The Glade 4.0

Those stats are all well and good, but you're failing to realize that as a tablet OS, Windows 8 is going to *completely* trump iOS and Android. It's not going to be like comparing those completely touch interfaces to Windows 7 + touch added on top of it. Maybe a smarter comparison would be to look at the mobile OS user satisfaction (here) and realize that Windows 8 is an evolution of what MS has proven to be a fantastic mobile OS.

What's funny is that I use an old HP Tablet as a secondary machine around the house, so this actually looks kind of sexy to me. Not that I'm in any kind of position to buy anything right now (or even when this materializes), but I may be one of the tech nerds this is made for.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Broke link...

As to your point about Windows 8 well Windows Phone was supposed to be the magic bullet for MS to replace Windows Mobile (2003- 6.5) which was the cure all for the problems of Pocket PC 2000 & 2002 which was the the fix for Windows CE. I keep hoping and praying that they get their crap together but they never seem to quite get it right. So for now I will stick to Android.

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Link works for me, but it's just a graph showing Windows Phone users have the highest satisfaction rating out of any mobile OS. Seems like MS is doing something right!

Gonna try inserting the pic instead of linking

Full disclosure I'm a windows phone user and love it. Came from an iPhone 4 and have a Kindle running Android ICS, I far prefer the WP aesthetic and experience to both.

Edit - and MS is having a Windows Phone event tomorrow, showing off the next update, and I bet they're gonna tie all this **** together. WP / Win 8 / Xbox just like iOS / OSX.

I have a graph that shows otherwise.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

So stupid that websites don't allow hot-linking... Edited

Full disclosure on my end, I started with Palm OS (3 maybe?); went to Windows Pocket PC 2000; then Pocket PC 2003; then Blackberry and am now on Android. I refuse to ever buy another Apple product so long as I live based on their price-gouging.

With that said, my brother in law works for MS and gets his cell phone and service contracts for free so long as he has a Windows device. Therefore I wonder how many of the 1.9% market share that Windows currently has are the opposite of Mac-o-philes (MS-o-philes?) and/or employees/contractors and would report higher satisfaction as a result?

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Lenas - Blackberry, iOS, and Windows are all within one another's margin of error. Therefore, a conclusion can not be drawn as to whether customer satisfaction is higher or lower among the three of them.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Yeah, the user satisfaction survey is.. kind of dubious. All it means is that Windows phone doesn't grab the ambivalent market. You're either a die-hard Windows phone user, or you don't buy a Windows phone.

iOS, Blackberry, and Android are much more prone to be peer-recommended to luddites, or people end up with them based on discount offers pushed by the service provider.

In other words, there are other factors behind satisfaction than quality; and I'm not willing to be convinced they imply quality unless I see the market share grow in accordance with the disparity in satisfaction reports.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

And the difference between the Windows Phone and Android is just barely greater than the range of the margin of error.

However, one thing we can all agree on based on that graphic: Symbian sucks.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I arrived at this conclusion: WTF is Symbian?

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There is a Chicken/Egg problem with Windows phone market penetration. The people who have them, love them. The problem, or at least the perceived problem, is that there aren't as many apps for WP as there are for Android and iPhone. Developers tend to shy away from it for various reasons, mainly because it's doesn't have the market penetration.

Microsoft's biggest problem is that they don't really know who their customers are.. or who they should market towards. It tries to be everything to everyone, and that's a difficult image to market, especially when you are playing catch up.

If they can get some positive press with Win8 and these new tablet/PC's, it will certainly help get some traction.

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Yes, but once again, Android cannot hold a candle to a full Windows operating system. At least not when that OS is Windows 8.

Symbian was the native OS for Nokia phones prior to their decision to manufacture Windows phones. I was, and still am, a Nokia loyalist - which is how I came to be a Windows phone owner - and I'm pretty darn satisfied with the platform. My only disappointment is the catch-22 cycle of "apps draw consumers / consumers draw developers".

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

We'll see. Apps occupy a somewhat separate space compared to x86 programs. Sure, you can go and load standard PC programs on it, but tablets have become synonymous with certain kinds of hardware integration that those programs won't have...

You can load Photoshop on your tablet, sure. And that's powerful, and great, but can it access the camera? If not, in the tablet-space, having an app like Instagram is better. Or, rather, not having an app like Instagram (because of the limited Microsoft-garden app support) is damning.

I'm certainly interested, and see potential. But I'm nowhere near ready to hail it as the conquering hero.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I need something I could run photoshop, illustrator word and a web browser upon.

This might fit the bill properly docked.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Do you guys REALLY think that Windows is not going to get the application support that people want? Hello!! It's freakin' Windows, and any developer worth his salt will see the advantage of having a single operating system for which to code.

Edit - I'm spouting love for what the Pro model is going to be, btw. I wouldn't buy an ARM tablet.

I kind of have to agree with Lenas here. Especially because Windows 8 is going to be the way it is. When you write apps for this tablet, you are also writing apps people can use on their Windows 8 PCs. So, yeah. This sounds like a really good thing Microsoft is doing. I personally have zero interest in tablets and smart phones, but I can still see this being a good thing for Microsoft and I feel it will put a serious dent in the Android and iOS marketshares.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Well, it's more a matter of wondering what kind of low-level access will be exposed to such stuff, and whether future hardware will end up with compatibility nightmares for said app makers.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Application support is only part of the equation. Those applications need to be cheaply available and convenient to acquire as well. While I'm sure, being Windows, I could poke around on SourceForge to find something I want, after checking around various places to see what's available to perform whatever task I need, I'm rather fond of being able to fire up the App Store and find **** on the cheap.

That's the part I find rather dubious about Microsoft. It's not that I don't think they'll have apps available, or that some of them will be easy to find. Rather, I have this feeling they're going to try to sell me **** for $40, and anything in a lower price range will be more obscure and harder to find.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Microsoft doesn't determine the price of the apps (at least not the ones developed independently).

The problem with free or low cost apps is that they are usually ad supported, and require a huge install base to be profitable. Since currently the install base for mobile windows products is low, the earning potential of an ad supported app is also low.

This is a pretty good read.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/b ... dev13.html

Microsoft knows how huge the App Store has been for Apple, and I don't think they're going to screw things up with outrageous pricing. On that note, pricing is up to the application developer. Submitting an application to MS and getting it approved is an easy process and any dev that doesn't have something in the MS Store is a cheapass. It's not free to become an MS developer, but it's not expensive either, and Apple charges similarly. Hell, I paid the developer fee just so I could dick around with the system before it came out. It's super easy.

Here is where Smartglass come in to play no? They can now port XBL arcade and support onto any device. First come games, then true "apps", before you know it people will potentially be buying all their content from the XBL app store.

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Xbox Live games already exist on Windows Phone, and Windows 8 has an Xbox Games app as well. And there's no "porting" man, this is Windows.