A short encounter with the Microsoft Surface RT

I had a chance over the last two days to spend some real life time with the Microsoft Surface RT. I got a good feel for the product and pairing that with what I know about Windows 8 I feel confident enough to write up some impressions.

The Surface is a PC, which is impressive considering what is inside. It’s definitely not any normal PC, but a Windows PC nonetheless. On top of that I must say it is the best notebook I have ever used. It’s light, it has a touch screen, it makes no noise and it runs for about 10 hours, what more can you ask for. Oh, and it runs the latest version of Windows.

Playing around with the Surface I find myself seeing Windows 8 in a new light. I have been using Windows 8 primary with a mouse and no touch screen. I had an idea of what Windows 8 would feel like on a touch screen, since I have had short encounters with other Windows 8 touch units. The Surface makes it all come together, and on it Windows 8 just makes perfect sense.

The Surface I had access to came with the TouchCover. The TouchCover is the perfect accessory for the Surface. I found myself using it just as much for typing as flipped to the back, using the Surface in stable mode. Coming from the iPad with the Ultra-thin Logitech keyboard, that is a new feeling. I almost never unhook the iPad from the keyboard, but leave it connected and docked. Using the Surface, the fact that the TouchCover is connected in the way it is, turning from PC mode to tablet mode is so easy that I find myself doing it constantly with no effort.

Talking about the TouchCover, it is surprisingly good to type on. I had feared that it would be too close to typing on a screen and that I would just hate it. It’s not. It’s no way as good as a real keyboard, but so much better than typing on the screen. I have not tried the TypeCover, but I’m sure I would like that a lot better. I’m not sure that I would welcome the added weight and thickness. The Surface is no lightweight. It feels heavier than the iPad, because the unit is long and not square as the iPad. This does change when adding the TouchCover because the Ultra-thin keyboard is heavy compared to the TouchCover.

I have used Windows 8 on Atom and Core2 Duo platforms and the ‘Metro’ apps an equally slow on Windows RT as well. It seems somehow that apps built for Windows 8 UI are just slow. Slow to start, slow to refresh, slow to draw information from the net, slow to reload when left for some other app, and so on. The processor running the show seems to make no difference. Tegra3, Atom, Core none of them does the job very well. The only processor type I have not tried for a longer time period I the Core iX series, but it seems excessive that basic apps like the Windows 8 apps should need that much power to run well.

All in all I came away very impressed by the Surface. I truly love the form factor, the screen, the TouchCover and Windows RT is impressive. I would, if I had more time with the Surface, find the current lack of apps annoying, but I know that it’s just a question of time. There is lots of new apps in the Windows Store every day, and more and more big apps are getting Windows 8 versions. The Surface has a lot to offer, and it does many of the things that the iPad does not, but for me it does offer up one major problem.

I would feel just weird dragging along both a work notebook and a Surface. They are just too similar that it would seems pointless. Carrying an iPad along with a work PC seems okay, since they solve very different tasks. If I ever got myself a Surface I would want to use as my only PC. It’s powerful enough to do the tasks, it’s flexible enough to play the role, and it has Office to back it all up. I truly want the Microsoft Surface RT.


P.S. This post in typed out on the TouchCover and the experience is really okay.

The battle of the eco-system - The death of Android

Google’s Android seems unstoppable right now. It’s the biggest mobile OS in the US and it just surpassed Symbian in India, a country where Nokia have reigned supreme for many years. It’s hard to imagine that this flight toward total market domination could crash and burn any time soon, but there are indications that Google could lose momentum in its fight to stay on top.

The first indication is the obvious one. Where Apple is keeping its, rather large, share of the mobile market with only three phones, Google has Android on hundreds of phone. So even if Android is the most used mobile OS in the world, it’s only due to the very large support from mobile phone manufacturers right now. Google will have to make sure that they stay happy with their choice of Android, and many of them do manufactur phones with others mobile OS’s.

