Is Microsoft the Ambassador of Choice?
In case you’ve missed the wave of hype over the launch of the iPad today (in the US anyway) it has set the internet alight with reviews and opinions. Some of the talk has been about the closed architecture of the iPad, both the hardware and the software are controlled by Apple (you can’t even change the battery). I’ve written (briefly) about this before. While I fancy a slate/tablet PC I probably won’t buy an iPad purely because I am limited on what I can do with it. I can’t run applications that aren’t available via the App Store, which need to be approved by Apple and they can pull them at any time. There’s also limited scope for expandability (none of the add-ons for Macs will work, so you couldn’t plug-in a USB webcam, for example, because the iPhone OS it runs is not OSX).
Ironically, a slate/tablet that can run Windows suddenly becomes the bastion of choice, where you can choose what hardware to plug-in and what applications (for all those currently available) that you want to run. It may not be as slick, but I’d rather not have my hands tied. And that’s before we get to the inability to run Flash.
I'm surprised Microsoft haven't picked up on this and started shouting about it, they're suddenly the good guys after having been the villains for so many years.