Why Microsoft Surface and Windows RT truely suck
Before we start, this is now a Windows 8 attack as such. Right now I am at my desk writing this on a Windows 8 PC, and even using IE 10! I am also listening to the 'new' Jimi Hendrix album, but those are both points for another day, but in short I quite like W8, even though my 24" monitor is not touch enabled, it is still an (almost) enjoyable experience. More another time.
So onto Surface. As a piece of hardware, I love it. Sure, the flip keyboard could be better, mainly by making it 'snap' shut, and it could be lighter, but ignoring those it really is a thing of beauty. I am impressed by the speed of apps opening and closing, and moving around with touch feels natural and fun. As with my W8 PC, the 'modern UI' apps really work well, presumably because they have been designed for that specific user experience. IE10 really wins over, and moving from games, to recipes to websites to messages really is great. Within that Modern UI world, the only draw back I can see is that there just aren't enough apps out there, and those that are there are a little half baked. How long do we have to wait for an official Facebook app for example? But there is so much potential there that I was almost walking over to the counter of John Lewis with my credit card... but what I saw next shrivelled that idea and destroyed it for the foreseeable future.
The other day I blogged about my woe with tablets, struggling to find a use for them. Here, I thought of myself in the kitchen, cooking alone with recipes, the tablet supported by that sexy kick stand, then my mind wondered to train journeys to project meetings, sitting there using the tablet to create a full on PowerPoint presentation or writing a journal paper. Eagerly, I opened up the desktop app and fired up PowerPoint. I have never been so disappointed. The screen is just too small to be of use. The features which have all my life been so accessible with a mouse suddenly become too small to be of any use. Apple owned this problem back in 2007 with the first version of iOS, telling it's develops that 44x44 pixles is a great resolution, but 22 x 22 is OK. It worked. But even if I take my ear in hand and start poking at those tiny icons, and manage to get the features open, the writing is just too small to see and experience clearly. I open up the keyboard to type my notes, and too much of the screen disappears.While the main Modern UI world is functional, semi-efficient and semi-satisfying, the Desktop world is none of these things. I want to run back to my PC and work from there.
What was I left with? Just feeling that the desktop app was useless and the modern UI underpowered. I so wanted to love this tablet, but the lack of quality apps in modern UI just made the Android and iOS world of tablets seem far more appealing. Should we be surprised? You don't have to look far in the blog and tech world to find posts from last year hailing the death of the netbook. Many reasons were given for why, but while you don't need a supercomputer to run web pages (which is a good thing), small pokey screens don't equal a high quality user experience. So manufacturers increased the sizes of screens, increased the power of the hardware, and within a few years had just landed on a smallish laptop, no longer a netbook as we once knew it. The same story is true of smartphones, with screen sizes increasing year upon year, stretching what can be considered a phone any more and the material in our pockets.
Should Microsoft then create a bigger tablet? No! As I said earlier, the modern UI has so much potential and can be genius. Larger screens are needed for work, but I would be very happy with a touch screen monitor or my PC AND and touchscreen laptop. So they just need to capitalise on the ace they hold, modern UI. Chris Pirillo suggested that the Windows Phone 8 experience as a tile based UI (similar to modern UI) should have been powered up to tablet form. Apple did that with the iPad and it worked! Microsoft really nailed the phone experience with Windows Phone 8, essentially being a modern UI experience as it should be, so why did they not capitalise on it. That is what windows RT should have been. Do that, nail it, and a windows ecosystem of phone, tablet, laptop and PC (maybe even server) would not only be great but beautiful. But this tablet thorn in the side of the environment ruins that, spoils are dreams and kicks us away.
Microsoft has never been short of brilliant ideas, but its just a shame they always go half way towards an exceptional user experience before giving up and shipping too early for a faster profit.
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