“It will be a couple of months before Apple brings out its tablet computer, the iPad, but other companies are already preparing a new batch of tablets running Windows,” Peter Svensson reports for The Associated Press. “Judging by a model that’s already out, the $550 Archos 9, the Windows tablets have a rough road ahead.”
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s iPad will begin shipping in late March, which, by our iCal, is next month.
Svensson continues, “Windows just doesn’t seem at home when squeezed into this 1.8-pound (0.8-kilogram) slab, with a touch-sensitive screen that is 8.9 inches (22 centimeters) on the diagonal. It’s sluggish, and the controls aren’t adapted to the size of the screen or the fact that there’s no real keyboard or mouse. On-screen keyboards kept popping up in the wrong places, blocking the fields where I wanted to enter text and the buttons I wanted to push. I struggled to hit the little ‘x’ in the corner of the window to close it.”
“Archos 9 is lethargic because it runs Windows 7 on a processor that’s even slower than those used in netbooks,” Svensson reports. “How slow is it? Windows rates computers from 1.0 to 7.9 based on how fast the hardware is, and places the Archos 9 at a 1.3 — the lowest I’ve seen. It takes nearly two minutes to boot up. TV shows on Hulu.com stutter so badly they’re like slide shows with a soundtrack.”
“Perhaps the best feature is a fold-out stand, so you can prop the tablet up on a table,” Svensson reports. “Still, it’s hard to imagine what the tablet is really for. It’s not good for playing games, taking notes or writing e-mail…[and] It plays online video so poorly.”
“It’s a little disconcerting that the Windows tablet experience is so poor, nine years after Microsoft made a big push for its Tablet PC version of Windows XP,” Svensson reports. “Clearly, Microsoft hasn’t really adapted Windows properly for this type of device… It’s not designed for vertical use, so forget about flipping it around… You could go into the settings and change the screen to a vertical orientation, but all the hardware buttons will end up in the wrong places. Also, the screen’s image quality is not very good.”
Svensson reports, “If tablet computers are ever going to be a mainstream product, they’ll probably need a complete rethinking of the software. That’s what Apple will be providing with the iPad.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “dslarsen” for the heads up.]
What does MSFT spend all its R&D;billions on?
As a former Toshiba tablet owner, his experience seems similar to what I had to deal with. It’s simple. Full blown OS’s don’t belong on tablets. Anyone who says they do deserves a tablet with a full OS.
And the iPad come ready to run all those apps plus it is built on Apple pre existing understanding of intuitive multi-touch that as been in use for a few years now.
You have to wonder why Microsoft isn’t ready for their me-too option.
uh…
Duh…
I honestly believe that what Apple has done here is create the next platform to unleash an immense wave of creativity. It has a great head start with the iPhone apps…but this is an entirely new creature. I figure in a couple of years we will look back and laugh really hard at how stupid all the detractors looked when it first came out. How they couldn’t figure out what it was for…how Microsoft didn’t get it …again. and by then, with Version 3 of the iPad it will have moved into retail, medicine, education, and many other areas, some with special cases, or adapters to help them become customized for those purposes.
A massive bomb just went off folks. If you didn’t hear it, it’s because you were listening to the past.
@KenC Unbreakable chairs
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Isn’t the iPhone/Touch OS based on core Mac OSX?
“On-screen keyboards kept popping up in the wrong places, blocking the fields where I wanted to enter text and the buttons I wanted to push. I struggled to hit the little ‘x’ in the corner of the window to close it.”
That kinda says it all!
Do you really need to know more about it?
Yes it is, but it is specifically modified for a touch screen experience. All windows does to modify 7 for touch is add a few useless touch programs, which, in my opinion, are unusable.
As for the disadvantages……..
“If tablet computers are ever going to be a mainstream product, they’ll probably need a complete rethinking of the software. That’s what Apple will be providing with the iPad.”
Not only of the software. The whole widget thing!!!!
Thanks for confirming. Apple took the smart route to create the UI experience for the iPhone/Touch/Pad.
I really wonder what Microsoft employees do all day.
Ok, I think it is about time to put on the shades. The really dark pair you may have around the house.
If you are in the Redmond area, be ready for a very bright white flash. Do not forget to drop cover your face and turn your feet to the light. Prepare for the following force for supersonic blast of air and extreme heat radiating from the Microsoft Corporate center.
Because Microsoft is going critical and Steve Ballmer is nuclear!
The last sentence of this article offers a good point, one that the bloggers and pundits do not understand:
“Svensson reports, “If tablet computers are ever going to be a mainstream product, they’ll probably need a complete rethinking of the software. That’s what Apple will be providing with the iPad.”
