yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows RT General] docfreed:
Interestingly enough, I too turned back to a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (I read a lot as well as listen to audio books). I too dislike android but I need my Gmail, calendar, etc and most of all, alarms that work, i.e., can turn themselves on even when the tablet sleeps. That's my pet peeve with any form of mobile windows going back to WinCE.

In any case, I'd chuck the Samsung for a Surface RT if the software worked - IMHO the Surface RT is the best tablet yet!
[Windows RT General] e.mote:
Latest rumorz sez that updates (not Blue) to all core apps are due some time in March. These are for both Win8 and RT.

I think folks are confusing RT v1.0 for RT the platform. One thing MS is known for is persisting with money-losing projects, and RT is a long-term bet. RT will stick around, even if v1.0 is a bit wanting.

What I'm interested in is what the pitch will be for this next rev. The "hybrid w/ bundled Office" spiel didn't work out.

PROGNOSTICATOR TIME! :) For Win8, the easy bet is that MS will double-down on same strategy as last year: bundling freebie Office w/ 10" & smaller tabs, and relying on faster hardware (Haswell, Bay Trail), lower prices (lower licensing, cheaper touch screens), and bug-fix/improvements to Win8 (Blue) to boost sales.

For RT, reportedly MS'll go small/cheap. That would mean naked tabs w/o keyboard since that adds to the cost, and smaller tabs can't have integrated KB anyway. Whatever happens, the heavy lifting will be all on MS, as vendor buy-in for RT is minimal. I see MS soft-selling RT for this next rev, since Metro isn't yet rolling. My guess is that we'll see a refreshed 10" along with a new 7" model, both with nominal market spend.

Speaking of Surface toys, I'd expect an Atom (Bay Trail) model to bridge the huge gap between the iCore and the RT, making it 4 models in all. If there's any adult left in MS management, the keyboard widget will be included in base pricing, and the whole line should drop by $100 for all models.

These may work, depending on what the competition is doing. If Apple goes ahead with the iWatch/iTV, or if Goog Glass hits the street, then frankly it doesn't matter what MS is doing with Windows. All the buzz will go to the new toys. That's the real problem for MS, it's forever fighting last year's wars.

BTW, looks like Blue leaks have started. You can catch up on the tidbits from the usual haunts. Incremental improvements as expected. No boot-to-desktop apparent. As with past Win releases, we should see RTM in July/Aug, and RC releases will be before that, so we'll know before long what cards MS will play for this year.
[Windows RT General] SixSixSevenSeven:
if there was an intel atom powered surface out already at about the same price as the RT (I might be willing to spare an extra £50 or so) then I would be all over that. Even better if it still had the wacom digitiser of the pro.

I do want to see a 7" windows device.
[Windows RT General] docfreed:
Hopefully they will also broaden their distribution - letting the morons at Best Buy introduce a new product is the kiss of death and MS's own stores are too few and far between.
[Windows RT General] SixSixSevenSeven:
here in the UK we get john lewis. They tend to be *alright* although when I was in there I had a go at one because an old woman was in there replacing a laptop which had just died. Said she only needs something little and will only be using it to check emails and facebook for distant relatives, nothing else.So basically a netbook, budget tablet or if those are too small, a budget laptop. Either way, something dirt cheap. Certainly not a 17" quad core intel core i7 with GTX660M GPU, 8gb of RAM, 2TB hard disk and a blu ray drive which they tried advising her.

If you get the right guy alot of them know what the various specs etc mean on hardware and one when I tested was easily able to explain to me that the samsung ativ tab and surface RT could not run legacy applications but offer an increased battery life etc and managing to be cheaper than their i5 systems in stock (didnt have any atom systems). Some of them are overly pushy about making you spend a huge amount of cash though.

Which is bad as john lewis is already more expensive than any other company in the UK most of the time.
[Windows RT General] e.mote:
>Hopefully they will also broaden their distribution

Distribution wasn't why RT didn't sell; maybe for the first month, but not after that. Besides, BB is the largest electronics retailer in the US, so I don't see what more can be done.

