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:
- 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
Is it Friday already?
It seems it was just a couple posts ago that I covered the Windows Phone App for Surface in Favorite Fridays… and it was. Time flies and it’s been a busy week. I find myself wondering which Windows Store app to cover in this week’s Favorite Fridays. I’ll be honest with you: it’s slim pickings in the Windows Store and I’m at a loss. There may now be over 16,000 Windows Store apps worldwide (over 10,000 in the US), but many big brands are still missing and very few apps truly stand out.
I’m looking at my current library of installed apps and many of them are basically the “Surface picks”. You can find the usual culprits like USA Today, New York Times, Engadget (still in preview), NBC News, ABC News, Wall Street Journal, eBay, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Kindle, ABC Player, and Flixter.
There are other apps I use but either I need to play with them some more, or I’m not totally happy with them to feature them here yet. The Zinio digital magazines app was recently updated and works much better now, but I’ll have to use it more to comment on it. News Bento is positioning itself to be a true Flipboard replacement but still has many issues I want to see resolved before I switch away from Nextgen Reader.
There are apps that look really cool from the outside, but soon fall apart when you start using them. Jon Stuart’s The Daily Show Headlines app suffers from many data issues, locks up often, isn’t showing the latest videos, most videos are dated January 1st 0001, doesn’t have full episodes and is just a pale shadow of the iOS version. The same goes for the Dilbert app. You can read the last few comic strips but there is not full archive access and the UI is so simple it’s just plain bad.
Finally, my Twitter woes continue. Tweetro and MetroTwit are still light years behind my beloved Twiterrific on iOS, and I pretty much gave up on Rowi too.
So what app should I cover today?
It’s an app I stumbled upon yesterday. It’s a super obvious household name, but it certainly not the first name that comes to mind when you use a Microsoft Surface…
Google App
That’s right. Google published a Windows Store app. You have to give props to Google and Microsoft. They understand the fragmented nature of the mobile ecosystem. Microsoft has already published several apps on iOS and Android, like Bing, Skype, OneNote, SkyDrive, Xbox Smartglass, Live Messenger, Lync and Halo Waypoint. They even published games like Kinectimals for iOS and Android, and there are rumors that Office is coming to these two rival platforms.
In turn, Google also plays nice with Microsoft with a Google app on Windows Phone. Even though their relationship soured with Apple, Google still has a number of iOS apps like Google+, Google Search, Chrome browser, Google Drive, Google Earth, Google Translate, Gmail and others. It’s also rumored that Google is working to bring back Google Maps to disgruntled Apple Maps users.
It seems Google is ready to recognize that Windows 8 and Windows RT are not going away anytime soon. They’re embracing the platform with what I hope will be a long line of Windows Store apps, starting with the Google app.
Why Google on Surface Matters
The Google app’s primary purpose is of course searching the Web. It supports your Google ID and remembers you after being logged in. The base experience is very similar to the one in the Google app for iOS. The Home screen displays the ubiquitous search bar, as well as icons to access your History, Apps and Voice Search. Unlike the iOS version, the Windows Store Google app sadly doesn’t support Google Goggles. This is especially disappointing since Microsoft doesn’t offer its rival Bing Vision service on Surface either.
There are two reasons why I picked the new Google app for Favorite Fridays:
Google is the leading Search Engine
My favorite search engine back in the 90’s was AltaVista. Newer engines were appearing like Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and MSN, but I stayed loyal to AltaVista… until Google came. I resisted that movement a bit but it soon became obvious that Google was crushing the competition with their superior results, blazing speed and lightweight UI. More than 10 years later, Google still commands over 60% of the search engine market share. I personally switched to Bing in late 2008 (it was live.com back then) and haven’t looked back. I personally prefer Bing overall, but only 15% of the population agrees with me. To each their own.
It’s very important to have solid Google support on Surface. Despite the built-in Bing, people will expect it and the European Commission will be happy.
You can talk to Google
This feature was the clincher for me: search via voice recognition. Just like the iOS version, it’s dead simple and it works, very well. Ever since Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, I’ve been enamored with HAL 9000 (as have millions of other geeks been too) and I’ve been dreaming of the day we’d have conversations with computers. For some reason Apple’s Siri just isn’t doing it for me, but something as simple as the Google app Voice Search got me fired up.
Just launch Voice Search via the icon at the bottom right in the Google app.
When launching this feature, the app will ask you for permission to use your microphone, just accept and move on. I was still getting some error about microphone access, so I had to go back to the home screen and select Voice Search again. Everything worked well after that.
