Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
* Surface 2 loses the low-density screen. I enjoy that low-density has been deprecated.
* The names are right. Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2. No "Surface with Windows RT 8.1" nonsense.
* Haswell, yes please. Longer battery life may assuage some popular criticism.
* Backlit type cover. I hope this is compatible with my Surface Pro.
* Two-position kick stand. I will be envious of this.
* Surface 2 is smaller than Surface RT.
* More memory in the Pro 2.
* Docking station. Depending on the price of that and whether it's compatible with my Surface Pro, I may pick one up. However, I'd prefer to have an inductive charging plate as I have with my Nokia phone. I love the idea of just dropping wireless devices on a plate with no cables, no alignment, no fuss.
I am disappointed by:
* I personally would have preferred a Surface 2 Pro that leveraged Haswell to reduce the form factor to roughly the same as the original Surface RT. But I've never actually drained my Pro's battery, so I'd take lighter-weight versus increased battery lifespan. I'm usually near an AC outlet when I am out and about.
* I would have liked a purely x86 lineup. Bay Trail Atom (or Haswell i3) on the low-end, Haswell i5 on the high-end.
* Windows RT needs help. Remove its artificial limitations.
Overall, I am fairly satisfied. I may want to replace my wife's netbook with a 2 Pro.
Everything's compatible with the SP. Only the original Surface is missing the extra contacts on bottom for some of the new hardware.
Myself, I'll be picking up the Power Cover when that shows up (I'm expecting 2014), but not replacing the tablet. 8ish hours of battery life is plenty for me.
I'll save the big money for a real laptop when the rest of the PC makers finally put some Haswell-based stuff on store shelves this holiday season. That it's taken them over a year since the MBA is pathetic.
The only thing that keeps me from using SP2 as a desktop replacement is the GPU. I still like to do some casual gaming every once in a while, and Intel's integrated graphics are too far behind nVidia/ATI's discrete offerings in other ultrabooks.
The original Surface lineup was very compelling. The only real issue with it was the majorly confusing marketing message with having two products with a major qualitative difference sharing essentially the same name.
It kind of pains me that rather than learning from their $900 million mistake, they've essentially doubled down on it and somehow managed to create two products with even more similar sounding names. I think that they're once again going to confuse some people about the respective capabilities of each machine with this naming scheme.
As far as I understand it, a Surface and Surface Pro run completely different types of software. Windows RT cannot run normal Windows Apps. I would view this as a major qualitative difference in the type of machine it is and such a similar naming strategy is confusing and not warranted.
I think they're both actually looking like pretty good machines yet again and both have their uses, but I think the message about what they are is going to be confusing to the marketplace because of the naming. I don't work in branding for a big corporation, so maybe my opinions are wrong. But Microsoft ended up with a warehouse full of unsold Surface RT's last time and I think that this is a big part of the reason why.
The Air/Pro/normal macbooks all run the same software binaries. Microsoft was/is selling two products with different machine architectures that run different software but with almost identical names. That's a marketing and customer-service disaster.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mz20e/hi_im_panos_pan...
The 1.5X screen of the Surface 2 is definitely better than its old 1X screen, but will that be competitive with the 2X screens in other tablets (Android and Apple) at the same or lower price points?
All considered, I'd much prefer to sink R&D into a 250+ DPI large form-factor desktop display than cram even more pixels into my Surface. The monitors I stare at for hours on end each day are 3x 30" LCDs and their pixel density, and the resulting relative clarity (or lack thereof), leave a great deal to be desired.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/surface/surfac...
Can you imagine Apple, or anyone else, deliberately releasing two different tablets, with the same name, which can not run each others' software? It is inconceivable, and for good reason.
MS cannot make decisions. That's what will kill them, long term. Just choose one!!
Either ban desktop apps on both models, or neither.
I'm talking about the management decision that only Metro apps can run on RT, which is such a stupid limitation that even Microsoft sees the need to bypass it to get Office on an RT tablet.
The alternative is a full port of Win32, which I imagine Microsoft considered and rejected. Even after they incurred all the time and development cost, ISVs would still have to at least recompile.
Not much commercial software but the regular open-source windows stack works.
Link please?
"Well the cheap one is shite, it doesn't really work. The expensive one does work so you want to buy that if you're going to buy one at all."
