With Surface tanking, Microsoft digs faster
semiaccurate.com
semiaccurate.com
I'm no fan of the Surface or Windows 8, but this is just ridiculous.
In any case; I am not sure there are any unbiased articles in the tale of Windows 8.
For what it's worth, the article does have some facts in it (you just have to read through all the clutter of Microsoft bashing), that OEMs are not happy about the Surface and that certainly not going to be pleased by Microsoft's decision to sell it outside of their own stores and website.
It's hard to dig the facts out of the machine. I was sitting in a Windows 8/Azure presentation last week and ask the Microsoft presenter several uncomfortable questions that he didn't want to answer. :(
The only serious problem I have with Microsoft, and it is really quite a serious problem, is that you have no idea how committed they are to any of their technologies and once you've been bitten the n'th time, for n >> 0, you just desperately want to be in control of you own stack, and so you own destiny.
Technology wise Azure is quite MS-agnostic, and that's the smartest thing they could have ever done with it. That said, their documentation has move from being developer-friendly to being a collection of marketing-friendly bullet points intended for pointy-haired bosses to inflict on their dev teams.
Still, xradionut, would love to hear the uncomfortable questions you posed. They'd help me decide if there's more than the devil in the lack of architectural details.
I've found the blog Scary DBA's series of articles on the author's experience with his Surface to be quite interesting. The general shape of the story is that the first couple articles started out fairly enthusiastic, then the tone moved to one of frustration as he documented all the technical problems he was running into. Lately they've been a bit more upbeat; he seems to have reached a state of equanimity.
"Fearful of losing ad contracts, most sites pointed out that this was actually a clear indicator of the success of Surface, it was doing great, the entire OEM and partner ecosystem just couldn’t match Microsoft’s superior design prowess."
I guess they somewhat allude to their journalistic abilities with their domain name.
Example? "painfully awful reviews of a product no one wants".
A quick Google and it's clear this is nonsense.
That said I won't be buying a Surface, because I'm perfectly happy with the iPad and iPhone and iMac set-up I have. A few years ago I would never have said I would have all Apple products, but seeing Windows 8 on the desktop convinced me to make the switch.
Even some of my hardcore Redmond loving co-workers have been playing with Linux and we have discuss the possibility of utilizing some of the nifty Python/C data tools that have matured over the last decade for analysis and ETL.
And they raise hell about why their favorite ms-praising article was flagged to death.
Let's hope that means more Ubuntu/Linux laptops in the near future, and laptops that are actually $100 cheaper than their Windows counterparts, not $300 more expensive, like that Dell one.
what is the downside to this? i can't see any....