Ballmer: ''Full Guns'' on iPad is ''Job One Urgency''
Windows 7 tablets to be Intel-based, not ARM, and they will print.
It's no great secret that Apple beat Microsoft (and basically everyone else) to the tablet market in the consumer space. Microsoft isn't happy about that.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the company is hard at work in making a Windows-based tablet that'll go head-to-head against the iPad.
"They'll be shipping as soon as they are ready," Ballmer said. "It is job one urgency. No one is sleeping at the switch."
On the topic of Apple's success with the iPad, "they've sold certainly more than I'd like them to have sold."
While other companies are tuning special operating systems for its tablet devices, Microsoft is sticking with Windows 7.
"We have got to make things happen," he said. "We're in the process of doing that as we speak. We're working with our hardware partners. We're tuning Windows 7."
One nice side effect of having Windows 7 is that it'll be packed with features that many of us enjoy on our computers. "When you get your Windows 7 machine, it will print," Ballmer said. "Some people actually like to print every now and then."
Ballmer didn't comment when the tablets will be launching, other than "It ain't a long time from now." As for hardware, it'll be Intel-based rather than ARM.
"We're coming," he said. "We're coming full guns. The operating system is called Windows."
(Source: Cnet.)
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They're making some pretty unorthodox choices here.
x86 rather than ARM for starters. Even Atom is a power hog compared to ARM. The x86 CPU's will make Win 7 tablets far more potent than any ARM one out there, but it means sacrificing battery life. Not exactly great for a tablet.
Second problem: Win 7. Even a modified version will require a lot of system resources and worse still, Windows' touch screen UI still leaves a lot to be desired.
They're aiming at a tablet that is far more powerful than any other tablet, especially for office apps and things like that, but that would make them even more direct competitors to netbooks than the iPad is. And face it, netbooks are cheaper, easier to use and probably with longer battery life too.
They're aiming somewhere halfway between a traditional tablet and a netbook. I'm afraid that like most compromises, it's not going to work out well.
It might use an Intel Moorestown CPU Silmarunya, which (though admittedly is unlikely) are extremely low power.
The mistake Microsoft and other companies are making is to attempt to beat the iPad at all. Tablets are actually a useless concept and a fad that will die out. People only bought the iPad because it had an apple logo on it - it was a style choice rather than a functionality one. If you want functionality you don't buy a tablet period. Therefore all tablet sales will be attributed to stupid people - and they've all already bought their tablet - because stupid people buy Mac computers. That's why no one buy Apple will sell tablets. Because the Apple logo is the only reason that exists to buy one.
Tablets are far from a useless concept. They are perhaps a bit niche but I use them in my business and they are the best medium to use.
Tablets are far from stupid. In the consumer space they are a solution looking for a problem though. Yes the shiny fruit has kicked interest into the form factor where before there was none, but I've managed to make even the iPad useful in my job (borrowed one from the uni as a test run).
Client demos, website concepts and wireframes, presentations, even my full production file on location has been great. I will be getting a few tablets in (ICD Gemini if it ever shows up) for the business based on the strength of what we've experimented on with the iPad.
If battery life is long enough, a Windows 7 tablet will be even better.
Yeah guys, I meant in the consumer space. It is the space where Apple has found most of its iPad customers, but where Microsoft etc will find none. The business and niche sector may have use for tablets of course, but that's hardly what the producers want to hear. They are only investing millions on matching Apple because they want the same success - success they simply won't get.
I think that THG need to make more of an effort to prevent advertising spam from being posted in their comment sections. winni2078's posts being an obvious example.
Is there any reason, other than the comparative courses that development has taken over the last decade or two, that RISC systems couldn't deliver similar processing power as x86 systems? Back in the day, Acorn computers (made by Arm or just using its processors? I can't recall) were faster than the 486s they were against, I think. They mainly failed due to businesses having universally adopted x86 machines and software.
It might be of course that Windows and its software is still enough reason to prevent RISC hardware getting that powerful, unless someone updates the old RiscOS to a comparable level and/or bridges the gap to make PC software work directly.
@swamprat
Acorn computers (made by Arm or just using its processors? I can't recall)
ARM stands for Acorn RISC Machine, so it would be fair to say it was the other way around. Acorn developed the ARM-architecture and later moved it to a spinoff company, ARM Ltd.
Is there any reason, other than the comparative courses that development has taken over the last decade or two, that RISC systems couldn't deliver similar processing power as x86 systems? Back in the day, Acorn computers (made by Arm or just using its processors? I can't recall) were faster than the 486s they were against, I think. They mainly failed due to businesses having universally adopted x86 machines and software.It might be of course that Windows and its software is still enough reason to prevent RISC hardware getting that powerful, unless someone updates the old RiscOS to a comparable level and/or bridges the gap to make PC software work directly.
ARM's architecture currently isn't designed for raw processing power, but that's not the main problem. x86 covers every bit of the computer market from Atom to massive supercomputers. All current higher end software is written for x86. Nobody wants to rewrite all software in current use, nor does anyone wants to anger Intel, AMD and allies.
The only reason ARM is popular, is that there isn't a truly low power x86 CPU (Mooorestown tries to change that, but it's not enough) and there is no mobile software written for it.
ARM doesn't have the resources to wrestle its way in the higher-performance market, while x86 so far hasn't really scaled down to the mobile market.
moorestown is close, medfield (32nm, 2011) will be perfect, and in 2012, if Intel wants, they can release a 22nm soc process atom.