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Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0
Eh, I’m not sure I agree with his statement in full but there are some tasks to which current tablet UIs, including that of the Surface, just aren’t very well suited – mainly those involving a lot of multitasking.
Correct me if I’m wrong on this, but iOS is essentially designed around fullscreen app use, correct?
The Metro UI in Windows 8 and RT has a couple features that make multitasking a little easier, including the ability to pin an app to the left or right 20% of the screen, the ability to cycle through the 80% (or fullscreen) app with a simple gesture (which reminds me of how you can move between Spaces with a four finger swipe on OS X laptops), and an easily accessible app switcher. This is probably great for your average home user. Realistically though, I feel like this setup would become unmanageable if you had more than a few apps open at a time, and the “20%” app is going to have quite limited screen space.
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You raise a good point, but it's also an interesting one. Let's be honest - how many of us here, regardless of operating system, use applications in non-maximized view? I'm not talking about Finder or Explorer windows, I'm talking about web browsers, Office applications (or equivalents), and so on. I've seen some people (mostly programmers) who resize windows so that they can view many applications at once, but the majority immediately maximize the window of the application that they're working with. My guess is that Apple and Microsoft, through collection of user data, have reached a similar conclusion, and hence we have Apple's "full screen mode" for applications in OS X, and Microsoft's "Metro" interface with Windows 8.
Personally, I certainly maximize most windows that I work with (although I don't use the "full screen" feature of Mac OS X as often as I probably should). What makes multitasking on a computer vs. the iPad isn't the screen size of the fact that I can display more windows at once on the computer; it's the speed of switching between applications. Alt-tabbing (or technically, command-tabbing) is faster than making gesture-based swipes.
This isn't to say that there's no good reason to have the ability to view multiple applications at once - there certainly is. Philosophically and psychologically it seems that we're moving away from the old idea that we could be ultra-productive by working on a million things at once, and technology is reflecting this by making it easier to work on a single thing with no other distractions.
(Also, a little tip for multitasking on the iPad - in addition to the four-finger swipe from side to side to move between application "panes," if you four-finger swipe upward you will bring up the list of most recently used applications and can tap one to go directly to it. This is the same action as quickly double-pressing the Home button, but it may be faster if your fingers are already at the screen. Since the gesture can be performed at any speed, it may also be better for people who have difficulty double-tapping the home button fast enough, or limiting their taps to two taps.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0
Most of this was open at the same time and was swapping between it all on a regular basis. I can’t imagine doing it using a current tablet UI and I honestly don’t know how the people I see use iPads in class manage to study on them.
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It all depends on the application. I used "digital notebook" software similar to Microsoft OneNote on the Mac, and a version for iPad was released. I never used it, but if it was anything like the Mac version, you could throw anything into it, and you could add "tabs" to easily get to certain pages and sections. I don't know if that would have worked for you, but it sounds like you could have put all of your materials into one application, and simply organized it within one application, which would have been fast and easily accessible.
So once again, it's not that one interface is inherently better than another, it's a matter of whether the software can be designed to make good use of it.