“It’s an understatement to say that Apple’s iPad generated a lot of chatter when it was announced on Wednesday; the scuttlebutt actually slowed down the Internet. Even Microsoft couldn’t help but weigh in, criticizing the iPad for being a ‘locked down device,'” David Worthington reports for Technologizer.
“‘It is a humorous world in how Microsoft is much more open than Apple,’ Brandon Watson, the director of product management in the developer platform at Microsoft, told me in an interview yesterday,” Worthington reports. “With Microsoft’s platforms, developers can build whatever they want, and target a broad array of devices using the same skill set, he added.”
“Watson claimed that many developers of applications for the iPhone OS–which the iPad uses–are not making money,” Worthington reports. “Developing applications for the iPhone and iPad is expensive, he said, because iPhone OS uses the Objective C language rather than Microsoft’s more pervasive .NET platform. And Apple’s control over the platform has alienated some people that make software for its products, he said.”
“Microsoft’s criticism misses the target altogether. What Apple has envisioned with the iPad isn’t a traditional PC–it’s more of an appliance… The iPad isn’t a PC,” Worthington explains. “I’ve gone on trips to Boston and Washington DC over the past several weekends, and spend hours riding Amtrak and on Wi-Fi-enabled busses. I didn’t bring a laptop with me, because I didn’t want to lug one around, and didn’t really need to have a full fledged computer with me. My iPhone provided me with entertainment along the way. Truth be told, I would rather have had an iPad with me to surf the Web, listen to music, watch movies and read. If the price comes down even further, Apple’s got a winner.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft bleats like a lamb being led to slaughter.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Irakli C.” for the heads up.]
@montex: ” Microsoft would love to build a product like the iPad…”
That’s not true. Microsoft is fully capable of creating a new operating system and user interface for a new class of devices, but they are afraid to, and rightly so. They know that as soon as they develop an OS that is incompatible with Windows, they’ll open the flood gates to competing operating systems. And they could very well end up losing their monopoly on the desktop. This is why the “Windows” experience is pushed onto every possible device and form factor regardless of the experience. The novelty of these devices usually ware off fairly quickly, which is why the Tablet PC never really took off except in certain industries where custom, pen driven applications make sense and the UMPC was nothing more than a gimmick.
This is evident in how far they dropped the price of XP to ensure that Windows was the OS of choice for netbooks and not Linux. They wanted to make sure people stay attached to Windows. So much so, that they even “rushed” out a “brand new” version of Windows after Vista failed to perform adequately on netbooks.
He said its a humorous world, not that the iPad is humorous. Geez another lie in a headline to get me to look.
if i was apple and knew microsh*t was waiting for my next move to rip me off i’d be hush hush about everything i did until it’s time
Microsoft always has this disillusion of what openness really is.
Microsoft (and its worshipping drones) believes its own proprietary technologies are open when in fact are the reason the Internet is in the shape it’s in (in a bad way)!
In short, no one is more closed than Microsoft, no one, not even Apple!
RIP M$
As has already been said, MS’s definition of “open” is what also allows it to be so highly vulnerable … to all sorts of things, not the least of which is malware and the angle that Apple is taking, which is commercial competition.
Essentially, the iPad is yet another Apple “Gateway Drug” for the Windows-dominated marketplace, and the basic strategy is the opposite of the MS error of trying to shoe-horn Windows onto everything: instead, it is to build (from common roots) devices that excel at what they do.
The OS it runs is invariably part of this, but the distinction is that it is tailored to that job first, and what gets pushed to the side are all of the concerns of 100% backwards compatibility for Excel spreadsheets and every other Windows format/application/etc.
…and that’s precisely the reason why this approach works: customer expectations are managed for what’s actually important…and since this isn’t an old-school “features count” list, that’s why the geeks and so-called IT “experts” don’t understand why the product could possibly be successful with such (ahem) ‘obvious shortcomings’.
-hh
So what about this vapourware appliance known as the Microsoft Courier? All I’ve seen of that is an animated mockup. At least Apple had the decency to show us a live product.
Admittedly the Microsoft Courier looks as if it might have some neat features. But then again anything can look “neat” in an animated mockup plus need we be told which OS (or variation thereof) it will be using? I think I’d feel much safer using an iPad for my online financial transactions thank you very much.
‘Microsoft exec: Apple’s iPad is ‘humorous’
What a dummy, everyone knows humerus is a bone! He needs a punch in the face with my fistula for telling such a fibula.
Sorry…haven’t had any coffee yet today.
2 Michael – 10:48 pm
[Microsoft] know that as soon as they develop an OS that is incompatible with Windows, they’ll open the flood gates to competing operating systems. And they could very well end up losing their monopoly on the desktop
Microsoft will never loose their “monopoly” (I’d rather say “dominant position”) on the desktop, but the desktop as we know it will disappear relatively soon with the arrival of the iPad, at least for a majority of people.
The new Apple Ipad has no camera/mic. (!) Can it be retrofitted with a camera/mic or is that not possible?
Acai Optimum
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/acai-optimum-review-get-free-trial-now-1704552.html