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OK, we promise not to make many more shows this long, but we did have a guest! Tom Schmidt from First Tech and MyMac.com joins the GMen for a lively discussion on WWDC and Microsoft’s new Surface Tablets. Guy deals with graduations, Gaz deals with a angry iPhone, and they both deal with new ways to possibly get podcasts in the future. You just have to deal with an extra long show.
Some Links
Guy’s App Pick: Commentcast by Martica. $5
Gaz’s App Pick: Colloquy IRC chat client for the Mac And £1.49 (likely $1.99) for your iOS device
People’s App Pick: Steve Hammond’s pic of Whatsize Mac by whatsizemac. $12.99 at the website and $14.99 at the Mac App Store
I have maybe a rather unusual opinion on Surface. First off,calling both tablets Windows 8 does not in any way, shape, or form mean that they are running the same OS. Windows RT isn’t Windows any more than Windows CE was. Linux/Android and OS X/iOS share a lot of code, it does not make them the same OS as they don’t run the same software.
The big mistake Microsoft made with Win 8 is that they caused their users the pain of changing the user interface without streamlining what is underneath – Win 8 still has a registry and the associated bloat. Microsoft really needs to do what Apple did with OS X – blow it up and start over with a small, fast core – Win 9, maybe?
RT tablets hace a chance to do well. A “Micosoft equivalent of the iPad” but with the ability to run Office could have a lot of buyers IF Microsoft has the patience to persuade developers to write for RT.
Full Win 8 tablets will flop totally (and I have owned a Win XP tablet). A full multuser, multitasking OS will NOT run well on the limited hardware of a tablet, any more than Windows 7 or Vista ran well on netbooks. The heat and battery issues will be very real, and the OS itself will take up a lot of disk space.
The few specs we have seen confirm this. 64GB is the smallest Pro model Microsoft will offer and the 2 lb. weight is presumably a very large battery (without a retina display to justify it), and the Core i5 processor it requires is going to cause heat issues. A first generation iPad, with 256MB of memory and a slow processor, runs quickly because the OS doesn’t make heavy demands on it. Just the opposite is true of Win 8. A 64GB Surface Pro is not going to be remotely as good a user experience as a 64GB iPad – not in speed, weight, or ease of use. These tablets are not going to sell even to enterprise when employees know that iPads exist, and I think this is true regardless of how well Windows 8 does in general.