Category Archives: apple

apple, google, internet, microsoft

Browser wars: IE loses 12% market share in 2009, Germany hates it

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I’ve been looking at the browser stats for 2009. According to StatCounter, Microsoft began the year with a 67.19% share for IE (versions 6-8 combined) and ends it with 55.23%. That’s a 12% loss or an 18% decline, depending how you figure it.

The biggest part of that share has gone to Firefox, which started with 25.08% and closes with 31.92 – a gain of 7% or a rise of  27%.

The big story is that Firefox 3.5 is now the world’s most popular browser. Although true on these figures, it is also true that IE 7 on the way down is crossing IE 8 on the way up; it’s possible that IE 8 will overtake Firefox sometime next year, though by no means certain.

However, there are huge regional variations. The UK loves IE: currently IE 8 is on 31.48% vs Firefox 3.5 on 19.2%, and IE overall is 56.02%. Germany on the other hand hates it:

According to these stats, Firefox 3.5 has a 44.19% share in Germany and IE 8 just 15.32%. The USA is somewhere in between, though closer to the UK in that IE 8 is in the lead with 26.64%.

Overall, clearly a good year for Mozilla and a bad one for Microsoft.

What about the future? Well, it’s notable that not all IE migrants are going to Firefox. The Other section is showing steady increase, and I’d bet that a large chunk of Other is based on WebKit, either in mobile browsers or in Google Chrome. Apple’s Safari is also WebKit-based, and has increased its share significantly during 2009. Mozilla should worry that developers are largely choosing WebKit rather than Gecko.

A bigger concern for Mozilla is the big G, source of most of its income. Google pays Mozilla for search traffic sent its way. It cannot be good when your main customer has a product that competes directly with your own. I’m guessing that a Google browser will overtake Firefox during the next decade.

apple, multimedia, sandisk

Review: Sansa’s iPod alternative

The number of shelves dedicated to non-iPod music players in the average electronics retailer seems to shrink with each passing year, and as I write the top 10 bestselling MP3 players at Amazon.co.uk are all iPods, so it’s good to note that Apple alternatives still exist. As it happens, I’d been using an iPod Nano for a few weeks when Sansa’s latest Clip+ turned up for review; and it makes an interesting comparison.  

Feature-wise, the Sansa falls somewhere between a Nano and a Shuffle. There’s no camera, games or accelerometer on a Sansa Clip, and at 4GB it has half the storage of the least capacious Nano (though see below); but unlike a Shuffle the Clip has a screen, an FM radio, and a voice recorder.

Sansa’s device also has something all the iPods lack: a slot for a Micro SD or SDHC card, which means you can plug in extra capacity up to 16GB.  This port also supports a concept called slotRadio, where you purchase 1000 pre-selected songs on a card, but they are locked to that card. A slotRadio card costs $39.99 in the USA; as far as I can tell they are not available yet in the UK.

In use, the Sansa Clip+ offers none of the tactile pleasure of an iPod; but check out the price. This particular model is £34.99 at Amazon.co.uk; a new-generation Nano is over £100 and even a 4GB Shuffle is over £55.00.

The good news is that the Clip+ sounds very good. That’s just as well, since I doubt many will care about slotRadio (especially in the UK). Expandable storage is a nice feature, though I’d more likely stick in 4GB and forget about it, rather than trying to manage a set of tiny SD cards.

Another strong feature of the Clip+ is that it plays FLAC and Ogg Vorbis as well as MP3, though I’d have liked to see MP4 in there too, for DRM-free purchases from iTunes. I also like being able to attach the Clip+ to a PC via USB and simply copy songs to it, rather than having to use Apple’s bloated iTunes.

Still, I have to admit that the controls are rather fiddly and annoying; I kept clicking back when I needed to click the centre button and sometimes vice versa.

In the end, there are two reasons to get a Clip+. One is because you like having an Apple-free musical life. The other is because you value function over form. The Clip+ does a great job at a lower price than an iPod; but if you like the silky feel and stylish appearance of Apple’s toys, this alternative is not going to win you over.

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apple, iphone, microsoft, mobile, nokia, qt, software development

Is Apple iPhone now unstoppable in the mobile platform wars?

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I’ve been reflecting on a chat I had with a mobile application developer at Qt Developer Days last week. He thinks that Apple has all-but won in the battle to dominate the SmartPhone platform.