As a consequence, this is one area where MS is ahead of Apple (even if MS is having difficulties reconciling the tablet vs. desktop experience). MS has touch on the desktop. When is Apple going to have touch on Mac Books?
I know SJ said vertical touch screens don't work. They will continue to say so until they add touch. Undoubtedly, they'll do it well, and it will be well integrated with the OS. But they'll continue to say it doesn't work...until it does. Similar to the movement to flat with nary a mention of Metro.
So Apple has the challenge of bringing their user-level of their OS offerings closer together (along with the hardware), whereas MS has the challenge of dealing with the Metro/Desktop schism and the x86/ARM dichotomy. Same coin, different sides.
Here's why: Last November when the iPad Mini and the iPad 4 launched, Apple sold 3 million iPads over the weekend. Surface has sold about 1.7 million devices total since it launched. http://bgr.com/2013/07/31/microsoft-surface-sales-2013/
It's hard to argue with success.
>As a consequence, this is one area where MS is ahead of Apple
The numbers seem to disagree with you. The reason Apple doesn't put touch on their Macbooks is cause no one wants it.
I think Apple's products are great. Their ID is fantastic. Their developer ecosystem leaves much to be desired. The fact that I no longer buy their products due to their closed nature (and, by extension, their philosophy for the future: closed, controlled, and owned) does not take away from my admiration of the company from a product and engineering perspective.
Apple was the first to bring down the price, make it holdable (in your hand), give it a battery that you don't need to worry about. Give it apps that were only designed for touch.
Android is iterating as much as Apple is. They will probably keep iterating until some big hardware breakthrough, maybe when someone releases a ARM86 (compatible ARM and x86 processor)? One major breakthrough of the original iphone was smooth finger tracking made available by the new capitative touch screen.
Before, they were called PDAs and they've existed since the late 80s. Apple wasn't late, they were simply waiting for the technology arrive to do it right.
The reason they have not added touch input to OS X, is because its not design for touch. I am sure, Apple will find another input method for their non-mobile hardware. Perhaps something similar to MYO or Leap Motion (or a touchscreen).
>When is Apple going to have touch on Mac Books?
I always thought features like 'Launchpad' were useless for those able to type, but they feel more intuitive once you've practiced the gestures. Apple trackpads allow me to directly manipulate content while retaining the cursor accuracy needed for complex interfaces. I'll be surprised if Apple adds capacitive touch to their laptop screens.
This is the assumption I don't agree with. Why do we need one OS to run all our devices? Ubuntu Unity is an interesting idea, but is that really where computing should head.
I don't see this as Apple "getting a pass", I think they mad e the right decision. It was certainly correct in '07 (for hardware reasons), and I think it still holds up as correct today.
Apple DOES have an X86 ecosystem AND an ARM ecosystem. They do not cross streams and customers are not confused, and Apple can successfully grow application ecosystems across two very different architectures.
So what is Microsoft doing wrong?
It's very simple, and I cannot believe they haven't already done this. I'm thinking that the naming scheme for their ARM platform is why they're balking, since they've stupidly named their ARM ecosystem "Windows Phone".
Apple succeeds by maintaining separation between the ecosystems, and that's where MS is failing.
MS needs to realign:
Surface means x86 tablet. Period. End of story. It's a high end tablet for those who need more than an iDevice, who want a full laptop in a tablet shell. Surface means quality. Surface means x86, and it means desktop compatible.
Windows Phone, including Windows Phone Tablet (Surface RT) means ARM. Period. The WP8 ecosystem and it's tablet arm should be the branding covering the ARM ecosystem.
I'm thinking that the name "Windows Phone" for the ecosystem is what dissuaded them from trying to attach the tablet to that ecosystem.
The reply just said that two tablets as fine if they would just kill the confusing naming scheme.
The Surface Pro is just a Windows laptop with decent build quality. It's the one in a boring (and shrinking!) market.
Well its a "Windows laptop", except for the fact that its a tablet that can (like most tablets) also function as a laptop and (unlike most tablets) comes bundled with the hardware for that rather than it being a separate purchase.
But its a full Windows tablet, not a WinRT tablet.
They have clearly made some sort of a bet on ARM, if it doesn't pan out they will drop it soon enough.
