Office 365 goes to work on an Android Unlike the video editing or CAD workstation beasts that are still utterly reliant on Windows, Android is slowly evolving into a workable platform for basic productivity. Browsers are becoming passable. Onboard applications are decent and there are an ever-growing number of applications designed for both touch input and mouse …
"The allergy to mice in Chrome for Android is one example: Google sees mice in Android as a massive threat. Android is local-application based.
If people could use a keyboard and mouse with Android properly, then they would have no reason to move away from the local-application model. Google's future is bet on SaaS applications and tied to Chrome OS."
Eh? Android works perfectly fine with a mouse - the fact that it doesn't have right-click context etc is simply because it's designed for use with a touchscreen.
What are you on about?
It's more than just right click. Click-and-drag highlighting is another key element missing.
The fact remains that simple functions which take fractions of a second to complete in a true mouse environment take multiple seconds to complete in a touch environment. Copy and paste is a great example. Touch is just not a "productivity"-based input model.
It is missing, or rather it's replaced by the highlight with movable tabs (clicking on the word to copy for a second bringing up the endstop tabs which can then be dragged to cover the text block you want to highlight for copy or whatever). It's different, but it's no less usable, and can be a little more accurate sometimes depending on the size of block you want to deal with and how good your rodent skills are.
Indeed I was a little surprised at how much is supported. With a quick test on my Nexus 7 with a MS Intellimouse, it supported the thumb and pinky buttons too (thumb button for page back for example) and also the wheel-driven scrolling. Yes no right-click menu, but as the previous comment said that's down to design.
Plus pair the device with a keyboard (bluetooth or USB - full-sized or a keyboard cover as you see fit) and you're good to go for any kind of text input.
Also is the appearance of this article on the very day that Google throw Quickoffice into the ring a co-incidence or karmic timing (or editorial balance that other apps may exist, although if so Kingsoft Office may feel left out too) ?
"The allergy to mice in Chrome for Android is one example: Google sees mice in Android as a massive threat. Android is local-application based."
Dude, calm down for a minute.
Perhaps the reason that mice aren't fully supported but only okayish is down to the fact that fairly few people (1%? I'm guessing here.) ever connect a keyboard or mouse to their Android device and so there are more pressing issues to take care of?
Chicken and egg. Most people don't use a key/mouse combo to extend the cabability of their tablet from "consume" to "produce" because the support sucks.
Back in the 90s we had a CD player, a Palm Pilot, a Cell Phone and a PMP for video. Most people wanted "one device that could do all of these things." People said things that sounded very much like you do now to discourage the rest of us from ever dreaming that we could get a single device that did all these things well.
Then Apple and Google came out and just fucking did it. They created an entirely new market and crushed their opponents like bugs.
Today there are all sorts of people saying "I wish I didn't have to bring a tablet along for portability and a notebook for productivity." I wish that I could simply use one device for all things!
Microsoft actually heard these people (holy shit!) but ultimately botched the roll out (no surprise there.) Like always, they saw a demand in the market but succumbed to terrible internal politics and decision-making that prevented them from turning a fantastic idea into a market-destroying superproduct.
People want to do more with fewer devices. We always have.
And there's always some dude in the background going "no, it's better to have multiple devices, each good at the one thing they do right!"
I'll give that a great big double-middle-fingered "nope" and keep on towards converged devices that "just work". One device. I only want to carry one device.
"......Today there are all sorts of people saying "I wish I didn't have to bring a tablet along for portability and a notebook for productivity." I wish that I could simply use one device for all things!....." Er, did you forget the convertible tablet PCs like the hp TC1100? That is what Android needs for productivity - a docking station with keyboard and mouse which gives proper mouse capability, a full-size keyboard and output to a separate monitor, maybe even an USB printer - then detach the phone and put it in your pocket when you want to go somewhere and just consume. Then Office365 on Android would be completely useable (as long as you were within reach of your docking station). It seems there are no end of docking stations for stereo speakers, why not a desktop dock?
> I'll give that a great big double-middle-fingered "nope" and keep on towards converged devices that "just work". One device. I only want to carry one device.
OK - I'm the anon you responded to and probably a tad too late with my response but - point taken. 'd be nice to have.
So what you're saying is Win8 got the single-device idea right but failed on the implementation while Android got the idea wrong but succeeded with the implementation (of being one half of an outmoded multi-device policy) and should now make strides towards also becoming a system useable like an ordinary computer when having a keyboard and mouse connected. I get it.