His reasoning is based on a couple of things. The first is that Apple is easily outpacing others in application availability and number of app installations. I guess there are many ways of counting this, but have a look at these figures. Handango, which has been in this game for over a decade, reported in January that it had over 140,000 apps and 100 million all-time downloads across a number of SmartPhone platforms. Apple reported this month that it has 85,000 apps and 2 billion downloads.

His second point is that Apple is one of the few companies to understand that users like consistency better than choice. “If I pick up an iPhone, my fingers know what to do,” he told me. This makes users reluctant to switch, except to another iPhone. By contrast, Nokia has a zillion different devices supposedly tailored for the needs of different customer segments, but as a result there is no sense of a consistent platform and users can easily switch away. Windows Mobile has the same problem but with multiple vendors as well as frequent design changes from each vendor.

These are points well made. If the much-rumoured Apple tablet appears, we can expect the App Store concept to extend its reach to larger devices as well. No wonder Adobe is so determined not to be left out on this platform, announcing a compiler to convert Flash applications to native iPhone code, as well as stepping up its campaign for Flash in the iPhone browser.

That said, I can think of counter-arguments. One is that iPhone isn’t yet, as far as I know, strong for corporate development. Windows Mobile has some advantages here, for Microsoft platform companies, while Java (not available on iPhone so far) is also appealing to corporate developers.

Another is that Google Android will give strong competition and take advantage of Apple’s weakness, its reluctance to abandon premium pricing.

Third, the consistency argument only goes so far. If you look at today’s iPod touch, for example, compared to the first iPods, there are huge differences. Users will in fact switch if there is convincing value in what is new.

Fourth, the more iPhone grows in importance, the more discontent over the closed nature of its platform will grow.

It is still early days for SmartPhones as a development platform; and while it is fun to speculate, things may look very different in a couple of years.

Still, let’s acknowledge that right now it is advantage Apple.

See also: What’s your choice in the mobile battleground?

and this great rant from a frustrated Symbian/Nokia developer:

Calling all Nokia & Symbian geniuses: Am I wrong?

apple, blogging, microsoft, twitter, windows, windows 7

10 Mac alternatives to Windows utilities

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I’ve been spending an extended time on the Mac in order to explore Snow Leopard. As far as possible, I’ve done all my work on the Mac since its release. The trial will be over soon … but in the meantime I’m sharing notes on some of the utilities I used for tasks I normally do on Windows, in no particular order.

1 Capturing screenshots

On Windows I press PrintScreen or Alt-PrintScreen (for the current window), then paste into an ancient copy of Paint Shop Pro 5.0 for trimming and re-sizing. No, it’s not PhotoShop, but it loads in a blink.

For the Mac I use Ctrl-Command-Shift-3 (whole screen) or Ctrl-Command-Shift-4 (selectable area) which adds a screenshot to the clipboard. Then I use the latest Preview, which has a File – New from Clipboard option. I love Preview – it has tools for further trimming and resizing, and when you save it shows the file size as you select different formats. Since I often want to minimise the size for a web page, it’s ideal.

2 Secure file transfer

I avoid FTP for security reasons, so on Windows I normally use WinSCP for secure file transfer.

On the Mac I use Fugu, and of the two I prefer it.

3 Word processing

On Windows I use Microsoft Word. On the Mac I mainly use NeoOffice, which actually felt a bit nicer than its parent, OpenOffice. I also spent some time with Word 2008 (good for compatibility, but slow) and Apple’s Pages from iWork 09. One nice feature of Pages, for journalism, is the stats window that shows the word count as you type.

4 Web browsing

I used Safari, in order to get the most complete Apple experience. I’m getting to like the Top Sites feature, though it’s hardly essential, especially the way it shows at a glance which pages have changed.

5 Sound editing

On Windows I use Audacity. On the Mac I use … Audacity, though for some reason I found it slightly less smooth.

6 Playing FLAC

Apple is still stubbornly refusing to support FLAC in iTunes or Quicktime. My solution was Songbird, a great alternative, which supports FLAC straight out of the box, or rather download.

For converting to FLAC I used MacFLAC, though I found it less than robust. I missed dbPowerAmp (Windows).

7 Remote desktop

I find Remote Desktop invaluable for managing servers. On the Mac I used the official Remote Desktop client, which worked well though it falls slightly short of the Windows version (perhaps this is a policy!).

