The Superbook

[PlayfulPhoenix]

They have a bad habit of gimping their devices however. The iPad Pro's would be a great laptop replacements but Apple doesn't give them mouse support.

A tablet with mouse support = a shitty desktop experience. Just as a laptop with touch support = a shitty tablet experience. That's not gimping, that's focus, and it's why Apple makes billions of dollars on iPads from day one, whereas Microsoft started with a billion in write-offs, and eventually arrived at their current "success" of selling a fraction as many units, albeit profitably.

Customers have been voting with their wallets on this for six years now.

And in any case, that criticism isn't even strictly true anymore - iOS supports a pointer with the virtual keyboard via a multi-touch gesture. It's not a mouse replacement by any stretch, but it's a mouse functionality replacement for many instances where it would be useful.

I don't feel their products are cannibalizing each other because I know lots of people who own both an iPad and a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Even Cook himself said he believes the products are meant to be separated (when asked about the Surface).

Anecdotal remarks are a poor substitute for the behavior of markets. And convergence != cannibalization. Cannibalization is x replacing y, not x = y (which is convergence). Nobody would say that iPhone = iPod, but the iPhone sure cannibalized the hell out of the iPod. Nobody would say iPad = MacBook, but you can bet that Apple's selling a lot of iPads to people that would otherwise have bought Macs. That's cannibalization.

Here's a quote from Tim that actually pertains to cannibalization:

Better to eat your own than have your own eaten by others. That’s Apple’s philosophy on product cannibalization as related by Tim Cook during the company’s first-quarter earnings report.

“I see cannibalization as a huge opportunity for us,” Cook said Wednesday. “Our core philosophy is to never fear cannibalization. If we don’t do it, someone else will. We know that iPhone has cannibalized some of our iPod business. That doesn’t worry us. We know that iPad will cannibalize some Macs. But that’s not a concern. On iPad in particular, we have the mother of all opportunities because the Windows market is much, much larger than the Mac market. It is clear that it is already cannibalizing some. I still believe the tablet market will be larger than the PC market at some point. You can see by the growth in tablets and pressure on PCs that those lines are beginning to converge.”

The iPod doesn't cannibalize Mac sales because it replaces all the things the Mac does. The iPad cannibalizes Mac sales because it does a subset of those things, but it does that subset better since it's a cheaper device that has many advantages over a Mac - portability, simplicity, battery life, and so forth. Those advantages are a product of the fact that the OS is designed for the hardware, and that hardware alone.

I mean, I don't know how else to say it - Apple is the company of cannibalization. Microsoft is the antithesis of cannibalization, and Continuum is the epitome of that culture - they're literally trying to stuff Windows into phones and IoT! And call it the future! It's a backwards and dated perspective that always has, and always will, smack of fear of disrupting the golden goose. Meanwhile, they've lost in all the realms of technology that ultimately mattered in the past 10 years - mobile, web, and (soon) cloud. All because they couldn't look past Windows.

 

[iFreilicht]

A tablet with mouse support = a shitty desktop experience. Just as a laptop with touch support = a shitty tablet experience.

And that's exactly what should be changed.

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

And that's exactly what should be changed.

Folks at Apple would probably say it's unchangeable, though - that what is required to make software work well with a mouse, invariably makes it a inferior solution for touch input, and vice versa. I'd personally agree with that when it comes to interface design, as the modals are simply too different, and the fluidity of iteration too important, to compromise with half-measures.

I don't necessarily think that it's impossible to have one underlying OS tie phones/tablets/desktops together, to provide one platform for developers, and to do that well. But again, Microsoft's had a decade to deliver it, and they simply haven't come close. My personal opinion is that such an effort is doomed from the start if they try to make Windows that "one OS" - you can't have a codebase that tries to be so ambitious while being trapped by the legacy and expectations of Windows users. It's a chasm that can't be crossed. They have to start fresh. But they won't, because they're afraid to disrupt their core business.

 

[BirdofPrey]

the WIntel platform's greatest asset is also its greatest liability: the backwards compatibility that has gotten so many people on the platform always threatens to snuff out innovation since you immediately lose that momentum the second your new stuff doesn't work with your old stuff, and under those conditions, there's only so far you can move forward before waiting for everyone else to catch up.