Yet Google refrain from allowing us to use a mouse properly in Android because it would allow us to do stuff properly outside the browser in apps (or for that matter inside the browser) which would go against their browser-based business model since Android can easily be forked so they don't really like Android apps and... and... no, I still find that last bit incredibly far-fetched.
> to discourage the rest of us
Incidentally I'm not out to discourage anyone.
>Perhaps the reason that mice aren't fully supported but only okayish is down to the fact that fairly few people
They are fully supported, since 2.3 - text selection these days is handled with bookend like tabs, it used to be more like a desktop. It was changed partly as tabs are much more accurate on a physically small display [read-tap asymmetry and all that] - but also for general productivity because they allow extension of the text selection in both directions with only a pointing device, instead of just one direction like a mouse on Windows.
HCI support on Android is a God-send for a lot of disabled users - head trackers, roller balls, joysticks all work out of the box - and the standard predictive virtual keyboard is better than most accessibility middleware on desktops.
I have a cheap-arse Chinese Android tablet in a little leather wallet with a keyboard built into it; and that keyboard makes a huge difference to productivity. It doesn't (and can never) compete with a full-sized keyboard and mouse combo; but it's a grillion times better than using a screen keyboard.
The thing is that if you're after true productivity then you need the multi-dimensional user interface to support that. It just isn't going to happen if your display device is also your input device, no matter how clever the programming.
A docking station would do it; and there are several halfway house solutions (like the wallet with built in keyboard; bluetooth keyboard and pointer combos; laser keyboards and the like) that are all better than using the screen on it's own but all require an extra device and usually involve some other compromise (the bluetooth kb needs charging; the laser keyboard needs charging AND you need to adapt your typing style to the kb etc). I do have hopes for something like the Leap Motion pointing device but it's early days for that yet and they're still in the wanking about stage as far as software and productivity goes (from the look of the site...my toys budget has yet to allow me to buy one for testing personally).
We're probably going to end up with some sort of finger-tracking plus a virtual overlay in something like Google Glass but right here and now there isn't anything that can touch a keyboard/pointing device combo.
Documents to go is still a very touch-based input application. If you are willing to put up with an awful lot of frustration you can make it do something. My measure of it's effectiveness, however, is "how long does it take me to make the same document on the tablet that I can make on a netbook, where the document I am making is a simple blog for The Register, including several hyperlinks, a moderate amount of copying and pasting and some moving of blocks of text to get the right order of events?"
If the answer is "it takes more than 5% longer on the tablet" then I don't consider it to have a viable office package. It may have very nice document viewers. I may even have the ability to do minor markups in those viewers. But that's not an office suite. It's a PDF viewer with a commenting system that can handle office formats.
Many manufacturers make netbook-like products, though you have to pay a lot more. The Lenovo X-230 tha I am working on right now met all the requirements to finally be the first thing acceptable enough to replace my netbook. (Though it was bloody expensive.) The wife replaced hers with a similar model that had fewer bells and whistles in the $550 range.
That said, the playbook is better than most for productivity, but still not good enough to make up for lack of apps, amongst other issues. If only it had had e-mail from the start, it might well have had a real chance. Playbooks aren't bad devices, but they Microsofted the launch something fierce.
>For pure productivity you're right, a netbook will beat a tablet which cost more every time. Unfortunately most manufacturers don’t put out netbooks these days. I only got my playbook when my AA1 keyboard started to
The "new Netbooks" are devices like the Ativ500t with dock or the similar Atom tablet pc. They have the same performance, a slightly better screen resolution than most netbooks and similar screen size.
Some people OTOH are replacing a scooter (Netbook) with a Hayabusu (Lenovo X230) and call that "minimum required".
"Windows 8 isn't a serious consideration for anything here"
For using Office 365? I would suggest it's probably the most popular platform used after Windows 7....And it's a significantly more powerful, secure and efficient OS than Android.
"Besides, an Atom has terrible battery life. 12 hours minimum or go the fuck home.."
Hardly any devices on any OS last 12 hours now:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ativ-smart-pc-500t-windows-8-atom,3360-11.html
But they are coming:
http://gigaom.com/2013/09/12/these-are-the-devices-that-will-kill-off-windows-rt/
Funny, I have almost a dozen Android devices that give me over 12 hours, and a Windows 7 device that gives me 16.
