Ballmer Promises Microsoft Tablet By Christmas 356
judgecorp writes "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told an audience at the London School of Economics, that there will be tablets running Microsoft's Windows operating system available by Christmas. 'We as a company will need to cover all form factors,' he told an audience of students and press. 'You'll see slates with Windows on them – you'll see them this Christmas.' Mind you, if he's talking about the rumoured HP Windows 7 slate, he may not be so pleased when it appears. A recent YouTube video showed a supposed prototype which has been described as a 'trainwreck in the making.'"
Well, there are a number still available (Score:4, Informative)
Motion has 3 models available:
http://www.motioncomputing.com/ [motioncomputing.com]
There's the Archos 9:
http://www.archos.com/products/tw/archos_9/index.html?country=us&lang=en [archos.com]
and the Samsung Q1EX:
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP-Q1EX-FA01US [samsung.com]
and the Panasonic Toughbook is available as a slate.
Sadly, Fujitsy quit making slates though (perhaps they'll go back to making them?) --- interestingly the selection of Windows slates has gotten so low that some people who want a larger format slate are purchasing the Axiotron Modbook (a converted Mac laptop) and installing Windows on it.
William
It would have to be in the retail chain already (Score:5, Informative)
To be in the stores for the holiday shopping season, it would already have had to be shown to retailers, the retail space booked and paid for by Microsoft, and the first containers of product on ships in transit from China. It's too late in the retail cycle for this season.
If it isn't Courier, they can keep it (Score:1, Informative)
Yes, we want tablet PCs. Yes, we want tablet computing pads.
We also want the Courier.
But we won't get the Courier. Ballmer hasn't got the vision to sell something like that.
Several christmasses ago (Score:4, Informative)
17 years too late? (Score:3, Informative)
There never was a Courier (Score:3, Informative)
But we won't get the Courier. Ballmer hasn't got the vision to sell something like that.
They also don't have the vision to design it. The whole thing was basically a video mockup, and if you really thought about it the design as it was just was not practical. There is a vast world of difference between what a video effects guy can come up with and what really can be made.
Re:Doing it just to do it (Score:5, Informative)
From T other FA (eWeek needs better people if they think they can stop me cutting and pasting... sheesh...)
The rest of the article is not worth looking at, let alone reading.
It's a reaction to Wall Street (Score:5, Informative)
It said Microsoft was being threatened by the rise of tablet computers such as Apple's iPad, which do not run Windows software.
Re:OMG (Score:5, Informative)
It's windows 7 with some half-assed touch support bolted on. it will run your existing windows software but your windows software was designed for mouse and keyboard. I think you would need to be really desperate to go anywhere near it (this characterization applies to Microsoft, manufacturers, and consumers)
Re:Once again.... (Score:3, Informative)
Still waiting on the mac version of directx
You mean OpenGL?
Re:And in typical Ballmer fashion (Score:5, Informative)
Since when was Windows an open development platform?
Since it was first made available.
Try writing a decent Windows app using gcc and not making use of frameworks like .Net, MFC, etc.
For starters, all those frameworks that you've listed (and others which you did not) are layers on top of the core Win32 APIs, which can greatly simplify things, but don't really provide new capabilities. A testament to that is that most apps that ship out of the box in Windows don't use MFC, .NET, or any other framework - they're coded against raw Win32 API. .NET is not even a C/C++ framework, so why it's listed alongside gcc is beyond my comprehension. It's like complaining that you can't write Rails apps with gcc. That said, you can write .NET Windows apps using a fully OSS stack - Mono runs on Windows too.
MFC is a proprietary Microsoft C++ framework. It's very archaic, too, and you'd have to be a masochist to write a new app using it. Meanwhile, Qt for Windows is available, works great, and comes with a great free IDE.
This, by the way, is precisely what it means to be an "open development platform" - APIs, ABIs and file formats are all documented, and there are no legal restrictions on their use, so any company can provide development tools and frameworks targeting Windows. Qt SDK is a prominent one, but you can just as well use Java with either of the major IDEs, or any of the dozens of C++ frameworks, or D, or Python/PyGTK, or write your own.