"We'll support your competitor if you support ours"
Apple actually managed two very smooth transition/coexistence periods, from 68K to PPC and from PPC to x86, when it was easy to build binaries that ran on both platforms.
It's all the legacy apps that are the problem.
Windows Store apps run on both of them.
Actually Windows 8 can run anything Windows RT can run. The opposite isn't true however, since there's no way to write a desktop (x86/Win32) application for Windows RT.
I was intrigued by the music keyboard, not because I think the Surface is the instrument of the future, but because I think there is a market for a device which can easily customize its input experience like that. I have thought for a while that future test equipment from Tektronix or Agilent might look like that but with a scope control panel and a dock for attaching probes.
Like the 2 position kickstand, the one we got at work to do testing on that was annoying. I bet Surface 3 touts an infinitely adjustable one :-).
I think the ARM/x86 messaging is pretty spot on as well, Microsoft is playing the "its just windows" card pretty hard and dropping the RT moniker was smart too. Most consumers could care less about instruction set architecture. And what happens when Apple makes an Air with the A7 ? Will Apple have the 2 x 2 matrix (iOS/MacOS)(ARM/x86)? and Microsoft the 1 x 2 matrix (Windows)(ARM/x86) ? I'd think the latter long term is easier to message and less confusing for customers. If they go all Ubuntu like and create a Win 8.1 phone experience then there product / os vector is 1x3 (Windows)(phone/tablet/laptop).
That said, for me it reinforces the notion that this is the year of the Linux desktop. I recently had the experience of using a USB serial cable that worked under Linux but not under Windows 7. That was one of the signs for me that perhaps Windows was ceding the development workstation business (or at least not paying attention to it). That should be good news for folks like System76.
Fix app compatibility.
Start by removing the artificial restriction on desktop apps. Currently desktop apps are restricted to those signed by Microsoft. If they were to remove this restriction there's a whole load of apps that could be recompiled to target ARM and work on the RT desktop. Companies and open source devs would be far more willing to spend a small amount of time porting existing code bases to ARM than re-writing whole apps for 'Metro style'.
On top of that, Microsoft already have a platform compatibility layer in .Net. And they clearly already have a ARM version of the .Net runtime as you can build Metro apps targeting .Net. It seems absolutely crazy that they don't make use of this already existing compatibility layer that could allow all existing .Net apps to run on RT desktop without change. This would make the surface RT a far more interesting proposition for companies looking to deploy their internal homegrown enterprise apps to windows tablets.
This change would re-position the RT from it's current state as a underwhelming curiosity who's main competitor is IPads and Android tablets which have a wider range of apps (and are significantly cheaper in the case of some Android brands) to a true low-mid end laptop alternative with decent app support at a similar price point. The Surface pro stays as it is as a high end laptop alternative.
Remove that signature check and I would probably have brought an RT for every member of my family, confident that the apps would appear fairly quickly as they got ported to ARM.
As it is the RT is irrelevant with little prospect of the number of useful apps increasing, and the pro is too pricey to justify. I keep considering it, but always end up sticking with a laptop at half the price.
I say all this as a Microsoft fan in the main. The surface concept is so close to my ideal device. It's so so close to being exactly what I've been waiting for, but yet somehow manages to entirely miss the mark just through the presences of a little software lock.
I would say the desktop is the biggest problem with Surface RT. It's clear they wanted an iPad, but ended up tacking on the desktop because Windows 8 couldn't operate in Metro-only mode (some settings, etc not available) and Office wasn't ready.
Fix that. Drop the desktop so there is no more confusion on the RT. You want the desktop? You want the pro. You want simple, reliable, easy to use? You want the RT. You had the vision, you knew what you were going for, complete it. I think the market might reward you. Either way at least you don't have the desktop sitting around reminding your users they bought a 'fake' computer.
I'll also say that making the RT tablet a different color is a serious plus. The fact that Microsoft was selling two totally different tablets aimed at different markets with different price points using the same name, marketing, and look was crazy. If customers can't tell which product is which, how you do expect them to choose?
The thing is I don't actually specifically want a pro. All I want is a device that I can create content on. For me, creating content means I want it to run Visual Studio, Photoshop and Blender, along with some toolchain type apps like Git, Dropbox and Filezilla. These apps are just not ever going to appear as Metro apps. So currently, I choose to buy a laptop for half the price of a Surface pro.
