Windows 8 Tablet Vs iPad 3 - The Tablet war

Let us compare the Windows 8 Tablet Vs the new iPad 3. The real tablet war begins in 2012. Now that the new iPad has been revealed, everyone's chiming in on whether it's a disappointing incremental upgrade or a fantastic breakthrough. None of that matters to its success, of course. If every single previous iPhone and iPad product launch is any indication, Apple is going to sell truckloads of these things no matter what any expert, hater or fanboy says.

However, there's one thing that makes this iPad release different from ealier ones: The new iPad will be the Apple device that goes head-to-head with Windows 8 tablets when they arrive later this year. Microsoft's new OS will spawn an entirely different species of tablet than the Android devices that have so far been Apple's main competition. And if Microsoft plays its cards right, it could be the one that finally gives the iPad a serious challenge in the market.

So far, no product has been able to do that. The first "real" Android tablets, like the Motorola Xoom, were largely ignored by consumers. The newer tablets and latest Android upgrades are certainly better, but they're still hampered by an amorphous ecosystem. Those examples of up-scaled phone apps on Android that Tim Cook cued up in his keynote were pretty damning, and he also said there were 200,000 iPad apps in the App Store. Google doesn't give an official count of tablet-specific Android apps in Google Play, but estimates are in the thousands.

Tablet Non-Contenders

Non-Android tablets look even worse. RIM fumbled the launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook so badly that the tablet -- and possibly RIM's whole credibility in the space -- will never recover. HP killed its consumer tablet offering, the TouchPad, mere weeks after launch upon realizing the iPad was an opponent it couldn't hope to defeat.

Certainly, the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook are success stories, but they kind of cheated. Both have only managed to carve out a niche market among tablets by selling their devices at a rock-bottom prices (the Kindle Fire's is so low that Amazon may be selling it at a loss). They can only do this by using the device itself as an outlet to sell specialized content. These products aren't going toe-to-toe with the iPad -- they're fighting over the scraps of the market it's left behind.

So far no device has been able to seriously challenge the iPad experience in its entirety. Basically, the tablet market has yet to see its Motorola Droid, the phone that finally showed, along with Android 2.0 software, that the iPhone wasn't the end-all-be-all of smartphones. Android's success skyrocketed after its release.

Windows 8 Tablet to the Rescue?

Could the tablet market's dark horse be a Windows 8 device? It's possible, but it hinges entirely on how consumers respond to the new user interface, Metro.

The thrust of Windows 8 -- and why it's such a big gamble my Microsoft -- is that it brings the same UI to tablets and traditional PCs (desktops and laptops). Metro is ideally suited for touchscreens, but it works with a mouse and keyboard, too.

There's a reason Microsoft has done this, and it's not really the spirit of bringing tablet features to your laptop. Quite the opposite, in fact. In order to have any hope of succeeding in tablets, Microsoft has to convince its army of Windows developers to make software for those tablets. But no one's going to develop software for an unproven OS where the company has seen little commercial success (no current Windows tablet has significant market share).

However, if your entire OS, including traditional PCs, is running the same software, then developers almost have no choice but to design apps for tablets. Windows 8 essentially turns all Windows developers into tablet developers, potentially giving the Windows 8 tablet platform the fuel it needs to expand rapidly and finally give the iPad a real opponent.

The Catch: Metro

Again, almost. There's one thing that could hold it back: consumers rejecting Metro. You see, Windows 8 lets any user turn off Metro and just use the traditional desktop. If enough of them do, many developers may simply choose not to create Metro apps. After all, if most of your customers are just switching to the old Windows environment anyway, why bother?

That would let the air out of the expanding Windows 8 tablet balloon pretty quickly, and that's even before we consider the wild cards of potential device fragmentation, how Windows will work on ARM devices and whether or not consumers will even accept a tablet as their main computing device.

Microsoft needs to get Metro 100% right if Windows 8 tablets are going to have any hope. If users like Metro, then the developers will follow, and a real ecosystem will emerge. If not, the iPad will probably be the only tablet worth talking about for a long, long time.

Windows 8 Tablet Vs iPad 3 - The Tablet War Begins

Microsoft's Windows 8 Consumer Preview was made available to download yesterday, giving everyone a chance to experience the company's most revolutionary change in user interface since Windows 95. The interaction paradigm has shifted from a mouse-centric desktop to a touch-friendly, highly visual Metro style UI. The old Start orb has been retired and replaced by a Charms bar, which is brought to life with an inward swipe from the right. A swipe from the top down dismisses the app you're in and returns you to the home screen, and the left and bottom edges also have actions associated with them. Gestures play a very significant role in Windows 8, but they're only one aspect of a truly gargantuan list of changes.

While the Consumer Preview software remains at the beta stage, its central concepts have now been fleshed out, so we thought this would be a fitting time to compare them against Apple's iPad, the incumbent leader in the tablet space Microsoft is seeking to become a player in. iOS 5 and Windows 8 share a few similarities, but the user experience is fundamentally different and informed by different interaction metaphors. You can see those detailed in the video below, and if you care to learn more about what else has changed under the Windows hood with version 8