But I agree with your point that the familiarity argument will hold no water whatsoever for the first year of tablets based around Windows 8 / RT. Initially, the selling points will have to center around legacy/Office support or mouse/keyboard compatibility, or simply that it's just a better tablet than the other guys. Consequently, I predict slow take up of dedicated Windows 8/ RT tablets. But over time, it might prove to be a slow grower. I continue to believe that the backward compatibility feature will prove to be nothing but a red herring, as people discover that it may be possible to run older apps on tablets, but that they will suck.
If it takes a year for the Metro interface to become familiar, that will give Apple one more year of a head start. They've already had more than two years, and in that time they've built up quite a large cadre of happy, dedicated users.
I really don't think Steve Ballmer understands how badly his company is being trounced.
This is not to say that Windows 8 or Windows RT won't go anywhere, or that nobody will buy tablets that run those operating systems. I'm sure they will, and that the user base will grow over time. What I don't see is developers abandoning iOS any time soon. The only reason there are any apps at all for Windows 7 or 7.5 is that Microsoft paid developers to build them. |