The problem is the competition they have targeted. They've pitched the RT against the IPad and Androids and it loses on functionality, and they've pitched the pro against Laptops and it loses on price. An unrestricted RT would win against the IPad/Android on functionality and the win against the laptop on size and flexibility while matching it on price.
I really like my Surface a lot. However I feel it has two use cases: a very powerful (and quite nice) tablet (really, metro is wonderful!) or as a desktop with a monitor, keyboard and mouse attached. At work we are a Mac shop, being able to take something out that is tablet sized but becomes a full fledged Windows PC by borrowing the needed peripherals from the Macs is really awesome.
Microsoft Bob? Active Mates Barney? It's a big change, but it's nowhere near the worst thing they've ever done.
That old risk matrix stuff~ You know; risk of something going wrong vs. cost of failure if it does.
Let's see, risk: we're screwed. Probability people will hate it... I dunno, pretty low. Seems like a great strategy! Let's go for it!
By comparison buying Nokia was smart move on the same scale; risk: we're screwed! Probability that nokia will get cold feet and abandon windows phone / go bankrupt; looking not that unlikely.
It's easy to judge things as stupid in hindsight, but to class them as truly 'world class stupid', you really have to imagine what sort of things they were thinking about at the time the decisions were made.
Metro <--- Was pretty stupid.
(* see https://www.soluto.com/reports; people argue over what the data means, but the raw numbers are pretty compelling)
I wouldn't be surprised if Metro is gone within the first two or three calendar quarters of the new CEO's tenure.
Call one the Work, and one the Play. The Work gets the desktop, full Windows 8, full Office, Visual Studio, etc., the Play gets Metro and enough support to not be completely useless but also enough to create a separate market segment.
Bundle them both with keyboards. Give the "real" keyboard (the Surface Type Cover) to the Work, because people with this tablet will be the ones writing Office documents. Give the cardboardy Touch Cover to those that buy the Play because they just need it when the touch screen becomes a little too annoying to bang out that email to your family while on vacation.
Differentiated products for markets that should now be able to self select with less confusion.
We used to complain about Microsoft's multiple versions of Windows with "Home", "Media Centre", "Professional", but strangely, now we seem to be asking to go back to that realm.
Does Surface 2 Lite work? Essentially, that is what it is, it doesn't have all the features of the Pro, and it's lighter.
I don't understand this line of reasoning. This is a finished product, everything is right there and done. Why should it be crippled to be more like the iPad? The one thing the market doesn't need is another iPad clone. For once Microsoft changing little is their chance to be different!
If they can make Metro so awesome that nobody bothers to load the desktop, that's a win. Tablet users will (and should) spend most of their time in Metro. Removing the desktop to force the hand is a bad as crippling the desktop is now. Having the desktop there when you need it could be major selling feature!
Microsoft should do more than just remove the restrictions on desktop apps, they should be actively courting software developers (both commercial and open source) to port the most used software. Especially critical business software.
I understand your point about wanting to reduce the confusion between the versions. But the real market for the Surface (Pro or RT) is not the same as the iPad market. It could be, maybe in the future, but not now. Right now Microsoft needs customers and they need to leverage what they have. Metro/WinRT is playing their competitors game and they're already coming from behind. People who want to work, even a little bit, could benefit a lot from an RT tablet that supports metro and desktop equally. I've tried to work on my Nexus 7 and it's very difficult and I don't need much -- ARM ports of a few open source tools would get me a long way.
If the desktop is crippled, there is no reason to keep it. Keeping it around lets Microsoft continue to use it as a crutch. "Well it's OK you can't do that, in Metro, just go to the desktop."
I don't think this would make another iPad clone, it still has a lot to offer. It would just be enforcing the ease of use and manageability of a Metro-only computer. That's one of the reasons the iPad is so popular, it's easy to use and manage. That's not a bad feature to copy.
> Especially critical business software.
This is the thing I found the oddest about Surface RT. In order to avoid canabalizing laptop/Surface Pro sales, they prevent the RT from joining a domain. I'm sure there are tons of businesses that would like an iPad style device with iPad style battery life and a sub-iPad price that could be secured with their domain. Instead they went consumer-only, and businesses had to buy the heavier, hotter, more expensive Pro.
