iPad "Surface" -- er, "Pro"

Posted by MadaboutDana
Sep 10, 2015 at 04:16 PM

Yeah, but that’s just it, innit? People **don’t** develop apps like that for Windows, just for iOS. And in view of the enormous power of the iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro, with their extraordinarily smooth gesture/stylus input, you can see why.

Not that I particularly want to knock Windows here – I’ve spent a happy hour or two playing with Surfaces (the pleb one and the Pro), and they’re very nice. But when it comes to simple, unencumbered graphical power, gimme an iPad any time.

A simple list of the top iOS graphics apps shows you why the iPad is so popular with artists. It supports a whole bunch of very powerful apps (e.g. Pixelmator) that are the equivalent of desktop apps but stripped down for convenient mobile use. Windows attempts to do that, but falls into the “which interface?” trap. Just to take a simple example, there are two versions of OneNote: one is the graphical one for mobile use, the other is the desktop one. Is it surprising that the iOS version of OneNote is actually better than either of them (although it lacks folding, sadly)? With Windows, you’re always having to ask yourself that question - am I now working in mobile or desktop mode? I think it’s more of an obstacle than Microsoft ever realised it would be, and largely explains why there are relatively few Windows mobile apps (although their cunning decision to release free software for migrating iOS apps to Windows may help solve this problem). Certainly it’s a question I find myself asking whenever I start playing on a Surface.

Not so much “Am I a Mac? Or a PC?” but “Am I a mobile Windows user? Or a desktop Windows user? And which does this machine do best? Rats, I’m not sure…”