And then He Was Typing Lots

*sigh* My BtrFS partition corrupted itself and died. Why is such an unstable file system included in the Linux kernel? For shits n giggles I suppose. Anyway back to Ext4 I guess. I'm also annoyed by how terrible each of the desktop environments for Linux that I've tried are, Gnome 2.x seems to be the most usable for me, which is sad considering how antiquated looking and feeling the whole affair is. I could write several thousand words on why I think each of the major linux interfaces fail so badly, but I wont -_-

ANYHOW

I'd like to talk about the Microsoft Surface. I'm talking about the Microsoft Surface from the perspective of being Australian, so I'll talk about it as such.

ANDROID'S TAKE

First of all, Tablet manufacturers need to understand the nature of their products' relationship with the iPad. Annoyingly, too many to date have treated the iPad like the elephant in the room, and this has resulted in spectacular failures a la the Motorola Xoom or virtually all of Samsung's tablets. They have treated their product just like the treat their android phones. It's easy to see why - Android phones are definitely a great alternative to the iPhone, intact I own one and prefer it over my iPhone.

Android on a tablet is utter dogshit. It's slow, and it's painfully obvious that it's the phone version, stretched to make it larger, with a few "oh i guess we have to" tablet features thrown in. It's absolutely a non starter, and I think google is not serious about making a great tablet OS. Anyone who says otherwise has yet to convince me, and I've used it *a lot*. I could write an extravaganza on what I feel are the failings of Android on a tablet, but that's not what I feel like writing.

On top of Android being fucking woeful to use on a tablet, we have android tablet manufactures who seem to assume that tablet android will be competitive like the phone version is, and pricing their tablets the same as the iPad, despite in many instances, having considerably inferior build quality

Let's be real here. Honestly real. You walk into a shop. You're a dummy. You don't even know what the difference between android and iOS is. You see two tablets. The SAME PRICE, one has a nice aluminium build, is easy to use, has a tonne of apps, and is the same tablet many of your friends have. The other is ugly, works very strangely (seriously have you watched a novice try to work an android tablet?) and does not have many tablet optimised apps. Which one are the going to buy here? The proof is in the pudding buddy, at my university I have seen a grand total of three, count 'em THREE android tablets. All three were Nexus 7s too. This is opposed to a shit storm of Apple iPads.

So want to sell an Android tablet? Making it cheaper than the iPad is your first priority. If you come out with a tablet for $499, you've fucking failed already. No customer is going to care that your tablet is faster, has a better graphics chip, supports more radio bands or has a kevlar strip on it, it's a non starter. They will care that your tablet is the same price as the nice tablet everyone else has, and they will buy the iPad instead. Case closed, as the numerous Android tablet flops demonstrate, it's as simple as that.

The Nexus 7 stands as a solution to this: it's ridiculously cheap, and its success is reflected in the fact that i've actually SEEN them in the wild here in Australia.

WINDOWS TAKE

Anyone noticed how Apple like they're trying to be? I mean, Apple is making a shit tonne of cash, of course you wanna be like Apple! This can be seen as a good thing (like the daring Metro interface) or it can be bad (not releasing the SDK for Windows Phone 8 until launch so there are zero third party WP8 optimised applications).

Microsoft Windows 8 RT is an interesting take on what a tablet should be, and from my perspective presents a number of key advantages over an iPad:

1) It's a scaled down computer OS rather than a scaled up phone OS. You can multitask, you have quick access to functions via charms, you can run two applications side by side. iPad does none of that (and No, the iPad does NOT multitask. Don't be fooled into thinking it does.)

2) It has a USB port. You tried moving files from a computer to an iPad? makes you wanna cut your wrists hey?

3) Office RT will mean that you can get real work office work done on a  tablet. You can be that Office RT will be really, really good.

Unfortunately they've priced it the same as the iPad, positioning it as a direct competitor.

Like I said originally, customers will walk into the shop, see the Surface and iPad side by side (remember the surface doesn't come with the keyboard as standard). Apple understands the value of something looking good, because their entire business model is based on selling expensive, high margin hardware to cashed up twats (noticed how dumbed down Final Cut X is? Or how they don't give a shit about nichey, high end products like the Mac pro anymore?)

The point of the Retina display is it looks great, even to a cashed up twat with no idea about technology. And no multiple applications at once means said cashed up twat has quite a usable, unconfronting device to use.

By pricing it the same (or more expensive than an iPad in Australia) they are basically shooting themselves in the foot. The 1366x768 display, ignoring all the "it's more readable" bullshit by Microsoft, combined with the boxy, plasticky look of the device, are going to seriously work against it.

So basically I think that the Surface has the potential to fundamentally be a much better device for people are actually know how to work efficiently with technology, but at this price I doubt it will take off. I fearlessly predict price cuts in the near future.