I’ve been an avid iPad user for 30 months and counting. I still love and use my Pad a lot, but I also bought a new Surface RT. Will my Surface ever completely replace my iPad? I don’t know yet, but I’d love to find out. This blog series is aimed at comparing the two devices in all sorts of situations, from work to home, and analyzing the pros and cons of each. You can read other entries in the series using the links below.

• From iPad to Surface – Day 1: Acquisition & Setup
• From iPad to Surface – Day 2: Sandy Killed my Power
• Bonus Post: You Want to Buy a Surface, but What is Windows RT?
• Bonus Post: Developing Apps for Microsoft Surface, Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Phone 8
• Bonus Page: Infragistics NetAdvantage for Windows UI – Developer Controls for Windows 8 & Windows RT

Tweaking Tablet Settings

Show a new car to a “car guy” (or Beth Massi) and the first thing he’ll want to do is pop the hood. They want to see the “guts” of the car, the engine, what makes it “rev”, but what they mainly want to see is the POWER under the hood! I’m not a car guy, so most of this is lost on me. I am a proud geek though.

Show a new device to a geek, and we usually have a similar reflex: we’ll usually fire up that section of the operating system showing us the various specs and available configuration options. We want to see how fast it is, how much RAM it has, and what we can tweak. Some people want devices that “just work”. Few things are configurable, they don’t ask too many questions, they’re happy with the way things were laid out for them, and if some configuration option is not available to them, they’ll go out of their way to tell you they don’t need it. Most of these people usually line-up outside of Apple Stores to pay an extra $600 for a 5th row of icons. They love Apple.

Other people want control. They want to be able to tweak any setting they want to make the device work in whichever way they want. When they have enough rope to hang themselves, they’ll ask for more slack and tell you they don’t need spotting anymore. These people want to pick exactly the screen size they want, how much storage is needed, they can tell you why they need 4 cores instead of 2, they’ll jailbreak any iDevice that comes their way and they’re very opinionated about Apple. They love Android.

Where does the Surface fit in? Who will it attract? The iFanbois or the Droid Widget Lovers? Let’s explore the question.

iPad Settings

The screenshot above shows the settings “app” built-in iOS for the iPad (Wi-Fi only version). The user interface is simple enough, easy to navigate and you don’t really need a user manual to figure things out. It can be a little hard to remember where stuff is sometimes. For example, instead of having a separate category for network settings, you have to go under “General” to find Network settings on a 3G/4G device, or the VPN settings and iTunes Wi-Fi Sync, yet the Wi-Fi configuration gets its own tab/page.

The iOS configuration options give you a fair degree of latitude, but Apple doesn’t give you enough rope to hang yourself. Things you can tweak include:

• Which apps can send notifications or not. You can also turn off all notifications altogether via the new “Do Not Disturb” mode.
• Background images to use on your lock screen or as your main wallpaper.
• Getting stats about how many songs, videos, photos, apps (I have 350?), and such are on your iPad, how much storage is available .
• Auto-Lock, pin & rotation settings
• Which sounds to play and for what system events, though you can only pick built-in sounds. You can’t pick your own.
• Configure Siri’s language settings.
• Date, time, keyboard, input languages, accessibility and more.

This settings screen also contains a whole list of all the apps on your iPad that expose their settings to iOS. This way you know where to look to change any app setting since everything is centralized. I like that, although I’ve seen apps that don’t expose their settings like this. It’s also annoying when you’re inside an app and you want to tweak settings and you’re forced to leave the app to go to the iOS Settings to adjust them. Some apps expose both, but it’s not a very consistent story.

Overall, this is not bad and I have rarely encountered situations where I found the lack of iPad customization annoying. I’m sure some Android users would cry foul here. I have an Android tablet but I don’t use it much. Then again, now that I see what the Surface has to offer, I guess iOS could do a bit more.

Surface Settings

Windows RT has a Settings “app” similar to the iPad’s. You simply swipe your finger from the right edge of the touch screen to display the Charms bar. From there, you can access Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings. Selecting Settings expands a second panel with more options. This is where the Surface shines: that panel shows context-sensitive settings based on which app is currently in the foreground. This is cool because it creates a consistent experience. If you want to tweak the settings for any app, swipe the right edge, pick the Settings charm, and there you are.

The Settings panel also contains common “quick setting” options that are visible from any apps (see screenshot above), i.e. the kind of stuff you will use the most, such as wireless network, volume & mute, screen brightness & orientation lock, notifications silence, power (sleep, shutdown, restart), and keyboard input. You also get a link to display PC settings, which loads the screen shown below.

The Notifications setting is cool since it allows you to “mute” notifications for 1, 3 or 8 hours, basically the equivalent of a meeting, a movie or for the night.Nice touch, I love it. The iPad has the “Do not disturb” setting, but it’s easy to forget to turn it back on later.

