Hacker News Reader

Comment by cryptoz | Hacker News Reader

Yes, this is what really blows my mind. Microsoft has spent 10+ years shipping desktop software on tablets. Everyone seems to think that Surface and Windows 8 is the new beginning, where Microsoft realizes that it has to change something for software to work nicely with touch-based interfaces.

Except that they still don't get it, or if they get it they are completely unable to deliver. They are marketing the Surface RT and showing that it runs Office - the old-style-1990's-desktop-PC-UI Office. That's not impressive. Nobody wants that.

So the question is: Does Microsoft truly still not get it? Or do they get it, and are choosing not to / unable to deliver the proper experience?

View on HN

They should focus on getting OneNote and Outlook working with Metro, and get them running on the Surface and Samsung Note style phablets.

Both have killer Use Cases whilst mobile; you can be productive with both tools with a touch interface and without a keyboard.

I'm surprised that they've not noticed that.

Onenote already runs on metro and is kind of nice, actually.

OneNote actually has a touch centric app in the Windows store @ http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/onenote/f022389f-...

MS actually has OneNote in the iOS App store as well, though it's surely severely gimped: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-onenote/id41039524...

I would argue that plenty of people want a full-featured version of Office on a tablet. Especially one with a useable keyboard.

I completely agree about it being full featured! I think nearly everyone on the planet wants that. There's no reason to remove features based on it being on a tablet, but there's plenty of reason to change the UI to make the buttons easier to touch.

From the video review in The Verge of the Surface RT a little while ago, it looks like Office on the tablet has exactly the same Save dialog, for example, as desktop. How on Earth are you supposed to navigate that with your fingers? Tiny little buttons, changing the folder tree, etc. It looks absolutely miserable.

They actually switched the Office interface into a 'touch friendly' mode that spaces out the buttons quite a bit more to avoid missed touches. Speaking as a Surface user, this works but is definitely missing some elegance.

It might have been cool 4 years ago.

But these days, those tin dialogs and buttons are a joke. Heck, I've been bitching about non-resizable dialogs in Office for years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com