* 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.
I think all of the products are surprisingly compelling, but the naming has arguably become an even bigger and more glaring issue.
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.
You could argue the same point regarding Apple's naming of their Macbook line prior to the discontinuing of the original Macbook moniker. Even now, the difference between the standard and the advanced Macbook line (purely on naming) are the words "Air" and "Pro".
I disagree with your point as I don't see any kind of major qualitative difference between an Air and Pro. Both are very similar computers that run essentially the same software - one just operates faster than the other. That's a quantitative difference.
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.
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.
Just yesterday, I was talking to my friend who works at Intel (on audio for Haswell tablets). He mentioned that Haswell isn't stable enough yet. I didn't get into the details though.
> * Surface 2 loses the low-density screen. I enjoy that low-density has been deprecated.
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?
No, not on screen clarity (though color accuracy competitiveness is still uncertain). I would personally prefer a 250+ DPI display. But retiring the abomination known as "1366x768" is long overdue. So as you say, the progression is definitely better.
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.
We are getting 31" 4K displays this year that come close (doesn't have to be 250 DPI at desktop viewing distance, but the high 100s would be nice). They are expensive ATM, but should come down in price pretty quickly. The only question I have is if Windows and its application ecosystem will be ready for it? There seems to be a lot of scrambling right now to prepare for a new high DPI status quo, so I'm very optimistic.
Dear Microsoft: Out of ARM and x86, choose one. Just choose one. For the love of god, choose ONE.
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!!
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.
You're actually agreeing with the parent, who stated the problem as 'two different tablets, with the same name, which can not run each others' software'.
> The Surface Pro is just a Windows laptop with decent build quality
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.
I guess I should have said "Windows tablet/laptop" then, or better yet, "Windows 8 tablet." It's very similar to other Windows 8 tablets, like the ASUS VivoTab or the Dell Latitude 10.
Why does Apple get a pass on this? They have just taken the alternative approach of fracturing their OS and hardware. It's natural because of where they started (iPod -> iPhone -> iPad), so this isn't a criticism.
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.
That's a false argument. These are separate points of discussion. You're arguing that they're right because they were first to market in a new space and have achieved significant momentum. Momentum is just that. They've been riding on it for a while. The last significant innovation was iPad, which was just an evolution of the one real innovation: iPhone. That's only going to carry them so far. Android is eating their market share while Apple is extracting what they can from this momentum and iterating on a theme.
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 apple doesn't put touch on their Macbooks is cause no one wants it"...
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).
I find using a Magic Trackpad with a desktop Mac to be a wonderful experience. After working in a Linux/Windows world for a while, I was surprised at how quickly I stopped relying on hotkeys in favor of gestures. I'd say any Apple computer running 10.7 or later is actually built for 'touch'.
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.
Given the sales of Surface and touchscreen PCs I have to reject the whole premise of your question. What is Apple getting a 'pass' on here? They seem to be giving consumers what they want/expect out of these devices. Apple could snap their fingers and have a touch enabled version of OSX that's better than Windows 8. They could easily add an x86 target for iOS apps and have a massive library of native touch enabled apps for the Mac. They could do a legacy touch mode as good (low standard) as what Windows 8 has to offer. They obviously haven't done it because they think it sucks. Again given that the market has said the same thing so far the premise of the question is really backwards to me. Apple is getting a pass on not picking a failing strategy!
> So Apple has the challenge of bringing their user-level of their OS offerings closer together (along with the hardware)
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.
> Can you imagine Apple, or anyone else, deliberately releasing two different tablets, with the same name, which can not run each others' software?
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.
Even if you do that, you still can't run your desktop apps on the ARM model. I really don't want to explain to luddite relatives why they can't run a game unless they buy the more expensive model.
Either ban desktop apps on both models, or neither.
Emulating an x86 on an ARM like the Tegra 4 would probably result in a pretty unsatisfying experience. Apple was doing the opposite: Emulating a processor with worse single threaded performance and (arguably) a simpler ISA.
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.