Now, I'll admit the 16-hour device is not what I would traditionally call "portable" - it is a Lenovo X230 with the extended battery *AND* the underslung attachment battery - but it's a decent compromise when I was shopping for a netbook replacement. (Especially as I can choose to leave behind the underslung battery if I only need 8 hours and that cuts the weight in half.)
The Android devices do the thing, are perfectly secure, powerful, fast and basically do everything I could ever ask of them...except have a decent office package. (Unless I'm using Office 365 through Dolphin, which I usually do.)
Windows 8 isn't a consideration. It's complete, utter shit. Windows 9 might be decent, but I seriously doubt it. Microsoft's corporate attitude in general - but especially that of the endpoint divisions - are so utterly user hostile that I think it's safe to bet that the next several years' worth of endpoints are going to be worse, not better.
Desperation and repeated failure breeds fanatics. Fanatics aren't capable of rational thought. They collapse into an echo chamber where anyone who doesn't think like them is not merely wrong, they are evil. Their voices and opinions mustn't be heard.
This is where the Microsoft endpoint divisions find themselves.
They have dug themselves a deep hole and sealed themselves in. Outside thought, opinion, reason...it is viewed by them as hostile and treated as such. Increasingly, the few remaining fanboys are falling into the same category. I would liken them to an early-2000s Apple Mac mythology, but that would frankly be unfair to the Cupertinians; Microsoft and the banner-wrapping fandom that remain clucking after their endpoint products are way farther gone than the Macolytes of the past.
Microsoft doesn't do portable. When Microsoft can reach 12 hours of sustained usage that doesn't require outright lying about usage patterns or power metrics the rest of the world will be at 24. Microsoft has no desire or care to solve these problems. They don't feel it's relevant.
X hours - defined as roughly however long the existing technology lasts - is "good enough for anyone." In fact "what on the table today" is "good enough for anyone" which is part of the problem; so indoctrinated into this message are the very people making this technology that they have become unable to see where improvements are possible, let alone needed!
Microsoft have done many great things. Some parts of Microsoft will continue to do great things into the future...but the endpoint guys are a complete write off.
Changing the guard with Ballmer II: The Elop Boogaloo isn't going to change anything. Elop's eyes are as calloused as the rest.
Maybe - maybe - if they choose Satya Nadella as the new CEO they stand a hope in hell on the endpoint. That's a great big bloody maybe and it doesn't seem like powers that be are even capable of that level of rationality. Sad, really.
"still doesn't even have a word processor that can compete with Microsoft Word 2.0 running on Windows 3.1."
While I'll admit that many of them were hopeless even a couple of years ago, they are getting better and better all the time. Genuine competition does that. Kingsoft Office (there are three or four others that I've tried as well) is one of the gems and really does compete with Microsoft Word and other parts of the Office suite. It's not perfect, but then there are still hundreds of very long standing bugs and annoyances in Microsoft Word that have been in there for years. The point is, applications such as Kingsoft Office, even now, are likely to fulfill the editing needs of 99% of users. Although I ought to qualify that as "Western" as I have no idea how will it handles others text orientation systems or alphabets, something that Microsoft have invested a lot of time in.
What is better, and already mentioned above, is that because there are competing apps out there, they are genuinely competing with each other and producing better and better applications as a result, each revision with more efficiency, better usability and more features. This hasn't happened with Microsoft Office for a long time where prior to making it ugly and almost unusable for "Metro" the main changes have been re-skinning some of the front screens of the application and somehow making every application considerably slower and more bloated than the earlier releases.
Touch-based apps like Kingsoft Office which have virtually zero support for mice (such as click-and-drag to highlight or any form or right-click support whatsoever) are worse than useless for productivity.
The ability consume content is worthless. The ability to make very minor changes then fire it back is almost as worthless. An office suite should be focused on productivity. "Push and hold, then fight with the stupid drag balls, then click the touch button, then drag, drag, drag, drag, darg, then spend a mintue fiddling with the damned thing to get the cursor where you want it, then push and hold, then push the button to paste" is not a productive work flow.
Until the office packages are optimized for content creation not content consumption I'll have no more regard for them than I do a PDF viewer.
Extra marks if the article also considers the small things that make all the difference. EG.
1. The ability for the BT to pair with more than one device and switch between them; instead of having to delete the pairing and repair to swap.