Without having the chance to confer with Apple’s iPad designers, I suspect that trying to shoehorn all of OS-X on the iPad would only slow it down. OS-X is much more compact than Windows 7, but it is still a large and sophisticated operating system. The new Apple A4 CPU is surprisingly fast, but it is likely much slower than the Intel or IBM-based CPUs we work with on our Macs. For that reason, and to preserve battery life (this is a mobile device), as well as the fact that the iPad was not designed to be a general purpose computer in the manner we have known up until now, it makes sense for Apple to take a different approach.
That’s something pundits won’t get. The geeks will expect a computer they can tinker with, and they will scream bloody murder. But they’ll be missing the point. The iPad is meant to give you access to the world from wherever you are. To read. To stay up-to-date. To be entertained. To research. To learn.
The point here is that the iPad represents a completely different metaphor. If you want to geek away, use a Mac (or God forbid, a PC). But if you are looking for answers, for news, for entertainment, or if you are looking to compose, send or read an email, the iPad represents a new approach.
For this reason, speed is all-important. Apple had to create hardware that boots instantly. That launches into applications in a snap of a finger. That is responsive and intuitive. That meant stripping away OS-X to something even faster, more simple and for a different purpose.
I have not played with the iPad, but from what I have read, it’s amazingly fast. THAT is something that will resonate with consumers. That speed will let the end user do what they want and get what they want immediately. When you turn on your TV, you don’t want to wait for it to boot up. You want it NOW. And that is the promise of the iPad. That is why it will succeed.
I just received a fax from Zune Tang. He says sorry, but his PC has been down with some ‘non-software’ related virus or blue screen or something like that. Anyway he just wanted to say that we’re all idiots and that windows tablets are superior…yada yada yada. He says that if his machine isn’t up and running soon that he’ll go use a neighbors iMac to post, but I’m not supposed to mention that part, and if I do he will do his denial thing.
Anyway, just passing the word along!
MDN Word: ‘ran’ which isn’t what a PC has ever done well.
Windows 7 on Archos 9 rated at a *speed* of 1.3 – to paraphrase: “even slower and clunkier than a netbook” – that should be all any potential buyer needs to know. What did Jobs say about netbooks?
I don’t know about Windows 7 being slow on cheap ass processors but that stuttering video was Flash video.
And they wonder why Apple won’t support Flash.
@NCG598
You forgot the part about kissing your ass goodbye.
“A massive bomb just went off folks. If you didn’t hear it,
it’s because you were listening to the past.” – PR
This is arguably the best comment
ever posted on MDN!
The one feature that matters: Can you run the software you need to on the archos tablet? The answer is yes. You can’t run anything with Apple’s express consent on the iPad.
Might as well buy a brick, they are cheaper.
So is there were apple fan boys trot out all the fallacies of argumentation described in their first year philosophy course?
Should I make a bingo card? If false dichotomy got its own column I’d have bingo by now.
@UltraVisitor:
Remember that banker who got busted for watching pics of a hot model on his PC? There ya go!
I can’t learn on an iPad if I can’t even evaluate a simple perl, python, ruby, php expression. Oh but I can do it in javascript right? Well that’s a cop out isn’t it? Pretty sure I can develop and EVAL on the archos tablet, doubt I can do both on an iPad. Have to test a new parameter or feature? Well just recompile (wait wait wait) and try it again. How’s it work on the iPad? It doesn’t.
You can’t educate when you bind the hands of the user.
Hilarious review of a trainwreck of a device.
Now we’re talkin! I’m so gettin one of these!!
@Sam
Why is it, that you only *knows* slow script languages?
What kills me is how Apple-haters deride Steve Jobs for the comments he made regarding netbooks (“The problem with netbooks is that they’re not really better at anything; they’re just really cheap”) as if Apple doesn’t research this stuff beforehand. Apple is the innovator because – say it with me now – they know who and what their competition is.If you honestly believe that there aren’t dozens of netbooks sitting in Apple labs since many months (if not years), then you’re simply delusional. hasn’t the iPod / iPhone juggernaut taught anyone anything?
@Sam
there are over 6 billion people in the world. How many of them do you think want to code in perl, ruby, python, or anything else on a mobile device?
People should keep that kind of perversion to the privacy of their homes, and not tale it out in public.
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People who keep saying the iPad is a bad idea because it won’t be running OS X, or that you can’t “shoehorn” OS X into the iPad are obviously unaware that the iPhone operating system is a Touch version of OS X. Why would anyone want to put the non-touch version of OS X onto the iPad? To make it as stupid as the Win7 computer described in the article?
Ah, yes, so it has Flash!
May Flash rot in hell!!! (Along with Pandora for that matter.)
@Elijah:
>The one feature that matters: Can you run the software you need to on the archos tablet? The answer is yes.
Well, I don’t know – from the article, run seems like something of an overstatement. How about crawl slowly and painfully?
Then again, that pretty well describes Windows in general.