Personally, I don't get where MS is going with Surface. If MS is going to expand it to a full line, with full retail presence and massive marketing spend (as you would think with its new "device and service company" mantra), vendor support will dry up like with RT. MS is doing the Apple copy-cat routine, but I'm not sure if MS is fully prepared to ditch all its OEM partners and go it alone, as with Apple. More likely is that MS will want to have it both ways, as it did with pricing Surface toys at a premium, and also expecting it to sell well.

Speaking of copying Apple, I'm wondering if MS will charge for Blue, as Apple does with its periodic updates. Another improvement, eh? Next up, yearly subscription--Windows 365. The future is bright.

About Blue...all the various improvements are for Metro. The desktop is pretty much persona non grata. Readying myself for the glue factory...
[Windows RT General] docfreed:
RE: Distribution

I may have misspoke - I meant my comment on distribution with reference to how Best Buy displays anything but Apple stuff.

Here's an interesting take on Best Buy from the street!

http://www.thestreet.com/story/1187...-best-buy-to-oversee-second-death-spiral.html

And please don't go to the glue factory - your comments are always appreciated.
[Windows RT General] e.mote:
>Here's an interesting take on Best Buy from the street!

The BB management snafu looks to be resolved amicably. In any case, the company's performance stems from the overall B&M industry's malaise, than from any particular misstep. It's not reflective of how Surface sells (or doesn't sell).

Apple toys are showcased because people want to buy them more. Well, OK, that and MDF spiffs. Presumably all of MS' marketing funds went into break-dancing Catholic schoolgirls. Lordy. You'd think that if MS can pay Nokie a BILLION DOLLARS a year to do WinPho, it could spare some loose change to prop up the end-caps for Win8. What did the 300 millions to Nook buy for MS?

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/buyout-effort-ended-best-buy-founder-returns-to-company/

BTW, seems there's a wave of agitators necro'ing long-dead "Win8 rulez/suckz" threads--not only on here, but other forums as well. I'm guessing MS fans are timing their comeback with the "new improved" Blue. The funny thing is that OS wars never get old--peeps are all too ready to jump back into the fray with their warmed-over three cents. It's the geek's version of politics and religion.

Me, I'm thinking Windows Blue is MS' most apropos naming to date. It makes up for the Metro naming fubar. I'm feeling a little blue at the moment about Win, and I don't think there'll be much green any time soon.

Speaking of company management, that's my metric. Rather than guessing what a co. will do next, it's simpler to look at the peeps and their track record. Yes, Sinofsky got the boot, but the Old Guards remain, and so is the "Metro uber alles" strategy ala Blue. I get that they're leveraging the desktop userbase to jump-start Metro. I don't get why they're starving their single most important cash cow by letting it wither on the vine.

Anyway, as with the Mac-vs-PC war, and the Amiga-vs-Atari-ST before that, it's all just a tempest in a teapot. The computing world will keep on trucking, regardless of whoever is the latest flavor. I'll use whatever fits my need.

Looking around, I like the Android ecosystem. It obviously doesn't have a desktop solution at the moment, but what the eco lacks in polish, it makes up for in vitality. Where else can you find a $50 PC-on-a-stick that lets you do surfing/streaming onto your big-screen TV? Where else can you find nifty toys like Rasp Pi and other tinkering gadgets? That's where walled gardens fail.

That, and I'm hoping Ubu mobile can get decent enough for peeps to start porting x86 stuff over. That'll be a while longer. 2014?
[Windows RT General] GoodDayToDie:
OT, but as a for-the-record: Raspberry Pi is cheaper than $50 (at least in USD), supports surfing and outputting to HDTVs, and doesn't (by default) run Android... It runs GNU/Linux, not Android/Linux. The two should not be confused.

With that said, I agree with your point about walled gardens getting in the way. They add costs (which are mostly borne by the end customer) and restrict usefulness. On the other hand, they can also be widely successful commercially. Despite the far larger number of Android devices, iOS devices bring in more money for the company that makes them (yes, that's in cumulative and absolute terms, not per-device or per-OEM). It's generally more lucrative to be an iOS developer than an Android developer, assuming that what you're developing is something Apple will permit on the store.

