PREDICTION: countdown to failure, Windows 8 RT tablet will be an unmitigated failure.

[lothar]

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/11/29/microsoft_halves_surface_orders/

 

[Zink]

Were there any good deals on Windows RT devices on Friday/Monday or did MS stand by and try to sell under specced tablets for more than the competition? I didn't see any here in Canada.

 

[BladeVenom]

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/11/29/microsoft_halves_surface_orders/

"Microsoft has slashed the number of Surface RT tablets on order with original design manufacturers (ODMs) in Asia, according to reports.

The supply chain was primed to build and ship four million units of the ARM-based devices by year-end, but Redmond has slashed this to two million on the back of weak demand, sources told Digitimes."

 

[finbarqs]

we should start a countdown...

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I went to the Microsoft store last Sunday to play with Surface and see the other touch ultrabooks and the VivoTab. The store was packed, which I was happy to see.

While waiting for line of people to dissipate so I could actually play with a Surface device, I played with a Sony touchscreen ultrabook, which I thought was very nice, and the VivoTab, which I thought was outstanding. Super light and a nice keyboard dock.

My favorite part of Windows RT is that I was able to pull up Hulu.com and nbc.com/snl and play any video / show I wanted without the website telling me that "this video is not available for your device."

I'm still waiting on Surface Pro and right now am looking at that versus the Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro, but I could probably coexist pretty nicely with Windows RT as my laptop and android tablet replacements.

This actually pisses me off that Hulu doesn't let you watch on your mobile device. What's the difference other than the device? I suppose they want to charge because being able to watch on your mobile device is supposedly a luxury. But from a technological standpoint who cares? Maybe someone should make a desktop browser spoofer on an Android phone....

 

[finbarqs]

it's the fact they couldn't get the rights to it. Even Hulu Plus, doesn't have 100% of the content of Hulu. A lot of will be labeled: Web Only

 

[s44]

This actually pisses me off that Hulu doesn't let you watch on your mobile device. What's the difference other than the device?

Rights agreements.

 

[lothar]

This actually pisses me off that Hulu doesn't let you watch on your mobile device. What's the difference other than the device? I suppose they want to charge because being able to watch on your mobile device is supposedly a luxury. But from a technological standpoint who cares? Maybe someone should make a desktop browser spoofer on an Android phone....

I'm not a Hulu user...Never tried it, never used it.
But can't someone just request the Hulu.com desktop site to bypass that? Many Android browsers have that feature nowadays?

 

[KentState]

This actually pisses me off that Hulu doesn't let you watch on your mobile device. What's the difference other than the device? I suppose they want to charge because being able to watch on your mobile device is supposedly a luxury. But from a technological standpoint who cares? Maybe someone should make a desktop browser spoofer on an Android phone....

It's not Hulu specifically, but the networks behind it. They want to maximize profits and having you pay per view through a marketplace is much more desirable.

 

[dagamer34]

I'm not a Hulu user...Never tried it, never used it.
But can't someone just request the Hulu.com desktop site to bypass that? Many Android browsers have that feature nowadays?

You can on Windows RT. It's just a regular web browser to Hulu.

 

[Sureshot324]

Integrating the touch ui with the desktop makes perfect sense. You can choose to ignore it and use only the classic desktop. The only thing missing is the start button and IMO Ms should have kept that as an option, but you really don't need it and there are 3rd party apparently for that. Right clicking on the bottom left corner gives you a menu with a lot of the options you had in the start menu.

Soon there will be no such thing as a laptop without a touchscreen and it's great to have the choice between a touch interface and a traditional desktop interface.

As a touch ui it's very good. I especially like it's use of swiping from the edge of the screen to alt tab or bring up overlay toolbars. Ms's biggest problem is their reputation. People just don't like them as much as they like Google or apple.

 

[blurredvision]

we should start a countdown...

