How to save Windows Surface? | Hacker News Reader

How to save Windows Surface?

datagenetics.com

20 pointssqueakynick49 comments

No, that's not the problem.

The problem is that they've now got three operating systems: a phone OS, a tablet OS and a productivity OS. They should have stuck to two.

The Surface RT should have been a branded as Metro (along with WP!). The OS should have been licensed at a low cost (not the $80 Windows fee). It should have cost $400 at release, with the cover keyboard.

The Surface PRO should be an Air++ - the logical evolution of the Air concept. A small, light but fully featured computer. Only they could have made it smarter. Sell it with a hub which connects the Surface to monitors + KB/mouse whilst home. Make that switch to desktop mode automatically (with an override button, aka the orientation switch on the iPad).

PCs: the whole Metrofication of Windows 8 stinks of arrogance and head-up-ass syndrome. Yes, offer it as an option. Yes, bring the visual style to all of your tooling (it's pretty!). But no, don't do it in a way that makes working with a keyboard/mouse painful, breaks multi-screen support, breaks a whole host of games and only works to annoy your customers.

Instead, offer it as an option: if the user has a touchscreen installed, ask them what they prefer. Make it easy to switch. Heck, switch automatically (like what I suggested with the Surface Pro). Heck, open that up via APIs, and let smart companies do cool stuff with it.

Instead we have someone senior at Microsoft trying to turn himself into Steve Jobs by copying his negative traits - stubbornness and ego - without having the brilliant vision and marketing ability to make it actually, you know, work.

The Metrofication of Windows 8 hasn't even been extended to other programs. The whole ALL CAPS nonsense that VS and Office embraced isn't found in Windows 8. (Not to mention, it seems haphazardly applied in VS/Office; some things are caps, others aren't. There's no rhyme or reason that I've discovered as a user.)

Windows Phone does use all caps titles, though in a more subtle way. In general Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Office 2013/VS 2012 all seem to interpret Metro in a different way, with a surprising amount of inconsistency between WP/W8.

In my opinion giving bounties to developers is a flawed idea. Devs may be motivated to do an app, but if the userbase is small, they will simply cut corners, and do the bare minimum, forgetting about support and further development after the bounty was acquired.

In other words - if there are no users, a bounty will not convince devs to build a reasonable product, as there will be no incentive to do so. If there are users within the ecosystem, then the bounty is unnecessary.

That is why so far the bounty programs did little to improve the ecosystems.

A nice idea someone posted here in the comments - instead of giving devs bounty money, Microsoft could give free cash to users left & right, so they'd spend it on the apps. This would force the devs to not only do an app, but do a really good app...

I like your idea, and I think it should be a bit of column A and column B. Kickstart the platform from both ends, users and developers and then let the momentum ride itself from then on.

Alternatively, create startups using a fund (I know that Google and Apple have both done this - but only really could find the iFund [1] )

Benefits: * Not free cash * Startups own their product, but are forced to develop for your platform * Multiplies the amount of money * Allows some form of control through stock ownership * Can pay for itself if the platform is successful.

Cons: * Requires more overhead * Fund management needs to be trusted * Startups thus created could "branch out" of your platform, thus creating competition (see. Spotify - now competes with iTunes).

Personally, I see most of the negatives as "good problems to have", esp. when you're about 3+ years behind existing (and rapidly growing) platforms (in the case of Apple, that was vs. Windows/Web and in the case of Microsoft, it would be iOS/Android).

[1] http://www.kpcb.com/initiatives/ifund/

Blackberry paid bounties for every app developed in their store, and they got what they paid for - developers repackaged worthless content like wallpapers in the form of "apps" and listed them in the thousands. They made a killing. I don't think RIM really cared one way or the other, because they were looking to plump up that meaningless statistic that the press bandies around. Look, we have M apps in N months, check dat growth!

Microsoft does this. I have helped port a few apps that are popular on other platforms. The incentive for the company was, in fact, quite sizable.

Yes, they do. I've worked at two companies where they've offered to pay for development and/or help with the ports themselves. (EDIT: for Windows Phone, though)

We they even gave me a free phone to port over a small hobby ios app. The phone is fine but it smells like desperation.

To have the honor to be a developer on their platforms, we have to pay Microsoft 49€ per year for Windows and 99€ per year for Windows Phone. That's the opposite of a bounty.

