People compare Microsoft's Surface tablet to Apple's iPad. Some favor the Surface, others favor the iPad. But this is a false comparison.
Both the Surface and iPad are tablets. But they serve two different markets. The iPad is designed for consumers; the Surface is designed for businessmen.
The iPad is easy to use. It has lots of games and consumer-oriented apps. One can play music, read books, and play games. One can get apps for banking, for reminders, and for adjusting photographs. But it doesn't have apps for the workhorses of today's office: the Microsoft Office programs.
The Surface is designed for the office. It comes with 'home' versions of the Microsoft Office products, and 'real' versions are promised. (I suspect that the difference is mostly one of licenses.)
The Surface is less a general tablet and more a "tablet for running Office". It also happens to run other programs, but don't let that fool you. It's primary purpose is to be the tablet platform for MS Office. The innards of Windows RT use a number of old Microsoft technologies -- just the things needed to run the Microsoft Office suite.
As a specialized tablet, I expect that MS Office and the MS Surface will grow in parallel. New versions of MS Office will take advantage of new features in Windows RT and Surface tablets. Enhancements to tablets will be designed to support new versions of MS Office.
Heck, using this logic, Windows RT is simply a platform on which to run MS Office. It is an "Office operating system".
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