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elgrantrolo writes:
With the iPad likely to be a top selling PC these days, this distinction in the computing world is likely to become less important, even more now that Microsoft announced the release of MS Office apps for Android phones and for the iPad. Some strings are attached to the Office365 SaaS, but overall, it looks like a significant step for Microsoft to be less reliant on the Windows OS.
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Microsoft Office for iPad and Android Phones
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 2, Insightful) by lothmordor on Friday March 28 2014, @03:55PM
Maybe someone can clue me in a little, because I just don't get this.
Why pay for content creation software on a device that is meant for content consumption? Trying to write a report or some sort of documentation on a touchscreen makes about as much sense as wearing boxing gloves and trying to do calligraphy.
I suppose you could make a case for this as a document viewer or a way to make some small changes at final review or some such. But that brings up good questions like, why isn't the workplace providing the proper tools to do your job? Or worse, why are they bothering you with this while you're away from work?
I'm sure there are some people so plugged in that they might actually need this, but I doubt that number is high enough to justify the software development cost. It just strikes me as using the wrong tool for the job.
I suppose with a big enough ad campaign, you can convince people to buy wet sponges to drive nails.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Teckla on Friday March 28 2014, @04:06PM
I've seen plenty of people with iPads and Bluetooth keyboards. Perhaps that makes them acceptable for some kinds of content creation.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday March 29 2014, @07:59AM
Quite, most people would be happy with the functionality of ms works from 20 years ago. Writing a quick document with a smattering of formatting on a tablet with a raptor style keyboard is fine for them.
Personally I have an ipadd (work supplied) and one of the things I have is a Visio document reader on it. When I go to a meeting I take it along rather than my laptop. It's lighter, the battery lasts, and I don't lose my ssh connections, but I can access all sorts of documents when a discussion happens.
Most of our documentation is stored on a wiki, so we rarely use office. There's the occasional spreadsheet that is barely more complex than a csv, so I don't see the need for office, but I'm sure other people need access to read office docs.
Right tool for the right job.
(Score: 3) by everdred on Friday March 28 2014, @04:58PM
> Why pay for content creation software on a device that is meant for content consumption?
Easy: the masses don't know this. For a lot of people, this is their new computer.
We don't take no shit from a machine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 28 2014, @06:46PM
This is the point I came to make.
I call for a show of hands of people who routinely consume M$Office documents on handheld devices--or have EVER done that.
*Creating* them on these thingies is a whole nuther level of disfunction.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by elgrantrolo on Saturday March 29 2014, @04:00AM
This is not that new. Home computing influences work computing habits and vice versa. At the moment, the ease of use of iPad and Android are so significantly better than the traditional PC that people are quite enthusiastically adopting iPad for work. There is compromise but a decent one.
I have only briefly used iPad but completely understand why people are enthusiastic about using it. Having SSD only for high end models was probably the worst thing that the traditional computer manufacturers have done. Now we have old PCs perceived as complex and slow, while tablets and phones are easy and powerful (2 cores and HD! wow! It's the SAME as a PC!)
People with 10" tablets are taking them everywhere, with the expectation to use them for work and play, like the MS Surface ads suggest. I think that the Surface (Pro and RT) is a decent answer to what the iPad and Android tablets brought to the table, namely in showing that a Microsoft "ecosystem" does help getting good online services working across devices. It suffered a lot because of the delay to get them to the market and of course because Google, Samsung and Apple did amazingly well.
As things are, I think that in 4 years or maybe a little more we'll look at the PC landscape and see the installed base looking something like 40% Android, 30% Microsoft, 25% Apple. The "PC" will just include more device types than desktop, laptop and tower form factors. There are downsides, but as with the "PC Era", they are more easily perceived by the SoylentNews crowd than by the ordinary buyer. Like it or not, we are in the "Cloud Era", and PCs are expected to work with an App Market, to have a lot of computing power delivered by the cloud services suppliers and to be DRM compliant.
(Score: 1) by RedBear on Saturday March 29 2014, @04:40PM
How can anyone explain anything to you when your cup runneth over with invalid assumptions about what, where and how other people do their "work"?
Also, this asinine assumption that portable devices are "meant" only for "content consumption" is getting really old. I don't create much on a tablet either, but there are millions of people who are perfectly happy creating all sorts of content on portable devices. You just end up sounding like all the old-timers who laughed at desktops for being useless because they weren't mainframes, and the new old-timers who laughed at laptops for being useless because they weren't desktop workstations, and the... etc., etc. Technology moves ever onward. In the next decade we'll hear you complaining that these young whipper-snappers are using implanted ocular screens and typing on invisible keyboards and how nobody could possibly get any actual work done without using actual physical hardware like you used to do. And you'll still be wrong.
Maybe if you close your mouth, set aside your assumptions, and open your eyes and ears you might start to figure out what people actually do with all those "content consumption" devices. They collaborate on CAD drawings for multi-million dollar buildings, they make full-length movies, they write novels, they have dispersed business meetings from remote locations. And that's just scratching the surface.
As long as you consider everyone else on earth to be dumber than you, how can you learn to respect what they do?