They have tried this, I used to work for a company that makes an app for Android and iPhone. The app isn't great in itself, but it's part of a bigger service, and was even featured in an iPhone ad at one point.

Microsoft said that they'd pay $100,000 towards an app for WP7 but we said no. It sounds like a great deal, but the problem is that making the app is just the first part. You're now on the hook for maintaining the app, providing customer support, fixing bugs, adding new features etc...

If MS provided a guarantee that they'd pay for the ongoing support costs, that'd be one thing, but I'd imagine that would get very expensive very quickly.

Depends what the app is.

We were asked to take part in such an offering for our portal but we declined as there is little point in making an app when you already have a working mobile site that is tested on the platform in question.

Whilst I really like WP, this is not the way to promote your platform.

I want a surface, but everytime I get close to buying I do the same thing every time I consider buying a tablet, realize I have a laptop. Android, iOS, Surface, doesn't matter, they're all a luxury for people who already own a laptop or smartphone. Doesn't help that I already have a WP8 phone.

They're nice when you are on the couch or lounging in bed... at a coffee shop. And they're cheap. I use mine mostly for netflix. Got rid of the TV and cable, so it has actually saved me money.

Unless you are struggling, I would say give it a try. The Nexus 7 is a good low-cost choice if you are unsure, and you could trade up later if you decide you need more power.

I guess the reason I don't find surface interesting is I don't use a computer on the couch or go to coffee shops.

I do watch my TV close to a full on desktop computer and my Galaxy Note II takes care of everything else including bathroom computing.

A Note is a tablet for all intents...

I agree with you, if you already have a laptop, then another device can be a luxury. I purchased a Surface Pro about three weeks ago, my 2005 Macbook died. I had been using my girlfriend's Surface RT for work, and that sufficed for three months. But, I missed running Adobe CS, and it wasn't my machine. After ten years of using OSX I turned to Windows.

The Pro has tackled all the tasks, I've thrown at it so far. For example, I recently worked on a case study for a startup I work with. That meant writing, doing interviews, researching, and some graphic design. A good amount of work was done in Google Docs. But, the rest of my work flow lived in OneNote, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

At one point I had Illustrator, Photoshop, Chrome, Metro IE, and Xbox Music running, without any hiccups. This was all while sitting at 1871, a collaborative workspace in Chicago. A laptop can handle this right? Yeah. But, the Surface is a tablet, that costs 799-899 dollars. Before, I purchased the Pro, I was looking at getting a Macbook Air or a Macbook Pro. The Macbook Pro was out of my price range, and the Air was a close competitor. I mention cost to make a point on the price to value ratio for this machine.

The Surface is the sum of its parts. It has a high DPI screen, headphone jack, a digitizer, a kickstand, a USB port, MircoSD card slot, and a mini DVI port. At home it sits alongside a monitor, acting like a desktop.

The Surface Pro, has quickly become one of my favorite pieces of technology, in a long time. The battery life could be better, and not every piece of software is optimized to work well on the screen. But, overall, its a dream to use on a daily basis. In my head this is what a tablet should be. Maybe, it was the idea of the iPad, I wished existed, before it was officially announced. Before, Steve Jobs, unveiled a 10 inch tablet that ran iOS not OSX.

PS. After using both Surfaces for a while now, I came to realization that there should be more than one type of input for devices. We have an iMac at home, I have to make an effort to not touch the screen!

I think what you're attesting to is that the Surface Pro is not a bad or uncompetitive device, as I've heard elsewhere, and e.g. Wikipedia reports that Bloomberg reports that as of March 2013, total Surface sales were 1.5 million, with the Pro accounting for 1.1 million of them.

Which echoes what you say about what was in competition for your dollars, not iPads but real, not locked down with lots of software available laptops. E.g. the Pro is a niche product like Apple's OS X ones are now. The real trouble for Microsoft is how badly they executed on the Surface RT, and how many 10s billions of dollars they're letting their competitors snap up.

Yes, Microsoft did a terrible job communicating what the Surface RT is, what it does, and why it mattered.

