[NormM]

This would have been great a couple of years ago, but it's too late to bring out something that's almost as good as an iPad, but without the momentum or ecosystem. This was clearly designed by people who still don't understand why the iPad has been such a big success, and think the world is just waiting for an iPad running Windows. This is a desperation move, like the Zune, and will have the same effect on third party tablet hardware partners.

[untog]

but it's too late to bring out something that's almost as good as an iPad, but without the momentum or ecosystem

Are you suggesting that Windows doesn't have an ecosystem?

[rst]

Desktop Windows does, but stock windows apps generally don't work well in tablet mode without adaptation. Metro (in the form of Windows Phone 7) is lagging. Windows 8 seems to be something like the two of them running on the same kernel, but unless there are apps on both "sides" that synergize well, the whole may be less than the sum of its parts.

[untog]

The intel version at least will be able to run all apps- and the keyboard has a multitouch trackpad.

UIs will need to change, for sure. But as long as it's possible to port large portions of the codebase of existing Windows apps (see the demo of Lightroom they showed), there should be a lot of options.

[greedo]

Call me a cynic, but there's more to a good app than refactoring an existing one with a new UI.

[NormM]

The RT version reminds me of the PC Junior, with its chiclet keyboard, and has no legacy apps. You're right about the Pro version, but it seems to me that's designed for people who need a laptop. Those people will buy a laptop.

[jasonkolb]

All they need is a good product at a lower price. iOS struggles at the tablet form factor. Great for phones, too limited for tablets. No, too limited to be the "main machine". Much of that is apple's fault for locking it down too far.

[greedo]

"too limited for tablets."

mkay. I think the market disagrees with you a bit. And your strawman about being the "main machine" is contrary to Apple's goals. They would like nothing better than to sell you an iPhone, iPad and MacBook.

[NormM]

I think the market has spoken. The new mobile world is here. Android phone shipments have already passed Windows PC shipments worldwide, and iPhone will also pass Windows this year. If trends continue, iPad passes the PC next year. Most people don't need some other "main" machine.

[peterkelly]

The OS is fine, except for the lack of a user-visible filesystem. It's the apps that are often limited, compared to their desktop counterparts.

[rimantas]

Oh god, there we go again. You can forget user-visible filesystem. Normal people don't care about "files". They care about their music, photos, videos and documents. Filesystems are vestige from the past, not the future.

[peterkelly]

Perhaps I should rephrase my statement. I'm not suggesting that iOS should provide full access to the entire root directory tree in the way that OS X, Windows, or Linux do. The default setup of these systems literally leaves tens of thousands of files sitting around on the hard disk in a complicated directory hierarchy that no user should ever need to see.

What I'm really referring to is the ability to organise your music, photos, videos, and documents (all of which are files) in a way that is based on topic/project, not application. For content consumption I think the current approach is fine, but for content creation it's often necessary to deal with multiple types of documents (e.g. a spreadsheet, word document, and some photos) and it's really awkward to deal with this in the current model.

If you are working on multiple projects, you want all the stuff for project A in one place, and all the stuff for project B in another place. This is especially important when A and B are for different clients, or you want to collaborate with someone on B but not on A, and easily send others a copy of everything relating to B.

I've seen first-hand how novice users can sometimes get confused about the location of their files, e.g. my documents vs. desktop vs. whatever, and I definitely agree that we need a better approach than currently provided on desktop OSs. But I think iOS goes too far in the other direction, and we're still yet to see a solution that scales well with user skill level and needs.