This is why Windows RT didn't take; why would anyone get Windows, if it doesn't run any of the programs they have Windows to run? This is also why the Universal Windows Apps thing hasn't taken off either, the new system not only adds new idiosyncrasies to learn, but it also means giving up the Windows 7 and earlier userbase, while the old system still works for Windows 8 and 10 Users, and there isn't enough non-x86 installed userbase to really care about, and the whole platform ends up in a circular dependency: software firms aren't going to spend development dollars on a platform with few users, and people aren't going to adopt a platform with so few choices.

As far as supporting both touch and mouse; I think Windows 10 actually does it rather well, though I can't say whether or not it works well for phones, and, at the moment, it's mainly software devs dropping the ball there (again, because there's not a big reason for them to create and alternate interface for touch). There's annoyances for sure, but it works well enough in both domains. (Some examples: why do we still have/need a desktop, or rather why can't I use my desktop as a homescreen and put tiles on it, and how long do I have to wait till they finish moving all their settings from control panel to settings?)


I think another major factor is the walled garden approach Apple has. What runs and works on their platform is whatever they say does which keeps the whole system fairly tight, and by controlling hardware as well, there's less fussing about with compatibility, it's the same reason people get consoles, you buy one, and it just works, no fiddling with drivers or buying a new piece of hardware and having it not work, and with only a few different platforms with specific properties, developers can target each very specifically. Both Windows and Android suffer from fragmentation, new programs need to run on older platforms, and older software needs to run on newer platforms, and hardware companies can make whatever they want, so there are a slew off different parts that need to be supported, and a range of screen sizes your UI needs to work with. You may have also noticed Google's attempts to break into the PC space have been just as unsuccessful as MS trying to make tablets and phones, and it's for this reason. There's just too much variability, and they have no leverage to improve uptake.

 

[Soul_Est]

the WIntel platform's greatest asset is also its greatest liability: the backwards compatibility that has gotten so many people on the platform always threatens to snuff out innovation since you immediately lose that momentum the second your new stuff doesn't work with your old stuff, and under those conditions, there's only so far you can move forward before waiting for everyone else to catch up.

This is why Windows RT didn't take; why would anyone get Windows, if it doesn't run any of the programs they have Windows to run? This is also why the Universal Windows Apps thing hasn't taken off either, the new system not only adds new idiosyncrasies to learn, but it also means giving up the Windows 7 and earlier userbase, while the old system still works for Windows 8 and 10 Users, and there isn't enough non-x86 installed userbase to really care about, and the whole platform ends up in a circular dependency: software firms aren't going to spend development dollars on a platform with few users, and people aren't going to adopt a platform with so few choices.

As far as supporting both touch and mouse; I think Windows 10 actually does it rather well, though I can't say whether or not it works well for phones, and, at the moment, it's mainly software devs dropping the ball there (again, because there's not a big reason for them to create and alternate interface for touch). There's annoyances for sure, but it works well enough in both domains. (Some examples: why do we still have/need a desktop, or rather why can't I use my desktop as a homescreen and put tiles on it, and how long do I have to wait till they finish moving all their settings from control panel to settings?)


I think another major factor is the walled garden approach Apple has. What runs and works on their platform is whatever they say does which keeps the whole system fairly tight, and by controlling hardware as well, there's less fussing about with compatibility, it's the same reason people get consoles, you buy one, and it just works, no fiddling with drivers or buying a new piece of hardware and having it not work, and with only a few different platforms with specific properties, developers can target each very specifically. Both Windows and Android suffer from fragmentation, new programs need to run on older platforms, and older software needs to run on newer platforms, and hardware companies can make whatever they want, so there are a slew off different parts that need to be supported, and a range of screen sizes your UI needs to work with. You may have also noticed Google's attempts to break into the PC space have been just as unsuccessful as MS trying to make tablets and phones, and it's for this reason. There's just too much variability, and they have no leverage to improve uptake.

Very well put.