Will Microsoft Release Its Own Windows 8 Tablet? 207
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft isn't exactly known for its hardware prowess. Sure, it's churned out plenty of nice mice, keyboards, and game controllers over the years, but success with actual devices has been mixed. The Xbox 360 has exceeded all expectations, while the Zune and Kin hardware have been monumental failures. According to industry sources in Taiwan, however, Microsoft is working on a Windows 8 tablet that will be powered by Texas Instrument's next-generation 1.8GHz dual core processor."
The 360 has exceeded all expectations? (Score:3)
The 360 has exceeded all expectations?
Except the whole paying for the debt the Xbox left them with.
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And overheating problems on the earlier models.
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Where do they admit that they spent 1 billion? I remember them committing to a warranty plan that somebody worked out could end up being a billion, but when did they say they actually reached that level of spending?
Also, where did the $100 number come from?
These are important questions. It is *very* difficult to believe that if they truly hit 30%, they wouldn't stop the factories and nip that right away.
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As for the $100 it was estimate based on assumptions. If it was $50 per unit, why would MS set aside enough money to fix 200 million consoles? That's 170 million more units th
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So the 30% number is really just the most extreme estimate?
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I wouldn't even go that far. I'm sure MS thought they could take over the console market completely. So far, they haven't managed that, though they have got an impressive standing.
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Look man, if you've got a console that has people coming back three and four times to buy a new one when it keeps conking out, you'd better be making money on it.
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Ah. The old "they lose money on each sale but make up for it with volume" gambit.
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if you want to do something like create spreadsheets
You put away your toys and use a keyboard and a mouse like any sane person would do.
use word
See above.
play windows games
All of which are designed to be used in conjunction with, you guessed, a keyboard and a mouse. Try playing Call of Duty with your "touch screen" and see how that works out for you. And any tablet centric games are already going to be on every other major tablet platform so there is no advantage to the Windows tab.
You can do it in theory with a windows 8 tablet
You can create spreadsheets, documents, and play games with practically every tablet on the market.
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See above.
Actually, I think reading of and maybe minor changes/notetaking on a Word document is a pretty good use case for a Windows tablet, especially in the business world.
Ditto spreadsheets.
Businesspeople who otherwise have no particular use/need for a laptop need to read these things in meetings all the time. The current typical solution involves the meeting organizer printing out a ton of paper copies.
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Actually, I think reading of and maybe minor changes/notetaking on a Word document is a pretty good use case for a Windows tablet, especially in the business world.
Then how does that make Windows special? There are very popular "Word" file editors on every tablet platform that matters.
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Because, if it works halfway well, they can sell it to many large, conservative non-tech businesses that are at least half a decade away from even seriously considering deploying an iOS or Android device internally.
Most corporations move, tech-wise, at a glacial pace. You can sell them a brand they've been using for a quarter century; you can't sell them a brand that they haven't, even if it's the darling of the consumer marketplace (Apple) or the tech-savvy (Google).
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Check it out next time your comparison shopping between android and windows tablets.
Today I learned that the iPad doesn't have a spelling/grammar checker. :)
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... you know the apostraphe is there in the post in question, if not your quoting of it, right?
Also, I'm not using an iPad so your point would be moot either way.
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I almost told him yes, but then I remembered the new Windows 8 tablets coming out in the next year or so, and asked him if he'd rather have that. He immediately said yes, because he understands how much more usable a Windows environment is in the business world than an Apple one; I agreed with him.
Ooookay... so what we've learned here, is:
1) you talked yr old man into waiting an entire year (or more) for some promise which may or may not fully materialize, based on technical expectations of which he knows little about (since he had to ask someone else, namely you).
2) he has no idea what the rejected device really is or does, and unless you own and use one in a business situation, neither do you.
3) you made that recommendation based on a promise which you yourself are not fully certain of ("If MS can
Intel (Score:2)
Intel should be even more worried than they are already [slashdot.org].