For somebody who hates Microsoft with a passion, you sure as hell manage to post multiple times in every single Windows 8/Surface/WP8 thread you can find.

 

[Dominato3r]

For somebody who hates Microsoft with a passion, you sure as hell manage to post multiple times in every single Windows 8/Surface/WP8 thread you can find.

But I have a Yoga

 

[lothar]

You can on Windows RT. It's just a regular web browser to Hulu.

Yes, but what's stopping someone from using Chrome or Dolphin browser on Android and requesting the desktop site of Hulu.com?
By requesting the desktop site, you're spoofing the user agent. Hulu shouldn't be able to stop that.

 

[Lyfer]

I actually like the Surface tablet when I got to play with it locally. Too bad it's waaaaaay overpriced for what you get and considering the ecosystem is new. If they would launched at $299 I think they would have avoided this failure to launch.

 

[ponyo]

Yes, but what's stopping someone from using Chrome or Dolphin browser on Android and requesting the desktop site of Hulu.com?
By requesting the desktop site, you're spoofing the user agent. Hulu shouldn't be able to stop that.

Hulu can tell from the mobile Flash. You could patch Flash to make it work but I don't know if there's current working one. I'm stopped fooling around with it since I rarely watch Hulu.

I expect Hulu to block Windows 8 RT soon. HP Touchpad worked with Hulu in the beginning before Hulu to a stop to it.

 

[podspi]

Hulu can tell from the mobile Flash. You could patch Flash to make it work but I don't know if there's current working one. I'm stopped fooling around with it since I rarely watch Hulu.

I expect Hulu to block Windows 8 RT soon. HP Touchpad worked with Hulu in the beginning before Hulu to a stop to it.

But should they? It isn't clear to me that the Surface isn't a PC.

 

[dagamer34]

But should they? It isn't clear to me that the Surface isn't a PC.

As far as Hulu is concerned, the Surface is a PC.

 

[finbarqs]

Integrating the touch ui with the desktop makes perfect sense. You can choose to ignore it and use only the classic desktop. The only thing missing is the start button and IMO Ms should have kept that as an option, but you really don't need it and there are 3rd party apparently for that. Right clicking on the bottom left corner gives you a menu with a lot of the options you had in the start menu.

Soon there will be no such thing as a laptop without a touchscreen and it's great to have the choice between a touch interface and a traditional desktop interface.

As a touch ui it's very good. I especially like it's use of swiping from the edge of the screen to alt tab or bring up overlay toolbars. Ms's biggest problem is their reputation. People just don't like them as much as they like Google or apple.

it would made sense if it was really seamless.. Try multi-tasking in IE- Metro. You can't. The charms magically stops working. And launching some apps inside the metro will automatically pull out the desktop mode, if the apps were made for desktops (i.e. Office 2010) So going back and forth between the metro UI and the desktop can be very confusing, especially when the interface is pretty clunky with a touch device. Desktop still isn't very touch friendly except for IE. And What if you launch IE from Metro, and it's asking you to install Flash, Java, but it can't? Most users will not be able to tell the difference between desktop IE and Metro IE. But Microsoft clearly made them different. There are more gestures in Metro IE, that's for sure!

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I walked into the MS store yesterday to try a Surface tablet. The keyboard is hard to use. The keys aren't defined enough for actual fast typing. I type 100wpm on a real keyboard, but probably when typing these forum messages I go for more like ~75. I couldn't achieve anything like that on the surface keyboard. Typing one sentence was painful. The sensitivity wasn't good enough to accept all my light taps.

Furthermore, the thing is just confused. Is it a laptop or is it a tablet? Using Office is too much. I know Microsoft tries to promote that, but you have to realize there's not that many great Office Suites even on Android. Apple had to design a touch version of its iWork software for the iPad. Porting stuff over sounds easy but the execution's never that clear. Do you really expect people to be doing serious Microsoft Office editing on their tablets? And the way it's setup, it's almost a laptop. In that case it's usable, but with no mouse what do you expect? Perhaps they should stick to a standard tablet with a view only and basic editing only. You can't expect to port Office over with the full functionality and have it that useful on a tablet.

