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MSNBC: 10 ways Windows 8 is better than iPad

Buildbright said:
Specs mean nothing without the performance behind it. The iPad 2 is still faster then the Asus Prime which is now coming out new model every three months now...lol Do you know a big reason Android Tablets are failing to beat Apple. They use outdated business models that PC and TV companies use. Make our products dated in a year or less. People are tired of being treated like cattle. The iPad 1 is still an Amazing device and runs current iOS. Remember the first Galaxy Tab?

But price does not matter as much in this fight as much as software. Android phones have tons of apps but the selection of native Android Tablet apps is sad. Who wants to run a blown up phone app on a Tablet? Apple will own this market as long as they don't mess it up. They have been working on this since 2003 they should own the market.
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specs do matter, especially to a buyer who wants X size screen, wants native stylus support, wants an sd card, or wants to plug in without having to go through itunes.

i actually found the asus prime to be quite fast. i think it is a very smart business model, and one that is showing tremendous success, especially for phones. the app market is surprisingly nice as well.

i think people mistakenly look for a single manufacturer to produce something better than the ipad, but miss out on the low cost amazon fires, or high end asus transformers that don't have anything near the sales numbers of the ipad on their own, but together have eaten up a huge chunk of market share.

i am quite keen on the ipad, and will be getting the ipad 3 as soon as it comes out. but, i am also well aware that it isn't the only game in town anymore. there is tremendous potential out there for manufacturers to produce some real quality alternatives. i do hope that apple is paying attention and adjusting accordingly.
 
iEvolution said:
I found it absolutely ridiculous that they removed the start menu, that'll go over real well with desktop users that have been accustomed to the start menu the last 17 years! Talk about fixing things that aren't broken.

Then you have the ribbon interface for windows explorer. . . it didn't go over well in office why the hell do they think it'll be accepted in windows?

If the build that is out is going to be basically the final build feature-wise I don't expect anyone upgrading to it. Its looking to be Vista all over again.
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What they've done is they've replaced the Start menu with the Start Screen. You are basically flipping back and forth from the desktop to the Start Screen rather than going to a Start menu (I think this is so you can still run the non-appified programs from the desktop mode rather than the Start Screen). It's an unnecessary "feature" and it's looking like MS has no intentions of letting you go back to the full traditional interface. And all the power user admin-type options are found by going out to the desktop, going down to the bottom left hand corner so the start menu pops up, and then right clicking. Your control panel, command prompt, etc. are all listed there. Too many clicks and too much flipping around to different screens in my opinion.

All that being said, I did some digging around this morning and also watched this week's Windows Weekly on TwIT, and found all the answers I needed to use Windows 8 the way I'm accustomed to using Windows. Knowing what I know now, I could pretty easily get used to Windows 8, and being in tech support, I'm going to HAVE to know how to get around this OS in order to help my users that have upgraded. When I finally get the money together for a Mac someday, I wouldn't have any qualms about sticking Windows 8 on it too in Boot Camp. I would love to mess with it on my wife's MacBook, but her job has locked it down so much that I can't even install a simple plugin when I need to.

What I'm worried about is that this OS has been really dumbed down for the average user. That user will be flipping around to different stuff, opening apps, opening tabs in the web browser, etc., and for that type of user, there is no real obvious way to see everything you have open. I am just predicting a call saying, "my computer is running really slow and my web browser keeps acting weird, and blah blah blah." and me saying, "Oh, well you have 100 applications open right now. Let's take care of that first."

I do see promise here though. Microsoft is (for once) listening to the market. People want tablets. People want touch interfaces. People have tried Android tablets and it's not catching their interest. MS has a real opportunity here to be the TRUE competitor to iPad. (I don't think they'll ever overtake iPad, but I'm definitely rooting for them to eliminate Android.) I wouldn't have any problems with using a Win 8 tablet or a Win 8 laptop/tablet combo. I'm just not sure the desktop version of it is necessary. If they allow me to completely turn Metro off and operate like Windows 7, I'm sold. After all, this is just Windows 7 with Metro running over the top of it.
 
with ice cream sandwich, i think android has finally hit its stride. i expect to see a lot more android sales this year. and, manufacturers are finally stepping up to the plate. the asus transformer prime is an impressive piece of kit in the tablet category, and the droid is beautiful in the phone category.

i don't know what windows has to offer here, because it isn't like they are going to be more enterprise friendly or anything. my guess is that they will sell well enough, but will struggle against android, and will make few inroads against apple. it doesn't matter how great the interface is (or isn't), they haven't got the app environment to make it work well.

basically, they are in the same place android was last year, and that is going to be really tough going forward with the ipad 3 as their competition.
 
