MobilityLeaks: David K Questions My Medication
On 9/1/2011 12:50 AM, David K wrote:
Just making sure I’m right on these numbers. PC’s sell 85m/quarter and iPad is about 7m/quarter. Correct?
Why is it relevant? Because I think MS because the #1 tablet OS in the first year when W8 comes out…
Chris Leiter:
I’m still at a loss with how people think that the windows tablet market (which has been around for TEN YEARS and hasn’t sold for shit) is going to magically turn around just because mad-man Ballmer slaps an 8 on the box.
Sent from my iPad 2
David K:
I’m shocked that an iOS user whose OS was dead a few years ago could be the one making this argument.
Simply put, one computer that you can work on with a mouse and keyboard, remove from the dock and it goes to Metro/tablet mode which is a touch base UI. Remember, this has been in the works since before Win7 was completed. This is a total redesign and all apps will be written to accept both touch and mouse depending on the mode you are in. Somewhat brilliant to sell a PC that can work in two modes without missing a beat so the concept of a PC that is a tablet or a tablet that is a PC so you never have to sacrifice mobility or function and you can do all of your work and yet also have those fancy full screen apps…all at the same price. There’s no need to buy an iPad if your PC is a tablet. Yes MS eats its own market to a degree with this but they build an ecosystem so they have more app sales to make up the spread and some.
Doug Simmons:
You’re only at a loss, Chris, in your own head because you’re surrounded by desperately emphatic fanatics who are even further lost in their heads and vehemently attempting to recruit converts and rail against people they perceive as not being helpful to that end.
Everything will always be a sideshow to the iPad beyond our deaths. Especially Microsoft products, no matter how many PC-like things they claim you can do on their thing that you can’t on the iPad. Android will give Apple a tiny run for its money in this department, but don’t expect an iPhone/Android phone war with tablets evolving the same way it did with the phones. And that’s coming from your local Google nut.
I will say, however, that Microsoft has a shot at giving Samsung a tiny run for its money — about proportional to Samsung tablets versus the iPad which is to say 1-2% of what Samsung sells.
That’s just the way it is.That said, I fully understand that no matter how many years after years go by with Microsoft failing to deliver on the next big thing they announce about something showing up at some point down the line (versus how Apple silently works and then bam, here you go everybody, that’ll be $600-$3500 bucks give or take) and failing to deliver doesn’t mean that they won’t eventually connect the bat to the ball. But they won’t and even David K and Surur knows that.
David K:
Who gave you your meds and why? You don’t think Android is going to take a nice ding at the iPad when Amazon hits 5m tablets in a quarter and drives the tablet market to the bottom in terms of pricing? TouchPad started this but it makes the iPad a luxury item again.
Again, jsut a few years ago the thought of Apple competing with MS would have been a joke. And the thought of Android overtaking the iPhone would have been laughable. That’s how this shit works. Your reign on the top is short like leprechans…
Apple’s day is coming.
Doug Simmons:
While you may be convinced that history always repeats itself with respect to companies or product lines eventually failing to be on top, one thing you’re overlooking about history repeating itself is that Microsoft may not break its huge streak of doing nothing noteworthy for, how long? Over a decade? So long I don’t even know how long anymore and I sometimes blog about technology.
Long enough for the MP3 player company to leapfrog them into being about equally in demand (the company) to own as fucking Exxon. I see that history repeating itself, the accumulation of success on Apple’s part especially with tablets, as a more likely thing than Windows tablets making it into the big leagues, let alone dethroning the iPad.
On the other hand, that new Samsung thing sure is thin. Also, yeah, if all these companies band together to do upside-down price fixing of selling their tablets at a huge loss indefinitely, that could prove me wrong.
Meanwhile the iPad will continue to improve, both hardware wise and software, and the longer and longer Microsoft takes to get anything done, for example turn-by-turn navigation, the more impossible it will be for them to accomplish anything. The more time passes, the fewer things Microsoft will be able to come up with that Apple already didn’t.
Chris Leiter:
The touchpad sold at $99 because it has a $300+ bill for parts. A $99 tablet with a $75-150 bill for parts will not outsell the iPad. Thinking as much is just crazy. It’s not like a cheap android tablet hasn’t been available for a while either… How are they selling btw? Just because amazon slaps their name on a turd (android 3.x) doesn’t mean it will sell like the kindle.
If it happens, great, but I’m skeptical. Very skeptical.
Sent from my iPad 2
David K:
Oh and I want a damn 17″ laptop/convertible. Yeah that’s how I touch…dock it, remove it, take it to a meeting and use the keyboard. Get home, flip the keyboard underneath and go to a large tablet that’s still functional. Don’t want 17″? Your preference. You’re not left with one choice. Want just a tablet without a keyboard? Done? Docking station? Done. All peripherals. Of course, it’s a PC.