Note that even if you stick to Microsoft offerings, Windows SDK is free, and includes both command-line C++ compiler and C# / VB compilers. As well as debuggers and other tools. VS Express is free, though somewhat limited. It's all still proprietary, of course, so your point still stands - just wanted to point out that you don't need to pay any $$$ beyond that Windows license to develop for it.
The vast majority of Windows development is done using Visual Studio because many people consider it the best development environment (at least on Windows). You're not in any way locked into it.
Re:And in typical Ballmer fashion (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft gives you Visual Studio Express, free of charge.
Re:Once again.... (Score:1, Informative)
Windows for pen computing goes back to Windows 3.0 days, 2 decades and counting....
Re:Once again.... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Doing it just to do it (Score:4, Informative)
Why include a "CTRL-ALT-DEL" button on the device's chassis unless you expect the software to crash on a regular basis? What's with having a mechanical button to activate a virtual onscreen keyboard?
I hate coming to the defense of Microsoft, but "CTRL-ALT-DEL" hasn't been a hard-reboot sequence since WinME. It's been used in WinNT/2K/XP/V/7 as a way to access the login prompt because IIRC it's a special sequence that only the kernel is allowed to listen for, so you can ostensibly be assured that no program other than the login prompt is accepting your username/password. A soft-keyboard version of "CTRL-ALT-DEL" would defeat that "security" purpose.
Re:And in typical Ballmer fashion (Score:5, Informative)
What the fuck. Revisionist much?
Windows 1.03, 2, 286, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, Windows for Workgroups, NT, Windows 95 (and possibly even Windows 98) all did not have a free SDK. And the SDK was needed to program for those platforms.
Hey, I went and bought a copy of Windows 1.03 -- and even though I also had a licensed copy of Microsoft C 5.1, 6.0, and MASM 4 and 5 I was not able to build an application for Windows. That would require the SDK, which was a considerable expense. I didn't buy the SDK until Windows 3.0.
And, from 3.0 until Windows 98 (when I finally stopped writing Windows apps), I spent a lot of money on those "free" SDKs. In the Windows 9x/NT timeframe, $3000/year for MSDN, several thousand before MSDN, so make it around 20,000 (or more). Not counting third party tools and libraries.
Re:YouTube video is gone... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Once again.... (Score:5, Informative)
Repackaging WinMo or Win7 into an iPad like form factor will not result in success
This is a very good point. I've actually used Windows 7 on a tablet PC, yes, complete with touch screen. It's horrible!
Imagine having to do window management on a device like that, stuff you don't even have to bother about on iOS or Android OS. Imagine an OS where lots of apps aren't designed for e.g. changed dpi settings (to at least be able to put your thumb on a maximize widget and not hit the restore widget!) and have their UI's crap out completely at that. Imagine how no text box in the OS will automatically pop up a virtual keyboard, and that the built-in Windows 7 virtual keyboard that's there consumes a third of the entire display on a 1024x600 touch screen. It's like how polished Windows XP 64-bit is for 64-bit apps. That's where Windows 7 is today, at best. They haven't even thought about how you're supposed to *use* Windows 7 as a touch OS yet, it's just a cobbled together mess of mouse interfaces, touch-oriented keyboards, small widgets, and API's for multi-touch features, for the 0.32% that use such devices on Windows 7. And they're already talking of a HP Slate this christmas. This will risk ending up a huge disappointment for HP.
Re:Once again.... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, to be fair... Microsoft demo'd a lot of features in Longhorn back in 2002 that apple copied and was able to get to market with faster (due to Micorosoft's major screwups in developing Longhorn). Microsoft showed stuff like 3D Window managers with wobbly windows, instant search, etc.. long before they were in other products like Compiz/XGL or OSX.
I think you have your history a little screwed up. Apple released hardware accelerated version of their compositing rendering engine Quartz back in August 23, 2002 (10.2 Jaguar). Previous to that, they had software based Quartz in 10.0 and 10.1 and Quartz evolved out of Display Postscript on NextStep. Apple and Next had been working on search for a long time before that as well.
The taskbar in Windows 95 and quick launch was stolen from the NextStep dock.