2. Shortcut buttons for your mobile OS of choice (Android / iOS / Win mob, etc.). Things like Home, Back, Menu etc.
3. How long you have to wait before you can type after switching on or it auto sleeping.
4. Range in real-word situations (baring in mind that the handset may be next to the TV it's driving through HDMI)
Thank you for responding Mr Pott! If ten keyboards (to fit in with the usual Reg format) is too costly, then perhaps just a couple of choice ones and a cheap and cheerful (?) unbranded model for comparison.
Was there ones a cunning fold-up yet full-size keyboard available for Palm devices, or did I just imagine it?
AFAIK Android and iOS started off as mobile phone operating systems.
The LAST thing I want to do is word processing or spreadsheets on my Android phone or tablet.
Touch screens and office software aren't practical.
However... if Intel & the like have success with large tablets + keyboard & mouse, that'll be different.
>The LAST thing I want to do is word processing or spreadsheets on my Android phone or tablet.
If I'm just entering text (with a view to editing and formatting it later when I'm back at a 'proper' computer), then the size of any screen or choice of OS isn't that important to me... I just want a compact device + keyboard so that I can type. This need could probably be fulfilled with a keyboard, a keylogger, an Altoids tin and a battery...
A 7" tablet is a perfect size for portability. If I could have a Surface-style keyboard cover that had a little detachable mouse (maybe fold-up-int-a-PCMCIA-slot style affair?) I would be on that like white on rice. Bigger screen is better, but try wandering a convention with a 15" notebook! Even my 13" was bulky and awkward.
There are so many places where I go during my regular day that a tablet goes and a notebook just doesn't. Increasingly, I can't rely on there being a "proper computer" available when I get where I'm going! People use notebooks almost exclusively now. They take them with them when they go. If I want a PC for doing the thing I need to do then that often means I have to bring it with me.
Depending on how much I am doing, sure, I'd use a larger converged device. But in most cases I can work on a 7" widget since what I need it to get something typed up, rearranged, hyperlinked and fired off. (Or somethimes I need to edit a powerpoint, make substantial changes to a spreadsheet, etc.)
A 7" at 1280x720 is smallish, but not so small I can't read it from a sitting position on the table. Still, why not have devices that supported touch AND keyboard + mouse, both as FIRST CLASS input devices and available in a wide range of sizes and resolutions?
Was it do mad to dream that one day we could watch video, listen to music, browse the internet, organise our calendars, do e-mail and answer phone calls all on one device?
Why is it so mad to add "actually using the thing to create content" to that list?
"Android is sneaking up on five years of general availability and it still doesn't even have a word processor that can compete with Microsoft Word 2.0 running on Windows 3.1."
Android in the majority runs on Tablets and Smartphones which are not particulary propice platforms for generating complex office documents, some small editing I can understand though. Comparing that to windows/MS Office which runs in majority on full blown PCS is not really a very fair comparison.
SmartPhone and/or tablets are just not very suitable platforms for complex document creation. No physical keyboard or mouse, forget it.
"Bluetooth or USB. Suddenly a keyboard and mouse appear. That wasn't hard. Now, software, support it. Oh, it won't? Chicken and egg."
Exactly the same can be said for the adoption of 'traditional' gamepads for Android tablets when playing appropriate games (or even for controlling media playback if the tablet is connected to a big TV).
I heard a BBC producer (of children's content) on the radio the other day... her information was that 60% percent of households with children in the UK own a tablet.
TextWarrior to bang out the text then you move it to the desktop to pretty it up. Much less painful.
Google have just made QuickOffice free so maybe they do want people in Android (and even iOS) after all.
I regularly edit documents in LibreOffice on a 1280×800 pixel display. I haven't measured the actual panel size, but it'd be around the 13~14" mark.
Yes, there's an awful lot of 10" and smaller tablets that exceed that screen resolution, and I seem to recall editing documents on a 15" 640x480 screen many moons ago without problems. (Microsoft Write for Windows 3.1 was the tool of choice for my cash-constrained primary school.)
I have an asus transformer prime. I have four office suites and they all do the same much ness. The only reason I have five is each one is slightly different but you can only open one document at a time, so document comparison means you need two.
I have 'docs to go', 'kingsoft office', 'office suite pro' and 'polaris office'. I use the transformer prime docking station keyboard and it works fine.