Chris Leiter:
Dude, everything you have said is possible now, so why hasn’t it caught on?
Because windows sucks with touch. I dont know why a HTML5 skin on top of windows 7 should magically change that. If it could, why hasn’t someone just created an app for windows that’ll do that by now? Do you think a mobile OS-inspired (a mobile OS that has a magically shrinking market share btw) interface will suddenly change that? Honestly?
Maybe its because legacy apps cripple innovation? A registry? Really? For the love of terabytes, please get rid of the fucking registry.
And finally, Why won’t it sell like mad?
Because Microsoft isn’t cool.
How do you take a company that is only cool in the gaming world, introduce a ‘new’ concept to people that really isn’t, and convince them that it’s x-amount better than the iPad? And yes, the iPad is the yardstick. The iPad is selling more copies in a day or two than most competing tablets sell in a quarter or even a year. And that’s not an exaggeration. Hell, even the best selling PC can’t compare to those numbers and PC makers make FAR less per unit than Apple does.
It’s all about money.
Please, tell me how MS can pull this off. I’d like to know. Cause if you can figure out how to beat the worlds best marketing team, the worlds best product designers, and the worlds fastest growing and most profitable retailers, you should be in the business and be a billionaire.
I’m not saying apple will overtake the PC market anytime soon, that’s crazy, they’re still very expensive machines. But the fact that the PC market is in negative growth for the first time ever and the Mac sales are way up shouldn’t be ignored. And that’s before you figure in iPad sales.
Take all that momentum, slam on the brakes and ‘introduce’ a new Microsoft tablet. I don’t know if you remember a few years ago when ms was pushing the shit out of win7, they were showing off tablets like mad. There were dozens of these amazing things on the market! How’d that go over? Surely the OEMs were able to cash in on that lucrative market… No?
WHY WILL THIS BE ANY DIFFERENT?!?!
I just dont see it. And my run-on rant has a lot of the reasons that keep me from seeing how MS could possibly retake the tablet market.
-Chris Leiter
Sent from my iPhone
Matt Anderson:
I think you forget how massively unfucking cool Macs were between the early 90’s and the iPhone. Dude, even OSX wasn’t shit before the iPhone. Seriously! Saying that no one can do it other than apple is absolutely ridiculous. Remember when ford was eating shit and about to die like the other us auto makers and the gov said “yo dawg! We gone bail yo ass out of this shit stick!” Ford said fuck that, and reinvented themselves in a vastly profitable way and are coming out with some amazing vehicles for the first time in ever. What the hell was ever cooler than the possibilities of surface? Microsoft makes cool shit, its just they usually make cool shit people aren’t able to afford for another ten years. And Microsoft, despite your argument for legacy abandonment, does and will occasionally drag everyone, kicking and screaming like 5 years olds hopped up on mountain dew, pixie stix, and their own unmedicated adhd-ness, into the future. Im saying it’s possible. Where was apple last time jobs wasnt at the helm? Hmmm.
Jimski:
Got my first Windows tablet in 2005 (Acer convertible) and I think it was somewhere between $1300-$1700. Fix that and it’s a new ball game. Shit, I might even stand in line for one of these. Bahhhhhh.
Sent from my phone
David K:
iCrhis, the difference is that all the shit about the UI sucking at touch is going to be a thing of the past. That’s what they’ve been donig for the last 3 years. So it’s not a large phone OS. It’s a full OS that has a touch overlay. If a third party introduced it it would never have the quality and it would never catch on to everyone the way that an MS overlay would. It’s not just the homescreen though. Again, all apps can run in two modes if the dev enables it. A desktop/PC mode for using a mouse and a tablet/finger touch mode when you’re on the road. Flip the switch to turn on the mode. That’s what they’ve done and that’s what they’ll show off at Build. Comparing this to the past is like the people that talk about Windows Mobile. MS killed it off and you can see the degree to which they left that on the cutting room floor. It was a ground up rework to get to WP7 and that’s what they’re doing here as well with their interface and user experience.
MS will give you flexibility in price point and customization of sizes. This is more like Android but even larger since this expands to full PCs. Apple is still selling a single size and it’s fine but not a PC. If you go to MAB then it’s a different OS with different apps. Again, MS is actually going to have one universal marketplace for their tablets and desktops. Same app wherever you are. And porting from phone to pc to xbox is not a chore. It’s all the same language.
