Quote:
Originally Posted by pl001
That depends on what your needs are. Windows 8 works great as a tablet for me. Most all of the basic stuff people use tablets for comes natively and the the interface is fast and fluid. There are already over 100,000 apps in the store, which is not bad at all for 18 months. Quality continues to improve. It's only if you have pretty specific needs or wants that it starts to fall short, in my opinion.
I understand what you are saying, I just think "poor" is not accurate. Perhaps that is the case for you, but I don't think it is for 90% of tablet buyers.
|
"poor" is indeed accurate for me. I'm not speaking for anyone else. 100,000 apps is a misleading number... because included in that number are "filler apps" like app-ified ebooks (of which there are many).
Based on my experience with the Surface RT/2 where only Modern UI apps are available, here are just the "heavy hitters" that are missing for me:
LOGOS Bible software. The Windows RT version of Logos has no resemblance to the iOS version. In Windows RT it is nothing more than a limited-function reader. No bookmarking, no highlighting, no notes... not even a TOC display. Alternative Bible reading software is not applicable here due to the resources (books, commentaries, etc.) that are specific to Logos.
Boss Jock Studio. This iOS app is a terrific podcast production app. The widescreen aspect ratio, and powered USB port of the Surface would make it a superior platform for podcast production. The widescreen would allow for a split-screen display of a text script, and the powered USB port offers greater flexibility in the number of supported USB microphones.
WriteRoom/Notesy/PlainText. I keep important notes as plain text in a DropBox folder that is accessed by Notesy/WriteRoom/PlainText on iOS, ResophNotes on Windows, Epistle on Android, and nvAlt on OSX. I have a variety of devices that I use and this setup ensures that the information is always available and synced. There is nothing like this available for Windows RT. I've tried using text editors to access those files on DropBox but it is not the same. No support for labels, keywords, or even searching across the notes. I've been giving some serious consideration to using OneNote for these purposes but the WYSIWYG notebook metaphor is not as useful as nvAlt-style notes.
Track 8 Audio player (technically, support for rubust ID3 Metadata tag support). All music player software for Windows RT appears to use the same underlying APIs. When I used the Zune desktop software, it was very finicky in handling ID3 tags. It took a lot of effort to keep things straight... specifically, using ID3V2.3 tags was the only way to ensure that the Zune would catalog things properly. I've since moved to OSX and iTunes (quite inferior to the Zune software). It seems like Windows RT is as finicky as the Zune. This will require additional work to bring newer tracks into line with the rest of my collection... even though it all works fine on OSX, iOS, and Android devices.
Feedly. When Google Reader was discontinued I settled on Feedly as an RSS reader. Yes I can open up the Feedly website in IE, but it is NOT as usable in touch mode as a native app.
There are quite a few others that I've had to "make do" with what is available. The alternatives are not as robust or feature-rich but it'll get the basic job done.