I think the Mac Book rebooting frequency has to do with how you use it. Using Final Cut Pro on a robust project rebooting and crashing was real common. And it never came back the moment before it crashed. It came back the last auto save. The debate over OS stability is silly because there is no truth to whether one OS is more stable than another. It has to do with the application software running that generates the crash. The OS itself never crashes but we don't use computers to just navigate around the OS. We run applications.
I would be pleased as punch if Microsoft made an Office version for ipad. But I haven't heard a word about it. Mike, you listed a whole line of different apps that do office functions. Seems pretty clunky to me. I've gone through several spread sheet apps and spent close to $30 on different $$ ones but none are complete and none are straight forward to use. The file listing system that Ipad uses is really awkward. To use 5 different XLS compatible SS apps I had to upload the same XLS file 5 times. That's crazy! The same with PDF files.
RE: Software. I was pointing out CHOICES that people have that work. Yeah, probably none of them allow complex macros of the sort I envision you wanting to use, but I am not convinced that MS Office for iPad will do that either. Nothing awkward or clunky about the options. The tablet as a replacement for the laptop/desktop does not provide the robust authoring environment that the desktop OS does; but for 99% of us, does it have to? I do "tablet stuff" on the iPad, and desktop stuff on the desktop (or laptop). That said, there is more and more "creation" or authoring capabilities on an iPad every day. I get blown away with the music my kid creates in garage band, or the ability to replace the paper-notebook with note-taking apps.
RE: OS, yes, software makes or breaks operating systems, but some operating systems seem to require a heck of a lot less "care and feeding" than others. OSX is not perfect, but it provides all the security and stability of linux with the robust software choices (and in many instances OSX-only software choices) of Windows. and perhaps OSX's great strength is the tight integration of hardware with software; something that is an achilles heel for Windows, and I suspect, will be the same problem with Windows tablets (as it is with Android in many instances). I have NO DOUBT that Windows 8 tablets will end up with processor and ram specs that exceed the iPad. But they will NEED that "brute force" to overcome inefficiencies in the OS (just as Android has to). It makes me laugh when I see the forum comments on tech blogs about how 2011 the new iPad is; almost always from people who never have used it. It is ingrained in people's minds that it has to have quad-core, it has to have lots of ram, it has to have high speed processors. Amazing, but my old 512mb iPad2 and my 1GB ram iPad next perform pretty much identically.
Far too many ideas in one post...
