About a week back, I gave a few of my thoughts on the future of computing as we know it in an article at The Tech Bulletin. Today, Microsoft unveiled Windows on ARM, which aims to bring an entirely new experience to the personal computer. It proves that what I said in the article last week really is going to be the future of computing and that both Microsoft is moving towards making tablet computing a reality as we speak. They're really working hard on it and want to bring Windows 8 to the tablet using ARM processing power.
I really love the idea and think that Windows on the tablet has the potential to change the game forever. Sadly, there is a possibility that these efforts which Microsoft is putting into their new project may not really be as successful as the OS developer hopes them to be. It'd be great if such tablet computing became a reality, but I'm not sure if it will be so successful now that the iPad has had such exposure to the industry and Apple seems to have a firm grasp on many tablet customers.
While Microsoft does have the potential to change the personal computing world, I believe that, if this idea is not executed properly, the entire corporation will fall into demise and won't have the strength to bring itself back up. I'm not trying to be an Apple fanboy here, but instead just making an observation. The main problem with what Microsoft is trying to do here is that they're starting too late. The tablet revolution already happened, and that was two years ago when the iPad was released. All competitors hastily set out to dethrone the Cupertino-based giant, though so far none have shown such phenomenal success and are really struggling to contend with Apple's much more favorable outcome.
It's not that the competitors are bad, just that their product wasn't released first. If you're going to transform an industry, then you must do it with haste and not linger about waiting for opportunity to arise. Many competitors acted as quickly as possible, but most were about a year behind the iPad and were announced at the international CES of 2011. But wait, that's only a year right? It shouldn't matter, but it does. If you don't act then you won't become the pioneer of a new age and instead get left in the innovator's dust.
So, what I'm trying to say here is that Microsoft is working hard on their tablet-bound masterpiece, but they're too late to enter the game as it's already started without them. Entering now will not help them succeed; if they wanted to do this, then 2010 was the year for it. There's always that one company in the lead, and right now it's Apple. Oh, and the way things are going, I wouldn't expect them to fall for quite a good amount of time. It's a shame too, because Microsoft has such great ideas for their upcoming OS and OEMs are gearing up for tablet manufacturing as well. I just wish that there were a brighter future for the late attendee of the tablet game, but the truth is that there's not.