The PC settings section includes many more options, quite similarly to what the iPad offers. Things you can configure include:

• Setting your lock screen picture to a preset or one of your own. The Start screen offers 20 background patterns and a palette of 25 color themes, but sadly you cannot use your own wallpaper image here. That makes me sad. I can see people creating cool background images that flow well with the Live Tiles. I hope this changes in the future.
• Change user settings, account picture, password & pin.
• See which other users have accounts on this tablet. Now, THAT is cool. It,s pretty much standard fare for Windows to have multiple user accounts on the same computer, but it’s unheard of for iOS. This probably stems from the fact that iOS was initially create for phones, which are very personal devices and you usually don’t share them. Tablets however are another story. I know many families that only have one iPad (especially given the price) and everyone plays tug-of-war with it. Supporting multiple accounts recognizes that tablets are computers and can be shared, whether at home or at work.
• Enabling/disabling notifications across the board, or at the app level.
• Enabling/disabling search at the app level, and deleting your search history.
• Managing which apps to share.
• Date & time settings.
• Turning app switching on and off, including the left edge gesture.
• Tweak keyboard behaviors, such as when to insert text suggestions, adding spaces after a suggestion, capitalize the first letter of each sentence, and such. This is nice. All tablet keyboards take a lot of liberties to make your life easier, but sooner or later you encounter a behavior you could do without. Android let’s you download whole new keyboards from the Play Store. iOS tells you “this is the keyboard we designed and you shouldn’t want it any other way”. Granted, the iOS keyboard IS awesome, I love it, but one size never fits all. Apple needs to recognize that. I guess the new iPad Mini is proof they are starting to get it.
• Control privacy settings.
• Manage other compatible devices, such as sending docs to the XPS Document Writer (seriously, who uses XPS?), sending to OneNote, and communicating with your other Windows PCs, Xbox 360 consoles and other wireless devices (I can actually see my Panasonic TV in there).
• Other settings like wireless radios, airplane mode, accessibility (with full voice support!), joining a homegroup, and Windows Updates.

App-sensitive search, share and external device integration is something that is exclusive to Windows 8 & Windows RT. iOS has some level of integration with Apple TV but you also need to have a shared computer with an iTunes setup on it to enable it.

The best part of Windows 8 and Windows RT settings is SkyDrive. By default, all your Windows 8 computers and Windows RT devices are all linked via SkyDrive, which is tied to your Microsoft Account. This means that setting your lock screen picture on one automatically sets it on the others, but you can disable that too.

Another example: I’m French-Canadian, from Montreal, and even though 99.999% of what I type is in English, I always use the French-Canadian keyboard mapping. I’ve been using it for over 25 years and I’m used to it. I used to have to change the keyboard mapping on all my computers, but not anymore. I set my mapping on my Windows 8 laptop, and it was automatically picked-up on a Samsung Series 7 tablet I use and on my Surface too. This is a great innovation. Apple syncs a few things in iCloud like Safari browser favorites, but not much more. They need to step up the sync game.

Overall I’m very pleased with the level of settings on the Surface. I’m sure I’ll find a few things I wish I could change later down the road, but then again, if a setting is not there, it turns out there is another place where I can look…

Surface Desktop & Control Panel

Today is Halloween. Wanna see something scary? Here goes… the screenshot above WAS TAKEN ON A SURFACE RT!!! MUWAHAHAHA!!!

Yeah, no kidding, this assortment of windows reminiscent of a tech support session on Windows 7 is indeed fully available on Windows RT. The full Windows 8 Control Panel is in fact still available in Windows RT. I was shocked to see this. I knew RT was to have a desktop to keep supporting Office and other first-part Microsoft apps (you cannot install your own desktop apps on a Windows RT device), but I figured we would barely notice the desktop and would hardly know it’s there.

Boy, was I wrong!

You get the full desktop experience (sans Start button, of course). You can pin stuff to the taskbar, there,s a System Tray with a clock and tray icons you can customize, you can put shortcuts on the desktop, set your own wallpaper, right click the desktop to personalize the desktop icons or manage the screen resolution and external displays. You even get a desktop version of Internet Explorer! Missing are the gadgets that were introduced in Windows Vista and still available in Windows 7. Those are gone since they were essentially replaced by the Windows Store apps and their Live Tiles.

Having access to the full Windows 8 Control panel is both a blessing and a curse. Power users and developers like me will love it since the degree of control is unparalleled. I’m afraid it will scare some people once they stumble into those settings. I like the iOS approach where there is only one Settings area where you can control a number of things under the hood. The Windows Control Panel essentially virtually allows you to take the engine apart, and this is something many users don’t want to, and shouldn’t do.

I’m also worried that many will see the Surface as a full fledged computer, and that might scare them into thinking the Windows world is once again too complicated. iOS offers a degree of simplicity that is very welcome to many, even diehard Microsofties like me. Time will tell if including so much of the Windows Desktop and Control Panel is an adoption deterrent or not.

Day 3 Summary

I did not dive deep into ALL the settings of either device. I’m sure I’ll get comments telling me “Hey, you forgot setting X on iOS, no fair”. It’s ok, the idea was to give you an overview of how things work in both worlds. The Surface offers a greater degree of configuration and customization, but the iPad offers a simplified and centralized model that is more user-friendly. Both have their merits. Power users will feel at home on the Surface, but non-techies and common folk might find the iPad more reassuring.

Which side are you on?

If you have any questions about Surface, including suggestions for future topics to explore in this series, questions about my experiences with the Surface vs. iPad, or any other tablet, feel free to ask them in the comments section below, or contact me on Twitter at @ActiveNick.

If you’re a developer interested in building apps for Surface, Windows 8 and Windows RT, Infragistics has the right tools for you with the new NetAdvantage for Windows UI. You should also follow @infragistics on Twitter.

Did you buy a Surface or other Windows RT tablet? Are you waiting for the Windows 8 Pro tablets? What are some of the key apps you want to see on Surface? Do you want a tablet experience where everything is mostly set for you like the iPad? Or do you want the ultimate tweaking & customization experience like Android? Let me know.

See you tomorrow!