8 Twitter

I use Twhirl on both Mac and Windows, an Adobe AIR application. One oddity (getting picky): the font spacing is slightly better on Windows. In the word Blog, for example, there is too much space between the B and the l, but only on the Mac.

9 Email

I never thought I’d say I missed Outlook, but I did. The thing is, after much experimentation I’ve found a permutation that works really well on Windows: 64-bit Windows and Outlook 2007 SP2 in online mode (only for a desktop, of course).

On the Mac I use Mail, but I’ve found it less than satisfactory even though I run Exchange 2007 with all the required configuration.

10 Blog authoring

On Windows I use Live Writer, which is superb.

On the Mac I write posts (like this one) in the WordPress online editor. I don’t like it as much, but it does the job.

11 Bridge

Now this one is a problem :-). I find JackBridge ideal for those moments when I need a break from work. It won this year’s World Champion computer bridge contest.

The Mac is not so well served, but I have trialled Bridge Baron and found it not bad at all.

apple, microsoft, xml

Docx on a Mac: still rough without Microsoft Word

I’ve been living on a Mac recently, while thoroughly investigating the new Snow Leopard. One of the questions that interests me: how difficult is it to use a Mac in a Windows-centric environment? Once facet of this is Microsoft’s latest document formats, introduced with Office 2007: docx, xlsx and pptx. What if you get sent one of these, and don’t have Mac Office 2008 installed?

I downloaded a document on Azure blob storage from Microsoft – a random example. I opened it in four different applications: Apple’s TextEdit, which comes with docx support built-in; Microsoft Word 2008; Pages from Apple’s iWork 09, and NeoOffice, the Mac-specific port of OpenOffice. In the image below, Word is on the left, TextEdit on the right, and NeoOffice in the foreground.

Word 2008 opened it perfectly, as far as I could tell.

TextEdit crashed on the first attempt. On the second attempt it loaded, preserving the text but losing most of the formatting. Not a bad result, considering the scope of the application.

Pages was the best of the three non-Microsoft applications. It gave me a warning about paragraph borders being lost, but did not mention that the diagrams were messed up (Pages is on the right):

Image corruption in Pages with docx

NeoOffice made a fair stab at the formatting, but included some extraneous characters (you can spot these at top left in the screen grab) and omitted the pictures completely.

As a final test, I used Word’s Save As feature to convert the document to plain old .doc. This opened fine in Pages and in NeoOffice, though I have to say TextEdit gave a mixed result: the formatting was better, but the hyperlinked table of contents came out worse in .doc than in .docx.

Conclusion: don’t send .docx to Mac users unless you are sure that they have the latest Microsoft Word.

apple, email, exchange, microsoft

Apple Snow Leopard and Exchange: the real story

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Apple’s Snow Leopard (OS 10.6) came out last week, and one of its most hyped features is native support for Microsoft Exchange. Here’s what Apple says:

With Snow Leopard, the Mac is the only computer with built-in support for the latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server. So you can use your Mac — with all the features and applications you love — at home and at work and have all your messages, meetings, and contacts in one place.

What this means is that eager Mac users will be upgrading to Snow Leopard and expecting to be able to connect to Exchange at work with Apple-style “it just works” ease of configuration.

The truth is more complex; and I’m disappointed with both Apple’s publicity and the number of reviews that have simply reported its claims without investigation. That said, it is a tricky subject, and I have some sympathy with Apple, which is doing more or less the right thing at a technical level.

Configuring Snow Leopard Mail to use Exchange

The first thing to understand is that there are myriad ways of connecting to Exchange, including:

  • MAPI, which is Microsoft’s proprietary API
  • IMAP, which is a standard protocol for server-based email
  • ActiveSync, which is a Microsoft protocol used for mobile devices
  • RPC over HTTPS, effectively MAPI over SSL, enabling Outlook to connect from outside the network without VPN
  • Outlook Web Access, a web UI for Outlook
  • WebDAV, now deprecated
  • Exchange Web Services, which communicate using SOAP XML messages

Which of these protocols are actually enabled, and whether they are published beyond the internal network, is a matter for Exchange admins to configure.

The usual generic method to connect to Exchange from a miscellaneous client is IMAP, and this is exactly what Apple supported in Mail before Snow Leopard, and still supports. IMAP works pretty well in my experience, but it is only for email and does not expose any Exchange-specific features.