Don't have much problem firing off word docs of excel spreadsheets. I don't use a mouse but the trackpad works, and a few oddities aside they do the basic job. Meaning I rarely touch my desktop. (Long since ditched M$)
Only issue I find is file types, my libre office has a habit of screwing up the .xls format so on the android tablet and phone they become unreadable. I won't be touching 365 office as it is cloud based, but my galaxy note 2 and asus transformer prime do great typing and copying when needed.
I have an ASUS transformer as well, and the thing is damned near useless for anything excepting very minor document editing. Highlighting text, cutting and pasting are multi-second each affairs. If you do that (on average) 100 times per document - not remotely "out there" when writing something for others to consumer - this "multi-second each" thing starts to become a real drain on productivity. Especially since with a proper keyboard and mouse I can do all those activities as sub-second items.
Inability to open multiple documents is a big one, but lack of consistent keyboard shortcut support - and virtually non-existant highlighting or right-click support - are the big ones. Going from a browser to a document to copy links and back again (to do research) isn't exactly smooth. Everything about tablet UIs is designed for this "one thing a time" monofocus. It's slow, and ponderous and based on the idea that your time has no value, so you don't mind take a few extra seconds to do everything.
If I have an Asus Transformer and a shitty, beat-up, wrteched old netbook from 5 years ago, I'll choose the netbook. The Transformer is more portable, but the netbook won't leave me wanting to strangle someone by the time I'm done writing an article.
I still carry the Transformer most places. Because it's portability is far better. Yet every time I have to sit down and RDP into something because it needs fixing, or bash out an article, complex e-mail or what-have-you, I picture the slow-roasting of various Microsoft executives who botched the Surface launch.
Their widget could have been - should have been - the solution to all these ills. Why, why, why did they have to screw it up?
Having now used a Surface RT I wouldn't bother trying to get office working on a droid tablet.
Better corporate integration with intune, citrix receiver for x86 apps, and that all important USB port for when you need more than a touchpad. At the original price it was too much for the home market and wasn't pushed hard enough for corporate. Silly really, they're a fantastic piece of kit.
Agree wholeheartedly. The Surfaces are the best tablet idea so far. If only Microsoft hadn't alienated the entire developer community and most of their end users by refusing outright to listen to them about anything, locking away the desktop from tablet-mode users and pissing on the "fully connected" UI.
Microsoft had good tech. What they screwed up was the community engagement and pretty much every single detail of implementation. I wish Apple had made the surface. They'd have botched the first version, but the "8.1" version would have been amazeballs.
Instead, we got "always on" that "plays for sure" and a whole great big pile of "nope".
Look, I'll admit that I'll be thrilled if / when I have a single device that does EVERYTHING that I can imagine, from being a pocketable phone with passable web browsing and e-mail, right up to a full immersive 3D gaming platform and "content creation" workstation - but I think we're still a way off yet.
My current mix is a phone (Nexus 4), a compact tablet (Nexus 7 2013, with a compact Bluetooth keyboard for those increasingly rare occasions when touch-screen typing just isn't "good enough"), and a 15" Windows 7 notebook (with a full-size keyboard, mouse and a secondary 22" monitor when I'm at my desk), which is my machine for doing "real work". Interestingly, this machine spends an awful lot of time gathering dust these days - because it turns out that most of the time, I just don't really NEED a full-on heavy-duty content-creation workstation! It's actually a bit too big and cumbersome for everything other than really serious work - it's become more of a desktop-replacement machine than a true portable device, especially since I got a tablet that does most of what I want. I'm contemplating moving over to something much more compact (such as a Chromebook or similar) for this "mobile desktop" work.
I'm afraid Microsoft has pretty much missed the boat on mobile computing for me - they haven't noticed that for many people, something that is compact and cheap (or better yet, free), and "good enough" meets most of their needs. Microsoft want me to buy a subscription to MS-Office 365, but I'm sorry - for my limited requirements for truly mobile computing, the cheap / free alternatives (Docs to Go, Quickoffice, etc) on an affordable tablet are plenty good enough - both with respect to the somewhat restricted feature set of these "Mobile Office " software packages, and the general limitations of mobile devices compared to "proper" computers. When it comes to "mobile computing", the mobility, convenience, and low cost are more important than 100% MS-Office compatibility and functionality.
I can really appreciate the sentiment behind this article and as the trend is for larger and larger phones I'm looking to a future where we can really have a truly personal computer that we carry around in our pockets.