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(Or will it backfire again?)
Yes. (Score:2, Troll)
And it will be a gargantuan flop.
Zune was failed hardware as compared to XBOX 360?? (Score:2)
Other than a clock-based firmware glitch that didn't affect me, I have no memory of anything rising to Red Ring of Death on my Zune.
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Zune was more a marketing flop. All of those music/video player things are fungible, from a utility standpoint. I've had them all, and the one I still use is a little 2GB Sandisk Sansa Clip, when I'm not just using my phone.
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you have a zune?
Microsoft will draft hardware requirements (Score:2)
I thought MS didn't care about tablets? (Score:2)
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They Probably Had a Hard Time Finding an OEM (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has a long history of letting its hardware partners take all of the risks. That's a fine strategy if you want to sell a bog standard PC. It is a much less workable strategy if you want to make some sort of unique device. In the past, however, Microsoft has been the only game in town when it came to workable off-the-shelf OS software, especially if you wanted to play well with Windows.
So the OEMs took Microsoft's software and did all of the actual engineering to make it actually work. If the device was a flop they were left holding the bag with the unusable hardware and the bill for the engineering effort. If the device was a success, then it was a given that Microsoft was going to shop your ideas around to your competitors. After all, most of the software that made your device work belonged to Microsoft. Microsoft got paid per device sold, and so they were happy to encourage cut throat competition on the hardware side. This guaranteed that there was a disincentive to actually innovate as companies like Dell, that made their money by cloning other people's ideas and squeezing the supply chain until it bled, dominated. Why innovate if Dell and Microsoft are going to make all of the money borrowing your ideas? Every once in a while someone would come up with a new device based entirely on their own software (Palm, Rim, etc.), but they invariably faced lots of pressure and competition from Microsoft and its OEMs.
The combination of Apple's design prowess and the emergence of Google's android have broken this cycle. Apple has the design genius to create entirely new devices that people want, and the existence of Android means that Apple's competitors have a ready-made OS that doesn't require that they work with Microsoft. Now Microsoft realizes that it needs to get into these new markets, but none of its traditional allies are willing to risk working with Microsoft's software. Heck, HP even has its own software for these devices. Nokia is allied with Microsoft now, and in fact, it has bet the business on Microsoft's software, but they are too busy trying to make a Windows phone to be relied on for a tablet.
So Microsoft gets to take its own risks now. It should be interesting. Microsoft learned a lot from the XBox. It is even possible that they won't lose billions of dollars this time.
How shall i say this. (Score:2)
The *only* good thing about MS is that they provided a stable platform where they managed to make it tasty for hw companies to produce for and stable enough to keep developers. whenever MS tried to do more than an occasional mouse or keyboard it sucked.
Dear MS, just try to get your os stable and clean, and provide in a form that it can be easily adapted to different platforms (e.g. partial open source). The others will do the rest (see: Android).
Where's Nokia? (Score:2)
Seems like Nokia should supply the hardware. Poor Elop, betrayed by his ex coworkers.
How to market to other OEMs if they're competing? (Score:3)
Has it already become so obvious to the OEMs that WinTab 8 will be such an mind-boggling disaster that the only way MS can get it out to the marketplace is to make the hardware themselves? At which point aren't the traditional hardware OEMs going to start having second thoughts about supporting Microsoft on their other product lines?
Nokia's already feeling the burn from having joined themselves to the hip with Redmond, seeing their market freeze while consumers wait for whatever hybrid spawn the two produce, or just running to the other mobile platforms (Android/RIM/IOS). I'd have to think tablet makers debating whether to work with Windows are having their minds made up for them.
SCOX(Q) DELENDA EST!!
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MS: Hey, we are comming with Win8, it will run on tablets.
OEMs: Ok, call us when you have something.
MS: Hey, you'd better pay attention, or Windows may become more expensive for you.
OEMs: Ok, we are paying attention. Do you have something to show?