Snow Leopard adds support for Exchange Web Services (EWS), giving a much richer level of access to Exchange. First snag: EWS is only supported in Exchange 2007, which is why Apple says in its small print:

requires Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Update Rollup 4

Second snag: even EWS does not all the features of MAPI, and some features (notably public folder support) were only added in Exchange 2007 SP2, which has just been released. This probably explains why Mail does not (as far as I can tell) support public folders.

The key thing to understand is that Snow Leopard is not using the same protocol as Outlook and therefore does not have access to the same set of features.

What works and what doesn’t

Let’s assume that you have Snow Leopard and Exchange 2007 SP1. What works and what doesn’t? Based on my experience so far:

  • You will be able to connect on an internal network or VPN, provided that EWS is enabled, which it usually is. You may need to install a digital certificate to avoid warning messages.
  • Mail, Calendar (iCal), tasks and notes in your Exchange mailbox all appear nicely.
  • When outside the network, you will only be able to connect over the Internet if EWS is published externally, which it often is not. You cannot use RPC over HTTPS.
  • There is no access to public folders (note that these are deprecated, but still widely used).
  • It is not possible to send from an email address other than the default.
  • You cannot use Exchange delegation features, such as accessing other mailboxes.
  • Mail will download the entire mailbox; you cannot set it only to download recent items. There is no “online mode” as there is with Outlook.
  • When offline, you can access existing items, but new messages have to be saved as drafts. This is unlike Outlook, which gives you full access to send mail, delete etc, and synchronises on re-connect.

Snow Leopard vs Entourage

You might imagine that Microsoft’s own Entourage product would do a better job than Apple Mail at connecting to Exchange. This is not necessarily the case. The problem is that Entourage 2008 doesn’t use MAPI either. In its first incarnation it uses WebDAV. This proved so problematic that Microsoft quietly released a new Web Services Edition that uses EWS, like Snow Leopard. Even this is a temporary expedient, as the Mac Business Unit has announced Outlook for the Mac. The implication is that it will be closer to feature-parity with Outlook on Windows, though it’s not clear to me whether this means MAPI, or EWS, or who knows what?

My view is that unless you need some specific feature of Entourage, or find that Entourage mysteriously works where Snow Leopard does not, you are likely better off without it. This presumes Exchange 2007, of course. The fundamental reason is that Mail and iCal are nicely integrated with the operating system, whereas Entourage is not so good in this respect; there have also been quality issues with Entourage.

It would be good to see a detailed technical note from Apple and/or Microsoft on Snow Leopard’s Exchange support, how to configure Exchange for it, and any implications for security etc. In the meantime, there is an interesting discussion on Apple’s forums which highlights the issues.

For all its (many) faults, Outlook on Windows remains a better Exchange client than either Snow Leopard or Entourage.

apple, microsoft, windows, windows 7

Apple Snow Leopard: why don’t we all use Macs?

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Last Friday I attended Apple’s press briefing for Snow Leopard, and I’ll be a Mac (mostly) for the next few days as I put OS 10.6 through its paces. For as long as I can remember, I’ve set up my desktop so that I can easily switch between Mac and Windows, so it is no great hardship.

Snow Leopard is a relatively low-key release, timed by accident or design to appear not long before Windows 7 makes its full public debut in October – though many IT professionals are already using the final build. In the unlikely event that you’ve missed the many reports, the headline new features are:

  • Many small refinements and speed improvements
  • Major applications re-written in 64-bit
  • Grand Central Dispatch – OS-level support for easier concurrent programming
  • OpenCL – standard means of using the GPU (graphics processing unit) for general processing, not just graphics
  • Exchange support in Mail, iCal and Address Book

The Exchange support is welcome, though unfortunately it is limited to Exchange 2007. It was already possible to access Exchange in Mail, though the older support (which still exists for pre-2007 Exchange) was based on IMAP, whereas the new support is based on Exchange web services and has richer features.

I use Exchange 2007, and found it easy to set up my account in Mail. Unfortunately I’m missing some Outlook features, such as the ability to choose a different Sender  address, and I’ve found it prone to a few mysterious pauses –  once it went into a sulk for over a minute when I marked a message as junk – but this might be a problem with Exchange web services rather than Mail, who knows? I also have some public folders which appear to be inaccessible from Mail or iCal. Then again – Entourage isn’t as flexible as Outlook either.

Still, I  expect the Exchange support will be good enough for many users, and this will make it easier to integrate Macs into Windows-based networks.

