Intel machines running Windows 8 will have advantages over the ARM versions. Which means no post-PC world for Microsoft

So now we know, there will be four editions of Windows 8, all arriving (probably) by the end of this year. There are just two surprises: a small one and a larger one.

The small surprise is that the main versions of Windows will come in just 2.5 varieties: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, and Windows 8 Enterprise. (Enterprise is Pro with a few extra management bits.)

The second, larger surprise is that Microsoft’s iPad competitor, the bet-the-farm, nothing-more-important-than-this, post-PC tablet proposition is called – wait for it – Windows RT.

Huh? What’s so wrong with Windows Metro? What was so wrong with WOA (Windows on ARM)? and how’s that going to work in their marketing: “I’m a post-PC device and Windows RT was my idea?”

Anyway, that’s not important. What is important is that Intel may have just ruined the whole deal.

iPad-clone

The vision of what was, until this week, called Windows on ARM, or WOA was to produce something that looks and felt like an iPad, but with two distinguishing differences. It would come with Office – the only post-PC device to have it, and availability of Office on iPad is looking increasingly unlikely these days.

It would also come with the Metro-shell, the widely-appreciated and respected user interface vision that Microsoft is imposing on itself internally and on partners.

Go back a year or two and it’s easy to understand what pushed Microsoft into building a version of Windows that would run on ARM. From the fact Windows RT exists, we can infer that on the one hand Apple’s success with the iPad scared them rigid, and in short order.

On the other hand, we can infer that they had no faith in Intel being able to make x86 deliver ARM-like power efficiency. their engineers must have thought – back in 2010 – that Intel-based tablets were always going to be hot, noisy, and a bit rubbish. if they were relaxed about the iPad and confident about Intel, they would have simply waited out Intel’s R&D and delivered an iPad-clone that ran on x86.

But here’s the law of unintended consequences in action – what Intel are actually doing is going gangbusters on trying to deliver that x86-based iPad-clone Microsoft didn’t think was going to happen. That really muddies the water.

It makes perfect sense for Microsoft to do that. Whilst Microsoft is terrified of a post-PC world ruled by Apple, Intel is terrified of a post-PC world ruled by ARM. if Intel were to make x86 work as well as ARM in scenarios where ARM currently rules, Intel’s shareholders are happy bunnies.

It was never clear to me how Microsoft was going to manage having two products called Windows that would behave very differently. The problem with WOA is that it doesn’t run legacy apps, so it’s entirely possible that our customer floating into PC World could buy a “Windows” machine that happened to be a tablet fully expecting it to run his copy of Microsoft Office 95, only to find himself unable to install it. but yet, had he bought this other machine labelled Windows it would have worked fine.

The new Intel tablets are SoC units based on Atom – essentially, they are next-generation netbook-class devices wrapped in a tablet chassis. but, hilariously, these are not Windows RT tablets. they are Windows 8 tablets. so on the counter in PC World you’re going to have one tablet labelled Windows 8 that will run all your legacy applications, and one labelled Windows RT that won’t.

And then?

According to Mary Jo Foley in her article above these new “Clover Trail” tablets will have a nine-hour battery life, weigh less than 700g and be under 9mm in thickness. for comparison, a “new iPad” is about 9mm in thickness, weighs 622g and has a nine-hour or 10-hour battery life. so they’re the same sort of deal.

There will be a slight price difference though. Apple doesn’t have to pay for an operating system license, whereas Microsoft’s OEM partners do. Windows 8 will go to OEMs at a higher price than Windows RT.

Although pricing information on Windows RT is privileged, it would be logical to expect this to be priced about the same as a Windows Phone OEM license. In December, I felt this to be around $15 for the Windows Phone license, $56 for the Windows license. That’s about a £25 difference.

Something about these Clover Trail devices then starts to make serious sense. A basic new iPad will run you £400. if you were to say to someone that for just £25 more you can run all Windows software on a device that behaves like an iPad? That’s a big sell.

A much smaller sell is saying to someone that for £400 you can have something like an iPad that’s not an iPad, but with less apps. and that’s also not an iPad – which I realise I just mentioned, but it’s a point so important it’s worth mentioning twice. Everyone in this space could really do with the iPad being ever-so much more important.

Oh, but one thing, Windows RT comes with Office (albeit without Outlook). Windows 8 doesn’t. so if you do spend £425 on a Windows 8 Clover Trail-class tablet, you’re going to need to shell out on Office, unless you’ve got a copy of Office 95 or better lying around, in which case you’re golden.

So what’s wrong with that?

Logically then, if their Clover Trail-class tablets work as advertised, Intel just killed off Windows RT tablets. why would you not spend an extra 25 bones to run all your Windows apps?