I agree, that's why I said it should be un-crippled.
> I don't think this would make another iPad clone, it still has a lot to offer.
Really? It's a locked down API with apps sold exclusively from the company app store. The biggest selling app is probably Angry Birds! From a software perspective, it's almost distinguishable from the iPad except that the quantity of software is much smaller. That is not a recipe for success.
> That's one of the reasons the iPad is so popular, it's easy to use and manage. That's not a bad feature to copy.
It's a trade-off. The iPad is a very simple device and is very limited; it's difficult to impossible to make a file in one application and view it another! Microsoft can certainly try to out-simplify Apple but in the process they'll be leaving a large part of the market untapped.
> This is the thing I found the oddest about Surface RT. In order to avoid canabalizing laptop/Surface Pro sales, they prevent the RT from joining a domain.
It was a good plan, they made the RT so unappealing that nobody bought it at all! Microsoft should be trying to make the best possible product they can using all avenues they have available to them. Desktop, Metro, everything. Instead they're playing stupid games like this and the market is slapping them down for it.
App revenue is a small slice of profits even for Apple, and for the third-place player it's more important to attract devs than control their store.
That's probably a combination of OS and the doublespeak/marketing definition of gigabyte though.
Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, not in anything related.
So in this sense, while you may lose space for the OS, at least you can still expand it with a microSD card.
[1] - http://tablets.wonderhowto.com/how-to/add-extra-storage-spac...
NB: I buy second hand because of 'blood minerals' etc, not because I'm trying to save money exactly. Due to moores law second hand tech from last year is rarely much cheaper compared to new stuff from this year.
Too bad the 512GB/8GB model will probably cost an arm and a leg, making it more economical for most people to simply buy two computers. But once the price comes down a bit, I can see this becoming a true drop-in replacement for the majority of Windows desktops and laptops out there.
It's a laptop with a mutli-touch display.
I'm building a program right now for Windows 8, on Dell hardware[1]. I've gotten quite used to the OS by now, and as long as you have a touch display, it doesn't really deserve the criticism I've read. I remember hearing the same thing about Windows XP and Windows Vista and Windows 7.
The thing that I like the most about using Windows 8 is that all of my software just, like, works. A little bit of that is luck: if I had written any programs that had heavy use of keyboard shortcuts, it wouldn't work without a blutooth keyboard. If I had written any programs that expected the screen to never resize, that too would break. But those are pretty bad programming habits to begin with. My programs don't look great, but that is a temporary problem.
And I can program for it with the same tools that I'm using for Windows 7 (hell, I can program on it). I don't have to wait for someone to make a something-to-something-else translator to use my favorite language to write programs like I do on iOS or Android. I don't have to wait for someone to make a decent text editor on iOS or Android. I don't have to wait for someone to write decent source control software for iOS or Android. I have it all, already. I can do whatever I want.
Hell, if I want to install Linux on the thing, I could. Of course, it's probably not going to play nicely with the touch screen, but that is a different issue. The Surface Pro is just a PC.
[1] The Dell hardware isn't great, but it has a regular, ol', USB port on it, which makes it amazing. I've played with the Surface Pro at a Staples and found it to be better than this Dell device in every way.
Unfortunately, Microsoft managed to make both products look nearly identical and use the same name for both. The little I heard about the Surface was from people who bought an RT thinking it was a normal Windows computer and returned it.
I'm glad they're working to clear up the confusion with better naming and a slightly different look.
Also: Windows. I used to use it, but I've been working in OS X exclusively for a few years now, and going back to the Windows Command Prompt might kill me.
The only downside is that some if the commands are uneccessarily verbose in comparison.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/privatecloud/archive/2013/08/30/i...
BTW, can the Pro 2 run Linux?
Because there is no Surface Pro 2 equivalent that will run OSX. And by "run OSX" I mean "made by Apple" because there's no other way to run it.
And I doubt very much that the Pro 2 can do Linux well - can any tablets? I'd be interested to know the state of Linux touch interfaces/drivers.
Its a full laptop. Why wouldn't Surface Pro2 run linux?
I know you can on the Surface Pro 1. So I don't see why you won't be able to on the Surface Pro 2. Its an x86 machine as per their own requirement, bios have to be unlocked and the ability to disable secure boot must be present.
