I’ve seen a number of folks excited about the possibility of getting Windows 7 on a tablet device, whether it be through Citrix on the iPad or natively on a PC tablet such as the ExoPC. I personally have no such desire. Windows 7 simply wasn’t designed for the sole purpose of touchscreen computing. The experience simply won’t be as good as the iPhone OS. Another issue with running Windows on a touchscreen tablet is that the majority of Microsoft technology developers have only ever programmed for a mouse/keyboard experience. This results in less than optimal touchscreen computing experience. The iPad has a huge advantage in that there are developers who have been programming solely for touchscreen devices for 3 years. The developers’ mentality has shifted already to a touchscreen environment, meaning better quality experiences. This is not to say that Windows developers can’t code for touch environments, but merely that there will be far fewer quality experiences on a Windows touchscreen device than on the iPad for the next little while.
Microsoft obviously is not going to take the iPad challenge lying down, and will be touting Windows 7 as a more complete experience (Flash anyone?) than the iPad OS. Unfortunately however, I don’t see Windows 7, good as it may be, to be a worthwhile competitor to the iPad, due to the reason outlined above. So what should Microsoft do?
I firmly believe that if Microsoft wants to take on the iPad, it needs to build a tablet from the ground up. They’ve got some great software and hardware engineers1, and should leverage that talent to build a complete Microsoft tablet experience. Integrate it with Zune and Xbox. They’ve got the Zune app store and Xbox download on demand. Utilize the existing frameworks and build a custom, performance tuned device that can compete with the iPad. Microsoft has proven it has both the hardware and software talent… now they need to be combined.
- Windows 7, Xbox 360, and the Courier are fine examples of what Microsoft can do when they put their minds to it. ↩
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