I think Windows 8 looks pretty cool too, but shouldn't the comparison be between Windows 8 and iOS 6? Obviously they can't do this yet, but if Windows 8 is supposed to be out by the end of 2012, it's a pretty safe bet that iOS 6 will be out by then too.
 
palpatine said:
specs do matter, especially to a buyer who wants X size screen, wants native stylus support, wants an sd card, or wants to plug in without having to go through itunes.

i actually found the asus prime to be quite fast. i think it is a very smart business model, and one that is showing tremendous success, especially for phones. the app market is surprisingly nice as well.

i think people mistakenly look for a single manufacturer to produce something better than the ipad, but miss out on the low cost amazon fires, or high end asus transformers that don't have anything near the sales numbers of the ipad on their own, but together have eaten up a huge chunk of market share.
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Screen size is one spec I could see, but those other items are features. I don't think the Asus Prime is slow just not as fast. I don't dislike it either and agree Asus can not fix or fight the Android battle alone.

Market share is debatable. But the three most popular (marketshare) tablets under the iPad are the HP Touchpad, Blackberry, Playbook, and the Kindle Fire.

Two of the tablets are failures. All three are sold at a financial loss. The Kindle Fire is the only one with hopes to make money on content sales. But the Fire is more of a toy than a market leading tablet.

The only tablet maker making money is Asus because they have the best alternative but sales are still record breaking but they can't sell at full price.

I just find this funny because everyone said the iPad would $1000 Now they complain it's $499. Also remember seeing all over the iPad will lose its lead to Android. I think this battle has just begun and I think Windows 8 is the most interesting enemy to date.
 
I like some of the things Win8 and the Android tablets have brought to the table. Being able to access settings quickly, more customization of the feel/look of the OS and the widgets. iOS has slowly improved since its inception but its far from what I'd say a completed product, theres still room for improvement and hopefully Apple isn't too proud to take more features from their competitors.

I hope iOS6 brings an overhal to some of the visual elements.

I was really impressed with the look and fell of the Galaxy Tab, if I get a tablet it'll likely be the iPad mostly for ease of use with the eco system (+ Apple TV mirroring) but it's not a slamdunk sale.
 
palpatine said:
true. and, the cool thing about apple is that they will roll it out for everyone at once. how great is that :)
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This.

I mean ICS is not on all devices yet and I was reading where Google is hyping up Jellybean already.

iOS is not perfect and we sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture namely that it is build for the masses and ease of use and not for a handful of geeks hanging out on forums.
As is right now you can hand an iOS device to a 5 year old kid or a 82 year old grandma and booth will know how to get around it in about 2 - 3 minutes, try that with anything else on the market.
 
Windows 8 can overcome iOS any moment, no matter what a fanboy can think.
The consumer preview is awesome. I'm sure maybe 1% of the posters in this thread has actually tried it, so the other 99% is talking nonsense or by imagination.
 
LostSoul80 said:
Windows 8 can overcome iOS any moment, no matter what a fanboy can think.
The consumer preview is awesome. I'm sure maybe 1% of the posters in this thread has actually tried it, so the other 99% is talking nonsense or by imagination.
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Guess I'm part of the 1% that has tried Windows 8 and absolutely hates it. Can't think of 1 real reason to use a Windows 8 machine.
 
LostSoul80 said:
Windows 8 can overcome iOS any moment, no matter what a fanboy can think.
The consumer preview is awesome. I'm sure maybe 1% of the posters in this thread has actually tried it, so the other 99% is talking nonsense or by imagination.
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The consumer preview is well built and stable, probably because it's pretty close to what you're going to get in the RC versions and the final build. I love that Microsoft has been doing publicly available betas for the last two versions of Windows, but they're really not betas. If they were, they would never release these to the masses. They called the Windows 7 beta a beta, but it was pretty feature complete and stable. In fact, it was so stable that when the RC came out, I started running it on all my PCs in the house as our main OS just to see what would happen. Never had one problem and eventually upgraded everything to the retail release.

But I have to believe the philosophy behind releasing Windows 7 and Windows 8 betas were completely different. Windows 7 was an emergency situation. Everyone hated Vista and something had to be done. They released the Windows 7 beta, everyone went nuts over it, and it sold like gangbusters when the retail release came out. With Windows 8, they have massively changed how you interact with the OS and I think they just simply want people to start getting used to it.

I think public opinion of Windows 8 could go either way. People that buy ARM tablets are most likely going to enjoy it. Metro is snappy and stable and clean looking, and it's NOT an iOS copy like Android is. Microsoft actually used creativity to design their own stuff. People that buy laptop/tablet hybrids (I'm pretty sure there are some coming out) are going to like it because it has interfaces suitable for both formats.