The next two indications both come from what we have seen and heard about Andorid 4 (ICS). First installment is Android 4 as a mobile OS. Despite the fact that everybody that have tested it says it’s the best version of Android by far, they also state that it’s still not at easy to use as iOS. The learning curve is a lot steeper on Android and will discouraged a lot of users from picking Android as their next Smartphone OS. The other learned fact is that Google with Android 4 decided to focus on the mobile experience and leave the tablet part of the OS mostly like it was on Android 3.2 (Honeycomb). The reason this is bad for Google is because Android 3.2 never gained traction against the iPad, mainly because it’s maybe even harder to learn then Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), and that is not a good place to be. So where Apple is adding important new features in their latest release iOS 5.0. Google is still trying to fix the user experience with their release, Android 4.

Next up is the eco-system Google has to offer. Google has a mobile OS, a tablet OS and a desktop OS, just like Apple and Microsoft has. On top of the important three OS’s Google has an impressive amount of services. So what is wrong?

The OS’s
Microsoft has the biggest desktop OS, Apple has the biggest tablet OS, and Google has the biggest mobile OS. The problem is that Apple’s desktop OS is doing quite well, Microsoft is building its tablet OS on Windows, and nether of Google’s other OS’s is doing any business.

The services
Google has the biggest search engine, Apple has the biggest music and app store and Microsoft has the biggest gaming platform. The problem is that Apple either has, as good a service or hooks into Google’s service better than Google does and Microsoft owns the platform for cooperate use.

The future in the mobile space is going to be all about the eco-system. Not just in app, music, movie and book purchase, but also access to the content you created or bought. Here Google only have Android as a mobile OS to deliver this experience to the costumer. Apple has iOS that are a success on both the mobile and tablet platform, and they have MacOS the desktop OS of the second largest manufacturer of Personal Computers. Microsoft owns the desktop both for the consumer and the business user. They are soon launching Windows 8 that manage to tie together Windows, Xbox Live, Windows Phone and the Windows server platform.

If the future is all about the eco-system, Google is going to have a hard time explaining to their OEM’s why they should stay with Android. Logically none of them can get into the Apple eco-system, but most of them knows the Microsoft eco-system and could easily change. Some of them might even think that it’s better to try something new, and go with WebOS or something else.

The bottom line here is that Google, if they want to stay on top of the mobile OS game, also have to focus on the tablet and desktop experience. They need to get developers to make great apps for tablet Android, kind of like that Google is doing on ChromeOS. I know ChromeOS is dead in the water, but that might just be because it’s a little ahead of its time. They need to make sure that they deliver top-of-class integration into their own services, way better than Apple and Microsoft, and they have to make sure that they or third party developers deliver near perfect integration into the Microsoft server platform. They have to fix the first time user experience and update the UI to better guide the user, and they need to make sure that an Android user can easily get to music, movies and books without having to turn to Amazon and the Kindle Fire. Then Google will be able to stay on as the biggest in the mobile OS arena.

Android 4 - And the end of the tablet app

Andy Rubin at AsiaD

When Andy Rubin at the Asian All Things D conference told Walt Mossberg that “I don’t think that there should be apps specifically for tablets”, I seriously wondered if he really had a grip on the tablet business. It started looking strange already earlier that day, when Google and Samsung showed of the Nexus Prime Galaxy Nexus and Android 4. I know that the presentation was planned together with Samsung and what they were showing was a phone, but at the same time Google was showing off Android 4, the Android version that was to pull Gingerbread and Honeycomb together, and there was no mention of any tablet functions or apps. I wonder about this a little more in my post, Google Android 4 - A bit of a cold shower.


Thinking a bit more about it over the weekend I started to think that Andy maybe did get it after all, and that his vision of how a mobile OS should be, could be the very right thing. If I’m right about where Google is taking Android, it will also explain why they seemed to avoid answering questions about tablets. Here is how I see it.


The OS has to make sure that it will run one any type of device, it being a phone with a QVGA screen or a tablet with full HD resolution. It has to make sure that the UI works on every screen size from 2.5” all the way up to 10.1” or more. The OS has to be written in a way so the developer can just build an app and it will run on all the above mentioned platforms. In other words, Android makes sure that all apps work on both phones and tablets, and that freedom is not found on any other platform out there.