“Windows rates computers from 1.0 to 7.9 based on how fast the hardware is”
If MS gets to chose the range of values, why the heck does it end at 7.9?
Once the iPad is officially released, any Windows-based “tablet” existing or new will be an embarrassment. If the product is not yet announced or released, the producer should just shelve it and go back to the old drawing board.
“The one feature that matters: Can you run the software you need to on the archos tablet? The answer is yes. You can’t run anything with Apple’s express consent on the iPad.
Might as well buy a brick, they are cheaper.”
You’re right. Those 140.000-ish apps are really restrictive.
Wait, CAN you run the software you need? By “can” I don’t mean that you can load it and start it up. I mean, can you actually get it to run? From this experience, it sounds like practically NO. I need photoshop and illustrator. Can I run those?
That’s rich: so many iPad naysayers I met used this Archos as an argument…. USBs, Multitasking, Camera, much, much better than the limited iPad, yes?
This made my day.
@Mark “If MS gets to chose the range of values, why the heck does it end at 7.9?”
Maybe MS just intrinsically knows that none of their stuff deserve that point value!
Remember this…
“Didn’t you make this?!” Luv it…
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add “10” as in…
Maybe MS just intrinsically knows that none of their stuff deserve that 10 point value!
Most interesting thing about Window Tablet vs. iPad comparison will be, people running apps on Wintablet will find their apps will run better on Cyrix Thin Client running on iPad to access a Windows server.
My 2008 2.0 Alu Macbook has 5.2 on that test. If it weren’t for the HD and 9400M, could be 5.6
Mark said:
“Windows rates computers from 1.0 to 7.9 based on how fast the hardware is”
If MS gets to chose the range of values, why the heck does it end at 7.9?
Answer: Because ever since MS started selling “Points” that do not equate to anything a human can relate to, they have converted their entire measuring system to “Points”. So, a 7.9 to them is a 10 to us humans.
Instant on.
Responsive UI.
That’s what people want.
Sounds like an expensive Archos 9 electronic picture frame. Perhaps it takes advantage of the Microsoft innovations in “community” by squirting? All I can say is, I like Microsoft’s strategy for mobile computing. I like it a lot.
To those who doubt, take another look at the hardware and software in the mobile Windows space. The iPad will absolutely rule the tablet market and take away marketshare from netbooks, as well. I believe that millions will sell in 2010, perhaps as many as 8 to 10 million. It looks that good…
@PR Feb 10, 10 – 02:59:
Excellent post.
I’m in a debate with a friend who’s stuck on the need for a USB port, and a Finder, and being able to tweak things under the hood. That is 1990s computing as you have so eloquently pointed out.
The revolution will not be a wow moment as some people predicted. Rather, it will be quiet, and only visible in a few years when we look back and remember the way things were before.
* Instant on.
* 10-hour battery life.
* Just the right size and weight.
* Sharing-friendly IPS screen technology (good off-axis viewing).
* 140,000 apps out of the box.
* Huge incentive for developers to offer iPad versions of their apps @ $10 a pop (Apple set the bar with its iWork apps).
* Surprisingly competitive price.
These are the reasons why the iPad will be a success.
Here’s an advertising coup for Apple to kill the Window or Android tablets right off the bat.
Buy an Archos 9 and milk out every quirks of the Archos for the world to see and that will shut out all the misgivings that the pundits and Apple-haters love to heap on Apple products.
What a great laugh so early in the morning.
@sky
The revolution will not be a wow moment… … it will be quiet, and only visible in a few years when we look back and remember the way things were before.
Actually, the moment arrived with Macintosh, in 1984, and I can count on one hand, the number of times the Mac let me down. Mostly, it gave me mad skills and a world-class education.
All of my PC friends were preoccupied with penis-envy while I was banging cocktail waitresses, two at a time!
I spent the last thirty-years having fun and feeling quietly triumphant and my legacy is the mountain of work I have created, thanks to Macintosh, and its willingness to remain in the background.
@Elijah – “You can’t run anything with Apple’s express consent on the iPad. “
You most likely meant “without Apple’s express consent”.
You are wrong.
You can create anything for inhouse use that you want. None of that has to go through the App Store.
@G4Dualie
You’ll get no argument from me. I’ve worked with both platforms since 1984 and can attest that most of my meaningful creative work has been done on a Mac.
But I think this is a new revolution on top of the 1984 one you’ve cited. Go back to the original Mac – and any current Mac – and you’ll find all the trappings of the old metaphor. More elegant than DOS / WIN but it’s there regardless.
The old metaphor essentially is computer-as-computation tool; the new metaphor is computer-as-communication / media-consumption tool which is really what most people need.
The iPod Touch / iPhone has successfully introduced a very different computing experience matched to current needs that the iPad will build on. I think the relatively small segment of programmers and content producers will continue to embrace the old metaphor for now, e.g. running true laptops and desktops. Regards
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