But the desktop version? I'm not so sure. Unless touch screen monitors start seeing widespread adoption, the desktop Windows 8 is kind of pointless. It's giving you (no FORCING on you) Metro UI because I'm sure Microsoft wants all software in the future to be appified, but it's also giving you desktop mode for those programs that aren't Metro compatible. But if you have a lot of software that's mostly not compatible with the new interface and you really don't like Metro, there's literally NO way to turn it off and just boot into the desktop. Metro IS the start button now. You do not have the option of not using it, contrary to what Microsoft was saying when they first started talking about the new interface.

In general, I'm rooting for Windows 8. I think that it's truly an intuitive and simple tablet OS and I think Windows Phone is slowly becoming a truly great phone OS. Both will keep Apple on its toes, and that's a good thing. I don't think Windows 8 on ARM tablets is going to kill the iPad, but it sure as hell could kill Android for tablets. I'm still going to buy my iPad 3, thank you very much, but if Apple ever decided to quit tablets, I can now honestly say after using the Consumer Preview for a couple of days, that I would be way more comfortable buying a Windows tablet than an Android one.
 
APlotdevice said:
USB drives, keyboards, and cameras will probably work on at least a basic level. But printers? Uh, those need drivers. Existing drivers most likely won't work on the ARM version. And the older your printer is, the less likely it is that the manufacturer will issue new drivers for it.
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Yeah, well at least they're being honest about it :D


Still, I can imagine some older/not so old drivers will not work with the new kernel anyway and support for some of them is going to be scarse, at least until the first service pack will be on it's way.


But oh boy, how they've got that right about themselves... "it should work"
 
spiderman0616 said:
It's giving you (no FORCING on you) Metro UI because I'm sure Microsoft wants all software in the future to be appified, but it's also giving you desktop mode for those programs that aren't Metro compatible. But if you have a lot of software that's mostly not compatible with the new interface and you really don't like Metro, there's literally NO way to turn it off and just boot into the desktop.
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Google "windows 8 disable metro" and there are a bunch of utitilites that supposedly turn off metro, like this one: http://winaero.com/download.php?view.15

They were written for the Developer Preview, though -- do they no longer work for the Comsumer Preview?
 
LostSoul80 said:
Windows 8 can overcome iOS any moment, no matter what a fanboy can think.
The consumer preview is awesome. I'm sure maybe 1% of the posters in this thread has actually tried it, so the other 99% is talking nonsense or by imagination.
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So you have used it on a tablet? What was the battery life? How did desktop programs run on the arm chip?

I think nonsense is spread by people hyping a product based solely on a consumer preview not running on its intended hardware.
 
Windows 8 on a tablet..... The hardware is gonna be what makes it worth while. I think the OS looks kinda lame. Either way I wouldn't buy one. I gave up on windows a long time ago. I think Microsoft makes good software (office) but thats about it.
 
motoleo said:
I meant to add that I installed Windows 8 on my laptop. Needless to say, I uninstalled it. I tried to use it but. Um- it just- I didn't want it.

It wasn't even worth having it for the "cool factor" of just showing it off. It has no cool factor
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You have to take a few minutes to actually set it up and customize it so that it's showing you want you want to see.

Of course it's fairly plain and boring right 'out of the box'.

Richardgm said:
The major problem I have now is that it overwrote my Windows 7, so I'm screwed.
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You must have known going in that this would be the case unless you are installing on a separate partition.
 
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But that's just the thing it was so dull that I couldn't find it in me to really set it up.

What was most appalling about it was the fact that they took games from iOS, like cut the rope and demo that on the platform. At this point I don't even know who they're marketing to. Certainly not their old users or hard-core gamers with a demonstration of a game like cut the rope.
 
iEvolution said:
Then you have the ribbon interface for windows explorer. . . it didn't go over well in office why the hell do they think it'll be accepted in windows?
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Microsoft sure took Apples route of thinking on that one "We know what our customers want more than they do"

I'm glad about the ribbon to be honest, and it being included in explorer personally works for me as its collapsed by default, giving me more space in explorer than Windows 7, and I use the keyboard shortcuts for everything I do in explorer.

As for Office 2010, I instinctively know where all the commands will be kept. The ribbon just makes sense for me. I had to be trained on Office 2003 as part of my job, and I still get lost looking for commands on the menu bar.
 
Windows 8

As both a Mac and Windows person, Windows 8 is far superior to any other operating system out there. I hate MSNBC but they are actually right about this.
I'm dual booting 7&8 and I have found very few issues with 8.
 
11 the way : Why Win 8 is better than iPad

11th way : Why Win 8 is better than iPad


Win8 tablets comes with a massive pool of ready made computer viruses :D
 
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