So does that mean that we will never see a tablet app ever again on Android? Nope, but you will not find the app under the HD section in Android Market. There is only one version of any app, but the app can choose to work differently depending on screen size and resolution. I’m not a developer, so I cannot be sure, but I’ll bet that there in the Android 4 SDK is a way to find out the resolution and screen size of the unit running you app. That way Google puts the design choice in the hands of the developer and do not try to force any hands. This also makes sure that hardware designs can be very flexible, and the company building a device can be free to setup screen size and resolution any way they want it. All this freedom will seem a little daunting to start with, but when developers find out that they need only manage one source code for all Android devices I’m sure that we will start to see apps that work very differently on phones and tablets.


If I’m right you will never have to worry about an app being tablet compatible, or if you will have to buy your favorite app again in a tablet version if you buy yourself an Android tablet. I hope I’m right and I hope that we will see Google show the way for other developers by updating all there apps so they react according to screen size and resolution. Andy you said it you self, there is no need for tablet specific apps, and I agree, but there is a need for apps to change depending on screen size and screen resolution. Google please start updating.


Back in June I looked at Android as a tablet OS and concluded that it was not ready. The post is in Danish, but here is a Google Translation, Status on Android as a Tablet OS.

Windows 8 in a tablet world - The love of the IT department

Windows 8 running Excel and a Twitter app

Since Windows 8 was shown at D9 about a month ago I have been wondering where it could take Microsoft and the Windows platform after its release. The way Microsoft have gone about designing Windows 8 there is no dought that they have mobility in mind. That is not surprising since they don't really have a stake in the still growing tablet marked. Tablets are hot right now and tablets are creeping in on one of Microsoft's main markets, the business market.



There are four major operating systems driving today's tablets. iOS is by far the biggest followed by a distant second, Android. The two others are QNX - RIM PlayBook, and WebOS - HP TouchPad. Mabye with the exception of QNX the available tablet OS’s do not have the security build in to let them become an integrated part of almost any larger corporate network. This is a constant annoyance for both the employee and the IT department. The employee sees the advantages of the tablet in a corporate setting and often brings their own iPad’s to work. That puts pressure on the IT department to open up the corporate network to allow the iPad to be used beyond the standard mail and calender sync. This in turn forces the IT department to either open up the network to an insecure and non manageable tablet OS or disappoint a large part of the work force. Neither is very good for any company in the long run
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Windows 8 is build on the Windows 7 platform and have an added layer that is inspired by the Metro interface from Windows Phone. If you were to put Windows 8 on hardware, like say the Asus Transformer with a quad core ARM processor, you would have a perfectly fine tablet, that could easily be used as a notebook on your corporate network. Due to the Metro interface on top it will give you the ease of use that you expect from a tablet, but with the deep integration that is known from Windows.



But are Apple, Google, RIM or HP really going to let Microsoft get in the tablet game that easy? Well Apple does not seem to want to address the needs of the corporate market. They seem to be content with making a great product, mainly for the retail market. Google is all about the cloud, and while this might be the future, there is still a lot of companies that do not want to move their data to cloud just yet. RIM have a good hold on the corporate market, but their phones are starting to look outdated and compared to the latest iPhone or Android phone it just looks like RIM is at the end of their rope. The PlayBook is build on a different OS than the phones and it does not have the securities and deep integration that the BlackBerry OS have. WebOS might be a fine OS, but with the lack of products and apps out there I do not see how is can ever become a real thread to Windows.



So that brings us back to Windows 8. The more I look at it, and the more I look at what type of hardware will be available when Windows 8 hits the markets, the more I see the logic in what Windows 8 is going to be. With Windows 8 Microsoft is not going for the retail market, but they are betting that with the promise of a Windows 7 compatible platform, with a Windows Phone like user interface, the IT departments around the world will embrace Windows 8, and start supplying the corporate work force with Windows 8 based hardware.



With Windows Phone getting the full support from Nokia, and other of the top hardware builders in the market today, and companies like Asus and Acer already promising to build tablets, and everybody else building notebooks, with Windows 8, Microsoft is about to have an ecosystem that is going to be very strong an look very appealing to the corporate players. They will have the mail, calendar and collaboration platform of choice. They will have the apps to make the Metro interface, both on Windows Phone an Windows 8, look interesting enough to bring the average user in. They will, like they have done in the past, make sure that they offer just enough to grab the focus of the IT departments, while still putting enough focus on fun and games to keep the retail market happy. I believe that with Windows 8, Microsoft might just have done it again.