That said, the Surface Pro 2 looks really appealing.
I'm looking for a replacement for my iPad 2, but I can't settle on anything because all the non-iPad tablets have a widescreen, which I believe is poor choice when it comes to reading PDF textbooks.
Right now I read my PDF textbooks in landscape mode, and I use GoodReader to crop the margins, and everything looks fabulous. I'm worried that if I move to a widescreen tablet, I will end up with less vertical space and wasted horizontal space ("black bars" due to incompatible aspect ratios of the page and the screen).
How's your experience when it comes to reading these kind of textbooks? Any chance you could provide screenshots of how these textbooks look like when you read them in landscape mode?
Sorry if you already know that, from the way your comment is phrased it looks like you don't so I thought I'd throw it out.
Back in uni I was able to take math notes quite well by typing in Word. The math notation there is similar enough to LaTeX (including most macros for symbols) but types much faster. But that's not handwriting, admittedly.
I'm seriously considering trying to build something with the API. I'm not sure what; I just want to play with the cool technology. Perhaps an app which gives you an algebra question, then uses math recognition to interpret your working. It could then see that you made a mistake on step three (for example).
Perhaps I've just late to the party, but I'm still astounded that this is possible.
You can check out a demo here: http://webdemo.visionobjects.com/home.html#equation
For reading pdfs, the widescreen is annoying and claustrophobic, and I haven't found any Windows PDF reader that is comparable to Apple's Preview application. Occasionally I've "printed" pdfs to OneNote, to read and edit them there, but this doesn't work great. (You can't drag pdfs into OneNote because Windows and pdfs barely work together at all.)
I used to do math notes on my ipad goodnotes since it has a zoom window.
This little-known feature is as old as Windows XP Tablet Edition....
I've read many math papers and books this way.
Btw, do you have a good way to read two-column papers?
Personally, I have to draw/annotate circuit diagrams and the Surface Pro is so far superior to paper it's not even funny. I couldn't imagine switching back - taking notes with a full laptop/keyboard just seems archaic to me.
From my times playing with tablets, Linux trails Windows 5-10 years.
As a DJ, I need to carry around an expensive laptop to perform. The iPad does not have any impressive apps to DJ (at least not professionally), so I'd be VERY interested if they focused on the niche music market here. Surface 2 + Kinect/Leap + superb DJing app + Spotify-esque music supply = very happy musicians.
Unfortunately, I don't think anyone is going to spend the time to develop a quality DJing app.
Also, Traktor DJ and a Kontrol S2 is definitely a pro level setup for iPad...
Fruity Loops is now available in the app store for both devices. http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/fl-studio-groove...
Not sure it's a worthwile tradeoff for everyone though.
2) It would cost money to add the device to your Mobile account
3) You can just use the mobile hotspot feature on your phone and connect through that. Its easy on my Nokia 928.
Hell, half the time I have my wife's iphone connected to my phone via WIFI because she has AT&T (for work reasons) and they suck most places we go.
For business people your arguments 2 and 3 are actually incorrect: I don't want to use my personal data plan for my work. If the device has its separate LTE, it can just all go to my company and I'm done with the costs.
I've bought (and given away) four iPads with Verizon LTE. Exactly 0 people activated it.
This is old data, but in line with newer data I've seen WRT iPad activation rates: http://tabletquest.com/2011/02/disappointing-apple-ipad-3g-a...
The wife would not like to see the tablet around 100% of the time since, with LTE, it'd be a physical extension more than PC's and the phone are now.
- Gets pretty hot - new haswell processors seem to be doing better - Short battery life of 5 hrs - 75% improvement brings it to around 8-9 hrs, which is a typical work day and that's a great improvement
Overall Surface Pro hardware has always been top class, and I think this version might be the one to buy.
And let's face it - no one has actually liked MS products in a decade, they've simply put up with them. Now that people aren't forced to use MS products, they don't. It doesn't matter whether or not the Surface 2 is any good, MS killed the only thing going for them...
Windows 7 was widely praised, Xbox 360 is the winning console, Kinect was revolutionary and widely praised, and of course MS Office is still the premier office suite (I would argue that people "put up with" the alternatives).