MS: Yes, your hardware must meet that spec...
OEMs: That's insane, it
Why? (Score:2)
Last time they had a good concept for an in-house developed tablet (Courier) they axed the project just when a lot of people had started to look forward to it and were actively interested in buying one.
They really should (Score:2)
The Kin was made by Danger. The Zune failed for reasons unrelated to hardware design and build quality. They should go for it. Make something nice and do it right. Give device makers someone to copy that isn't Apple for once (even if your tablet is a copy of the iPad, at least 3rd party makers will get some idea of what to change about the iPad design and what to leave alone).
"Microsoft is known for its software, but why?" (Score:2)
For the past few years, at work, I am forced to use MS-office, MS-vista ....
I know they were first to make piss-poor software for the masses.
The masses do irrationally love their, malevolent or benevolent, gods on earth and in their mind.
"Reality is self-induce hallucination."
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Seems you are uninformed. They hire in plenty of international employees. I'm not American btw, I don't care about such patriotic/racist sentiments.
Re:I think they should (Score:4, Insightful)
Other Taiwan-based OEMs are also rumored to be assisting in the manufacturing process.
All American? Those days are long gone (and not just for Microsoft). Buying based on a US corporate logo isn't going to guarantee any American jobs (besides Ballmer's, and that's up for grabs as well).
The only difference between Apple and Microsoft is that the latter's O/S is going to have more end users committing suicide instead of Foxconn employees.
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The only difference between Apple and Microsoft is that the latter's O/S is going to have more end users committing suicide instead of Foxconn employees.
Nah. Emo kids love iPhones.
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I support America by running a real American OS: Debian.
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I'm certainly no fan of the Xbox, but I don't see "in the red". Microsoft's Xbox360 division has been profitable every year since the old xbox was retired.
Of course Microsoft wanted to be where Nintendo is now (billions of profit each year), but at least they aren't losing anymore. And they sold about twice as many units as the 2000-2005 generation.
Re:Exceeding all expectations, like the original X (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing personal, but you need to take a basic accounting class before you talk about this stuff. Really.
The division that includes the XBox has been profitable since the original XBox was retired because Microsoft went through a whole pile of accounting tricks to make sure that all of the large expenses happened before that arbitrary date. For example, Microsoft essentially pre-paid nearly $1 billion for promotion instead of paying for campaigns as they came up. Microsoft also wrote off another $1 billion for hardware returns.
The hardware return writeoff is especially interesting. Normal people, like you and I, know that Microsoft doesn't actually incur any costs until they have to fix your broken XBox 360. However, because of accounting tricks Microsoft could say (on the books) that it had already lost the money that it took replacing hardware. So the XBox division got credit for new sales, but it did not get dinged for returns. Instead of years of red ink, on paper Microsoft had a few *horrible* quarters and then moderate returns. This might make you feel better if you aren't very good at math, or if you are a fan of Microsoft's gaming system, but the end result is the same. Microsoft is still in the red overall on the XBox 360, and the best it could manage was a distant second place. Heck, Sony might even pass then for that honor.
Personally, I think that Microsoft had to do what it did, and it still could easily end up with a win, but talking about quarterly profits from the XBox division is just ignorance. Microsoft's investors have took a beating on both XBoxes, and I am sure that a lot of them are very wary about Microsoft making more hardware.
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I don't know about the Microsoft numbers, but I don't trust that chart simply because of Sony's numbers.
Seriously, since the PS3 is the worst-selling of the three console systems. Even with this year-old data, Sony should be doing much worse than that chart shows... unless they're doing creative bookkeeping between the PlayStation and Consumer Electronics divisions (read: TVs, radios, Blu-Ray players, etc...)