I think the Win8 model is a decent compromise - curated app store, sideloading as an option, desktop apps as another option. Of course, on RT (to come back on-topic), that last option is supposed to be absent... and I think MS is hurting themselves with that. It would be better if AppContainers were made more flexible, and it were simple / supported to use them for desktop apps; then you might see legacy apps releasing Win8 versions that have their own AppContainer sandbox (or for which the users can create sandboxes) but don't cripple the user experience.

Also, bear in mind that Android has far more malware than any other smartphone OS right now. In fact, among the "modern" smartphone OSes (ones for which a new device has been released in the last year, or ones for which security updates are still being released, or...) I believe it has more malware than every one of its competitors combined. The overall infection rate may not be that awful compared to Windows (~10% vs. ~30%, and I'm using extremely rough numbers based on very rough studies, here) but in absolute terms that's still a huge problem. While I disagree with the policy of "walled gardens for everything!" that Apple and possibly Microsoft are moving toward, it is sadly true that the average user really can't be trusted to make security decisions about their own computer (a group which includes smartphones and tablets).
[Windows RT General] SixSixSevenSeven:
In my opinion I find the iOS user experience childish and dated compared to android ice cream sandwich although that is personal preference.
[Windows RT General] GoodDayToDie:
Calling Google Play "curated" is like calling North Korea a "democracy". They make a show of it, but the facts are quite the opposite. Every measure that Google has attempted for detecting malware in Android apps has been immediately defeated, and the malware authors aren't even trying hard; something like 70% of malicious Android apps on the Play store use the exact same payload (premium SMS messages, in case you're wondering) as of about a year ago. "Curated" means somebody - actual humans, who do this professionally - examining each app before publishing. Even that isn't proof - Apple has had a few proof-of-concept malicious apps slip though - but they were caught almost immediately after publishing.

Apple's stock price is diving, but they're still bringing in great profits because, as you mention, they have very high margins. Samsung is the only Android vender making an amount within the same order of magnitude from Android that Apple is from iOS. Other companies are going to attempt to follow that money. As a side note, MSFT is down about 12% from where they were 12 months ago, which isn't good... but they're also *up* 8% over the last three months (during all which time Win8 has been out), and the trend is definitely positive.

Of course, it's true that Apple has been relaxing their app restrictions a bit in the last few years. From "absolutely no emulators/interpreters" to "no emulators/interpreters that can load arbitrary code", for example. On the other hand, they've also cracked down hard on in-app purchases that don't go through Apple, which has severely damaged the user experience for a number of apps (Amazon, big though it is, has no interest in allowing Apple to take their cut of every Kindle ebook an Apple user buys).

Do you have any studies that support your claim that Android malware hasn't hurt the platform? I know that piracy on Android has chased many developers away, and I've heard people discussing malware as a negative aspect of Android, but the plural of "anecdote" is not "data" andI don't know whether it actually affected purchase decisions. As for Windows malware not affecting its market share (and those of its competitors), Apple and their marketing department would beg to differ with you there, I think. Again, I have no numbers to cite, but it's certainly a point that Apple (and Apple supporters) have stressed hard in the past - specifically, during that period in the past where their PC marketshare more than doubled.
[Windows RT General] SixSixSevenSeven:
I don't know anyone who actually managed to get any malware on android. I think the malware situation is heavily exaggerated. Yes it exists but no one has it apart from the idiots who click to download absolutely everything without checking reviews, rating or publisher.

Malware exists on Linux but no one cares. Malware exists on OSX but no one really cares.

If its that much of a problem then there are anti malware tools on android the same way as there are on windows.

That said, In 10 years of computer ownership how much malware has ever infected my system? A keylogger which Norton caught immediately (surprising since it was ****ty Norton which is god forsakenly awful) and some pop up box for smileys the day before I was planning to install windows 7 instead of XP anyway.
[Windows RT General] netham45:
The closest thing to malware I've seen on Android is crap that spams advertisements in my notification bar which, while annoying, isn't really harmful.
[Windows RT General] GoodDayToDie:
Citations!

http://www.zdnet.com/android-accounts-for-most-mobile-malware-says-f-secure-7000012261/

http://www.f-secure.com/static/doc/labs_global/Research/Mobile Threat Report Q4 2012.pdf

"The likelihood that a given device contains malware or spyware is heavily dependent on geographic location, varying from .04% in Japan to 41.6% in Russia." https://www.lookout.com/resources/reports/state-of-mobile-security-2012

The "it's not really a problem; I never see it" point of view is very western-world-centric. Yes, North America has low infection rates for Android, but North America and even western Europe are not the whole world.