I have used it extensively. Even then, I would not compare the Surface RT to an iPad. It is closer to a Chrome Laptop. Sure the RT runs apps, and is a tablet. But, in reality, it runs a full fledge browser and Microsoft Office 2013. When I was using the RT, I spent all of my time in the browser; Google Apps, Basecamp & Campfire, and soundcloud, and Office. Sometimes, I would treat it like a tablet, and watch a movie side-loaded. (My lady uses Netflix and Hulu on it almost everyday at home)

I remember the day, my girlfriend purchased the RT. We were walking in the mall, she walked into the Apple store, picked up an iPad. Then she walked over to the Macbooks and couldn't make a decision. She wanted a tablet, but really needed some laptop functionality. We left the Apple store thinking, an iPad would probably be the best choice. This mall happened to have a Microsoft store, and there it was, the Surface. We were both taken in by the colorful keyboards, and the sleek metallic feel of it. But, we knew after a few minutes of playing around, it lacked an App eco-system!

Neither of us, knew that it had full Office, and that it had a desktop mode(app). Or why those would even mattered on a tablet! None of the store's employees were of much help. While I was playing with the kickstand, she came over and showed me the type keyboard. I hadn't cared much for it, it didn't look as cool. The keyboard made a huge difference in the usability of the device. It all made sense to me then. The Surface RT isn't a consumption tablet, its a modern day netbook that doubles as a tablet. It could hold its own in the real world.

That day she left with Surface RT. This was back in October, almost a year ago. Since, then the Surface RT has proven to be a failure in the market. But, I don't blame the device. The RT was the wrong device to take on the directly iPad. The RT is in its own category, as is the Pro. I see both tablets as a potential future for computing devices. Unfortunately, Microsoft did not communicate that, they barely communicated anything.

"The Surface RT isn't a consumption tablet, its a modern day netbook that doubles as a tablet."

Oh my, if they'd just pointed out that critical distinction with the iOS ecosystem....

Which e.g. absolutely forbids running programming languages, e.g. Gambit-C, a Scheme that's very suitable for devices, got kicked off the store, and despite being a former Apple Fellow hired by Steve Jobs, Alan Kay couldn't get the latest version of Smalltalk or the version for kids in the store. A quick check of the Windows Store found e.g. an "InstantRuby" that runs it on the system. There's even very appropriately a free BASIC ^_^.

"Buy your children iPads and they'll be consumers. Buy them RTs and they'll be producers."

The problem is that they called both devices Surface, when they were clearly two different devices. One is a "laptop" with desktop mode, and the other is a tablet with only Metro UI. To make matters worse, both devices ran "Windows". But one "Windows" ran Photoshop, and the other "Windows" didn't. Apple did the right thing by making a clear distinction between OS X and iOS. It gives users clear expectations and doesn't create confusion and disappointment.

The only thing wrong with Surface RT is MS saying that it runs Windows, which in most people's minds means mouse and keyboard. MS should have scaled up WP8 to tablets and called it something like Metro OS.

PS: Can MS please rename "Windows Phone 8" to something else without "Windows" in its name?!

I like the concept; amazing and gorgeous machine. I will be in market next year to upgrade my present laptop. Pro solves portability problems, and can be a single machine all over for me. I want Microsoft to pack in state-of-the-art innovation in this package.

Ideally, I want it to have:

- LTE,

- GPS,

- a good Lumia 1020-esqe camera,

- Thunderbolt port,

- Touch cover with good touchpad,

- battery life (Broadwell will help), maybe a keyboard accessory,

- and oodles of RAM and SSD space (or make it upgradable),

- Make good Metro apps for their own products, all of the apps are horrible right now. Every single MS Win 8 is a mess.

I will pay big moolah for this machine.

Or you know - a better solution - allow recompiled programs to be run on the desktop and allow sideloading of metro applications. The surfaces will disappear in a matter of days.

You are talking about Surface RT. Side loading will allow the present troves of ransomware and nasty toolbars to run amok on the Start Screen. And just allowing sideloading will not generate considerable interest among masses, to be frank.

No it won't ... it is very easy to add additional to MS key to allow singing of code.

Sideloading will create interest in geeks and developers. And in some businesses.

Anyway this is very cheap experiment to make ... the tablets are written off and it requires a simple patch.

Enterprises have their own separate store and the Enterprise Surface RTs allow sideloading [1]. And I think XDA developers already have a jailbreak tool and can compile desktop applications on RT [2,3].

[1]- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/jj874388.aspx [2]- http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092158 [3] - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092348

They're too afraid to cannibalize their existing laptop sales, but also not competent enough to jump both-feet-in like Apple.

One part of the company wants Surface to succeed, another is deathly afraid of such success, while knowing that the ground is eroding beneath their feet.

