Windows 8 RT: Why no love?


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HI All!

 

Over the last two years or so now, I have told people the following:

 

"I can give you a laptop that is very light, doesn't get hot, makes no noise, is very fast, is cheap, has significantly better battery life, can do all your email and internet surfing, lets you download and sort photos from your camera, can do all your word processing and excel-ing with a free copy of Office 2013, and can even play some games when you're bored...oh, and it doesn't get viruses!"

 

Nearly everyone has said "damn, gimme!!", when I tell them its Windows RT they either go "oh, i thought that was bad?" or they don't know what it is at all. Like any product, I have been suggesting this to the correct target audience (no snow to Eskimos) of average computer users that just do email, web, and photos, and typing. I mean most of the time the only thing people use the x86 architecture for is installing toolbars, crapware, and other rubbish.

 

I just last week was looking for the (now old) Yoga 11 RT but it's been killed! Can someone tell me why, an OS that is so perfect for such a large number of users out there, is dying off? (I blame bad marketing?)

 

 

 

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Who says it's dying off? Microsoft was slated to release a new RT model yesterday, but didn't due to Gemini not being finished.

 

The only reason it's finding rough traction is because of the idiots who insist they need to run whatever backwards x86 application on a tablet designed to compete with the iPad. For that, there is the more fitting Surface Pro.

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Add to that a little confusion of what Windows RT really was and plain old fanboyism and you get people jumping to the wrong conclusions.  Hopefully the switch to merging Windows Phone OS with the new tablets will help.  That way you'll have one OS for the mobile devices like Apple has with iOS and another full OS for the laptops/tablets.

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There is this psychological thing, not sure what it is called exactly, but it refers to others (as in, other people, the society, the media, or the social groups you participate in) indirectly enforcing their beliefs and influencing your opinions about things. In a way, the more you read and hear about something, the more you form an opinion about it, even though you may not have been really aware of that, and you may have never seen / experienced / used that something.

 

There are many examples about this... Vista, 8, the Ribbon in Office 07+, Windows Phone devices, Call of Duty, Diablo 3, Surface, League of Legends, Dota, faster electronic music (trance, psy, goa, hardstyle, hardcore), the metal and metal-like music styles / genres... and many, many more...

 

Sadly, Windows RT (and Surface) also suffers from this. In reality, RT would replace so many x86 machines that people use only for web, mail, social media stuff, watch movies and listening to music, providing them with much needed security and reliability.

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Add to that a little confusion of what Windows RT really was and plain old fanboyism and you get people jumping to the wrong conclusions.  Hopefully the switch to merging Windows Phone OS with the new tablets will help.  That way you'll have one OS for the mobile devices like Apple has with iOS and another full OS for the laptops/tablets.

I think it's more fanboyism and an insistence that Windows MUST be x86 or x64 - it's worse than modal absolutism.

 

RT - for all of it lacking x86 or x64 compatibility - is ideal for those that MUST have cross-compatibility with Microsoft file formats (remember, Office RT is standard), malware immunity (or at the minimum higher resistance than Android or iOS), along with decent battery life.

 

I have nothing against Surface RT at all as hardware whatsoever.  My complaints about RT as an OS apply equally to Windows 8 and later, and those are entirely the fault of the developer community - a lack of solid casual apps, especially casual games beyond the few that have been since ported to other platforms. (Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja both started in the Windows aqnd RT AppStores - and have since made their way to Steam, Android, and the iOS App Store - why is it that exactly no games have done the reverse?).

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Good to see there is some support for the platform out there!

 

Who says it's dying off? Microsoft was slated to release a new RT model yesterday, but didn't due to Gemini not being finished.

 

The only reason it's finding rough traction is because of the idiots who insist they need to run whatever backwards x86 application on a tablet designed to compete with the iPad. For that, there is the more fitting Surface Pro.

 

I think the lack of a Surface 3 announcement is what gave me cause for concern. Seeing as all other vendors have dropped the RT version, the Surface is the last of them.