It’s ambitious and that’s why Ballmer said this was their most ambitious OS ever. He’s right. Brilliant shit they have going on over there.
Kristofer:
Fuck Apple…
Murani:
IPad $500 starting point. Windows slates close to a grand. That pushes anyone not in business out the market. Have you ever seen a ad campaign for windows slates like there was for just windows 7? There was zero push for consumer adoption. U don’t think that is a big deal?
OEMs have to price them correctly. At equal pricing I’d buy a system like David explained over the ipad in a sec. Schools would flock to them because having a dockable full featured and cool interface PC that can be taken home is ideal.
Sent from my mobile office
David K:
WAit you don’t think the Amazon tablet at $400 sells a lot? Android lacks a Kindle. What I mean is that it’s so fragmented that they lack one device to look to and Amazon is looking to do something no one else has. They are willing to sell on a thin margin because they want something else- to sell services. They have their cloud music, their Android store, etc. They want to get their services sold and don’t care about making money on hardware…just like the Kindle.
And MS has one massive fucking innovation you’re overlooknig Simmons – Kinect. Now that I have one and have used it – it’s revolutionary. Already the fastest sellnig electronics device ever (Guinness record). And when tv integration is added and it gets integrated into Win8 it just keeps moving forward. It’s a great product with legs.
Doug Simmons:
This is neither here nor there but Murani, you know those Samsung tablet commercials with the guy singing “tooodaaayay-ay-ay”? Whenever I hear that I think of you for some reason.
Weird, right? How does that make you feel?
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About The Author
Doug Simmons
Biographical info.. hmm. I have a history of not being able to strike the balance between what is "safe" to put into these forms and what is, in my mind at least, funny. Can't do it.
You know, I was just combing the logs and discovered that Chris isn’t the only one who got a Chromebook and used it to drop by MD.
So David you won’t shut up about how Windows 8, one OS for all their stuff, will not only provide a tablet that is a “consumption” consumer device but produces things like a full fledged PC running Visual Studio itself or whatever, right? Well, would you call ChromeOS a step from Android toward whatever the opposite of consumption device is, an OS intended to get people using the cloud in cloud purity with needs for conventional PCs (which are shifting from Windows machines to Macs you know), somewhere in between to satisfy most people’s needs most of the time? What I’m getting at is that somewhere between the iPad and the fantasy you’ve spun yourself of the Windows 8 tablet, the truth lies, and Chrome may be an example of the market trying to fill that demand. If it fails, I’d put my money on everything Apple makes that would compete with Windows Whatever/Whenever, between the two companies.
Whatever I’m just trying to get the comments rolling obviously.
Also, Debian Linux/Chromium for the win.
MobilityLeaks is one of my favorite features on the site.
@Doug Simmons: Chrome is stupid. First off the pricing is silly so far. But why would anyone choose Chrome over Android? Take that Android phone that docks, right? [And don’t ask me for the name – there are 200 Android devices on the market all with the same sounding name] So you get Chromium plus apps plus storage. Am I missing something? I just don’t get why it exists when the minimum specs for Android are pretty low so it’s not a huge cost driver. In fact it’s just the memory that differentiates the two from a hardware perspective.
iPad iPad iPad. Yes they are the market leader and yes Android is an epic failure of a contender in that space. If its just about pricing then sure but businesses and schools are going to be a big customer going forward. That means security and proven track record is going to mean a ton too.
Why cite Windows 7 touch issues when Windows 8 is built from the ground up to be touch-centric first? I love David’s analogy to windows mobile compared to windows phone 7. The same applies to Windows 7/Windows 8. What about the demos showing Windows 8 start menu looks like its not a very good touch experience? Individual apps from third party devs know how to build touch centric apps because they do so for Windows Phone already.
And one more thing: FUCK apple’s marketing and design team. They haven’t done dick, literally dick, since 2007. They made an ipod touch, then threw a cell phone antennae in it, then made it big as fuck. How in the hell is that a great design team? It’s not a bad device but you’re going to have a really hard time convincing me that because someone figured out how to make their one it wonder popular for longer than average, that they are the bee’s proverbial knees of technological design. Marketing is another thing. Those guys could give every evil dictator, mad scientist, and satan-like entity raging boners of jealousy for the shit they’ve pulled off. Those dildo slobbers have figured out how to take advantage of massive amounts of idiotic people who come in and pay 1-2k for a computer they say is the easiest computer they have ever used, yet they pay best buy 100$ extra to take classes to learn how to use the god damn thing. That I will truly never understand. Maybe if I took a power drill to some important part of my brain piece I could see how the lower echelons of electronics users justify that kind of flaming idiocy. Again, not just idiocy, white hot balls of solar flairs, crammed with burning phosphorous sort of hot flaming idiocy.
