5 ways Windows 8 beats iOS - taylorshantoote1978

Consider first that I've been a daily iPad substance abuser since the daytime the tablet launched. I've never had much affinity for MacOS and Apple desktops, but I have literally used either the iPad, iPad 2 or spic-and-span iPad every day since April 3, 2010. Tablets work for me. Advert navigation works for me. And the iPad has worked for me—despite the fact that it's ne'er helped me do any real work.

Simply now there's a legitimate alternative to the iPad in my life. For the last a few weeks, I've been playing with various Windows 8 tablets, including, yes, the unaccustomed Surface RT, which I took for a tailspin on Microsoft's Redmond campus earlier this calendar week.

Windows 8 tablets are the real take, people, and their unique charms tie directly backmost to the new OS. Now, make none mistake: Navigating the Windows 8 touch user interface involves a steep learnedness curve. The new touch gestures aren't intuitive, and this alone cedes important ground to iOS, which is so oblong, farm animals could probably figure it out. But as with many vexing software interfaces (think Photoshop or Stand out), power is oftentimes locked within seemingly mystifying UIs.

Think about that as I share the five ways Windows 8 beats iOS…

Snap Screen

Snapshot Screen lets you bobtail a back app happening the edge of the screen. Also, poster the color-coded Pinned and Frequent tiles, which are discussed in the Net Explorer section below.

Besides offering legitimate, system-wide multitasking (a feature missing in iOS), Windows 8 includes a "snarl screen" have allows you to see two active apps along your display at the same time. Single app consumes about three quarters of the screen, while the other resides in a narrower strip. You can easy swop app positions, and even cut and paste cognitive content from one app to its neighbor.

Without ambiguity, Elasticity Screen is awesome. In fact, it's the primary intellect why all Windows 8 tablets essential have a minimum firmness of purpose of at the least 1366-aside-768. This widescreen pixel grid ensures all tablets will be able to run Cinch Screen, affording the narrower "snapped" app a width of no less than 320 pixels.

I can't wait to see this characteristic evolve.

Live Tiles

Apple is supposed to be the hip, whimsical, creative company, so it's ironic that the iOS home screen borrows all its invention cues from the dawn of Graphical user interface-settled computing—think static, identically sized icons laid down in a rigid grid.

In severe dividing line, the Windows 8 First Screen is dynamic, flexible and flat-out fun. Its app icons are represented by "live tiles" that can reveal perpetually updating information, so much as the latest upwind forecast or news headlines. Viable tiles tail besides be resized, affording an extra degree of exploiter customization.

You might call up all these features would lead to undue optic noise, but Microsoft's design guidelines help ensure that indigene and third-party apps cohabitate in harmony. The end consequence is a Start Screen that's bold and dynamic, but also soothing in its refined, artsy design.

Oh, and one of the coolest Start Screen features? It's called semantic soar upwards. Vindicatory touch the Start Screen with deuce fingers, and "squeeze" in. All the in play tiles will shrink in size, giving you a bird's middle view of your entire app collection, affording easier navigation between one part of apps to the next.

In point of fact, semantic zoom is on hand throughout the Windows 8 touch experience. It's already built into Microsoft's own Photos app (aiding navigation in large image collections), and developers can tap into this behavior as well. For example, imagine a calendar that allows you to quickly jump from a monthly view to a day by day view with a squeeze of your fingers.

Settings

In Windows 8, each app's settings and options are well-stacked directly into the app itself. You simply conjure up the Charms prevention from inside an app, and hit the Settings icon at the bed. From thither you can adjust specific app options, and also address scheme-wide settings. In iOS, you must exit your active app, assimilative the discrete Setting app, and then hunt around for the name of the app you want to adjust.

In some shipway, the Setting function in Windows 8 uses the same philosophy we find in Humanoid: Sacrifice the drug user powerful options to customise his or her experience, and attain these options quickly reachable. iOS, meanwhile, sacrifices customization in the service of simplicity. This makes sense for currying mass-marketplace appeal—because we don't need grandma and grandfather fiddling with every those confusing controls!—simply it robs power users of the functions we involve.

Semblance of a filing system

A file search within the modern UI delivers documents from both sides of the Windows 8 experience.

Because Windows 8 includes the new modern UI and the traditional desktop nether a unwedded wrapper, tablets can penetrate the desktop's file system. There are no traditional folders in the nonclassical UI, thusly you can't drag and drop files between directories (though, course, full filing system functionality is still available in the desktop). Nonetheless, the modern UI does expose an underlying filing system when you black market a look for from the Charms bar.

E.g., if you run a file search for the term "sushi," you'll find every written document—image, text file, whatever—with sushi in its filename, whether that doc belongs to a modern-day Windows 8 app or a desktop app. This is particularly accessible when you'Re looking for salvageable electronic mail attachments.

iOS does include a search operate, but it parses a drastically limited set of values. E.g., seek for sushi in iOS, and the function solitary reports back a list of installed apps with sushi in their names, too as Notes and Calendar entries that include sushi in their text string section. This is not a pregnant filing system search, because, well, iOS doesn't have you create fully comprehendible, eminently manageable files.

But the employment International Relations and Security Network't over on Microsoft's end. It shouldn't relegate the full power of its file system to honourable the desktop. I'd have it off to assure greater file-management features in the modern UI soon—and maybe they'll come soon if Microsoft adopts a yearly update schedule for its mobile OS. Apple and Google refresh p.a., and Microsoft should overly.

I

All your tabs (above) and accost bar and other creature comforts (below) are hidden from look at until you need them.

The current Internet Explorer—the translation sitting happening the Starting signal Screen leastwise—is better than Safari, full stop. More screen real estate is dedicated to web browser content, as tabs and the plow cake are obscure from view until invoked. In the new IE, there's also integrated search in the address Browning automatic rifle, a "flip ahead" feature that lets you zero through multipage articles with a finger sneak, and a emblazon-coded, icon-driven Favorites design that doesn't rely single on schoolbook.

This unlikely feature not merely looks precooled, it also makes information technology easier to rapidly locate the Loved you're looking for (except in Windows 8, web pages are "Pinned" for easy retrieval, not selected as "Favorites").

Ultimately, Cyberspace Explorer for the modern UI has a screaming-fast rendering engine. During my ain anecdotal testing, I found page load times to be faster in IE, and screen redraws to be even zippier than the already fantastic performance of Safari. Someday presently, the PCWorld lab testing will (hopefully) validate my experiences.

Leave the Windows Computer memory ever include Chrome operating theater Firefox apps so Windows 8 users can test Internet Explorer against the other mobile competition? We just don't know. And therein lies the biggest flaw of Windows 8, if not its Achilles cad in the battle with iOS: Microsoft's roving platform doesn't admit even a tiny subdivision of each the grand third-party apps that make iOS so attractive to mainstream users and hardcore nerds alike.

It's a problem for Microsoft, and information technology's one of the key factors that gives me pause when I consider whether to reach for the new iPad or Windows 8 hardware when information technology's time for pad action.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/461691/5-ways-windows-8-beats-ios.html

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