In Pictures: App wars - Windows 8 Metro vs. the iPad

Microsoft's Metro environment in Windows 8 and Windows RT takes the iPad approach to apps, but is it better?

Browser: Metro loses

The IE10 browser in Metro (the "regular" one is available on the Windows Desktop side) is very slick and simple. The Control bar at top shows thumbnails of open Web pages, and when you open a new browser tab, you get icons for both your bookmarked pages and frequently visited pages. HTML5 support is decent, but behind iOS's.

But the lack of folders and other real bookmark management functions means IE10 is hard to use outside of casual browsing of a few favored sites. And navigating among browser pages can be confusing -- sometimes sideways swiping moves through open tabs, sometimes it doesn't. The bottom line is that Metro's IE10 is more simplistic than simple.

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