What’s wrong with that is the Windows 8 and Clover Trail and x86 are all “PC” devices, and we’re in a post-PC world now. Microsoft’s intention was to create a post-PC device.

The fact you can run the legacy Windows desktop at all on Windows RT is an accident. Microsoft needed to run Office on it, so their engineers kept the legacy desktop support in there to de-risk the development of the Windows RT-optimised version of Office.

Why do you think you can’t run any other apps in legacy mode? The intention of neutering legacy mode in that way is designed to pin Windows RT in a post-PC world rather than have it get dragged back into a PC world. (No pun.)

In this article James Kendrick nails it by saying that the lure of the tablet is that there’s no intimidation. That’s why iPad sells so well. Post-PC devices are easy, straightforward, operable by anyone, and rarely go wrong.

PCs aren’t like that. and a Clover Trail-class Windows 8 tablet is a PC. Ergo, there will be intimidation, ergo people won’t buy them, ergo Apple will sell bazillions of iPads and, perhaps, the window of opportunity for Android will open again.

Case in point – a family friend recently bought an iPad and she asked me if she needed anti-virus for it. on an iPad, of course not. but on a full-on Windows machine, yes she would.

If these Clover Trail-class devices work as advertised they’ll steal all of Windows RT’s oxygen and kill it stone dead. and Windows will never move into a post-PC world. Something else will end up being the Pepsi to iPad’s Coke.

• Windows 8
• Tablet computers
• Microsoft
• Programming
• Windows
• Computing
• Software
• Intel
• ARM
• iPad

Matthew Baxter-Reynoldsguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Windows 8? Windows RT? Is this bifurcation Intel’s fault?

The iPad’s success is a bit like that of text messaging – the clue isn’t in the technology but in what it enables. so, Microsoft, here’s how to do it.

Last week I wrote a piece on the mishmashed mess that was Metro-style apps running on Windows 8. I wasn’t alone – there were plenty of others who found it similarly flawed.

Towards the end of the article I was at pains to separate how I felt about the bastardisation of Windows and Metro-style from how I felt about Metro-style on a tablet device. on a tablet, Windows 8 and the full-screen Metro-style apps work very well. but do they work well enough to that you can class the tablet as a fully-fledged post-PC device? that depends on how “human” it is.

Emotional high

I bought my first iPad when it first came out. I had no idea why I would want one when I bought it – it’s my job to understand these things, hence the expenditure. At the time I wasn’t particularly into Apple stuff. I had an iPhone 3GS, but the only pieces of Apple kit I’d bought before that was an iPod in 2004 and an “Ive Special” iMac back in 1999.

One of the things that I’m passionately interested in is how technology can be used to positively enhance human relationships. (I’m not particularly interested in technology for technology’s sake. Even the most ardent among us would probably admit it’s all a little dull. really? that new processor can get us an extra 30 minutes of battery life? Yawn.) most of the technology that’s had a disruptive effect on society has worked because it’s had a disruptive effect on people. when Orange was launched in the UK it was the first entirely digital mobile phone network. a feature of the new handsets was text messaging capability. (Other than that they handsets were pretty crappy compared to units like the awesome NEC P4 – warning: early-90s phone porn.) when Orange was launched, the company didn’t even charge for texting. you can bet if Orange had known how popular it was going to be they would have charged from it for the get-go.

Importantly, no one in Orange’s marketing department was contriving different ways to upsell customers into sending text messages. it was a tool given to people that made sense, so people used it, then the network’s monetized it. but people don’t use text messaging because of what is is. What it is is inordinately dull – it’s a way of encoding strings in the network’s control data stream. What it does is let you be down the pub with your mates being bored hearing the same story for the n-hundredth time and receive a text from that special person you want to be your beau or belle. It’s the emotional hit that comes from the human connection enabled by the technology that’s important – not how SMS works.

Facebook works in the same way. Facebook is the most boring site in the world from a technical perspective – just a socking great database of triviality. (OK, some of the “how” is fun if you need to build a socking great real-time-ish database. Do you need to?) What you’re doing when you use Facebook is buzzing off of the emotional highs and lows you get when dealing with people in your life.

iPhone – not impressed

The iPhone that I owned when I first took delivery of my iPad didn’t impress me much. yes, it was nice – nicer than my BlackBerry Pearl with the two missing keys and the tiny screen – but apart from the novelty of angry Birds, it wasn’t doing much for me.

The first time I took the iPad along to a client’s office, I was showing it around, and someone in the office held it up to his ear and yelled, predictably, “HELLO! I’M ON AN IPAD!” it actually made me quite cross – not because of the predictability of his Dom Joly-esque comedy stylings, but because he didn’t get what the iPad did, and even though I’d only owned it for a day I’d already developed an emotional attachment to it.