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The PS3 isn't doing that badly. It's only 5% behind the Xbox360, but you are correct that Sony is doing some tricky accounting:
"As of FY 2010 Q1, Sony are now reporting the results for the re-organised division Networked Products & Services rather than the old method of reporting for the gaming division. 'Sony said it will combine its VAIO personal-computer, Walkman and PlayStation businesses in the Networked Products & Services Group to focus on creating gadgets that can work with each other and
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I'm not entirely sure if those numbers are *JUST* the xbox. Microsoft has typically mixed the xbox in with other losing products like the webtv, and other crap so the division that xbox has been in has been unprofitable. Those numbers are also a year old, and xbox has been doing QUITE well in the last year.
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Two billion in red the first year. Which, coincidentally, is right about the same number as Sony's loss. Furthermore, MS came out of the red actually earlier than Sony. So either that makes the PS3 the mother of all failures, or the XBox360 did vastly better than expected.
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Video would likely be decoded by a separate chip anyway, as it already is on all current tablets.
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Considering decoding video falls into the category of "Embarrassingly parallel" we can safely say you have no idea what you are talking about.
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Yep.
I did not know MPEG decoding was a parallel process that worked better if you have more processors. Thanks for telling me, and in such a well-mannered message. I guess I should be looking for a quadcore 900 megahertz or 8-core 500 megahertz tablet when I go shopping.
BTW I get television for free! And you pay. Sucker. neener-neener (just joking) ;-)
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Is a dual core processor at that speed really better than a single-core at 3.6 MHz
Yes, it's almost a thousand times faster :) . Assuming you meant GHz, though, it comes down to battery life. Fast clocks mean lots of switching and deep pipelines which means lots of battery burn. It also helps with responsiveness. If there's always a core around to respond quickly to user events it will seem a lot snappier.
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two low-power cores will use a lot less power than 1 high-power core.
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Is a dual core processor at that speed really better than a single-core at 3.6 MHz? I think I'd rather have the speed, not the parallel processing, especially if I'm watching DVD or better quality video.
Yes. even one of the two cores is 500 times faster than a 3.6Mhz processor.
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I can't think of any CPU+Chipset released since at last 3 years doesn't have video acceleration, so the DVD decoding example is widely off-base; it's the GPU doing that anyway.
For real CPU tasks, I think temperature and issues are exponential to the clock speed, so paying the multi-cpu penalty (only about 70-80% efficiency, lower single-thread perf) is a worthwhile tradeoff, especially since all moderne software is multithreaded, lowering the multicore penalty: They most probably couldn't do 3.6 GHz in the
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Windows Tablet
This is just becoming an embarassment at this point. When is MS going to even try to compete? Windows tablets have been an abject failure in the consumer market for over a decade, Windows Mobile got stomped, Windows Phone is getting stomped and the kin lasted what, 2 months? Why can't Ballmer get it through his thick skull? Desktop Windows does not work on a tablet. Period. Why? Desktop Windows applications do not work on a tablet. It doesn't matter how many confusingly obfuscated skins you add over
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Well, actually.. the Kin is a totally different story, it was killed because the Windows Phone people whined that it was shitting on their lawn.
Indeed, the Windows tablet has been a failure for a long time, but a lot of that was because there were no apps for it, and regular windows apps just don't work well on a tablet. A Windows 8 tablet, with a tablet marketplace, might be successful if apps are written specifically for it.
I doubt Microsoft will actually sell their own though, they may be working on a h
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The Kin was killed because it failed to sell. The fact that the Windows Phone guys had political issues with the phone does not change that all-important fact. If customers would have wanted Kins, Microsoft would still be selling them.
I do agree that, at least to a certain extent, Microsoft stopped selling Kins because it was afraid that the stigma from the Kin's failure would rub off on Windows Phones in general. However, at this point, Windows Phone 7 is out, and it is still getting trounced. Heck,
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What they need to do is what the current overwhelming market leader did, namely, make a touch centric operating system from the ground up
The current market leader (I assume you mean Apple) didn't make a "touch centric OS" from the ground up. They took OS X - heck, they even took the same UI framework! - and they polished it into something very touch-friendly. In other words, precisely what you decry as "not working".