As for "quoting marketing flacks", marketing drives user choice to a large extent (I hope you'll not so insult the intelligence of everybody here as to demand citations of that). If you can't tell the difference between pointing out that Apple used the relative malware positions of OS X and Windows to good effect in their most successful PC* marketing push of the last two decades or, and "quoting marketing flacks", then there's no hope for this discussion. It is, however, worth pointing out that Microsoft sees Win8 in general and Windows Store apps in particular as the solution to the problem of malware on Windows, and - as Android has shown, and Symbian (among others) before that - an open ecosystem rapidly develops a malware problem

* Those "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" ads may have been ridiculous to many of us, and not just because in nearly every way that matters a Mac is a PC, but they were successful for a time. It is practically impossible to prove causation in such matters, but the correlation is highly suggestive.
[Windows RT General] e.mote:
>Malware exists on Linux but no one cares. Malware exists on OSX but no one really cares.

Yep, malware like piracy exists everywhere. No platform is immune. Windows is and has been the largest target for both, and the computing world deals with them and move on.

/Mod shortened
[Windows RT General] netham45:
It's interesting to note how the markets traditionally associated with higher piracy have a higher infection rate. When people pirate things, at least on Android, they're bypassing the store which is generally clean. That's how they end up with viruses, by bypassing the clean channels and instead opting for sketchy illegal downloads. I wouldn't blame that on Android, or even on it being an open platform; that's solely the end users' fault.
[Windows RT General] C-Lang:
First of all, "metro" isn't dead. It has a slow adoption rate, but is slowly gaining market share. However, RT may eventually become just for 7 or 8-inch tablets. And thankfully, RT is tied to the same app ecosystem as Windows 8, ensuring that we won't be left behind in the future. Microsoft is marching ahead with their Modernization of everything, as well as deepening the ties throughout their platforms (wp, Windows, XBOX, etc.). I think they knew adoption would be slow. The "Windows Blue" update to all platforms will help, and if they keep up what they're doing, Windows and touch will win. Another evidence Microsoft hasn't abandoned RT is the "Gemini" update to Office, which will bring Modern apps for all of Office. These could be free, or at least cheaper than normal Office software. This would bring quite a few people to Windows 8, simply for the free Office software.

However, what will Windows Blue bring to RT? My guess is, quite a bit. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft added an option to let users run desktop apps. I also think that it will bring serious performance improvements, which will be welcomed. Also, we will finally see an alarm clock! :D
[Windows RT General] e.mote:
>RT may eventually become just for 7 or 8-inch tablets.

There'll be an 8" Surface this year, which is likely to be intro'ed at Build. Given that Metro's minimum res is now reduced to 1024x768 in Blue (with functional Snap), it looks like that MS will wake up and adopt other sizes and aspect ratios more conducive to tablet use. Let's hope Blue will improve enough to be functional in portrait.

Pricing is the question. A rational projection would have MS going for price, say $200, like what Amazon did with KF to gain share, as frankly RT has got nothing else to lean on at the moment. But rationality and MS doesn't mix well (cf the $600 Surface RT blooper), so it's a bit of a mystery.

It won't be more than iPad Mini's $330, since Mini will get Retina and Surf.8 probably won't. A conservative guess would be $250, assuming that Gemini (reported Metro'ized Office) hits pavement soon enough to be bundled. It'll likely be on ARM, since Bay Trail is out of that price range.

Then again, Intel can make a low-end play by cutting prices on the old Clover Trail, like what Nvidia did with Teg3. I expect to see low-end $300 Clover Trail tabs from OEMs. These "netbook tablets" should have reasonably good prospects.

Or not. On Android side, low-end pricing on 7-8" is going toward $150.

