Well, this is it. Windows 8 in “tablet mode”, as demonstrated at the D9 conference.
The operating system will split in two, as two versions of Windows in the same product: one for the desktop, and one for the tablet.
It will function as a fully-fledged desktop operating system, slimmed down for performance steady tablet hardware, but will have a tiled Windows Phone 7 style interface to support the mobile user.
But I suspect the concept of ‘Windows on a tablet’ will be immensely difficult task to sell to the younger generation.
It’s the tablet part which holds the crux of the problem.
The Generation Y, on the most part, do not seem to have taken to the tablet revolution. I cannot understand why, though perhaps it is for the same reason that I myself do not want a tablet. I feel no emotion towards the gadget: no empathy, no feeling of ’sexiness’; just a benign cramp in my stomach.
It’s a luxury item, and I simply have little space for it.
As of yet, the tablet market is yet to fully explode. The iPad has the market dominance over competitors, without doubt.
Yet I would argue the vast majority of the younger Generation Y that own an iPad are doing so because they are impressionable to the gods of Apple, and are buying the tablet through sheer support of the company rather than the need for an extra peripheral.
Hand a younger user a block of cheddar with an Apple logo on it, brand it ‘iCheese’ and they’ll empty their wallets out without thinking twice. The Generation Y are innately spendthrifty when it comes down to technology.
Maybe Apple has the balance just right. Like the Goldilocks of the technology world, by separating out the desktop Mac OS X to the iPad iOS operating systems, it can provide a two-pronged approach to a lucrative business model of a ‘just right’ temperature. Apple gets the big bucks, and the consumer knows little different.
It’s clever, I’ll hand them that.
For now, though I do see the appeal in a fully-functional desktop operating system on a tablet device, offered by Windows 8 yet not by Apple’s iPad, the younger generation still needs the hook to draw them in.
The technology is there. The hardware, the compact processors, the battery life. The one thing that lacks, for which the busy student will require over anything else, is a keyboard.
Why the tablet? Why is the tablet so great? It’s great for X, Y and Z, but it is not directly compatible with the students’ A, B and C.
It is as simple as that. The student market may be tempted by the handiness and the splendour of a Windows tablet, but disdained by the lacking of a simple, overlooked appendage.
One simple question has yet to be answered. Why a tablet, over a netbook or a laptop? Tablets may be on the rise, but the PC isn’t dead. Windows 8 will prove that; I’d bet money on it.