I think it has a nearly-full port of Win32, it's apparently not hard to disable the signing requirement and run cross-compiled Win32 ARM binaries and turn the Surface RT into a useful computer.
Not much commercial software but the regular open-source windows stack works.
I don't think it's a feasibility issue, because a fair bit of Win32 had already been ported to ARM from the Windows CE days. I had .NET apps that ran on Windows XP and Windows CE from the same binary. As long as you stuck to the .NET micro framework subset, it worked great and was actually quite performant.
I agree with you that this is technically a solved problem. It's not difficult to develop a system that lets apps run on both architectures without users having to think about this.
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.
I don't believe this is true. Most windows store apps run on both of them, but I think there are some, e.g. graphics, API's that your app could access that would limit it to x86 only
Not that I know of. It's just that if you're going native code instead of JS or .NET you have to make sure yourself that you run on ARM. And apparently C++ is the only option that gets access to DirectX which may mean that 3D apps never get ported to ARM.
You can easily get an x86-based tablet and run a more or less standard Linux environment on top of the Android kernel. If your performance requirements fit, you can do it on an ARM processor. Chances are you can add a bluetooth keyboard/cover for much less than a Surface 2.
Not really. Since both run different apps then they should be distinctly separate products, and tacking "RT" or "Pro" or any other moniker does a disservice to everybody involved -- both developers and consumers.
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 used to agree with you, however their strategy makes a lot of sense when you realize that the desktop is just going to disappear from Windows all together. I think that in the future it'll literally just be treated like any other app, and you'll be able to download 'nix desktop apps alongside the Windows desktop app. Honestly with what they're doing with Hyper-V, this is becoming more and more plausible.
Very nice. Pretty much everything I read was a net positive for the product, the only quibble might be the price but of all the things you can change in the future that is easiest to change :-).
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.
There is a simple change Microsoft need to make to the Surface RT to make it viable.
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.
> Start by removing the artificial restriction on desktop apps.
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 name is also terrible. Pro vs RT makes it sound like one is picking a trim level of car. It makes it seem like they're both the same with minor differences on the surface. But they're not. They're quite different.
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.
Play vs. Work probably isn't the right dividing line between the two devices. The RT is more than just work, hence the 'Pro' moniker does fit well with that device. The problem with just calling it Surface 2 is that people won't get the difference.
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 understand the point you are making, but the fact is without the app ecosystem a tablet like that is just going to be third place to the iPad and Android tablets. They need to offer a compelling reason to purchase a surface over those other brands of tablets. The windows desktop with a decent selection of apps (because of the removed signature lock) would offer that.
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 have a Surface Pro and I don't feel it competes against laptops at all. Its screen is too small to use the desktop for any period of time. The keyboard (both the touch and type variants) are terrible for doing any real quantity of typing. The trackpad is clunky and primitive, using your finger on the screen itself is also a poor substitute for a real mouse. And finally, you have to have a steady, solid surface to use it in "laptop" mode. On the train? On the couch? Forget it, tablet form is your only option.
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.
> Fix that. Drop the desktop so there is no more confusion on the RT.
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.
> 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!
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.
> If the desktop is crippled, there is no reason to keep it.
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.
I don't know, taking a familiar UI, and replacing it with something that the majority of your users hate and don't use* all of a sudden seems pretty high up on stupid things to have 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.
Every company makes bad decisions on occasion. Refusing to hit the undo button on their bad decisions is the real killer for Microsoft. Microsoft Bob was an optional component from day one. It was never shoved down their customers' throats on the grounds that it was strategically important to the company, as Metro has been.
I wouldn't be surprised if Metro is gone within the first two or three calendar quarters of the new CEO's tenure.
Windows RT already has a full version of the .NET 4.5 Runtime for ARM. If you disable the Microsoft signature check, existing .NET apps do just run. A wasted opportunity - they don't want competition for their new App Store.. I wouldn't be surprised if RT was actually sold at a loss hoping to make up sales via apps like Xbox or razor blades.
