Comment by Lewisham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lewisham | Hacker News Reader

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The first thing a power user will do is to go to the old-desktop and stay there, basically not interacting with metro at all. There is no point, it's about as useful as the winkey+tab is on Vista/W7.

I don't know if you're trying to troll or you're just incredibly short-sighted, but I'll bite.

Windows 8 is clearly designed as a hybrid OS, in the same vein that Ubuntu on Android is, even if Microsoft's marketing team don't outright say it. It's fills the use case of "I love my iPad, and I love my Mac, but I really hate that I have these two devices."

Within a year, you're going to see probably about 30% of the new machines being manufactured as tablets, with docking stations. Run the machine in tablet mode, and you get Metro, perfect for reading web pages and flinging Angry Birds around in bed. When it's time to go to work, you pop your tablet into the docking station, and up pops the Desktop for productivity apps. Metro is not going to disappear like Media Center did. It's integral to the whole thing.

The iPad is not a machine to do large amounts of work on, but you'd be surprised how many people are trying to. Have you been on a plane recently? A good half of the iPads I see are actually jammed into some horrible looking keyboard dock. Consumers seem to really want a machine that will do this. That's what Windows 8 is.

The problem with this logic, IMO, is that they are still ignoring that, in spite of consumers wanting a single device that supports multiple interfaces, they're still trying to cram two very different experiences into one unified experience.

To me, Microsoft and Apple should realize that once you plug a keyboard/mouse into a tablet, it becomes a notebook, and the user should be presented with a new experience -- because it now has a new interface (keyboard/mouse vs. touch screen only).

If they could figure out how to intuitively transform your experience from a tablet experience to a notebook experience without jarring or confusing the user, then they could have an OS that could work with both devices -- or a single device that supports both interfaces.

So that should still work right? As long as there is a tablet that has a good keyboard stand, As a tablet, you mostly stay in the metro world and once docked you can use the keyboard/mouse. None of the metro apps I saw were not hard or non-intuiitive to use with mouse/keyboard.

For a legacy laptop, most of the work is done in the desktop anyways no matter how much Microsoft is touting the cool metro UI, I doubt the users of older laptops are going to spend much time in metro land. So that experience does not change much anyways.

So its like you do have two devices in one. Use the one which you prefer.

I don't see how that goes against what I said.

Of course the metro UI has advantages on a tablet, my post was mainly centered around the workstation. Whether you take your workstation with you at the end of the day or not is irrelevant for the work you do on it when it is being used as workstation.

If you feel the transition between the two isn't smooth enough that's another point but my first reaction to this is positive. I do not want that transition to be smooth, to me that's like trying to mimic the feel of a nice heated leather car seat while skydiving. If either was any like the other at least one of them would be worthless (probably both).

Realizing that that is impossible and separating them is the key to my heart and both windows 8 and unbuntu for android seems promising in that regard (but since I haven't used any of them that is just my initial impression). Apple on the other hand seems to be taking small steps in the opposite direction with mountain lion, which is of course fine for most but I don't think that that will cut it in the long run.

If you haven't even seen Windows 8, please don't comment on it. It's clear from even a quick look at Windows 8 what awkward transition between "tablet" and "desktop" he's talking about.

The idea of a single device that does both mobile and desktop work well is a nice idea, but in practice the few attempts at this have failed, mainly at the hardware level. See the Motorola Atrix, previous Windows Tablet Laptops, etc.

If Microsoft was serious about building this as the future computing experience, they should have built the hardware and controlled both the hardware and software. But then they'd be no different from Apple and they'd alienate their hardware partners.

"but in practice the few attempts at this have failed, mainly at the hardware level. See the Motorola Atrix, previous Windows Tablet Laptops, etc"

I am typing this response on an ASUS Transformer laptop, which I don't see as a failure at all at the hardware level. The only downside of the ASUS Transformer is that the Android software ecosystem has a long way to go to catch up to the idea of being run on a laptop-like device. This is something Windows 8 should have a big advantage on, which is one of the primary reasons I'm really looking forward to Win8.

>If Microsoft was serious about building this as the future computing experience, they should have built the hardware and controlled both the hardware and software. But then they'd be no different from Apple and they'd alienate their hardware partners.

Windows On ARM tablets do exactly this.

>> It's fills the use case of "I love my iPad, and I love my Mac, but I really hate that I have these two devices."

It's an interesting point, but if this is the target, then I think it's hopeless. Indeed, I don't think that people are ready to ditch there Mac/iPad setup for a unified windows setup. And if MS wants to conquer the tablet market, then I'm not sure that the "unified" argument is a key selling point. People won't buy any tablet over the iPad just because you tell them: "hey, you can find everything you (don't) like about windows on your tablet too!"

Note: I'm sorry if I sounded anti-windows, that's not the case, although I'm not a big fan either

Nobody is forcing you to use the things you don't like about windows. Which you haven't bothered to list... A tablet can be a pure metro experience and a pretty cool one at that.

Unfortunately, that's not going to happen unless we will see some x86 tablets. WOA will have Metro-style apps only.

And I doubt we'll ever see x86 tablets

Just an FYI Intel has announced new chips and future strategy for the mobile market. We will definitely see x86 tablets. AMD wants in as well.

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