Thanks to the torture that is stacked ranking, these two groups are very invested to fighting each other rather than the company's competitors.

As other users have pointed out, Microsoft actually does a lot of this. If you have a successful app MS will pay you handsomely to port it over.

Honest, the Surface's problem is more perception than anything

How handsomely? Will anyone step up and say? If this is happening, what is the going rate? If you were offered, but did not accept, what value would have changed your mind? (Everyone has a price) Are there really people out there that turned down half a million, a million, five million dollars? Are there smaller companies who would turn down 250K or 100k?

A related but better idea is what Amazon did: create a digital currency and give it to users to buy apps with. App sellers redeem the digital money for real money from Microsoft. Now you're still subsidizing apps but real users decide where the money goes.

Oh, I know what they should do with Surface ! I mean... I know what I wish they would do with Surface:

- Produce a surface pro with 13" mate screen ;

- 128gb ssd at least of whatever performance (upgradeable) ;

- 4GB of RAM (not soldered, upgradeable) ;

- keep the same vapor-mag chassis ;

- 1xHDMI, at least 2xUSB (at least one 3.0), 1xVGA for every situation, 1xEthernet, 1xSD reader ;

- an apple track-pad. Yes, they should buy the license. Stop messing with random knockoffs of lesser quality ;

- no weird 1080p screen on a 13" inch screen. hd+ is fine ;

- a quiet CPU (quiet > power) with IGP.

For the magical price tag of 1000€, VAT included.

And how they should promote it:

- Refresh the line every year or something ;

- don't talk every day about it for 10 months before the next refresh hits the drawing table ;

- talk about it the day before it's available on-line and at retail store ;

- produce one or two versions (10 or 11 and 13 inches) and let people upgrade it the way they see fit.

Basically be an alternative to Apple.

Of course, I am only looking at it through the laptop angle. Not a care for those tablets.

They are sitting on enough cash to try this for 3 years. Play it on the high quality of build and a decent price tag and see what happens.

And make it available in as many countries outside NA.

I would also like:

- LTE,

- GPS,

- a good Lumia 1020-esqe camera,

- Thunderbolt port.

Basically, a state-of-the-art machine (Not that above technology makes it really state-of-the-art). This is MS Research's time to shine.

Sorry, in my opinion only the thunderbolt port might be added (I don't see a lot of use for it yet though).

Other features are tablet/smartphones stuff I don't need to run my computer. Those belongs in a phone/tablet and would only increase the laptop price substantially for a minority of consumer. Let's keep it simple and obvious.

Though there could be some kind of external minimal (in style and in packaging) pci-express add-ons to support GPS, better camera, etc. MS should make money on those.

That's what Lenovo should be doing, too. Properly revive the X-Series with good screens and serious hardware. Except, put a proper screen on. Google ships a 4K screen on a 10" tablet. There's no reason for any 12"+ laptop/tablet to come with less. Your suggestion of HD+ literally means that this 13" device has less pixels than modern phones.

> Your suggestion of HD+ literally means that this 13" device has less pixels than modern phones.

Which isn't a problem in my opinion. 1080p on such a device means you have to scale up fonts and graphics elements to get to sthg like 1366x768 anyway (so things are actually readable). It's not about pixel counts, it's about usable optimal size for things displayed on the screen. Upscaling is bad because it requires more energy and heat more. HD+ or macbook air is enough for laptop resolution.

I forgot to add a good lenovo keyboard (or good island style keyboard but not those mushy surface keyboard).

A: 1366x768 is especially junk, as 720p video is going to get slightly upscaled and blurred. So it's low-res and looks bad for video.

B: Pixel doubling is a fine alternative. I recently saw a MacBook Retina, and I spent 15 minutes just reading colorized HTML because it was so shockingly good looking. Windows 8 (at least the WinRT side) supports scaling much better, and 8.1 is supposed to be able to do 200% (aka perfect) out of the box. So again, they're just lagging by not even offering the option.

C: Not everyone has terrible eyesight. Lenovo offers no 1080p (or higher, like they IBM did) on anything less than their 15" device (and the 11" Helix, I think). There's no excuse for that. I'd be exceedingly content with 4K on a 12" X-Series. I'd be overjoyed even to get 1920x1200 on an X-Series.

Paying developers to write apps only gets you so far, and anyway Microsoft is already doing it.