The trick is in doing it right.
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You have a point, but this is not at all what you've said in the original post to which I replied. There you have painted it as a technological problem - that it is somehow impossible to take desktop Windows as a base for a tablet OS and make it work. What you're talking about now is a marketing problem - the desire to shove "Windows(tm)" logo everywhere, as if it were some magic incantation that conjures dollars out of thin air.
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There you have painted it as a technological problem - that it is somehow impossible to take desktop Windows as a base for a tablet OS and make it work.
I guess I did implicitly say something like that but now that you bring it up, I'd actually say that it is true. I mean, to turn desktop Windows into a true tablet OS is going to require a complete redesign of the entire shell to make it touch centric. Everything from the File Explorer, the file picker, control panel, mmc, so on and so forth. Then, in order for it to compete with iOS and Android, you'll have to significantly reduce its system requirements or the other guys will just walk all over you wit
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. I mean, to turn desktop Windows into a true tablet OS is going to require a complete redesign of the entire shell to make it touch centric. Everything from the File Explorer, the file picker, control panel, mmc, so on and so forth.
That's true. But, did you see the Win8 demo video [youtube.com]? That's precisely what it shows. The old stuff is still there, but tucked far away, for the benefit of legacy apps you might want to run who expect to work in that environment. The new shell really is new, and unabashedly touch-centric (that whole tile thing).
Then, in order for it to compete with iOS and Android, you'll have to significantly reduce its system requirements or the other guys will just walk all over you with cheaper hardware and a similarly fluid and fast system for a lower price.
True. Hence ARM support (this is the crucial part of "cheaper hardware", and also a big deal for battery life).
And when you're done with all of that, do you really have "desktop" windows anymore? No. Not anymore than Android is desktop Linux or iOS is desktop OSX.
Well, you still have the same OS, and largely the same userland except for highest-level UI
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Well, you still have the same OS, and largely the same userland except for highest-level UI... so yes?
I'm not going to refute you point by point but ask yourself this. Do you really assert that the Windows that ends up on this tablet with the TI OMAP processor is the same as desktop Windows? Forget all the canned demo crap and hyperbole. Do you really believe that they are the same OS? I'll just say this, if you do believe that then the "Windows Everywhere" marketing is obviously working.
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For all technical purposes, yes, it's the same Windows. It's not a matter of belief, it's a plain fact.
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I've got an HP All in One touch screen and can say that Win7 actually works pretty well using it. Sure IE/Office and many other apps don't support touch screens yet but the OS itself already provides a decent framework for touch as IOS does.
Using explorer to move though the directory works quite well with the touch screen. Dealing with Media playback in WMP works quite well also. In fact the only area where touch is limited/fails is Office/Web and those apps stuck in -WinXP days. As to the OS itself, yes to
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Sure IE/Office and many other apps don't support touch screens
You just nailed it. If MS can't even get their first party efforts together for touch screen, do you really expect anybody else to care?
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You left out the most important word of his statement....yet.
Now that they are coming out with their own tablet and a tablet-centric UI for the next version of Windows, you can damn well bet the Office devs are cranking away at touch-friendly UI's for the Office suite, as well as many other MS developers getting touch-friendly UI's in place for all the big-name MS apps.
I predict now that we'll see Office, Works, IE, Outlook Express, Media Player, and hell probably even MS Paint and Notepad (cuz, seriously,
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Now that they are coming out with their own tablet and a tablet-centric UI for the next version of Windows, you can damn well bet
No you can't "damn well bet" anything. MS' Windows people have been beating the tablet drum for a decade and the Office team have basically gave them the collective finger.
Not to mention all the popular third-party apps out there that will be redesigned as well, same as what happened to many popular third-party apps for Mac when Apple released iOS.
Believe whatever you want to believe, I guess.
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Re:Windows Tablet (Score:4, Informative)
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The difference is Apple reset consumer expectation. They didn't say, "Here's OSX for your phone".
