I see that Gruber's already piling on the snark about it having a fan etc. What he misses is that there's choice, if you want a fanless ARM tablet, Windows 8 will run on it, there were a lot of demos of it doing so. But if you want a more powerful tablet with a Core i5 processor and don't mind the heat and noise that much, then there that option too. Whereas if you want a more powerful iPad, you're SOL.
I mean, am I only one that sees a 'powerful' tablet as a drawback?
Size, weight and battery life are three of the most important features of my iPad. Further, the non-fragmentation of the App Store is nice, a 1G iPad can run pretty much everything a 2G iPad can.
Why would I want to buy in to an ecosystem where developers are worrying about developing to the lowest common denominator? Would they consider optimizing their App for the 10% of their market that bought the Core i5 tablet vs for the ARM (in a total market size with 5 % of the tablet market)?
What benefit would you really see from a tablet with so much processing power? A I going to sacrifice all of that battery life so I can render video faster?
Ok, but what if they just let the tablet run all the apps that work on the desktop. Great. Now my overpowered tablet that has two hours of battery life and has a fan in it is running apps that aren't even optimized for a tablet form factor?
I agree, the "powerful tablet" seems like a genre without a market. iPad style tables are attractive because they are extremely small, light, and have excellent battery life. Why would I buy a larger, heavier tablet with poor battery life when I can buy a similar laptop instead?
The iPad is popular largely because it's something completely different from what's already there. A big tablet with an i5 and three hours of battery life is pretty much the same as what already exists in the PC space.
The thing is that you will have a choice. I'll be able to get a 17" hex core, dual HD power machine while my wife/kids can have a arm powered tablet. Both machines will be able to run the same metro apps.
Personally, I like power tablets. I got an android instead of an iPad (I gave away my iPad) because of the added functionality (usb in, hdni out). If I could have a windows tablet instead, I'd be a very happy camper.
I don't mean power tablets in terms of functionality, but rather in terms of raw computing power. Your Android tablet has nice features but it's still an efficient ARM processor which would be completely destroyed in any benchmark by a decent laptop. The question is, would you buy a power-hungry hex core tablet if one were available, rather than an ARM tablet or a powerful laptop? More pertinently, would enough people buy one to make it a viable market?
I don't think you're the only one. How many times has the "computer in tablet form" been tried now? How many more will it have to fail before MS realize they have to make a change. The complete lack of creativity from that company can be shocking. "I know! Let's do the same thing again but bigger/smaller!"
Further, the non-fragmentation of the App Store is nice, a 1G iPad can run pretty much everything a 2G iPad can.
Why would I want to buy in to an ecosystem where developers are worrying about developing to the lowest common denominator?
Funny how when Apple released the iPad2 they talked up how much faster it was than than the iPad, but I didn't hear a whole bunch of people talking about worrying about the lowest common denominator then. Do you think the iPad3 will only be as fast as the iPad2? The iPhone5 as slow as the 3GS?
Perf deltas are something people get an understand pretty well.
