Comment by recoiledsnake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by recoiledsnake | Hacker News Reader

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>"Ideally, what I would like (and I think most people would like) is something of the form factor of a MacBook Air (thin and light), that has a detachable touch-screen that can run apps written for iOS or Android, and when the screen is connected to the main body, acts like a fully-functioning laptop."

>I think some devices like this are beginning to appear, but so far none of them are compelling. It might take Apple to show them how it's done, again.

Really? Not even a mention of Windows 8, if it is just to say why it doesn't suit his needs? Has the author taken a look at upcoming Windows 8 devices like the Samsung Slate ?

Or is the discussion artificially limited to Apple devices when Apple has specially noted that they don't envision a fusion device/OS (atleast in the short-medium term) because it won't be a good consumer experience.

The tradeoff of the Slate is lower battery life and things like a fan, but it has a Core i5 and can run all Windows apps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K1ZbY03nTQ

Or check out the IdeaPad Yoga, a 13" Macbook-Air like laptop that can double as a Windows 8 tablet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SHKFYngqOM

http://cnettv.cnet.com/hands-lenovo-ideapad-yoga/9742-1_53-5...

There will be Windows 8 ARM tablets that will be fanless and have great battery life, but they can run only Metro apps and touch optimized versions of Office.

These are just the tip of the iceberg and there will be lots of Transformer like devices in the coming months running Windows 8. These may or may not fit the author's needs, but excluding them from the discussion doesn't seem like a good move to me.

I'll answer for myself, as I have no idea about the author.

For me Windows is disqualified from the start because it's not Unix or Plan 9. The nature of my work requires a Unix environment, and even if it weren't the case, I'd still prefer a Unix/Plan 9 environment.

The various Unix emulation layers available in Windows like Cygwin, SFU/SUA/Interix, UWIN, MKS don't satisfy me the slightest, and even if they did, they'd restrict me to the Unix side of things while on Linux or Mac OS X I most often use plan9port.

And your answer is thoroughly irrelevant. For the same reason, you can't use an iPad because it doesn't have classic unix environment tools.

Tried Virtualbox?

I was sure someone would mention virtualization.

I use virtualization all the time, I have to, I can't even chose not to. I am a kernel programmer, doing kernel work without virtual machines is very difficult, for one particular non-Unix operating system I develop for it's even impossible.

But my choice for Unix-based systems is not necessarily dictated by work. I use Unix tools all the time, for everything. Why would I run Windows as my host when my toolkit is available only in a virtual machine and I don't care at all about the tools Windows offers me? It doesn't make any sense, I'd have to run at least one more virtual machine and I'd have poor integration with applications running in the host.

By having Mac OS X or some Unix derivative, like Linux, as my host I have my toolkit where I need it most and I can still run my target VMs.

Install Linux on the Samsung Slate then? Linux will be taking advantage of touch hardware built for Windows 8.

People have already got it running but with some missing pieces that will fall into place with newer versions of Linux/Ubuntu and with new hardware.

I'd imagine because at the moment there isn't a tablet market, there's an iPad market. Windows 8 isn't even out yet.

Why is this being downvoted? Because it allows for the possibility that a Microsoft product could satisfy the needs of someone when an Apple product doesn't?

If you disagree, say why. A downvote isn't a substitute for substantiating your opinion.

There actually aren't any Windows 8 tablets (nor any Windows 8 devices of any kind) in the market now.

It's a valid point but it's at least a year early.

The author seemed to be talking about devices of such a form factor, presumably after discarding options like the Asus Transformer (+Prime +Infinity). Windows 8 is only one small part of the equation, and there have been zero compelling examples of it on a device such as what the author described. Not to mention that as an OS it certainly hasn't proven itself yet.

Its hacker news. What do you expect? Not many Windows users here.

So? I posted that from a brand new MacBook Pro. Doesn't mean I've lost my ability to reason objectively or that I need to trash the opinion (passive-aggressively, of course!) of those who like Microsoft or Lenovo or whatever. OP made a valid point about Windows 8 and (you're right, what do I expect; it's Hacker News) it got downvoted for that simple reason. I think it got downvoted because it was a cogent point. Bullshit.

[Disclaimer: I used to work on the Windows team]

I use both a Windows 8 slate (Samsung series 7) and a Macbook Air on a daily basis. Windows 8 recently released their Consumer Preview [1] and I'm finding that I'm using it more and more as my primary device. There's something about growing accustomed to having touch as an interface option that makes it hard to go back to traditional laptops.

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516.aspx

Yep. After using the Transformer Prime (mostly as a tablet, but with the keyboard dock if I need to write anything longer), I've started touching the screen on my MacBook Air as well. Doesn't do much, unfortunately.

A quad-core A5 might have the horsepower to function as both a Mac and an iPad.

Think iPad, but with some ports and an SSD in the 'base', and battery and screen and smarts in the touchscreen part.

I wonder how much compromise would be involved in such a device. It seems like it might be much less, now that we have two devices, MBA and iPad that seem to be converging together.

I'd love to see a detactable touchscreen product where tablet part is a standalone device, but the keyboard part contains additional battery and hard-drive and maybe even additional memory, GPU and CPU. That way the low powered tablet screen could be taken off when I want to only read or watch video, but the full power of the device is available when it's docked, with tablet or desktop interface available for each mode.

(Yeah, I get that plug-and-play chips & memory are unlikely to happen, so perhaps the keyboard part would contain a separate host OS and they'd communicate over a more hot-swappable interface...)

It sounds like the Asus Transformer[1] is most of what you want (and also a nice tablet).

[1]: http://eee.asus.com/en/eeepad/transformer/specification/

What if it's an MBA with all of the guts in the display part instead of the keyboard? Detach the keyboard et voilà, an iPad.

An iPad ... but thicker, heavier, with a fan and a docking port/hinge connecter on one edge. And an MBA with the USB/audio ports on the screen which is screen-heavy and keeps falling over backwards.

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