The main problem right now is they don't have Metro app versions of their own flagship products. When the iPad launched, it launched with Garageband, Pages, Keynote and Numbers in the App Store and ready to go (maybe a few weeks wait for some of them). Windows 8 was rushed and botched, plain and simple. There's just no excuse for launching without at least a plurality of native Metro versions of their flagship apps. You just can't expect third party developers to help float a platform if you don't bootstrap the ecosystem with apps yourself. This has been a problem for Android on tablets as well as Google only provides phone type apps. Relying on third parties means there's a long lag between platform launch and decent app support, and that gap is filled with the sound of crickets chirping and tumbleweeds blowing through your app store. Not a good way to encourage user adoption.

Having said that, from everything I hear the Surface Pro 128 is a great machine. If I hadn't bought into Mac/iOS 6 years ago I'd be tempted.

RIM tried the same thing with the Playbook... We all know how well that worked

RIM shipped it without supplying native email or a calendar, you were supposed to use your normally Blackberry to supply those to it.

Hard to imagine it being successful without such basic functionality, let alone it not being what you'd expect from RIM, it caused more than a little brand damage.

Both Surface tablets should've had the cover included from the start, and honestly the prices should be, oh, $100.00 lower than they are now. The Surfaces remind me of those 2011 era Android tablets running 3.x-decent specs, but poor apps, poor user experience, the same price or more expensive than the iPad, and were usually vaporware (or one small step up from that).

MSFT is in the position Android was back then, the big difference being obviously that Android has moved ahead.

The design of this site is intolerable.

microsoft should understand that mobile is a battle they can never win, they should count their blessings and focus entirely on the enterprise side of their business.

To a large extent Microsoft's success is based on have similar technology (or at least similar looking technology) at both the consumer and enterprise level.

Kids growing up using Windows to play games and browse the internet will find it a very smooth transition to using a Windows PC at work or learning to configure a Windows Server.

Sometimes you don't need to win to make a profit, however. MS does have a huge enterprise business. Now what happens when an enterprise that uses MS computers everywhere, MS servers, MS exchange, etc. wants to add tablets? They are far more likely to chose an MS tablet because they are already running all the MS kit anyway and have all their software and support staff targeted at that. MS even puts forth the non-RT version so the tablet can replace the PC if needed. There are companies with millions of dollars sunk into desktop PC software.

So even if MS never wins in the consumer market and always just runs second third or fourth, having their own in house solution could still be cost effective.

The thing is Win RT it's not anything like previous versions of Windows, both from a user interface standpoint and from API/ABI compatibility standpoint. it does not support Active Directory, fullnExchange or most other Microsoft enterprise integration tech. There is no compelling reason for a corporation to go with surface.

Bizarrely iOS and Android both have better Microsoft stack integration.

Remember that it is version 1.0 right now, and MS has a good (not perfect) track record of follow-thru.

Not that this is unassailable reason, but I've heard people say the exact same thing about Microsoft in 1999. "Palm's so far ahead of them, etc. etc." - a few years later, Palm was shipping Windows.

Microsoft's fundamentals on Windows 8 mobile are quite solid. Even the design aspect ("pure digital") is something that both Android and iOS are moving to in some form.

It's true that WP7/Win8 haven't launched as well as they'd hoped, but calling it over seems rather premature.

It's true what you say, but we have a different world nowadays. In 1999 Microsoft was the undisputable world champion in IT, they were the only ones who had deep pockets, lots of users and a tremendous software ecosystem. Now we have both Google and Apple with deep pockets, lots of users and software in their stores.

Google is even playing the Microsoft card, developing a desirable OS for the hardware manufacturers to use in their devices. And the hardware manufacturers are delighted because not only it's free, but they also can have their own app stores and add value to differentiate themselves from the competition (look at Samsung with the Galaxy devices). It must be a hard sell to convince these guys to return to Microsoft, be just another "Windows devices + crapware" manufacturer and stay away from the profits of purchased apps.

On the other hand, the much touted inertia towards Microsoft products has been debunked, I think. Many people seem quite happy and productive with iWork or QuickOffice on their devices. And that cannot be overstated, once you see that in the end you could do work without Microsoft Office, it's really hard to put the genie back in the bottle. The other part was games, and you can find plenty of them both in iOS or Android.

So, not impossible, but it's clear that this time it will be very difficult for Microsoft to be topdog in mobile. They are late and struggling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com