The argument is moot really… Apple has better marketing plain and simple. When people think of tablets they think of iPads, when people think of mp3 players they think of iPod. It pisses me off really that it’s marketed so much that it’s become the name for everything. No matter the brand or mp3 player, people call it an iPod. The same goes for tablets now, or at least those that resemble an iPad. I have my Le Pan Android tablet, and I love it, I was at kids karate class using it and I was asked if I liked my iPad. I had to calm down first before I answered and calmly explain it wasn’t an iPad, but an Android tablet, and they looked at me like I speaking in a foreign language.. My kid did something similar not long ago in the car, he called my Zune HD an iPod, I like almost flipped out on him.. it drives me nuts that people actually believe there’s nothing else out there but iDevices..
In my opinion iPod, iPads and iPhones aren’t that good really, I’ve used them all, but they’re so over-hyped and over marketed that they are the first things people think of even if they’ve never used one. If you see and hear about something enough then you’ll want it, it’s marketing 101, no matter how good or bad it is…
Hey Ike, and everyone else, should I switch from calling these things MDLeaks to MobilityLeaks? I like MobilityLeaks more, wish I had thought of it first, though the two downsides being that it gives me less room to have fun with the titles and it’s not what I started the branding of this whole thing with. Think I’ll switch.
All right so what’s everyone saying here… hmm.. Matt seems pissed, Murani’s still irritated, David K’s still convinced he’s right about this and that. Let me “digest” this and weigh in as I recategorize all these bits to MobilityLeaks.
I can do so much more on my Vista HP Tablet, than anything IOS has to offer. I don’t understand this post.
Sent from my Vista Tablet…
David K:
Oh wait sorry, @David K: The next time my ol’ lady or any relative or, were I to find myself in the market for a laptop, the next time a situation like that arises in which I can guide someone either toward a Linux laptop, a MacBook or a Chromebook, I’m going to go Chrome (unless they’re a special needs person — which if they were, I’d sub a lot of family IT guy work out to them, but I’m the only one).
The reason, without digging too deep into the specs of these things, is that it takes most or all of Google’s big services, as in everything you can do within the Chrome browser (which is a lot you have to admit), all that cloud shit, Picasa, whatever, strip out just about everything else that contribute nothing to Mommy, Daddy or Auntie but some sort of point of failure that results in calls to me to run over and fix things, like if my dad’s worried that this Windows Update thing in front of him is a legit update or a virus (actually a good question with Windows), I can’t think of one person in my family who wouldn’t be fine an dandy on one of these Chromebooks and not only fine and dandy, who wouldn’t be better off than what they are with whatever they’ve got.
Security and feature updating-wise, Google Chrome, and I’m assuming Chromebook and ChromeOS, updates more frequently and invisibly than anything else. I’m guessing the operating system and its limited functions, whatever has been stripped out that the things boot up in several seconds and doesn’t have much better horsepower than the latest phones, is such that it accomplishes everything they need, including offline Gmail to Picasa to Docs and printing through the cloud, Maps, everything they all rely on, with relatively few areas that would trip them up. I think a Chromebook in possession of any family member of mine, and maybe many clients of mine, would lead to happier experiences on their end and my phone ringing fewer times a day to help them on my end.
An iPad with a keyboard would sort of do that too, but, and this may not surprise you, my family’s become pretty Google-centric.
Now let’s see some of the specs.. okay, the Samsung, $400 without cellular (which I guess is what I’d get and just tether). Probably a good screen, Samsung’s good at brightness. The rest, yeah, nothing to right home about, but I’d bet that it’s more than enough for everything they’d need. Says 8.5 hours on a charge with the battery still holding 80% after a thousand cycles — not bad, assuming that 8.5 is an honest, Apple-like rating, which it may not be, but good enough.
Boots fast, they have no choice but to do basically everything in the cloud where it belongs and, if you’re like me and follow several dozen Google blogs, you’d know how fast Google makes all the things you’d do with one of these Chromebooks or Chrome better — like Google Docs. And this thing.
Since you’re not a Google fanboy (sorry, fanboi) like me, maybe you could offer some insight regarding why a MacBook which would cost at least double or a PC laptop with Windows or Linux or whatever would be better for them?
Okay fine, let’s pretend Windows 8 will exist in time for their next laptops. Why would they be better off with that? I’ve already weened them off of Thunderbird and almost off of OpenOffice/Office to Google’s services.
On the other hand, the longer Microsoft takes while Google and the OEMs step the Chromebook and ChromeOS game up (and the game of all the other things they offer) to make their own thing, the better positioned they are to embrace and extend with a fancier street view no one uses.