A huge red microphone tells you to speak your search query. The app does not seem smart enough to drop the term “search” if you say “Search bacon shortage”. It’ll actually include the word “search” in your query. To search for something, simply say what you would type in the search box without adding any extra commands. As soon as there is a short pause, the search will be executed without any need to say “Enter!”, or “Go!” or “Make it so!”
From this point on, you get the default Google experience, as you would in any web browser. Don’t expect anything special. The app won’t read results back to you. You’re expected to read the results on screen, not Google stuff while driving.
What else can this app do?
Google Apps
The Google app also features a collection of Google Applications. I was semi-excited to see what would show up when I tapped the “Applications” box in the middle of the home screen. I was greeted by a palette of application icons matching the popular offerings from Google: From Gmail and Maps to Google + and YouTube.
The excitement died. It turns out these are just quick shortcuts to various websites, offering nothing more than what’s available in a browser. These are not app screens or Metro redesigns, these are just HTML5 pages wrapped in a native Windows Store app. It’s a small convenience and nothing more.
This web page-driven experience is not unlike the iPad version of this same app. Google for iOS also offers a variety of shortcuts to embedded web pages like Google+ and Reader, but it also acts as a launcher for other Google apps available in the Apple iTunes Store for iOS, such as Google Drive, Chrome, Google Earth and a few others. Hopefully Google will release more apps in the Windows Store and integrate them with this app in the future.
The Google Maps page is bound to be a popular choice, but don’t get your hopes up. The performance is actually quite disappointing. The culprit is actually Internet Explorer 10 on Surface RT. These Google web pages may be in a Google app, but this is still using a wrapped IE10 control, not Chrome. If you open Google Maps in the native IE10 app, you’ll note the same deplorable performance. You better stick to the built-in Bing Maps app in the foreseeable future.
The Google Reader app simply links to the Google Reader web page as well, but for some reason we’re redirected to the mobile view. If you want to read your Google Reader feeds, don’t even bother with this page here, just use Nextgen Reader or News Bento.
I was curious to see how the YouTube experience would be. There is no default YouTube player on Surface and I was hoping for this Google app to give me this experience. This is also just a YouTube web page.
I ran into some issues when I tried to access YouTube. First, the browser control itself complained that “Part of this webpage is not supported and may not render properly”, offering to open the page in my default browser. This is not a good experience.
Secondly, the YouTube page told me I needed to upgrade my Adobe Flash Player. I tried to tap the provided link, and after many failed attempts, the page finally loaded, only to tell me that the Flash Player is already built-in both versions of IE10 in Windows 8 and Windows RT, and there’s nothing else to download. Again, another confusing experience for average users out there.
I was eventually able to select videos and play them. Upon right-clicking the video I discovered it was actually using an HTML5 player. Why was YouTube complaining about Adobe Flash then?
This is why we need real Windows Store apps and not lazy web pages in a wrapper.
Another drawback of the web page approach. I found it hard to hit the video controls with fingers. Those were designed for a mouse. It’s a good thing I do have a trackpad on the TouchCover, but this needs to be more touch-friendly.
Swiping from the top or bottom edge of the screen (or right-clicking the screen with a mouse) reveals an application bar and alternate view. From this view you can view your search history (also accessible from the Home screen History button), go back to the Home screen, view a Tutorial or initiate a Voice Search from anywhere in the app. The Tutorial is actually helpful and I recommend going through it once for any new user of this app.
Search Charm & Settings
Google knows how to play nice with the Windows 8 design guidelines. The Google app actually supports the Windows 8 / Windows RT Search charm. Initiate any search within your Surface and the Google app shows up in the list Search-compatible apps. This list gets pretty long so I suggest pinning the Google app to the top via a tap & hold if you think you’ll search with Google a lot.
The App Settings for the Google app are simple enough but useful. They are accessible via the Settings charm and allow you to:
- Turn Instant search on or off
- Enable/disable Voice Search
- Enable/disable Personalized Search
- Clear your search/browsing history on this device. Note this only affects the Google app, not your whole IE10 history
- Record history on the device or not
Summary: Moar appz plz. kthxbai!
The Google app is a decent start, but it’s not enough. Those app shortcuts will have to become real apps in their own right.
I also hope we eventually get the ability to launch the app via voice commands too. For this we’d need built-in voice search at the operating system level like we have in Windows Phone 8. It’s on Microsoft to deliver.
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? Are you happy with Bing search on Surface or you ignored it to use Google.com in your browser on Day 1?
Let me know.