Really? [youtube.com]
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Informative)
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Thanks to marketing 101, I now associate brown with UPS.
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I have a Brown Zune. It's awesome. Don't use it anymore since I bought a WP7.
http://www.greentechvillage.org/wp-content/uploads/Zune%20Brown_2.jpg [greentechvillage.org]
I would buy a brown phone if someone made one.
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Zune didn't have enough features? It had more than comparable iPods (the Classic, not the Touch). Like a built in radio tuner. And the ability to buy/download a song from the radio with a click. And over-the-air syncing. And Sharing. And ZunePass.
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My impression of the Zune HD and Kin's failures is that they failed as a result of piss poor marketing
Yeah, they just needed to fix it with marketing. It couldn't have been because they flat sucked compared to the competition? Surely not.
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The Zune80 and Zune120 were superior to the iPod Classic in just about every way but two... better hardware, better sound quality, better UI, and better desktop software (Zune), and ZunePass. It just didn't measure up in market share/3rd party support, and international support (ZunePass being US only was a huge problem).
So no, the Zune didn't "suck" compared to the competition. I owned both, and I assure you the Zune (as well as the Zune HD) are great pieces of hardware, with great UIs, and the Zune soft
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Take a real look at them. They didn't suck in comparison to their competition.
I beg to differ. They were ugly, heavier than ipods of similar specs, and the interface was less intuitive. Together, that counts as suck. And the Zune HD had piss poor third party support, and the apps that were on it took too long to load with some even requiring full page video ads to be viewed before they would even start up. Yes, that sucks when the iPod touch is so much better.
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They were ugly, heavier than ipods of similar specs, and the interface was less intuitive.
I thought the exact opposite. I think the mirror backing of the iPods is one of the ugliest gaudiest designs, and only gets uglier as the device gets scratched up. As far as the interface, I always had trouble with the scroll wheel (my thumb just doesn't move that way). The 2nd gen zunes had a touch sensitive pad you could flick to scroll, which was much easier to use for me.
As for the Zune HD, yes it lacked apps, but it was a much better MP3 player in my opinion. It felt like a good MP3 player with apps ta
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It's a Windows TC.
Kin XL (Score:2)
They can reuse that Kin name they have laying there.
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WinPad.
Which is ironic because it starts with "Win" but will probably end up being a huge epic "Fail". Backward compatibility can only go so far, especially the transition between a desktop OS made for a keyboard and mouse and a tablet OS made for a touch interface.
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Windows 8.0 BingPad Professional Edition with Windows Live for Tablets
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I'll wait for service pack 2..
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Yes, MS can get Samsung or some other vendor to put some hardware together for them, and throw a copy of the Windows 7 phone OS on it, but that's not really a product. You're going to need the set of applications (Kindle, etc.) that make a tablet interesting and some form of integration as well. Some of them may exist for the phone already, but unless they're optimized for the table screen, the user experience will really suck.
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Newton, 1993
Lisa, 1983
Pippin, 1996
The newest thing on your list is 15 years old. I doubt very much most Apple fans even know what they were.
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That's because Apple has a few successes once in a while, and those sucesses do, you know, successfuly hand them some money. Microsoft by their turn had one extremely "successful" product recently, that is nearly the end of its life, and still in the red.
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Not right away ... it'll take about a week before it runs Linux.
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Agreed. My wife and I both have 120GB Zunes, and we share a Zune Pass. The player hardware is rock solid, the software is decent, and the Zune Pass just kicks ass all day long.
Yes, Zune marketing has undeniably failed. But it's a shame, because the product itself is actually pretty damned good.
I've only owned iPods in the music player space, but I've played with various Zunes. My impression was that MS made the best music player on the market at precisely the time that being just a good music player was no longer good enough. Nothing in the iPod lineup is as good as a Zune for music, but the Zunes can't compete with the extra functionality of the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad ecosystem. That, and they marketed them poorly.