I think it's funny that people laugh at Apple when they bring iOS elements into Mac OSX. However, it's doing so in a slow manner. Facetime slowly coming in, then the app store, and now notification center, etc.

But holy crap. Microsoft went in 1 shot to integrate Windows Phone and Windows itself. Apple isn't even jumping into touch yet. What makes you think Microsoft will have better execution than the touchscreen experts? Nothing. That's right.

I like Windows 7, but Windows 8 is just a disaster. It's just in an awkward position. Are you a touch OS or are you a full desktop OS? I prefer to use my OS as a desktop OS, but it seems Microsoft is making it hard to do that.

 

[preslove]

My prediction is that after tons of complaints about Metro, desktops & laptops with Win8 will be shipped with Classic mode as default.

Windows RT will fail. Windows 8 pro tablets will probably fail, too.

 

[BladeVenom]

Windows RT will fail. Windows 8 pro tablets will probably fail, too.

It may be a niche market, but I definitely think there is a market for Windows 8 pro tablets.

 

[lopri]

With regard to WinRT Office:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4708274

I'm on the Word team in Office and I'm coming into this thread incredibly late, but FWIW the slow typing on ARM was something we couldn't fully address in time for the preview release. Word RTM (ARM and x86/x64) has much better performance.

One of the challenges we had was that for a large majority of the product cycle we didn't even know about the Surface. We were looking at ARM early on, but the hardware we had was prerelease hardware from MSFT partners that had varying levels of performance.

Even now we don't know a whole lot about the Surface. It's a little frustrating, since we (Office) hit RTM we're eagerly awaiting the point at which new Surface RTs will have Office RTM baked into them. The preview release is seriously many many months old from the RTM release, and it's painful to think that this is what customers are going to see from Office when they turn on their shiny new device.

And a response from..

This issue is known, intermittent and dependent on a number of factors. It has been addressed and an update is forthcoming.
This type of issue would be identical across NVIDIA based ARM PCs and large numbers of the reference platforms were available at the same time they have been available to external developers.

Developers on the Office team (and Word team) that needed to contribute to the ARM focused work had access to the tools and hardware needed, including Surface specific hardware. There was no shortage of knowledge, hardware, or communication.

Are these real MS folks? And this dude (stevesi) is the one who recently resigned?

 

[Dominato3r]

With regard to WinRT Office:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4708274



And a response from..



Are these real MS folks? And this dude (stevesi) is the one who recently resigned?

Hey Lopri, I work at MS and I'd like to tell you this is all correct

In all fairness, we don't know, but what most people have said is that only people who 'needed to know', knew about the surface.

 

[gladiatorua]

Windows RT/Phone being Windows is not a selling point because it's not really Windows. Only under the hood. And it comes with bloat.
It's still Windows 6.something(Vista, 7 and now 8). And moving it to new platforms in this state... And forcing new UI on PC users... but that's another story.
I can't see Surface and Windows RT driving sales.
In case of Apple, iPhone drove the sales of not so cheap iPad, iPod drove sales of not so cheap iPhone... and iPod established dominance on a market crippled by media companies.
Same thing with Android. Phones were first, then Google failed with Honeycomb and only after 4.0 and bunch of cheap tablets the share started to grow.
Windows Phone 7 flopped. UI is new and shiny but it wasn't enough. And it turns out it's not so shiny.
Surface Pro will not succeed, unless MS market it properly. Not as a tablet, but as half a laptop. Like Asus Transformer something.
Surface Pro doesn't look like Pro. It looks like Plus. And doesn't deserve i5. Microsoft is kinda too late. Tablet market was established with an overgrown phone instead of shrunken PC. Even though tablets like Surface Pro were there for a decade. And at a similar price point, I think.