So, here’s a thought experiment. Let’s make an assumption:

  • Most people prefer the Mac operating system over Windows, and prefer the Mac hardware over most PC or laptop hardware.

If that is the case, why do we not all use Macs?  There’s a host of reasons which come to mind, starting with price. I looked at macwarehouse.co.uk and pcworld.co.uk, which are owned by the same group. The cheapest Mac I can find (Mac Mini + keyboard, mouse and display) is currently £536.96, vs £260.86 for a PC; and the cheapest laptop is £645.99 + VAT for a MacBook vs £216.52 for a cheapie PC laptop with Vista Basic. These differences are not small.

Note I am not saying that the Mac is poorer value; that is an entirely different argument.

A second big issue is application compatibility. Although there is no problem that cannot be solved with finding alternatives, or dual boot, or a virtual machine, it is all friction that impedes Mac acceptance.

Third, there is the greater manageability of Windows in a corporate environment based on Windows. This is a form of incumbent advantage, which is hard to break unless the incumbent messes up badly. Arguably Microsoft has messed up badly, though less in the business context than in the consumer context, and Windows 7 will pull back some lost ground.

The above leads me to believe that Snow Leopard is not likely to change the status quo significantly – understanding that the status quo is that Apple is gradually increasing its market share – even granting the assumption I made, which is somewhat controversial. On balance, I consider it more likely that Windows 7 will stem the flow towards Apple, though without a high degree of confidence.

More significant than either factor is the continuing migration towards the Internet. In this respect I’ve argued that Apple is like Microsoft. The Internet is a great leveller; it will reduce the friction of changing operating systems (helping Apple) but also make Apple’s UI advantage less noticeable (helping Windows/Linux/Google), and make it harder to sell expensive desktop software (Microsoft is the bigger loser here I think).

It’s fun to speculate; but I must add that so far Snow Leopard has been a pleasure to install and use. Technically, Apple hasn’t missed a beat with OS X since the first release, and that’s an impressive achievement.

apple, google, iphone, itunes, spotify

Apple, Spotify, Google and iPhone: how to get into App Store

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I was mildly surprised to see that Apple has approved Spotify for iPhone. Reason: if someone buys into the Spotify subscription model, why would they ever want to purchase music from iTunes, whether for iPhone or elsewhere? The iPhone version lets you listen to selected tracks offline, so that is not a problem.

Here’s a bit of speculation. Maybe Spotify benefited from the fallout over Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice application – though Apple says it “continues to study it”. The Google Voice move drew articles like Apple is growing rotten to the core from TechCrunch. The question for Apple: did it want another high-profile, self-interested app rejection while still fighting Google Voice?

A further consideration is that Spotify is a tiny company compared to Google; music download/streaming enterprises come and go, and Spotify has a tricky task ahead making its business model work, as Mark Mulligan observes. Further, there’s nothing to stop Apple launching its own streaming, subscription service if it chooses to do so.

If Apple felt it had to choose between the threat of Google Voice, and the threat of Spotify, it is easy to see why it would pick the latter.

It follows that if you want to get your difficult, might-compete-with-Apple app into App Store, you should:

1. Build a decent-sized community around your service first.

2. Make a lot of noise when you submit your app.

3. Make even more noise should Apple reject it (this did not apply to Spotify, but it has worked for others).

4. Choose a moment when Apple is already embroiled in App Store battles that are more important than yours.

Publicity makes all the difference.

With all this, will Spotify succeed? The service is fantastic, but I’m not sure about people’s willingness to add £10 per month to their already-expensive iPhone contracts. However, I still think what I have argued for years: that in the digital age, music subscription makes more sense than paid-for permanent downloads.

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apple, microsoft, windows 7

Hands on Windows 7 multi-touch – will Apple get this right before Microsoft?

I’ve been trying a Dell Latitude XT2 with Windows 7 as a way of exploring multi-touch with Microsoft’s new operating system. I have a number of thoughts on the subject, which I will do my best to organize, but this is work in progress and I welcome your comments.

Multi-touch has received scant attention in all the Windows 7 coverage for one very good reason: few of us have the right hardware. Even a Tablet PC won’t do; you need one with that supports multi-touch which is one of a very few PCs on the market.

Touch is nevertheless a key issue, because it is the future of how we interact with our computers, particularly portable computers. 

