Actually, the forced inclusion of Metro appears to have driven at least part of Windows users away, or made them decide to stick with Windows 7 or earlier. I know I will be sticking with Win7 until Microsoft clearns up its act, and I'm seriously contemplating switching to OS X. The tighter integration between iOS 8 and Yosemite is making the switch quite attractive.
The Windows lovers who hate Metro, will stay with 7, others will embrace and learn it. Me, I hate the tile UI, although now I just own a gaming rig on 7. I recently switched, so its no issue for me now. I switched, not because of Win 8 but as I use an iPhone, iPad, and I was interested for a long while in moving to OSX to add the integration.
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So from where I'm standing, the OS looks extremely relevant.
If your a Windows user, and a tablet user (apps issue aside) the hybrid is a potentially nice option. If you are an Apple user, you probably have no interest, but there is interest from Apple users, predominantly due to having one device that is a tablet OS AND a full desktop OS
Last year, when Apple introduced the A7 chip, it called it a desktop-class chip. iOS *is* a touch friendly version of OS X. It's not pen friendly at the moment, but that is easily fixed by adding a digitalizer. The only thing iOS wouldn't do that Win8 does is run legacy desktop software. Any other "desktop" function can be turned on if Apple flips a switch, as anyone familiar with the jailbreak tweaks scene well knows. And legacy software is not as important as people think. You don't really want to run desktop Photoshop on a tablet, what you really want is a tablet version of Photoshop that does everything the desktop version does.
An option is to make OSX touch friendly, without slashing the current UI. Or to keep integrating as is happening, example, the function which I cannot recall, to automagically move a document etc between devices as you work on it. As you say, allow the tablet functions to grow so you can use a very similar and capable version of say Photoshop on the iMac, MBP, or iPad. Thats a great rebuttal, and a differentiation to MSFT
I think eventually iOS and OS X will converge.
I don't think so. Im thinking sales, and going back to your compromises, you cannot have desktop OS that on a 27 inch screen is the same as on a 9.7 screen. Integrate where moving one to another is seamless.
But Apple is leading up to it gradually, rather than forcing a giant leap forward like Microsoft did with Win8. So sure, right now we are stuck with iOS apps that are not as powerful or full-featured as their desktop counterparts. But iOS gets more powerful each year, and with that, iOS apps get more powerful each year. Eventually, we won't see much difference between desktop and tablet apps in terms of power and features, so that when the convergence does happen, the transition will be smooth, with little or no learning curve. At least, that is what I think Apple is aiming for.
Agree