I think that no matter which group you belong to – Apple, Linux, Windows, BeOS – we can all agree on one thing: original equipment manufacturers are terrible at writing or pre-loading software. Whether it be adding pre-exisiting software to Windows OEM installs, or software they write on their own, it is universally bad. As such, I just can’t understand why Microsoft would leave creating tablet user experiences to OEMs.
While Microsoft is pushing Windows 7 on one hand, it’s promoting Windows Embedded Compact 7 on the other. Windows 7 is Windows NT, whereas Windows Embedded Compact 7 is Windows CE – different kernel, different software stack. Microsoft may have seen the light when it comes to more tightly controlling the user experience in mobile phones, but sadly, that revelation isn’t carrying over to the tablet space.
At Computex, Microsoft is showing off an ARM-based tablet running Windows Embedded Compact 7, which comes with an impressive Silverlight-based user interface, created using Expression Blend. While it is different from what we’re seeing with Windows Phone 7 (which won’t come to tablets), it does bear a close resemblance. It looks pretty darn good – well, except for the browser which uses Internet Explorer 7.
Video courtesy of Engadget.
Sadly, it won’t come to market. In their wisdom, Microsoft believes that original equipment manufacturers should create their own interfaces on top of their embedded operating system. Yes, the same companies that have taken away hours of our lives by including boatloads of crapplets on their machines are supposed to write tablet touch interfaces.
This right here is why Microsoft will not get any serious foothold in this tablet market. What we’ll have instead is dozens of different and crappy interfaces, with just as many crappy incompatible software stores filled with outdated software because the OEMs are too lazy to keep their software updated. Adding insult to injury, they’re promoting both Windows 7 and Windows Embedded Compact 7 for tablets.
By the way, I still fail to see the use in these tablets, but then again, I’m weird and still think tabbed browsing is a bit hoity-toity.
Sure, the OEMs will build the UIs, but they are talking about it being a Silverlight stack using Expression Blend as the visual design tool. Which means that there is a set of standard widgets, and all the interfaces will in fact run on the same software stack. So there is still some promise here, there is a real risk that the development efforts on this will be rather fractured design-wise, but at least it is not really a question of real compatibility problems. Plus that Silverlight is already on the desktop Windows, and will be the basis for Windows Phone 7 (and that is a huge part of things I suspect), so in some ways Microsoft is really building something that looks like a coherent software stack strategy here.
So, in summary, the technology will be the same and portable, but the UI design may get a bit bumpy. I am a bit tempted to compare the situation to the web really, since that is the model for a lot of new apps these days. There are no UI guidelines for the web either, but at least all pages are built on a similar portable technology stack.
Edited 2010-06-03 13:51 UTC
Yeah the Silverlight for Embedded is actually based off of Silverlight 2, and uses C++ as it’s programming language as opposed to any .NET language.
It’s ugly. Old. And a remarkable improvement, which doesn’t speak well to what WinCE had before.
Besides the superior tooling of Blend, don’t really expect much code sharing between WinPho7, Windows, or OSX.
It’s disgusting. Even the limited Silverlight for Symbian is more feature filled.
This is weird though, Windows Phone 7 also runs off of Silverlight on top of Windows Embedded, it seems a bit strange that they would have two completely different versions of the same thing coming out the same year, and your comment is the only place I have heard that suggested yet.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mikehall/archive/2010/06/01/windows-embedde…
“One of the core technologies in the CE7 release is Silverlight for Windows Embedded – this is a Silverlight based rendering engine that supports hardware acceleration and sits directly on top of the underlying Win32 API set (there’s no .NET in Silverlight for Windows Embedded).”
The purposes of Silverlight for WinPh7 and Silverlight for CE7 are different.
The former is a managed sandbox for creating apps, the latter is to facilitate the development of custom experiences for OEMs.
For example, designing a custom tablet UI experience in Blend is laughably easy. Silverlight includes intrinsic support for things like multitouch and animations, so basically all designers need to learn is Blend.
More stupidity from Microsoft then. Why would they not ship the real Silverlight rather than some UI-maker thingy. So you can’t even use C#? Or any other .NET language? It seems dumb beyond belief. Am I missing something here?
In my posts below I assumed the development for WEC7 would be similar (not exact) to WP7. Since that’s not the case, I retract the affected portions of those posts.
Edited 2010-06-04 08:57 UTC
They just released v. 1.0 for netbooks and engadget has really cool videos of a MeeGo tablet.
I submitted a link for that (it dropped under the radar). Though i understand it might not be as exciting as a winCE one
.
As fun as MeeGo might be… There are SO MANY mobile Linux efforts I simply can’t see the forest through the trees any more. Mobile Linux alliances are formed almost every other minute, so my apologies for not keeping up with that stuff.