If I was going to try to adopt this system I'd use a generic tablet with JellyBean at the very least. Nexus 7 would be great if you weren't compelled to save to the cloud ( which lets face it, is big brothers pocket.)
I'd get a bluetooth keyboard, I only wish they would sell ergonomic models, and I would learn to do everything with the keyboard. Lets face it, mousing is too slow and, as accurately explained in the article, only an ant can select text with the touch screen with any accuracy.
Someday the speech recognition will make the keyboard redundant until, that is, we want to type something in a cafe without anyone hearing.
Matias do a lovely version of their Pro series which explicitly support connecting to mobile devices via Bluetooth. Might be worth a look.
(I'm quite fond of my Unicomp IBM-based keyboard, but I have an older Matias Tactile Pro sitting next to it for when I feel like a change of feel.)
I know that it is terribly annoying to have to listen to people on the phone while in public, but we have perforce become accustomed to it. However, I am pretty sure that I can talk much faster than I can input text on a phone or tablet. Setting up better editing methods and using talk-to-text has some potential, I would think. I will have to give at least the voice input a go... putting my er... words... where my mouth is.
Duo 13, i7 variant. £1725, before you even go on about the prices Sony will charge for an extra battery, a car charger... well, it doesn't come with it. I also see no battery life figures.
So, we're probably talking somewhere north of two grand, all in. For a jumped up netbook. To write fucking Office documents.
Now what was that I said about extortionately priced? Not to mention that the huge PDAs that we now call "tablets" have a battery life that approaches or exceeds all-day heavy usage already, without any mucking about swapping batteries halfway through.
A tablet PC running office. Does it "play for sure?" Do you need it to be "always on?" How's Microsoft at actually listening to it's userbase and fixing bugs, changing the UI where required or climbing down from previously idiotic and pointless restrictions? Does it have an app for that? How's the feeling amongst the developer community and the userbase? Most critically of all:
...when can I actually get away from this wall socket? 12 hours of battery - minimum - or just go the fuck home.
Oh that wall socket was left behind years ago. T731 can do it easily with hot swap batterie in the second bay (Actually 8h on the two internals as well, a second swap-in will get you 12+). And that is "old tech" from 2010/2011. Going by the Duo13s performance the 733/903 will do 12+ on the two internals.
With an core-i7 M-series CPU!
"Hot swap battery" is not a solution. Look, I realize that you are probably Microsoft marketing, but can you please get your head out of the 2003-era messaging? It's just embarrassing. Microsoft has pivoted several times since then.
"Hot swap battery" was replaced with "you don't really need that much battery life" about two years ago. Also: the market decided this already and said the idea of hot-swap batteries was completely ridiculous, in case you missed the memo.
12 hours. On the batteries that come with the device. Actual usage. Not the made up "here's a Haswell that can get 12 hours, honest! (But if you breathe on it that drops to 6.)"
Microsofting the message with "we can do 12 hours if we completely throw away the "portability" portion of the tablet exercise and instead go to some megalith with multiple hot-swappable internal batteries" is shameful. Gods man, half of what my company does is tech marketing; you are bringing their entire profession into disrepute. Please stop; you shame the all aspects of the IT industry with your desperate grasping.
Mr. Potts you are what gives journalism a bad name. A REAL bad one.
The real and existinc core-i / sandy T731 with both batteries installed gets 8+ hours right now in my usage. Granted, that does not include watching videos since for that I have a 42'' television screen. And the unit is quite portable.
Sorry but you are a TROLL!
I could say the same about anybody suggesting a Core i7 lap-scalder for doing letters and spreadsheets with. The Fujitsu Lifebook T731 is not exactly cheap either, unless you want a decrepit "refurbished" one.
So sure, if you have unlimited funds and the desire to throw unlimited amounts of them at some kind of shiny, then you might just barely, so long as you're not using it too hard, get 8 hours out of an x86 Windows tablet PC. Really, well done.
Now if you don't mind, I have a years-old TF201 here to play with. Cost £500 when it was brand spanking new. Goes all day. Like the Duracell Bunny of convertible tablets, it is.
Actually I think, now Microsoft have made the idiot decision to try and turn the desktop into a phone and get the general public used to "duh hooge squares and pretty pictures" phone interfaces, Android could go through just a few modifications to be mouse and multiple-window-friendly and stand a good chance at taking Microsoft on, on their home turf. Wouldn't that be something?