Why the cloud? I don’t know if I’m down with that idea. A combination of incriminating photography and questionable copyright ownership is the first thing. Second is news of all this recent hackery, like Sony losing millions of customers names, phone numbers, addresses, credit card info, shoe size, chocolate or vanilla preference, etc. scares the shit out of me. I do a lot of writing of all sorts and I don’t really trust the cloud to protect it the way I do, not from disk failure, but from someone breaking in and stealing my shit, not that I think I’m really a good enough writer to warrant ripping off. Either way, cybersecurity is becoming and increasing problem as OEM’s and other manufacturers piss people off left and right by either spying on them, or telling customers what the hell they can do with the products they have purchased. I would rather have local processing power than relying on someone to let me use a processor hundreds of miles away across a network, ala onlive, or other decentralized cloud processing. So this chromebook shit makes me physically sick to imagine as our future. I don’t think it will fail, but I can say it probably won’t be snagging my consumer dollar out of possible paranoid delusion, or maybe one day, validated suspicion.
Okay Matt. Security, let’s get into it.
So let’s say you had a need to store a document containing things like your plastic, social, scan of your drivers license and so on. Which strikes you as a less unsafe place to stash that document — your Windows computer or in your Google Docs?
If you said Windows computer, and it’s something you actually intend to do one day, I suggest you first start a command prompt and run the command netstat, then geo look up the IPs. You may find one or two of them to be located not in Redmond but in Lithuania or some Chinese province. Upon that discovery, if you haven’t already had something similar over the years, do a Google News search for incidents of all the hacking exploits and privacy breaches that occurred on Google Docs that would have exposed your document to “those people” and then report back to this thread your findings. And you know damn well how likely you are to get a keylogger or trojan on a Windows PC than a dumbed-down copy of Linux with a browser slapped on it — the one known for its rapid and effective updating mechanism.
tl;dr, your Windows computer isn’t safe, the platform has a uniquely bad reputation of inviting the world to break into your computer within seconds of plugging a fresh machine into the Internet (though it’s been improved considerably), neither is your trash outside, neither is your plastic when you hand it to a waiter, hell even in the seventies neither was your identity as a below-the-radar 45 caliber killer when you got a parking ticket … but Google so far has a pretty impressive track record (as does Chrome and, though nascent, so does ChromeOS, and the encryption strength in between).
Actually that was still tl;dr, sorry.
@Doug – You are a tool for suggesting I am in the retarded enough camp to be foolish enough to have an unsecured desktop or even practice behaviors that would even begin to expose my PC to the junior varsity level of bullshit viruses like keyloggers. If you could stop sucking googles dick long enough to formulate a coherent argument I’d humor you. However, your hypothetical involving keyloggers would have picked up any info I would be entering in the cloud anyway. My argument wasn’t against Linux but cloud storage. Get your shit straight. Im not the average idiot with a half thunk out opinion. =P
I was using the royal “you” dude, talking more about moms and dads and normal users than about whatever it is you do on your computer.
And I know you’re awesome at desktop computing, but if you’ve never been touched by phone-home viruses and other JV bullshit along those lines, the Geek Squad would be very wise to hire and pay you a generous Geek Squad salary because that’s an impressive accomplishment.
Especially with Windows.
Oh nice job upgrading to a more recent copy of IE just before making that quarter thunk-out comment about how secure you are. My copies of Chrome may have done something similar but on their own and without making it a hassle.
But hey, IE baby, you can look at that fishbowl IE test site and the fishies swim around really fast compared to Chrome and everything else. That’s some superior shit right there.
Jive turkey.
Well when you have IE on your phone and not your desktop it does update automatically. I use chrome on the desktop. And it’s not a massively impressive feat if you’re not trying to “win a free iPad by clicking on this link”. In addition, you may have been referring to moms and dads about this chromebook business, but my comments were specifically applied to personal grievances with cloud storage. Not everyone should own a gun because i think a good margin of people out there would shoot themselves in the face while they were looking down the barrel and having Michael j. Fox clean their trigger for them.
Okay but .. wait, what??
Damnit Matt! I thought you were just kidding about being on the fence, for the lulz.
🙁
I vote for MobilityLeaks. Love that.
Chromebooks sound like something that might work well for people that just need word processing, email and browsing, but need a laptop vs an iPad. My next computer purchases will be macs though. 13″ Mac air for me, 13″ pro for the wife, and a mini for the house.
Omg…
This will TOTALLY kick the iPad’s ass…..
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/amazon-kindle-tablet/
Lol, right….