>what will Windows Blue bring to RT

Reportedly the leaked build is Milestone 1, with M2 being the public preview, and RTM after that. What you saw in the leaked build is pretty much what you'll get.

>It has a slow adoption rate, but is slowly gaining market share.

"Slow adoption rate" doesn't work when you're in 3rd place. That's where WP is at right now, and (slowly) going nowhere. Its single-digit share is propped up by the 1-bil-a-year handed to Nokia. Even for MS, I doubt that's sustainable.

What's normally talked about is RT's value proposition (or lack thereof) to end-users. I think more important is RT's (and WP's) lack of appeal to vendors. For RT/WP, vendors need to pay for OS licensing, can't customize their UI, must have MS approval for hardware design, have an inferior ecosystem, and now they've got to compete against MS' own hardware. Contrast these to the freedom OEMs get with Android, with a better eco. Now you see why Noke gets the multi-billion payment.

The grand plan is still to unify all platforms (XBox/RT/x86/WP) under the Metro banner and with a common code base, to allow write-once-run-anywhere. It's why MS is pushing Metro so hard, even at the expense of sacrificing its desktop cash cow. Subscriptions will be more compelling with multiple platforms. Your XBox Live Gold sub can also update your OS and Office, and your apps will work across platforms.

Nirvana won't happen this year, but you can see the trend with each successive wave of MS releases. Blue's multi-platform span is a case in point.

But there's the plan, and there's the execution. For the plan to stick, at least one of the superfecta has to win. With goose eggs like Surface RT/Pro and Win8, it won't matter what the plan is.

I'm excited for Round 2. MS Build and Goog I/O should tell us enough to handicap the rest of the year.
[Windows RT General] GoodDayToDie:
I take objection to several of the points you claim (for example, pre-OS X versions of MacOS were pure trash from a technological or feature standpoint compared to the NT family, and were a +/- tradeoff against the better members of the 9x family - things like memory virtualization and preemptive multitasking took far, far too long to come to MacOS, and the lack of a command line interface at all has a number of drawbacks beyond the obvious one of not providing a typing-driven interface).

Your point about MS persisting in a market and eventually taking it over is pretty good, though. It doesn't always work that way - they blew the marketing game on Zune, failing to stress its best points and not pushing enough awareness of the brand, and eventually discarding it - but they've managed in most other markets they tried to break into. With that said, if RT is dead, the reason isn't because Microsoft didn't push it hard enough, it's because there's no need for RT in a world where x86 chips are as power-efficient as ARM chips. Why use an incompatible instruction set architecture when you could just use x86 and have the benefit of backward compatibility?

Also, I'm not sure if you were agreeing with and disagreeing with the sentence of mine that you quoted, but your point actually supports mine in a couple ways. OS exploits aren't the big problem anymore - that was largely solved with Vista - but rather exploits in third-party code and Trojan apps are the problem. The solution to Trojans is simple: have people get their apps from a trusted store. The solution to vulnerable third-party code is more complicated, but a combination of sandboxing (which is the main thing the guy I was speaking to meant by saying Windows Store apps solve the malware problem), encouraging use of verifiably safe languages, requiring exploit mitigations, and supplying their own updates should help there. Win8, and the Windows Store, do those things.
[Windows RT General] e.mote:
>Microsoft has learned to figure out a workable approach...and refine their products over time.

MS overtook 1-2-3 and WordPerfect because it owns the underlying platform (Windows), and exploited that fact to its advantage in beating the others to market. WordPerfect subsequently sued MS for monopolistic behavior. The lawsuit eventually failed, but the material revealed during the trial laid bare the underhanded tactics employed. MS won, but not because its product was better. Anyway, it's irrelevant to the current situation.

Second, MS doesn't operate in a vacuum. The competition likewise are improving their products, and to date, they're gaining market share faster (while being already far ahead). At some point, market positions will become stratified, and a superior product won't be enough to overcome a superior ecosystem--cf Windows as a desktop OS.

>Windows 9 will support develop-once deploy on anything - in the Metro environment.

It's a long road to Nirvana, and potholes abound. Given the roadkills from the many broken promises and failed projects, I wouldn't drink too much of the Kool-Aid.