Touch computers should have no keyboard or stylus

This one takes a bit of argument. I’ve used a Tablet PC for years, almost since their first release, and I like lots of things about them. However a lot of the time I use them in old-style keyboard mode. Why? Because the stylus is a nuisance and text input too fiddly. When Microsoft designed the Tablet PC, it should have made “doesn’t need a stylus” as the number one constraint, and “doesn’t need a keyboard” as another. It did not; and that is why Tablet PC has more-or-less failed.

There are several problems with the stylus concept. They are fiddly, expensive, and get lost easily. They make interacting with the device less natural. They introduce new problems while solving others.

As for the keyboard, it is a disaster. Once you concede the necessity of a keyboard, you end up with a clam-shell, twist-screen design that is complex, fragile and expensive. It is neither one thing nor another, and can never be mainstream.

The chunky finger problem

The stylus is a compromise that solves a particular problem: the finger is a chunky pointer. Typical menus and icons are designed with mouse-precision in mind, and stabbing them with a finger results in frustrating errors. Still, this problem bears a little analysis. Does a finger have less precision than a mouse pointer? Not really; human fingers are highly evolved and easily capable of the necessary precision. The Windows Touch Pointer (available in Vista as well as Windows 7) illustrates this. It is an on-screen mouse which represents a large target for the finger, but controls a pointer of high precision:

Using the touch pointer, the finger is just as precise as a real mouse, though it takes some mental adjustment, gets in the way, and is off by default in Windows 7.

The text input problem

The other advantage of the stylus is that it simulates a pen, making it easier to write or draw. This is actually an excellent reason to have a stylus as an option; but it should not be necessary for normal operations.

Text input without a keyboard is a partially unsolved problem, and the stylus is not a complete answer. Handwriting recognition is now pretty good on a Tablet; but I can still type faster than I write, and the pop-up input panel is an interference, especially when you only need to type a few letters. Apple’s iPhone (no stylus) has a good stab at making touch input work for text, and though I still don’t like it greatly, I think it is along the right lines.

Windows 7 and touch

What about Windows 7? Well, Microsoft has gone half-way towards making Windows touch-friendly. Multi-touch is a major advance, and gestures are a powerful concept enabling touch-driven applications that are much easier to use. A gesture interprets a pattern drawn on the screen as a single command; there is a list of Windows 7 gestures here, and developers can create their own.

Microsoft’s aim with Windows 7 was not to build a special touch interface, but to make the standard UI easy to control:

A touch shell for launching only touch-specific applications would not meet customers’ needs – there would be too much switching between “touch” mode and Windows applications. Instead, we focused our efforts on augmenting the overall experience so that Windows works great with touch.

This sounds good, but has Microsoft succeeded? My test was simple: start up in Tablet mode and see how easily I could work, without using the stylus.

I found using Windows 7 touch-only possible, but not always enjoyable. You can pump up the text size to make targets larger, but applications like Microsoft Office are still hard to use. The new taskbar is designed to be touch-friendly, and generally speaking it is, though not so much in the notification area. The Start menu is less good; and despite Microsoft’s concerns a touch-specific replacement may well be a good idea. Some applications, like Windows Media Player, seem fine with touch control; others, like Control Panel, awkward. Internet Explorer is relatively nice to use, and so is Apple’s Safari; I can well believe that it is designed with touch-control in mind.

One of the issues is that the on-screen keyboard does not always appear when you want it. It pops up automatically when you focus on standard text boxes; but for some reason it does not show up if I tap on a Sticky Note, for example; I have to drag it out manually.

The awkward truth: applications do need to be designed for touch in order to shine.

I do not know exactly what Microsoft and/or its OEM partners are planning for Windows 7 touch, but suspect we are going to see a few more high-priced niche items like the Dell Latitude XT2 – lovely hardware though it is – that essentially continue the Tablet PC theme and will not greatly impact the market.

The kind of device that might work, to my mind, would be:

1. Without keyboard or stylus

2. Priced keenly

3. Small – 12” screen at most

4. Bundled with excellent touch-friendly applications that are a pleasure to use – not just a collection of samples like the Windows 7 touch pack. Basic actions like web browsing, email, note-taking, and entertainment (games, media) should all be covered.

5. Preconfigured so that your first experience of Windows 7 multi-touch is not a frustrating one

Question: if that is right, is it likely that such machines will appear soon? Or is it more likely that Apple will deliver its rumoured tablet and severely impair Microsoft’s potential market?