Last night's Microsoft Surface(Tablet) Keynote (Full MP4 Video) | Hacker News Reader

Last night's Microsoft Surface(Tablet) Keynote (Full MP4 Video)

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23 pointskyriakos23 comments

I like the subtle dig at apple when they are talking about the antenna "no matter how you hold it".

"The keyboard can measure the exact force exerted" We can finally have games which understand urgency :)

This could help the dire state of driving games on the PC. To play a driving game properly you need at least a joypad (or ideally a dedicated wheel). Of course most people's PCs only have a keyboard and a mouse.

This is because you need to be able to give gradual controls for things like steering and throttle. A keyboard that solves this problem would be great.

Force exertion can really be another neat signal, We can probably make the confirmation boxes go away if delete is pressed with a lot of force.

This is really something which we expect out of natural input devices. I can't count the instances where I used to press the keys harder in fighting games just to hit the other person harder.

That is true, but I guess it would need to be calibrated on a per person basis. I know people who really give their keyboards a thumping just in the normal process of typing.

I'm really looking forward to the next generation of keyboards , with things like dynamic displays on the keys (so that it shows application specific function labels on the keys themselves) and also this.

I have heard many people say that the keyboard is dead, which I don't believe for a second but it is certainly high time that it evolved.

Who cares about the games, think of all the pointy haired bosses who can impart the necessary urgency and importance in their Outlook emails and Powerpoint spreadsheets!

"You can use all the applications that you're familiar with." (19:58)

Hm. Are applications sandboxed? That is, do I have to worry about running antivirus software on the device?

It's not needed in WinRT mode, because WinRT apps can be installed from marketplace. You might wanna install AV for desktop mode though (in case of Win8Pro version).

Thank you for the link. Was eager to watch the announcement as the videos available on the web don't tell much and does not show somebody interacting with the tablet.

Just a thought on the presentation itself -- they seem to be relying on a teleprompter too much. Either that, or the prompter is located in a really bad spot.

how do you think this affects the OEM's that will release Windows 8 tablets and ultrabooks? is this considered competition or a 'paradigm' like google's nexus?

personally I was planning to buy a Windows 8 tablet (x86 one) and even after last night's presentation i'm still considering Acer Iconia W700

Well some reports yesterday considered this as sort of a reference design but MS showed how good they can be at hardware. I can't imagine anyone not wanting to choose the Surface first over an OEM unless it's due to price.

I think it also shows the internal conflict of MS. Ballmer spoke of the integration between hardware and software much like Apple has done. We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the OEM on a large level such as a Dell and HP.

One thing I noticed here. I'd actually like to have on of these but I'm not too psyched about running Windows on it.

Is it possible that MS is in fact better at hardware than they are at software? MS mice have certainly been popular over the years, also see the Xbox 360 control pad which beats any other pad I have ever used.

Isn't there any YouTube link? Or Vimeo? The file is downloading very slowly for me. Not even enough to stream.

A search for 'surface keynote' yields, as the top hit, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCmudUDv3GA

"Whoops".

From this it seems pretty certain that the resolution of at least the pro version is 1080p (25:58). And the strong implication is that the RT version is 1366x768, which works out to 208 ppi for the pro version and 148 ppi for the regular version.

I wasn't watching it really carefully, but wasn't it that they just specified that the output of HDMI and DVI can handle those?

I'm at ~30 min still though.

He says "the apps that I've been showing you, they look really great in the native resolution of the screen, the 1080 resolution", that's very unambiguous.

Also, they refer to the resolution as "HD" and "Full HD", which is also a rather unambiguous description of 720p and 1080p.

lol. Typical Microsoft. In the middle of the presentation the "surface" stops working. The the guy swaps it with another to continue the show. Its around minute 14. Fail.

Isn't that sort of hiccup par for the course at these sorts of events? I assume the best you can hope for is to handle them gracefully when they arise.

I was about to say. Stuff like this happens to the best of us. Look at any Apple press event and you'll see several machines lined up - and in fact, Jobs has had his hiccups as well during keynotes.

If this is regarded as a "fail", than the OP clearly has never held any serious presentation that involved hardware and software.

To be fare apple has its own share on 'fail' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsKKQNZG3rE

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