2011年3月18日星期五

Be Careful What You Wish For Your Windows Tablet

Be Careful What You Wish For Your Windows Tablet www.wholesaleeshop.com.au
Those conclusions should be obvious to everyone (though apparently not to those tablet makers and their carrier partners), but the Forrester study had another insight I found both interesting and ironic: Most would-be tablet buyers really want a Windows tablet. In addition, several news reports this week sounded a curious theme, claiming that many iPad buyers were queasy about buying Apple products.
[ Also on InfoWorld.com: Tablet deathmatch: Apple iPad 2 vs. Motorola Xoom. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights via Galen's Twitter feedand the Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter. ]
The Windows tablet desire is a theoretical, safe oneGiven that every attempt by Microsoft and PC makers to sell Windows-based tablets has failed -- with Windows XP, Vista, and 7 -- why do people want Windows tablets? And if they do, such demand will put Microsoft in a good position when (if) it delivers a tablet-savvy Windows 8 in 2012 as it is hinting, right?
The real answer to the first question is simple: Users know Windows on their PCs, and the idea of something familiar in the tablet space has real -- albeit theoretical -- appeal. Redmond's repeated failures in this field shows that customers may want Windows tablets but not the kinds that Microsoft has repeatedly delivered. They've all failed on several counts: high weight, low battery life, and awkward UI.
When HP made a lot of noise last year about its Windows 7 slate, the HP 500, many bloggers and analysts swooned. But HP made only 5,000 or so of them, quietly and quickly taking the product off the market within days of shipping the first units. The HP 500 was about as light as an iPad, so that issue had been solved. I can't speak to the battery life or its UI, as HP refused to let InfoWorld test one (not a good sign). But I have worked with Windows 7's touch interface on other HP products. In short, it's unusable. It's no surprise HP pulled the plug on its Windows slate shortly after it launched. Now, of course, HP has decided to go its own way with theforthcoming WebOS-based TouchPad.
The Apple queasiness is a more substantive concern
The several quotes in news reports from iPad buyers about feeling weird for having bought an Apple device give me pause about Apple's long-term position. It suggests an emotional discomfort that could persist even if people love their iPads, as most do. If that discomfort doesn't dissipate, it leaves Apple vulnerable to Android and other competitors once their value proposition improves.
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Although Apple is one of the originators of the modern PC -- after all, its industry-defining Apple II computers predate those that ran the "standard" DOS of the 1980s, and Mac OS presages Windows by several years -- it still has a cultish reputation. Certainly, Apple's intensely enthusiastic user community helps create and perpetuate that "holy roller" reputation, and a parade of Apple executives -- John Sculley, Guy Kawasaki, and of course Steve Jobs -- over the years have both tapped into and orchestrated those emotions in times good and bad.
Like a minority religion or political faction, Apple is both famililar and exotic. For the "just folks" crowd, it can be difficult to join that club.
Then again, if Apple didn't have that emotional component, it likely wouldn't exist today. It took that degrree of emotional commitment for its users to stick with it as boring but safe (remember "no one gets fired for buying IBM"?) computing spread through the business world, then the personal world. But that emotional nature can also be exclusionary -- few people like being proselytized or feeling they have to make an emotional commitment to a product beyond their personal happiness in using it. If it feels like you have to join a cult to get the goods, you'll think twice -- and more easily flee when similar items become available elsewhere.
On the other hand, the iPad has been only growing in adoption, like the iPhone and iPod before it. Most users of iPods don't think of themselves as having joined a cult, yet they remain loyal to the MP3 player device after all these years. By the time the Android and other tablet makers fix their value propositions -- or if the time comes when Microsoft has a compelling tablet offering -- maybe iPad users will have reached a similar state of noncultish devotion. If not, Apple could be vulnerable and the tablet market will remain very much unsettled.
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