"A wasted opportunity" - completely. I wasn't actually aware there was already a full ARM .net runtime, that just makes it even more stupid.
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.
As it happens I bought a second hand Surface Pro from ebay and it arrived today. Moving to it from a laptop thats a couple of years old, the Surface Pro is absolutely blowing me away. Faster than my old laptop, also acts as a tablet, using desktop applications via touch actually works, the pen is brilliant. The 128gb will be fine for me, because I've got used to living within about 120Gb.
Its actually 96GB free on the Surface Pro 128GB (source: http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-officially-and-confusingly-di... ), and you can get it up to 104GB of free space by moving the recovery files (for if you need to reinstall the OS) off onto some other media. Of the 24GB still taken up, I gather some of that is because Office is pre-installed (but not activated) and presumably that can be removed too.
Just like the Macbook Air with it's 128GB SSD has a bunch of it taken up OS X when you get the device? I look at the surface pro as microsoft's macbook air equivalent.
I'd say the Ultrabook family is Microsoft's macbook air equivalent. I'm a big fan of the Samsung Series 9, and I don't think I could go back to a bulkier form factor for my next machine.
Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, not in anything related.
You can also utilise the microSD slot (which sits behind the kickstand[1]). A few of my coworkers who have the Surface Pro brought a 64gb microSD card and store media (music/videos/photos) on the microSD. The speed of the card isn't too bad when used for that purpose.
So in this sense, while you may lose space for the OS, at least you can still expand it with a microSD card.
£600 - theres lots of them going for around that price on ebay and places like CEX. Suppose they will get cheaper as ver 2 becomes available.
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.
The docking station looks fantastic. We've finally reached the day when we can plug in the tablet when we get home and instantly transform it into a full-blown desktop PC!
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.
The numbers still don't seem to add up though. For the same price you could get a (much) cheaper/lighter ARM tablet that gets much better battery life and a better desktop. I'm not sure what the point of convergence is here unless you have some specific need to run a legacy win32 app on a tablet.
There are some problems with comparing a Windows Surface Pro tablet to an iPad. The availability of programs is such that you're not going to use the iPad for content creation, and you're probably not going to use the Surface for gaming. The Surface is not a pick-up-and-go sort of device.
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.
It's quite clear that the Surface (formerly RT) was designed to compete with the iPad, and the Surface Pro (formerly just Surface) was designed to be a hybrid/laptop replacement.
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.
The Surface Pro 2 could make for a really interesting developer machine. Plug it into external keyboard/monitor when you're at your desk, then just pick it up and take it on the road when you want to. I'm tempted, but part of me can't shake the idea that I'd be replacing my laptop with a tablet, even know I know that's not quite true.
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.
I don't doubt that Powershell is good, but it's different. I've grown to appreciate being able to use all the same commands on my dev box as I do on my servers, and while Cygwin covers the basics, it doesn't do it all.
With newer versions of Windows, Microsoft has attempted to bring powershell on par with the linux terminal. Supposedly, every admin function possible in the OS is now capable of being performed in Powershell.
The only downside is that some if the commands are uneccessarily verbose in comparison.
Their push into headless Window Server deployment has certainly driven Microsoft to shore up PowerShell. Recently they're taking on declarative server configurations (ie: puppet) with their own brand of it -- Desired State Configuration.
Cygwin + MinTTY can make Windows bearable, but, if you have already moved to Mac, why bother? OSX combined to MacPorts makes for a very functional development environment. The only very specific downside is that it won't run Visual Studio.
Ubuntu has been working with touch for some time now and I would expect it to work adequately. I assume the keyboard/cover emulates a keyboard, so keyboard access should not be a problem. My worst fears come from hardware support. After having bad experiences with laptops that come bundled with Windows, I am fully aware hardware can be designed not to work with 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.
I still use windows but most of my day is spent in putty shells, git bash, phpstorm, pycharm, and and dbForge. It's not so bad. I'll probably move to a surface pro 2 with 256 or 512 from my ~3 year old Dell Latitude.