Hang on – an “emotional attachment”? Odd, right?

The iPad did to the personal computer what text messaging did to telephony. Text messaging turned a box that could make phone calls into something that you could use to – for example – surreptitiously flirt with someone exciting while having a really dull day at work. it reduced the distance between you and those who provide you an emotional high. the iPad does the same thing. Email, Twitter, Facebook, anything you’re into, is a factor closer to you, a factor more accessible than before. it also brings the information you need a step closer too. If I want to watch Top Gear in bed, or read a book on Kindle, it’s a breeze on an iPad. Do I want to prop up a laptop in bed and deal with all the faff? No. just make what I need available there. Don’t make me have to go over there. Hence why I was cross with the office wag – he was lightly mocking me for an object that had quickly become important in my psychic landscape because it was already a gateway to experiences and people that embedded in my life and lifestyle as important.

For me, it’s a shame that the term “personal computer” was snaffled by IBM back in the 80s. really, the iPad is the “personal computer”. What we call a PC really isn’t that “personal” at all. Ask yourself whether it is, next time you’re pounding away at your work desktop bought at the cheapest possible price and built from the same system image as your nearest “n” colleagues, unable to mount a USB drive, or get to sites you want through the firewall. Nope – not “personal”. in comparison the iPad is a deeply personal and – here’s the key word – human device.

WOA there

Thing is, there’s nothing magical about the iPad. Apple are fabulous at marketing. the iPad is a really, really good device. It’s staggeringly cheap. If iPad had a good competitor we’d be talking about killer sales for “tablets”, not for “iPads”. (But there isn’t, so we talk about “iPad” sales by default.)

My best theory on this is that Android doesn’t have a brand. Google changing Android Market to Google Play highlights this point. That’s a dumb move. somehow Google has managed to create a smartphone platform so popular over half the phones sold are Android, yet most people who own an Android phone don’t know what Android is! Best to entrench that position and rename a key property involved in the Android ecosystem away from the Android brand … Sheesh.

Perhaps a deeper problem is in how these companies think. in Charles Arthur’s book Digital Wars there’s a part about Dell trying to build a competitor to the iPod. in early 2001, Toshiba had shown Apple’s hardware chief Jon Rubenstein a nifty – and tiny – 5GB 2.5″ disk drive. He reasoned that this would work in the music player Apple wanted to build, and tied up an exclusive contract. a year or two later, Dell wanted to compete – but decided its supply chain needed two drive suppliers. trouble is, the suppliers put the connector in different locations. the result: Dell had to design the device with two voids so that either hard disk unit could be accommodated on assembly. Result: the player has air in it. It’s physically bigger.

Dell, at that historical point in the game at least, was probably better at running a supply chain and manufacturing than Apple. but by taking the focus away from the humans who would use the devices, and instead into the process that builds the devices, they stripped away some of the humanity of their iPod clone. Apple would never do this, and it’s not because Jonathan Ive is being fussy or fastidious. It’s because designing a device primarily around a supply chain is un-human.

Apple’s success comes from removing the “un-human” part of business. It’s not in the size or quality of their App Store, it’s not in that they’re first to market, it’s not in that they have the biggest database of credit cards, it’s that they’re focused on the human experience.

Oh, the humanity!

In order for Windows on ARM (WOA) tablets to succeed, Microsoft has to create a distinctly “human” tablet to compete with the demonstrably “human” iPad. Understanding how people interact with others through their post-PC devices to enrich their lives is where success in WOA lives.

(You can see Microsoft is mucking some of this up already. “WOA” – honestly, is that a good name for a “human” device? Hardly. Metro-style? What is that? How do I explain that to a relative who has a passing interest in technology?)

If you run Windows 8 on a tablet, you can see that it has the potential to work. the way the tablet works is very human – the touch capability works nicely; it’s quick and responsive; Metro-apps ebb and flow in a less clunky way that the iPad’s equivalent. like the iPad, it’s able to punt the OS the hell out of the way and allow the user to drive a quick path to the who or the what that the user needs to connect with to get their emotional hit.

Metro-style on the desktop doesn’t do this – this is why it needs to be killed, preferably with fire. Metro-style is the equivalent Dell having to put voids in its case to support its supply chain choices. It’s the wrong way up, guys!

So remember, Microsoft, when you’re building an OS, it’s all about my life and my world and much, mess less about your suppliers and your shareholders.

Matthew Baxter-Reynolds is the keynote speaker at the first Windows 8 Conflab being held in London on 18 April.

• Windows 8
• Tablet computers
• iPad
• Microsoft
• Windows
• Programming

Matthew Baxter-Reynoldsguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. all rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Windows 8 for tablets: success lies in being human