You're right about the consoles (except the kinect, I don't know a single person who owns it) however, but the console crowd are a fickle bunch, and the way things are shaping up, the PS4 could be the winner this time round...
Focus on what this device does fantastically, rather than poking fun at what "siri can't do".
The marketing/image problem was to be expected considering it was a new product entering a slightly fermented market. It was always going to take time to build a brand.
(full discloser: Windows Phone employee)
People familiar with Windows want a cheap way to take their desktop with them. That's the primary audience, and introducing an ARM-based tablet that CAN'T run their desktop apps, is killing them. I would have gotten rid of the ARM one entirely (at least until there's a big enough native app economy for it), and found ways to bring down the cost of the Pro, and just sell that one.
That said, the smart covers are pretty innovative. Being able to switch between a keyboard one, an extra battery one, and that amazing looking music production, is a stand-out feature. Something that Microsoft needs desperately.
The devices were definitely to blame. Surface RT squandered Microsoft's ace in the whole in this space: Office + Outlook + Windows network integration. Not only did Office RT not ship in Metro form, but the product that shipped initially was a buggy pre-release. It was disastrous execution. Besides that, Surface RT sold for an iPad/Nexus 10 price without comparable specs (Tegra 3 and low-resolution screen).
I think Microsoft marketing was definitely to blame for their failure to properly distinguish the two (Surface Pro vs. Surface RT). They really were two very different devices for different uses. Trying to call them both Surface tablets was a mis-step in my opinion because of their very different use-cases: one is a desktop replacement, the other is a tablet. To me, that's a marketing problem, not an engineering problem.
And here we are observing them do it all over again. Surface 2, Surface Pro 2. Just by the name you still could figure they are the same machine and maybe the pro is a little bit faster or has a bigger flash drive etc. Just as you figure with the different Windows editions. "Ultimate", "Professional" "Home" etc.
People who get the Surface 2 will still be very surprised to see that that they cannot do anything with it seeing as not one "exe" they already have will work on them.
Microsoft didn't apply their own rules to themselves: they couldn't be bothered / didn't want to re-write Office for Metro, but they insisted that for everyone else the RT only support Metro apps.
If Office had been converted to Metro there would be no reason for the RT to even let you see the traditional Windows desktop. I wanted to like the RT - I really like the Pro - but after a few weeks using it I just gave up. It was a compromised device, from start to finish.
Maybe the long term goal is Modern versions of Office apps but the Office port is probably an essential bridge to it.
* In theory because they may be most familiar with Office 2003 or whatever, and now they're faced with something that looks completely different.
The Surface, to me, beats out all the other tablets. At its core, it's a tablet that made to do more than simply consume media (which is what drew me to it), but they did nothing to sell this fact. I mean, their launch commercial? Jesus.. people dancing to dubstep? It makes it look like just another ho-hum, late to market product.
Do you remember the commercials when Apple started using intel processors[0]? I would have loved to see Microsoft go in that direction and play to their image of "doing work." Finally a tablet that is built for people to do things, rather than consume things. Heck, go after the gaming crowd, play Civilization, do something!
Apple spent a decade getting people to understand that a $1,000 machine is worth the money. It is a lot easier for Apple to move downmarket than Microsoft to move upmarket.
The iPad is really Apple's $300-500 computer and it is cannibalizing the Windows machines because millions of people would rather use an iPad to do email and facebook and youtube than they would a junky $300 laptop that weighs 7 pounds, has a 15" display, and a 3 hour battery life.
Microsoft will probably figure out how to sell computers to consumers like Apple does, but it's a long road and it's not the bargain basement volume game that they're used to.
You got me thinking differently about this. Thanks.
Their more recent advertising that goes directly at the iPad is much more compelling, and will have a very positive impact on their sales.
A Windows-powered answer to the MK808/Ouya/VitaStation and similar products, bundled with a nice wireless keyboard/mouse remote gizmo - something like this: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/itemdetails/57Y6678/460/4C2830F...
WinRT's consistent support for keyboard/mouse sets it apart from touch-oriented Android. Wireless handheld keyboard/mouse is hard to get right, but touchscreen without touching is harder. WinRT could be great on TVs.
But MS would worry about cannibalizing their XBox sales.
- At 720p you cannot run Windows Store apps (needs to be 768 minimum)
- At 1080p much of the UI is too small. You can increase the font size but that’s not always enough.
