Microsoft says tablets will trump PCs in 2013
Slate domination
Microsoft reckons tablets will outsell standard PCs next year - and Windows 8 will be the catalyst for the shift.
"Everything used to be desktops, now 60 per cent of PCs sold are laptops. Next year, tablets will outsell desktops," forecast Microsoft's Antoine Leblond, head of its web services operation.
Talking at the company's TechEd Europe event, Leblond reiterated that while Windows 8 is geared for tablet use, it can be used on desktops and laptops just as well.
"Windows 8 is an old and new bet," he said. "Windows 7 was really rooted in the last generational change of Windows, which was Windows 95. Windows 8 is a generational change in Windows. But it's still Windows. Everything you could do before, you can still do in Windows 8."
The Redmond man talked up his firm's reimagination of Windows from the OS to the chipset, with focus on preserving battery life a key factor. After all, "we're moving towards a world that's battery powered" and the future is clearly in the tablet domain. Perhaps that was another reason behind Microsoft's decision to launch its own-brand tablet. ®
COMMENTS
Microsoft says a lot of things.
Few turn out to be true or accurate.
And therein lies the problem...
Quote: "Everything you could do before, you can still do in Windows 8"
Which means that precisely nothing has changed. The concept that made the iPad stand out wasn't the fact that it had a touch screen. MS has tried that for at least a decade without success.
The iPad is popular because it isn't a computer/PC (in the eyes of the general public). It's an appliance that provides communication, entertainment, and many other functions in a form where you simply press a button and it works. Although it has an operating system, it's practically invisible. And - like any appliance - the user is protected from accidental harm. No need to keep asking, "are you sure you want to click/download/run/open that?", or telling them, "you are unprotected - please install firewall/antivirus/etc software", or - with almost every passing day - "there is an important security update to install". No drivers, no techno-babble, no expertise required whatsoever.
But MS is fixated with the idea that "everything is a PC running Windows". Windows 8 has disastrously contradictory goals - to compete with the iPad (which is an appliance) and to do everything Windows 7 did (which is for a general purpose computer). The net result is that it can't do either of these very well. It's only tolerable on a desktop to the extent that you can make all the 'features' of Windows 8 disappear, and it isn't a tablet operating system - it's a PC in a tablet form, just like all the other slate/tablet PCs Windows has supported over the last decade. In other words, an expensive PC in a less usable form.
"Everything you could do before, you can still do in Windows 8"
...he said, before adding "it'll just take you four times longer to do it while battling with our next generation Metro UI!"
Battling the UI
I gave up trying that years ago, what with Aero, ribbons and the continual hunt for elusive menu items.
Obligatory bad car analogy: If GM kept moving their gas, brake and clutch pedals around every few model years, I wouldn't buy their cars (I wouldn't anyway, but that's another story).
Mine's the one with the Print function in this pocket .... no, wait, maybe its the other pocket. Or the other coat.
Re: Not what he said...
They will force all desktops to have windows 8 installed at sale. No one will touch them with a stick.
Everything will outsell desktops.
