Mundane and pointless brought to you by Microsoft Surface!

[BigT]

@Infovore

I don’t understand why you’re calling the iPad an “inferior product.” That sounds like Apple-bashing to me. It may be inferior for you based on what you want, but there are a lot of people out there who are only interested in “consuming content.” They want something they can use while sitting on their couch, lying in bed, waiting for a train, whatever, to surf the web, play a few games, listen to music, watch movies…the iPad is perfect for that. Especially the latest one with the retina display. So what if you can’t use it to compose lengthy documents or spreadsheets? That’s not what it’s for.

Also, there are a lot more people who use iPads and other non-keyboard tablets to do all sorts of things in the professional world. Hospitals, warehouses, schools—the iPad has a presence there and many other markets. And if you want a keyboard for your iPad, there are any number of them out there you can use. So what if it’s not attached as part of the case (and there are iPad cases that do have integrated keyboards)?

Sorry, I don’t expect anyone to like iPads or think they’re useful for their particular needs. But I do get a little bugged when people call them “inferior products.”

Well, I can use other terms, but the idea remains the same. iPads are intentionally crippled. It doesn’t matter that this crippled device can do all of what you want it to do. It doesn’t change the fact that Apple could have made it do more, but instead set it up where we’d have to buy a separate laptop and tablet, when the same device could have been easily made to handle both.

Remember, tablets, just like everything else, were not something Apple came up with. It’s just something Apple successfully marketed to get people to want to use. It’s not exactly surprising that you only want it to do what it can do, seeing as most people didn’t even want a tablet until Apple told you about theirs. For those of us who wanted a tablet longer, we can see the corners Apple cut, and how they’ve successfully remarketed these cut corners into features.

Now they are even getting people to think that these new screens are somehow amazing for video, when these screens are higher than HD, and thus all movies are going to have to be scaled up. And if you’ve seen scaled up stuff before, you know it never looks as good as on a native resolution screen.

And I can say this even though I’m actually applauding Apple for being the first to finally come out with a higher pixel-density display. We’ve been stuck at HD resolutions and 100ppi (pixels per inch) for way too long. I’m not bashing Apple–I’m bashing a specific practice of theirs. You’ll note I wasn’t exactly 100% favorable of Microsoft either.

Look, I have no problem with people thinking the iPad is enough for their needs. I just have a problem with all those people who have been so convinced that they think those of us who want more are asking for too much. And, like the PDA when the smartphone came out, I can’t wait until these less fully-featured tablets are no longer so ubiquitous.

I don’t hate apple: I even hope the iPad is one of those tablets. It has an awesome UI, something Apple has been consistently amazing with.

And, no, I’m not a Linux geek, either. The various distributions actually started this new UI thing before Microsoft did. Part of what bugs me about Windows 8 is that the Metro UI is worse than those UIs which I thought were bad enough. It’s one thing for a group of amateurs to come out with something stupid…

[Martin_Hyde]

That’s not an entirely untrue narrative but I think Apple’s motivations are unfairly characterized. The old concept behind tablets, which many companies (including Microsoft, IBM, and even Apple a little bit with things like the Newton) tried was to get a tablet form factor device that approximated what a computer was. They usually created a device that was way worse than a computer, really expensive, and clunky to use.

That didn’t work. What Apple did when they released the iPad wasn’t so much “convince people that they didn’t want or need a PC in a tablet form factor, but instead a weaker device so they would also buy laptops” so much as it was just rethinking the tech industry’s position on tablets. The consumer didn’t really have a strong opinion on tablets, they were an niche product. Apple basically thought that with smartphones being so popular, they could create a tablet that was just like a giant smartphone. It’d have a bit more power, a bigger screen so it could consume content better and it could do everything a smartphone could do (except phone calls), and better. Apple banked on this idea being a lot more practical than the old tablet model and a lot more successful, and it was.

So it is true that Apple is selling a device that very intentionally is inferior in pure performance and capability than a standard computer. But Apple doesn’t so much see it as crippled so much as they see it as the argument about buying a small family car versus buying an F-350. The F-350 has a ton of expensive features that, unless you are in certain trades, you really don’t need. The average daily commuter doesn’t need to be able to haul a load of furniture, drive through a mud trail, haul a trailer or etc. So all the expensive features of a big powerful work truck would be wasted on the daily commuter. Apple (and specifically Steve Jobs) came to view PCs as the work trucks–you’ll never get a tablet that is more powerful than the powerful PCs of its day, but you really don’t need that. Most people are fine driving a Camry, Civic, or even a Corolla. The people who need F-350s or Tahoes or whatever will buy them.

Microsoft is basically reasserting its old position: people really want a fully functional PC in the tablet form factor, but up until now (that’s their narrative at least) the technology wasn’t there to deliver it to them.

[JohnT]

And that (MS’s position in your last sentence, Martin) is precisely what I’m looking for in a tablet.

[Gozu_Tashoya]

If it’ll run Scrivener and Final Draft and cost less than whatever the marketing people have named the new niche of Macbook Air knockoffs, I’ll consider it.