"....Android could go through just a few modifications to be mouse and multiple-window-friendly and stand a good chance at taking Microsoft on, on their home turf. Wouldn't that be something?" Spot on, and most needed! No-one seems to be driving the Linux desktop with any real enthusiasm any more, it all seems to have degenerated into flamewars between GNOME3 and KDE fans with nothing to actually attract new users away from Windows. Google Office and Chrome OS are simply too limited and designed to push Google advertising services.
Without real competition, even Windows 8.1 will stagger along as the leading consumer desktop OS, and MS Office will continue to rake in the cash for M$. Remember how hated Windows XP was when it first arrived? It won because M$ kept polishing it and the Linux alternatives were - frankly - poor. I absolutely detest the Office Ribbon concept - IMHO one of the worst interface/menu designs I have ever seen - but I'll not stop using Office. We need something to drag along the Linux desktop in the same way Android dragged Linux-based phones into pole position, and if the Linux community lets them then M$ will happily let it be with subscriptions to Office365. From what I have seen (and I have used Office365), Google Office is not the answer.
Yes, I am a troll; where have you every seen me say otherwise? I also happen to be right.
Th market decided that things with "hot swappable batteries" were not "portable." I have an ASUS R1F myself; have various tablets today and I'm perfectly aware of the form factor (in all incarnations, from small screen to largeish and clunky) and the level of portability. Not only that, I have traditionally been a true champion of the Lifebook P1510d and P1610d notebooks, even back when tablet's weren't yet much of a thing.
They don't fucking sell.
The P1510d, P1610d and some less successful successors were the closest that Microsoft got to "portable" before the Surface, and they suck sweaty balls compared to an iPad. "I can put it in a backpack and carry it around" is not portable. "I can pick it up with one hand and read it for a few hours like I could a paperback book" is portable. Even here, the iPad is bordering on too clumsy and too heavy. (The Nexus 7 is dead on rights for that.)
You are constantly having to stretch "usable battery life" by cutting out "things you can use it for" in order to support your arguments. You are talking about devices 4-5x as heavy as a true tablet (which is the modern standard for portability) whilst talking about devices easily 4x (at least!) a tablet's cost.
Every post you are in here rah-rahing Microsoft. It doesn't matter how completely off the mark you are or how badly Microsoft have done in teh area you are cheering, you rah-rah them like your paycheque depends on it.
Face it, friend, Microsoft does not have the answer to all things. In fact, they done fucked up real good on a great many. Tablets are their corporate specialty; they "don't get it" with as an elemental force of nature!
If you want to say I'm bad at journalism, hey, I can take that. I haven't been at this for more than a few years. I, at least, am able to cheer Microsoft when they deserve it (Server and Tools, baby!) and tell them to eat a great big wiggling sack of fuck right the hell off when they have screwed the pooch. (Microsoft's endpoint efforts.)
I don't have a loyalty to any company, product or service (well, except Ninite.) I will cheerfully rip into a company for screwing up as well as praise them for getting it right.
Here is a great example: tablets.
Good:
Microsoft have cottoned on to the right idea: a single, converged device that can "do everything".
Microsoft made halfway decent hardware: the Surface RT
Microsoft finally broke with "old windows" and created a new version: Windows RT
Bad:
Microsoft completely screwed the launch and absolutely shattered end user, consumer and even investor trust.
Microsoft poisoned their OEM relationships so badly it will take them a decade to recover.
Microsoft didn't listen to their end users after screwing them over and doubled down on douchbaggery with 8.1 leading to a further loss of confidence.
Microsoft restricted Windows Rt in a whole bunch of really stupid ways that made it a complete pariah even after they fixed some of the bigger issues. (Outlook as one example.)
Microsoft refused to allow desktop access on their proper tablet OS (Windows RT) thus cutting people off from real productivity app access unless they used Office and only office.
In short, Microsoft had a FANTASTIC idea. But Microsoft tried to leverage Windows 8, Windows RT and the Surface line to further lock-in and drive people towards Metro - which many loathe - in an effort to acclimate people to phones. The net result being a bunch of terrible, irritating design choices and restrictions that resulted in a truly shit series of products and services and a worse corporate attitude.
What people want is the portability of an iPad. Many of us want to use those portable devices to do work. Microsoft could have owned that market like a boss. They screwed it up.
