Microsoft insider reveals attack on iPad’s Achilles heel

There are press briefings, there are the whispers you get around certain companies and there the ‘friendly chats in a quiet corner, when no one is listening'. With or without alcohol, our experience says that ‘3' is the way to go when you really want to know what a major company is thinking. KitGuru cosies up to a senior Microsoft bod and hears an interesting snippet.

When Microsoft made its pioneering advances with the tablet – more than 10 years ago – no one was really interested.

On 3rd April 2010, Apple ran an advert that said, “It's already a revolution and it's only just started”.

That launch was the culmination of a series of thoughts, innovations and inventions that began when Steve Jobs gave his famous speech in 1983 – telling the faithful, “We want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you. that you learn how to use in 20 minutes and with a radio link so you don’t have to hook up to anything and you’re in communication with every large database and other computers”.

Given the speed at which this vision has exploded onto the world stage, why the sly smiles on the faces of senior Microsoft folks?

In the spirit of Bond-esque espionage, we'll call our senior Microsoft contact ‘Moneypenny'.

When we asked Moneypenny about her new found confidence, she was quick to point out the win, “People don't really want to run reduced applications”.

“With Microsoft, you'll be able to run all of the applications you normally run, but in a much more mobile way”, said Moneypenny.

“Just look at the processing power you have available in the iPad 4, it's really substantial”, Moneypenny point out. “The main CPU is a multi-core chip running around 1.4GHz and they keep banging on about how powerful their quad core graphics processor is – and the next generation will be even more powerful”.

OK. We get it. The Apple iPad packs some punch with even stronger punches to follow, but what's your point Moneypenny?

“Think back to when you had a multi-core processor, running at something like 1.4GHz in your desktop PC”, said Moneypenny. “That was enough to run all of your applications, right?  You could use your Office applications as well as design packages like Photoshop etc, so why not now, on the iPad?”.

A quick scout of the interwibble shows that the 1.4GHz version of the Pentium III did, indeed, launch at the start of 2002. To give you a little context, when this processor launched, it was expected to run Photoshop 7 – and people would have still been buying Pentium III processor based PCs when Adobe launched its first version of CS in the following year.

So, at first glance, Moneypenny seems to have a point. The iPad should be able to run ‘real software' and give us all a revolutionary mobile-worker experience – but it doesn't.

“You'll now see a very rapid development cycle with Windows-based tablets”, said Moneypenny with a glint in her eye. “These new generations of tablet will allow you to run full applications on the move – and that's where we will win, big time”.

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KitGuru says: It's hard to argue with Moneypenny. None of us want to carry around 2 devices and, if you're a serious worker, why would you want to carry around something that only really executes 69 pence ‘apps' when the full blown software products are sitting there waiting on a Windows-based tablet?

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