ignore the code: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

17 Mar 2014 • ignorethecode.net

To be sure, it’s absolutely possible to use iPads productively. In fact, Apple blogs love to point to examples of people who do use iPads to produce things. And yes, these people exist. There are artists who draw on iPads, and musicians who make music on iPads, and writers who write novels on iPads, and movie makers who cut their movies on iPads. But the fact that you have to point to these people, the fact that there are articles about these people, shows that they’re unusual. An artist drawing a painting on an iPad is a novelty.

If it was normal for people to use their iPads for creative tasks, there would not be newspaper articles about people using their iPads for creative tasks. The iPad will have arrived as a productivity device when news sites stop reporting about people who use iPads for productivity. So in the end, all of these links to articles about people who use their iPads to create things only seem to support the notion that this is not how most people use their iPads.

Great counter-point for all the "iPad is not just for consumption" hoopla we hear. Sounds about right to me.  I use a Macbook to create and an iPad (mini) to consume.

Later in the article the author goes on to try and address the lukewarm reception of Windows 8 in the market:

The things I love about Windows 8 are exactly the things that the most vocal Windows users hate, and the things I hate about Windows 8 are the things they love. So maybe the problem with Windows 8 is that Windows 8 appeals much more to me, a Mac user of 20 years, than to your typical Slashdot-commenting Ars-Technica-reading Windows user who frequents online forums to talk about Windows. And because these people are the most vocal Windows users, and because they tell their friends which versions of Windows to like and which to avoid, that has real effects on Microsoft’s success with Windows 8.

If that's true they've really shot themselves in the foot (again) by naming everything Windows.  Windows people don't like it because it's not familiar  and people who already know they dislike Windows never give it a shot because - well it's still Windows, right?

What a mess.