If MIcrosoft want to have a hope in hell of making it in the endpoint business in the next 5 years they need to own that failure. They need to say "mea culpa," admiting both internally and externally that they did not do well on this and then come back and Window 7 the fuck out of their current Tablet Vista.
They could do it. They choose not to.
If you want to wrap yourself in their banner after that, you go right ahead. But don't for a second try to pass off Microsoft's tat as in any way competing with Android or iOS. It isn't. It competes with Blackberry. And if they're really, really lucky, they'll hold onto third place.
But the way they've been going lately, I wouldn't count on it.
...except that Android doesn't support click-and-drag to highlight. Doesn't support right-click anything. Doesn't change between tasks easily...the mouse is a third-class input device on an Android device. The Android device says push/click-and-hold-and-wait-and-smeel-the-flowers-and-isn't-it-nice-we're-pissing-away-your-whole-afternoon-with-our-shitty-UI-that-isn't-productivity-based-in-the-slightest?
Yeah. cute. Because I haven't been bashing my head against that for years with the Transformer. Un-hunh...
My daughter's iPad was sold pending an upgrade to an iPad 2, however she started university; taking notes and editing them in lectures became a priority. I thought about this and bought her a Lenovo X201 12" Laptop. It fits in her large hand bag, and she can watch the umpteen videos in odd formats she has on it straight off VLC, can run Matlab etc.
Eventually though she did get iPad mini as well, as she enjoys the convenience, but that laptop was boon.
My needs were completely different, sold my iPad (a gift) after a few months and bought a HP Envy 17 (Windows 7) instead, which I've had ever since. Admittedly it breaks my back when I carry it to work every now and again on my bike, but it has served me well. Now someone has given me an old iPad as a present again. Installed 'Badland' on it, and I really am quite enjoying it, to sell or not to sell...
My phone's an Sony Xperia Z, which I can take notes on reasonably well using Swype, though I've never written or edited a document on it, then again I've never needed to.
> Sign of desperation, it'll Office for Linux next.
Which will be hobbled. The aim is to do enough to kill off the alternatives without being enough to replace windows.
That was RT too.
These companies have stopped trying to be the best and are concentrating on not cannibalising existing profit centres. If they aren't careful, good-enough will appear from elsewhere.
Two and a half years ago -- was the last time I can specifically recall opening and doing more than the most basic of input into a word processor (Openoffice). -- it was to update my resume.
Roughly the same amount of time since I did my last presentation(openoffice again). Presentation for previous company.
Probably been 5-6 years since I did anything remotely resembling something serious in a spreadsheet
~60% of my writing is in wiki (confluence), ~5-10% in blog (wordpress) and the rest in text files (usually vi or gedit)
However I HAVE used MS Visio quite a bit over the past several years, obviously orders of magnitude more than anything else in the office suite. I do use Outlook on occasion for brief times (bulk deleting email etc).
The mistake MS made was assuming there was a lot of people that WANTED an office suite on their tablet.
Obviously the market has spoken and most people don't care. It's never been a "killer app". For a small minority of the users out there(perhaps the author of the article) it obviously is. If someone makes a good office suite it'll probably sell pretty well, because it's not a terrible thing to have. But I don't expect it to be a trigger for another wave of tablet sales - those will move based on the "killer apps" (whatever they might be I've never used an android or IOS tablet) that already exist resulting in tens of millions of tablets selling each year.
We will never get anywhere if all developers merely nudge existing products towards what they hope will sell.
And the principles are so basic!
So Microsoft had a working version of Word that ran on Win 3.1? I bet they had a modest set of features rather than bloated software, had not yet added smooth scrolling (or other unnecessary resource consuming features), and actually developed the software so that it used resources sparingly. That way, the software runs at reasonable speed, crashes less, coexists with other software, and provides most of the features people want.
The other thing we need is new interfaces that suit the hardware. Doesn't anyone look into better ways of coping with (size of finger tip)/(size of screen) > (size of mouse cursor)/(size of screen)? How about dasher (http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/)? Or adapt that to be a qwerty keyboard that expands in the area where your finger is, or where it expects the next character? (I really must stop trying to develop ideas while posting El-Reg comments.)
And fancy not supporting a plug-in keyboard. I had an Ericson mobile that did that 20 years ago.
No wonder Free Software has grown up: I couldn't write it all myself. But it's such an opportunity for companies like Microsoft!
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