The commercially viable ones:
– Android
– MeeGo
– WebOS
– … what else?
Just for reference, the tablet is here:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/01/meego-moorestown-powered-tablet-…
I wouldn’t say that Apple’s bad at writing software… obviously, that’s not what’s meant here.
Apple is kind of special in that they are hardware and software, not just hardware that is adding crap software.
You know, if HP had control over their own OS (oh, well they do now with WebOS…) and used that on their laptops / tablets, etc then it’d quite possibly be as good as Mac OSX on the Macs. It’s all about controlling the hardware and software together to make a coherent piece.
Many a Windows problem is just crappy hardware that doesn’t work together, for whatever reason. The OEMs then add their own custom drivers and programs on it, which 9 times out of 10 end up being crap.
Every laptop I’ve bought has been completely wiped and had a fresh install of Windows put on it. All my desktop systems I build myself, so never have that problem there anyhow.
And the hardest part about that is finding drivers for weird custom things (usually the ACPI stuff).
It’s too bad more OEMs aren’t like Dell and sell Customized Linux installs for their computers. Not sure if Dell still is, they should publicize it more, that’s for sure.
I’ve heard this many times and I still don’t get it.
It’s like saying that a private service is better than a public service because the CEO never changes. Defending Apple by taking one of the worst things about them.
OSX’s drivers are written by the hardware manufacturer, just like on Windows. They don’t get magically more stable because there’s less around. On the other hand, you get forced to use hardware that you may not like… How is it an advantage ?
Edited 2010-06-04 07:49 UTC
Especially at the prices the makers want for them. Tablet < laptop for me, period.
As for Microsoft’s half-hearted effort in this space, I don’t understand it, but it seems like they do that sometimes — throw a bare hook in the water and see if some hapless fish accidentally gets snagged on it. MAybe it is an attempt to hang onto their existing WinCE customers, rather than having them jump ship to Linux.
I guess you never used Sense UI from HTC. It’s great UI and basicly lifts WM6 phones close to Apple user experience (unfortunatly it doesn’t rewrite all components so ugly WM6 is visible some places). I wouldn’t be suprise see Android tablets that are heavily modified. Intresting to see if Microsoft is going to offer unified app store for CE.
I saw that video earlier at Engadget, and the video is so zoomed in that I can’t tell whether to be impressed or not.
But ASUS’s Windows Embedded Compact 7 tablet looks pretty good already, and they used their own UI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5a3Mciw_Uk
Anyway, isn’t Android doing the same thing? OEMs are creating custom UIs on top of it? And Google gets praised for that.
Finally, why shouldn’t Microsoft offer both Windows 7 and WEC7 for tablets? Windows 7 is used for Tablet PCs, while WEC7 is used for dumbed down iPad-like slates which are good at consuming content but suck for anything else. The Tablet PC (tablets requiring a full PC OS) market still exists and the tablet craze might jumpstart that market. ASUS is offering a Tablet PC slate based on Windows 7 and an iPadi-ish slate based on WEC7.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/31/asus-eee-pad-official-intel-culv…
The one thing I agree with Thom on is that there should be one app store (or, at least one primary app store) for all WEC7 tablets that will provide apps that run on all these devices, regardless of the custom UI the OEM threw on there. Should be easy if all the apps are Silverlight, XNA, and HTML 5. And “native” apps (apps written to WCE itself rather than Silverlight) should work too, if they are required.
Edited 2010-06-04 08:18 UTC
Edit to the above: I do agree with Thom on one other thing, which is that generally speaking OEMs suck at UI. If Microsoft insists that OEMs be allowed to make their own UI, them maybe Microsoft should still offer a WP7-like standard interface for WEC7 tablets. OEMs could still choose to roll their own UI, but if it sucks then it’s on them, and they’ll lose to competing WEC7 tablets.
But I’d like to hear from Microsoft why they want OEMs to create their own UIs. Maybe to foster competition in the UI space as well as shift development/testing costs to the OEMs.
I think ASUS’s UI (which I reference above) looks pretty good. A more WP7-ish UI would also be good. There’s room for both, as long as they run the same apps. As I said above, a primary app store is a must for WEC7 tablets (not for Windows 7 Tablets, since those are full-flegedt Tablet PCs that run full Windows apps already).
Turns out that the Silverlight in WEC7 isn’t Silverlight at all, but “Silverlight for Embedded” which is just a handler of Blend-created interfaces; apps using it still have to make direct OS calls via C++. No .NET language support or other Silverlight goodies. Totally lame. So I retract from my parent post the sections dealing with Silverlight. And XNA, since I assume that’s not supported either.
Seems lame though, and I’d like to know why they don’t ship the real Silverlight on WEC7.
Edited 2010-06-04 08:58 UTC