Re: Microsoft buying Nokia's devices & services
 

That's a sure-fire way to make an already barely selling product sell even less. Having the ability to install Cyanogenmod, et al, is only appealing to a minority of the people.

Just as it seems the Surface RT. So to see Nokia build that first, possibly... shows how in touch with customer needs they were in the end.

Read: Not at all.

Re: Microsoft buying Nokia's devices & services
 

Oh cmon!!

..........

Re: Microsoft buying Nokia's devices & services
 

well, i'd say thats quite a pessimistic view to hold... I feel you are correct that the slice of public intrested in such a thing is fairly small but every sale counts, right? And I fail to see why would it make it sell less really?


Yes, it really makes no sense to introduce new RT tablets when the current offering has shown people how useless it is. With windows tablets I am afraid the pro version is the only usable solution[*]

[*] For windos-liking people, that is. For quite a lot of people nothing that comes from MS is usable...

Re: Microsoft buying Nokia's devices & services
 

To be fair, there's LOTS of murmurings lately about some big changes coming to RT, i.e. making it mostly like Win8 & getting rid of of it's major annoyances, that remains to be seen though.

Re: Microsoft buying Nokia's devices & services
 

I wouldn't say it's pessimistic as much as it's realistic. Don't get me wrong, that's on my mind whenever I purchase something - "What operating systems can I place on this gadget" and "Can I root this thing?" are actually always in my mind. But I'm realistic enough to know that I'm a minority in that.

And it probably won't make it sell less; it just won't help it sell more.

Here's where I become the hypocrite. I own a Surface RT - but it was purchased for me by a company to evaluate its validity as a platform. I told them to pass but kept the RT anyway (they offered).

It's not as much bad as it's just missing the point. RT shouldn't have a desktop mode whatsoever. Makes no sense since I can't install whatever I want. So it's just a waste. Nokia going for RT is like them going for Windows Phone 7 sales after Windows Phone 8 announced that they'd not have an upgrade path.

Re: Microsoft buying Nokia's devices & services
 

As long as Google and apple don't have a tablet with full desktop experience surface pro is a valid alternative. I can see surface continue to grow in the years to come since many are familiar with Windows desktop/laptop. It would help if microsoft could decrease the price for the pro...

Surface pro 2 feels like the most exciting product from Microsoft and would be cool if they could push full desktop experience to 5 inch phone in the years to come.

Hope apple do something simular with Ipad.

Re: Microsoft buying Nokia's devices & services
 

Apple's going in the other direction. They're merging tablet user experience into the desktop OS. Launchpad brings the iOS icon based type of launcher to the desktop. Notifications are now present and they're a lot like the notifications on iOS 6.

And if you think about it (think long term), there's gotta be a reason why they're converging. And I think the iPhone 5S is the clue.

64-bit ARM chip, integrating their mobile OS workflows (full screen apps, aforesaid items, et al) into the desktop could mean sooner than later they will have a ARM based MacBook AIR that could offer incredible battery life that the Surface Pro and even Surface RT cannot offer. And what's to stop them from converting all but their Pro offerings onto ARM? The software is the only hurdle at the moment - same issue on Windows RT.

If that's the case, Surface is indeed going in the wrong direction. Having a desktop on a product that's touted as being your "tablet" is just wrong. Metro is truly a mobile OS interface. Large, touch enabled, and finger friendly. After trying to use the Surface RT and going into the desktop, I've all but lost my religion. Hit areas are far too small, it just seems wrong without a keyboard and mouse.

Microsoft truly needs to have Desktop, Tablet and Phone levels of UI's. Desktop would include Enterprise, having Windows 2012 Server also have the Metro UI is just plain wrong.

Re: Microsoft buying Nokia's devices & services
 

Buying a Nokia tablet just to root it and run Linux instead is just plain ridicilous when there already exists others.

Why the f... do you want to pay taxes to Microsoft to run Linux? It has been so for years now! Thats how they had run theyr desktop/laptop bussiness time to stop feed them!

Re: Microsoft buying Nokia's devices & services
 

The build quality on some of those other tablets is just plain poor though.

Re: Microsoft buying Nokia's devices & services
 

They can't fix the annoyances of RT. The main problem is that it looks exactly the same as Win8 and people *will* be misled in store. Then go back to the store and ask the rep: "There is a problem with my new laptop (tablet)" I downloaded (Firefox|vlc|chrome|whatever) and it doesn't get installed"

Tell me what would you do if you were that rep, the next time a possibly clueless customer is courting the Yoga 11.
"Dear sir, this is not a real PC it cannot run your favorite software, you know that, yes?"
Still wondering why it doesn't sell?

This cannot be fixed unfortunately. Linux on ARM makes sense as you still have all the apps in repos, readily recompiled for you. It is impossible to recompile the world of windows, and an emulator is out of the question, not enough grunt.

They lost their chance to make that work. If they released RT with a home screen different enough and without a desktop it could have worked.