 

I didn't think of that, the perception/common belief issue. The media says its bad, so everyone says its bad.

 

Hopefully there can be some return of RT products soon...I need them to recommend to people! :P

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When I can install all my software that I use on it, sure...

If you mean modern apps that are as powerful as desktop ones, then hopefully they will come. If you mean desktop apps, no way! That ruins the point.

I think it's more fanboyism and an insistence that Windows MUST be x86 or x64 - it's worse than modal absolutism.

 

RT - for all of it lacking x86 or x64 compatibility - is ideal for those that MUST have cross-compatibility with Microsoft file formats (remember, Office RT is standard), malware immunity (or at the minimum higher resistance than Android or iOS), along with decent battery life.

 

I have nothing against Surface RT at all as hardware whatsoever.  My complaints about RT as an OS apply equally to Windows 8 and later, and those are entirely the fault of the developer community - a lack of solid casual apps, especially casual games beyond the few that have been since ported to other platforms. (Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja both started in the Windows aqnd RT AppStores - and have since made their way to Steam, Android, and the iOS App Store - why is it that exactly no games have done the reverse?).

Cut the rope has not been updated for the past 2 years or so.

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If I had to guess I think it's the app design. To be fair, mobile requires elements of an interface to be hidden (but one "Anchor" button to the hidden menu can fix that.) With Windows RT, it seems like the app design is going out of it's way to hide everything and that just annoys people. I'm talking about the "Off-Screen" swiping gestures to bring up hidden UI. The insistence at Microsoft to make everything minimal has had some good and bad payoffs. Namely, everything being hidden and brought up with "Off-Screen" swiping gestures is the downfall and the minimal "Flat" design is the thing everyone likes. I mean everyone because Microsoft just doesn't get enough credit for being experimental and trying new things. And every other company seems to have implemented this design style. This is one thing Windows RT had going for it and everyone applied to to their platform. Then there's the "Cut Off" pages with the app design. Apps that don't have the information within the page you're looking at and simply have part of that information hanging off to the side waiting to be swiped on screen. Instead of, symmetrically allocating that information and giving a button to bring up more information. (The Weather App is a good example of this.) Also, some of the iconography is just been down right confusing. I think it might have been the fitness app on Windows 8 where there was a button to bring up the main menu and the button was a "Minus" symbol. I mean I don't even know what the heck to make of that design choice. It makes no logical sense to me. When has a "Minus" symbol ever been used for a main menu button? Then there's the color scheming. Everything has a brash color to it. (This is annoying on iOS7 as well.) Someone did a concept of Windows Phone a little while ago and used a pastel set of colors to show off the tiles. I don't think it was perfect, but I do think somewhere in that choice of coloring is a great idea for color scheming. I know this is somewhat subjective. But I really wish Windows RT/Phone had a few more borders. Let me give an example:

 

14055407299_d417f57d95_o.jpg

 

 

With color, it can be a little more open to interpretation as to what is selected or selectable. With borders, it seems a lot clearer as to what is selected or selectable and what is not. I'm not suggesting they should have borders around everything I just think they should implement more borders than they have. Even in the case of still being minimal, one line can become two and pull down to show a hidden menu (Of course, I think this should be done with a button to show there is a menu that can opened. And NOT by applying another swiping gesture.) Another problem I think with Windows RT not getting as much traction as it could have is Microsoft was the third company to establish their platform.

 

I think the Office for iPad apps were very well designed. And I hope they bring all of those design elements to Windows RT.

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HI All!

 

Over the last two years or so now, I have told people the following:

 

"I can give you a laptop that is very light, doesn't get hot, makes no noise, is very fast, is cheap, has significantly better battery life, can do all your email and internet surfing, lets you download and sort photos from your camera, can do all your word processing and excel-ing with a free copy of Office 2013, and can even play some games when you're bored...oh, and it doesn't get viruses!"