- Surprisingly, while keyboard navigation is great, it doesn't seem to support the Xbox 360 controller at all for navigating through the UI.
That's why WinRT opens up a new market for them. A WinRT device for light gaming, photos, video-chat, etc. for your TV would be nifty.
My main beef why I can't recommend it is compatibility. If that was addressed, the number of apps would skyrocket and I'd be a huge fan.
You would think since MSFT is late to this market, putting in a low-medium cost, highly functional tablet to reverse the trend to apple and google would allow them to catch up quickly. The pro price is currently on par to an Ipad. Hopefully CEO #3 will do that.
At least I got a nice lecture about respect.
I agree he isn't very photogenic but if you actually watch him present....it's a whole different story. You can probably find his part of the Surface 1 announcement on youtube and I'm sure the one today will be put up later.
If someone didn't want to do productive input-oriented work, why would they need a tablet with a Haswell processor?
Microsoft proved with the first generation that they have the chops required to make hardware that's just as nice as Apple's. Everyone praised the Surface's hardware, they just didn't like the battery life of the Ivy Bridge version nor Windows RT. Unfortunately, the inability of the Surface to be used as a laptop makes it a secondary device for most people. A $900 secondary device is going to be way too expensive for most people, who as I already said, pay less than $700 for their primary devices.
1st party devices are almost universally better than third-party devices. For example, while I loved my Clamcase Pro, I bet it wouldn't have died after less than a year if it had been made by Apple. That's why I was hoping that Microsoft would see the potential in making a proper keyboard for the Surface 2.
The closest thing we have right now is the Lenovo Helix. It's a nice device, but it was launched with Ivy Bridge right around the time Haswell was released, and it costs a fortune when compared to the surface or a Macbook Air.
Power Cover Extend the battery life of your Surface. Click in Power Cover and get that extra time you need to make it through that last meeting or the rest of the flight. It’s like a keyboard and battery in one.
Edit: Sorry, misunderstood your question!
I'm not a music person but pressure-sensitive controls seems like the next frontier for touch devices (that, and Kinect-type cam interfaces)...I was going to say, "the iPad will likely fall behind here"...but it looks like third-party vendors are adding pressure-capability via Bluetooth: http://www.tuaw.com/2013/08/20/wacom-unveils-pressure-sensit...
I've given MS plenty of chances. I think it's time I moved on.
Also, with iOS 7 rolling out, MS is going to have a lot harder time playing the "fresh new interface" card.
I'd hate to get a bunch of battery life back from Haswell just to burn it all on RAM I don't even want to get the 512GB model.
I'm interested in Haswell reviews, including the power/heat levels.
I just can't justify $900 when I could get an Ultrabook with more power for a little more. I guess that is just the price you pay for form factor.
This is a delusional move from a company that's so far behind in this area that it's no longer funny.
* high-quality wacom digitizer
* high resolution screen (1920x1080 @ 10.6")
* touch screen
It's a very compelling, cheaper alternative for digital artists and programmers who want to develop for the Windows 8+ native UI. I didn't buy the first one because I wanted an 8GB+ option at a minimum and I thought the storage options were anemic as well. But the newly announced model is rather tempting.
However, the prices on the different options are still somewhat discouraging: "You can get Surface Pro 2 with a 64GB ($899) or 128GB SSD ($999) and 4GB of RAM, or if you want 8GB of RAM there are 256GB ($1299) and 512GB ($1799) versions as well. Surface Pro 2 retains the old front and rear cameras."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7362/microsoft-announces-surfa...
$1299 for 8GB of ram and a 256GB SSD? Really? Holy profit margins Batman!
I'm curious as to whether I'd be able to plug this into my large external monitor and do my day job with it.
Now that they have Nokia, I predict that Microsoft will attempt to acquire NVIDIA in order to mimic Apple's and Samsung's vertical strategies. Not sure Jen-Hsun or the board would agree though.
but I do hope there is a hotkey(function key) to turn off the back light when I'm watching a movie or something.
It only makes sense if you expect to use the tablet/touch features a lot, in addition to the traditional desktop. I plan on getting one mainly for the digitizer to take notes, so having a full portable computer is a nice bonus and justifies the price since I currently don't have a notebook.