The flood gates are open for tablet computing

Last week was a big week on a personal and professional level. Tuesday afternoon brought the birth of a new member of our family, a daughter, which fit in nicely with a flood of new product announcements from the major players in tablets. Let’s take a look.

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Apple

Apple kicked the week off with a long-anticipated “iPad Mini,” a 7-inch tablet which, like most recent Apple releases, was well-known to the public before the curtain was finally pulled back for the official product announcement. Interestingly, Apple also announced a “new” New iPad, largely keeping the form factor of the prior iPad while shifting to Apple’s new “Lightning” connector and providing a slight specification bump.

While Apple’s secrets were well-known before its product announcement, there are a couple of things that stand out to me about the iPad Mini. The first is that tablets have matured to a point that market leader Apple sees a viable market for a multitude of form factors. Apple now has three tablet formats, when you consider that the iPod Touch is essentially a tiny slate. Steve Jobs famously lamented that there was only one “perfect” size tablet, of course personified by the original iPad’s 9.7″ screen, but now the company is putting its money where its mouth is on different screen formats.

The other interesting thing about Apple’s announcement is its timing. A reawakened Microsoft, which we’ll talk about soon, also announced the release of its Surface tablet last week. Shortly after Microsoft had set the announcement date, both Apple and Google put events on the calendar.

Google

Google had scheduled an Android event for Monday, Oct. 29th, but it was canceled due to Hurricane Sandy. Instead of rescheduling, Google announced its new Android products on the web site, including the operating system Android 4.2, the Nexus 4 smartphone, and a full-size tablet called the Nexus 10.

The Nexus 10 tablet is certainly worthy of the positive press, but Google seems to be making what primarily amounts to a “me, too” play. We have yet to see if Android freedom and price-point can lure users away from the shiny Apple, even if the hardware specs are comparable.

Microsoft

While Microsoft’s “official” release of Windows 8 and its Surface tablet were primarily rehashes of previous news, what’s most interesting is that Google and Apple appear to see this release as enough of a threat to try and steal some of Microsoft’s thunder. I’ve previously written that Surface represents a major bet for Microsoft, with a large potential reward — returning to dominate the tablet market that it entered nearly a decade ago — and a huge risk by creating a billion-dollar failure as HP did with its WebOS tablet.

For IT leaders, it’s amazing to witness all three major players in the tablet market launching refined products over the course of a single week. Apple and Google appear to be tweaking largely successful products, with Apple notably admitting that there’s more than one “perfect” tablet size. Microsoft’s big bet on what amounts to an entirely new ecosystem driven by hardware and its new OS could completely change the face of the tablet market or be relegated to the bargain bins in a few short months.

What are your thoughts about the recent tablet announcements. Who do you think will dominate the market? Share your opinion in the discussion thread below.

Source : techrepublic[dot]com

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Microsoft places a heavy bet on Surface

This week’s big news is the pending release of Microsoft’s Surface tablet, which is a major push for the company on several fronts. At a high level, Surface marks Microsoft’s re-entry into the tablet market, one that it helped create in the early 2000s, only to see limited acceptance — and eventually, Apple dominated the market with its launch of the iPad.

Superficially, this seems like another entry into the “Look, Ma, I have a tablet, too!” category, but it’s noteworthy because it’s Microsoft’s first foray into a major piece of hardware, one of the first “flagship” tablet-style devices running Windows 8, and the first major piece of hardware running Windows RT, the tablet-focused version of Windows 8 that’s targeted toward the optimized ARM-based processor.

Initial reports indicate that Microsoft has bet heavily on this particular tablet, producing an initial run of five million units at a starting price of $499 (USD) apiece. In my mind, this move also marks some boldness and risk-taking from a company that seemed content to give up on innovator status in the last few years, cashing checks from its desktop OS and Office suite rather than attempting to change computing as we know it.

Own it

While Microsoft has taken some flak for producing its own hardware, it’s a necessary move. As an owner of several past tablet PCs, the experience and good ideas represented by the platform were marred by poor driver support, inadequate batteries, high price tags, and a lack of interesting hardware.

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Apple has long realized the benefit of tightly integrating hardware and software, and if Microsoft can successfully drive a hybrid strategy, whereby it releases flagship devices and maintains a cadre of hardware vendors filling in the gaps, some interesting things might happen. If nothing else, Microsoft has already set a high bar on the hardware front and will hopefully do for the Windows-based tablet what competition from the likes of the MacBook Air did for the ultralight PC laptop category.

Looking good

Microsoft has apparently also hired some industrial and graphics designers, a marked departure from the past when most of the visual tweaks to its products were geeky or more sizzle than steak. While the dramatic change to the Windows 8 interface has CIOs raising a skeptical eyebrow, it is certainly pushing computing in a different direction and represents far more bold thinking than pretty windows and animations.

Where it could all go wrong

There’s a lot to like about the moves Microsoft is making, but at this point, they are little more than pretty pictures, release candidate software, and marketing superlatives. There are no extensive, hands-on reviews of the Surface tablet at the time of this writing (although the device is slated to go on sale in just a few hours — on Friday, Oct. 26, 2012). So, the Windows 8 interface remains untried on a massive scale, and developers who are likely growing weary of the proliferation of tablet platforms now have another one to deal with.

These are all problems that have been routinely discussed, but a more nuanced one is the question of whether users can be bothered to jump aboard an entirely new platform that encompasses hardware and core OS functionality. I’ve talked to quite a few people, and many of them think that desktop- and laptop-type platforms represent the past. The majority of their computing interactions take place in browsers. Even in the corporate environment, Outlook and Office do the majority of the desktop-based work, and all the “action” happens in web or proprietary-client applications.

For these people, consumers and corporate customers, Windows 8 with its new interface represents an answer to an unasked question, with Windows 7 essentially “good enough.” Considering quite a few major companies still run the venerable Windows XP, Windows 8 may be a bridge too far.

One of the criticisms of the iPad, that it’s just a “big iPhone,” is also its biggest strength. The interface is no-frills and essentially gets out of the way so you can interact with your content and applications. Even with high-quality hardware, a new platform that’s completely different from anything, except perhaps Windows Phone, may be a tough sell to a public wary of the “platform du jour.”

While there are many unanswered questions around Surface and the raft of risks the platform presents, it’s exciting to see a resurgent Microsoft that’s breaking out of its rut, has learned a thing or two about design, and is willing to abandon decades-old computing conventions and partner relationships. Betting big has big risks, but quiet stagnation is equally risky and perhaps even more painful.

Read also

• ZDNet: Microsoft Surface RT: A review roundup
• ZDNet: Microsoft Surface: Why hardware really matters again
• CNET: Microsoft Surface review: Innovative tablet stranded in an app desert
• CNET: Microsoft Surface vs. Apple iPad (4th gen) vs. ASUS Transformer Infinity

Source : techrepublic[dot]com

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