 

Nearly everyone has said "damn, gimme!!", when I tell them its Windows RT they either go "oh, i thought that was bad?" or they don't know what it is at all. Like any product, I have been suggesting this to the correct target audience (no snow to Eskimos) of average computer users that just do email, web, and photos, and typing. I mean most of the time the only thing people use the x86 architecture for is installing toolbars, crapware, and other rubbish.

 

I just last week was looking for the (now old) Yoga 11 RT but it's been killed! Can someone tell me why, an OS that is so perfect for such a large number of users out there, is dying off? (I blame bad marketing?)

 

It would be a shame if RT were killed off. Like you said, for casual users, it's ideal. I'd get fewer service calls from certain friends if they couldn't download all the crap. I'd honestly love to see RT brought to non-tablet systems for just that reason. An RT-based "desktop" system (in the sense of physically placed on a desk) would be ideal for kids - homework, social apps and games, with significantly reduced risk of viruses.

 

And even for more advanced users it's a great portable system. I can do a lot more with my SurfRT than with my Galaxy Tab - the Surface is great for remote support using Remote Desktop or Teamviewer Touch. The Surface RT may be closer to the "tablet" side of the tablet/laptop hybrid, but it's still very useful - the most useful tablet of the three I've owned.

 

It may not be able to handle AutoCAD or full Photoshop, but there are certainly solid uses for RT systems. People just need to be made aware of the benefits as well as the limits.

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Who says it's dying off? Microsoft was slated to release a new RT model yesterday, but didn't due to Gemini not being finished.

 

The only reason it's finding rough traction is because of the idiots who insist they need to run whatever backwards x86 application on a tablet designed to compete with the iPad. For that, there is the more fitting Surface Pro.

 

 

So true. I also had my doubts before I got my RT tablet (2520), but now that I've gotten used to it, it's just great. Plain and simple! The only thing that I miss from the x86 world is MS Silverlight. Regular desktop apps (except from Office) would not be  fit for tablet use anyways. One should treat RT as a tablet OS, not to compare it with Windows 8 pro and such. It does everything really well that a tablet OS is supposed to do. Don't know how people's opinions got so twisted about it or win8 for that matter. They're both exceptionally good and fun.

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If you mean modern apps that are as powerful as desktop ones, then hopefully they will come. If you mean desktop apps, no way! That ruins the point.

Cut the rope has not been updated for the past 2 years or so.

Why should it be?  Simple/casual games seldom get updates - if a game is constantly getting updates, it kinda breaks the casual model.  (Bejeweled 3 hasn't gotten any updates, either - except for OS-specific/platform-specific patches.)

  Raa's earlier post illustrates the "x86-exclusive" mindset still out there when it comes to Windows.

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If I had to guess I think it's the app design. To be fair, mobile requires elements of an interface to be hidden (but one "Anchor" button to the hidden menu can fix that.) With Windows RT, it seems like the app design is going out of it's way to hide everything and that just annoys people. I'm talking about the "Off-Screen" swiping gestures to bring up hidden UI. The insistence at Microsoft to make everything minimal has had some good and bad payoffs. Namely, everything being hidden and brought up with "Off-Screen" swiping gestures is the downfall and the minimal "Flat" design is the thing everyone likes. I mean everyone because Microsoft just doesn't get enough credit for being experimental and trying new things. And every other company seems to have implemented this design style. This is one thing Windows RT had going for it and everyone applied to to their platform. Then there's the "Cut Off" pages with the app design. Apps that don't have the information within the page you're looking at and simply have part of that information hanging off to the side waiting to be swiped on screen. Instead of, symmetrically allocating that information and giving a button to bring up more information. (The Weather App is a good example of this.) Also, some of the iconography is just been down right confusing. I think it might have been the fitness app on Windows 8 where there was a button to bring up the main menu and the button was a "Minus" symbol. I mean I don't even know what the heck to make of that design choice. It makes no logical sense to me. When has a "Minus" symbol ever been used for a main menu button? Then there's the color scheming. Everything has a brash color to it. (This is annoying on iOS7 as well.) Someone did a concept of Windows Phone a little while ago and used a pastel set of colors to show off the tiles. I don't think it was perfect, but I do think somewhere in that choice of coloring is a great idea for color scheming. I know this is somewhat subjective. But I really wish Windows RT/Phone had a few more borders. Let me give an example:

 

14055407299_d417f57d95_o.jpg

 

 

With color, it can be a little more open to interpretation as to what is selected or selectable. With borders, it seems a lot clearer as to what is selected or selectable and what is not. I'm not suggesting they should have borders around everything I just think they should implement more borders than they have. Even in the case of still being minimal, one line can become two and pull down to show a hidden menu (Of course, I think this should be done with a button to show there is a menu that can opened. And NOT by applying another swiping gesture.) Another problem I think with Windows RT not getting as much traction as it could have is Microsoft was the third company to establish their platform.

 

I think the Office for iPad apps were very well designed. And I hope they bring all of those design elements to Windows RT.

iPad Office is not a Modern UI app, and it has ios 7 style design not the Modern UI design. Those gestures are not hidden but are natural for tablet and PC users.

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Windows RT cant compete with other mobile operating systems like Android or IOS which run the full version of Office 2013 + Visio, Can be joined to an Active Directory domain, Can run any windows software, can be managed using group policy...... Oh wait

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HI All!

 

Over the last two years or so now, I have told people the following:

 

"I can give you a laptop that is very light, doesn't get hot, makes no noise, is very fast, is cheap, has significantly better battery life, can do all your email and internet surfing, lets you download and sort photos from your camera, can do all your word processing and excel-ing with a free copy of Office 2013, and can even play some games when you're bored...oh, and it doesn't get viruses!"

 

Nearly everyone has said "damn, gimme!!", when I tell them its Windows RT they either go "oh, i thought that was bad?" or they don't know what it is at all. Like any product, I have been suggesting this to the correct target audience (no snow to Eskimos) of average computer users that just do email, web, and photos, and typing. I mean most of the time the only thing people use the x86 architecture for is installing toolbars, crapware, and other rubbish.

 

I just last week was looking for the (now old) Yoga 11 RT but it's been killed! Can someone tell me why, an OS that is so perfect for such a large number of users out there, is dying off? (I blame bad marketing?)

 

Well your quote is very misleading.  If you tell someone you can give them "a laptop that is..." most are going to assume that when you say "laptop" you mean something compatible with the software they are used to running.  So sure they're going to say "damn, gimme!!"  Once they find out what you're offering is incompatible with everything they had before and is in fact a tablet then they are going to compare it to other tablets.  When they do they will find competing tablets that are also very light, don't get hot, make no noise, are faster, are cheaper, get better battery life, can do all their email and internet surfing, lets them download and sort photos for their camera, can play way more games, etc.  Plus they have MUCH larger app ecosystems that they may already own apps from because of prior devices.  Really Office is the only thing going for RT and it's not really a metro app and RT had to include the Desktop just to support it.  Android doesn't have an official office app yet but it has ones that do good enough for most joes on the street.  iPads now DO have an official MS Office app and also don't get viruses.

 

RT failed because while the hardware has great build quality it didn't really push the spec envelope or offer a huge bang for your buck value compared to it's more established competitors.  As for it being "very fast" that's subjective and debatable.  MS needs to merge the RT/Win8 and Windows Phone APIs/App Stores and they know this and are doing it but it's not done yet.  MS needs to make an actual touch native, non-desktop version of Office and they know this and are doing it but it's not done yet.  So in summary it's late to the party and immature in it's development state so it failed.  It was still a necessary step though because even if this particular product failed they did need to port Windows to ARM as ARM isn't going anywhere.  The Windows on ARM that is the RT OS will likely evolve into what replaces Windows Phone and even runs in server versions on ARMv8 64bit servers in the future (obviously different SKUs but the same core OS.)  So MS lost the battle sure, but the war is far from over and they are well positioned going forward.

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Microsoft confusing branding / Mishandling consumer expectations. 

 

When people understand this is a "tablet" that has similar functionality as an iPad, or Android tablet.

It's easy to see the value. Most people think it's a computer and get frustrated when there software doesn't work on it.

 

On top of that, when it was first released, it costs MORE then the iPad with the confusion added on top of it. 

One can argue it was a good value for it's price, but to consumer's it was too expensive, and MS had to eat the loss (and was the last straw for Ballmer before he was ousted). 

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when they first showed windows rt i said that rt does not make sense because of 2 reasons:

 

- lack of quality apps are obvious, it never got much traction which was to be expected.

- since hardware is getting better every iteration it is only a question of time when you can run a full blown os system on a tiny slick device. surface pro 3 is getting close. i expect the next iteration to really nail it.

 

look at it like you want, windows rt has very very weak and narrow buying arguments. also, the distiction between windows and windows rt is a nightmare for the majority of ppl. total fail.

 

 

 

ps: the first surface sucked, they had their chance but failed.

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and those are entirely the fault of the developer community - a lack of solid casual apps,

 

Microsoft's own RT apps are lackluster.

MS needs to merge the RT/Win8 and Windows Phone APIs/App Stores and they know this and are doing it but it's not done yet. 

 

Could not agree more.

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iPad Office is not a Modern UI app, and it has ios 7 style design not the Modern UI design. Those gestures are not hidden but are natural for tablet and PC users.

 

It's not a Modern UI app, but it looks like the Modern UI version that they demoed at Build 2014. I thought it looked like a very well done conversion of a desktop app to a tablet interface that is still applicable to both.

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Microsoft's own RT apps are lackluster.


 

Could not agree more.

Only Xbox apps are lackluster on Windows 8.

 

when they first showed windows rt i said that rt does not make sense because of 2 reasons:

 

- lack of quality apps are obvious, it never got much traction which was to be expected.

- since hardware is getting better every iteration it is only a question of time when you can run a full blown os system on a tiny slick device. surface pro 3 is getting close. i expect the next iteration to really nail it.

 

look at it like you want, windows rt has very very weak and narrow buying arguments. also, the distiction between windows and windows rt is a nightmare for the majority of ppl. total fail.

 

 

 

ps: the first surface sucked, they had their chance but failed.

It has some great apps, Surface Pro 3 does nail it, but Surface running RT will always have better apps and hopefully will have a smaller footprint. RT will hopefully be slimmer and drop (or disable) the desktop. RT is not weak it has no viruses, runs with minimal hardware, and has free Office. Also comes with 200 GB OneDrive storage and 1 year free Skype, Surface RT is a great device, do you own one? I do,

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I own a Surface RT, but I can accept the fact Intel has improved a lot with regard to adopting mobile platforms, so Windows RT's fate may be near.  

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Because MS wrong-headedly decided it should be a hardware division (ARM v x86), instead of a usage based one (Modern v Desktop).  That and they still haven't figured out a way to crack the anti-MS mobile developer dork brigade.

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I just want to see WP and RT merge, and I think thats where its heading. 

What you mean is Windows and Windows Phone merging and RT dying off... That is the likely path if MS kills off its OEM partners in the Windows Phone space. We shall see how that goes... With the ink drying on Nokia this is probably coming sooner than later.

 

Mobile OEMs generally are allowed to make source code changes to the underlying phone OS. I'm not sure if MS wants OEMs making source code level changes to Windows proper.

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- poor touch support

- No GPS for directions, weather reports, etc (surface)

- no apps (Not even Windows mobile)

- poor battery life

- no app compatibility with x86

- expensive

- no compatibility with windows phone

What is RT? It's not a mobile OS. It is a desktop but cannot run desktop apps??

If windows RT== Windows Phone I would buy it.

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