Yeah, Vagrant seems like one of the best options. But buying a computer that will require me to run everything inside of a VM feels a little messy. Although maybe it'll force me to compartmentalise my projects properly...
It may seem like it at first, and it may actually be depending on your role. I spend a lot of time working on Silly Business Shit and dealing with things in IE-land, in an industry filled with mostly Microsoft customers/users. It's nice to be able to work on both sides on the same machine.
I'm a college student studying engineering. I can say that replacing my laptop with my Surface Pro has been amazing. I'm virtually 100% paperless, with all my notes being taken with OneNote (seriously amazing!) and textbooks saved as PDFs. It's also awesome that the Pro has enough power for me to do real dev work on it. So make the switch! You won't be disappointed!
I'm a student also, but I've been using the iPad for this. I don't take any notes on the iPad itself because the courses I need to take notes on are mathematical, so I simply write on paper and then when I come back home I scan it and append the scans to an evergrowing PDF file that is synced to my iPad.
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?
FYI with OneNote and a digitizer stylus as the Surface Pro comes with you can just write your notes on the screen. OneNote will recognize the handwriting and allow you to search through it etc.
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.
I don't think it'd be particularly efficient. I need to be able to write proofs (which include lots of math symbols) and draw diagrams very quickly. I've seen people do it with digitizers, but the results ends up being rather poor. Pen & paper still looks best.
The Surface Pro, with OneNote, works extremely well for this, more efficient than paper. OneNote is buggy and crashes, and the Surface is sometimes slow---so it isn't perfect---but it is still better than paper. High-quality pen input (except at the screen edges), different colors, copy-paste and undo.
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 came across MyScript yesterday, and have been very impressed. It's an SDK which can recognize handwritten math (among other things). It has correctly recognized everything I've thrown at it so far, even though I'm using a mouse so my writing's pretty crappy.
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.
Windows comes with a dedicated math handwriting input panel. Totally random, all because of their long (failed) push for Tablet PCs. I'm not sure how well it works though.
It needs a lot of massaging, at least for my handwriting. But it's been a while that I tried it with an actual pen. The main problem is that it recognizes strokes, so if you go back and close a gap in a symbol to make it appear right the recognizer will think you changed o to σ or something like that.
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.
Your problem is that you have an iPad 2. If you use a retina iPad, you will be able to read a PDF in landscape if you can read a book. The screen simply becomes almost as good as print.
No, I'm saying that textbook reading on the iPad 2 is a good experience to me, aside from the rare textbook that has very narrow margins (meaning that the text is pretty small), and two-column papers.
Btw, do you have a good way to read two-column papers?
I find that reading textbooks on the widescreen isn't all that bad actually. As far as writing math equations, like someone else mentioned, Windows has a dedicated equation writing tool that works really quite well. Otherwise, just plugin the keyboard and use LaTeX.
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.
For mathematical writing I've been using Lyx which is a Latex WYSIWYG application. Once you know the shortcut keys it works rather well. Nowadays I often work directly in Lyx rather than on paper first and then type it into Lyx. It encourages you to work cleanly and correctly rather than quickly and sloppily, so in the end it saves me a lot of time. The big disadvantage is that it's hard to incorporate drawings.
OneNote (+ digitizer) is indeed amazing ... I don't have a surface, but I do have a series 7 slate, and I have to say that the writing/drawing experience on win8 is really really nice. Considering upgrading it to the pro 2 now.
You won't regret the upgrade my friend! I'm actually thinking about buying the docking station for my Surface. I think once I get 8.1 on there and the screen scaling issues are fixed, I'll do that.
Downvoted you because this looks like astroturfing. New account, seemingly random nickname, a persona matching the target audience of this site and several postings with purely positive content and a style that doesn't look right on HN.
That said, the Surface Pro 2 looks really appealing.
It's very likely obvious astroturfing. Microsoft does this a lot. Keep this incident in mind next time you hear someone extolling the virtues of Win8-style "flat design".
8.1 screen scaling is awesome. Flatmate has a iMac with Windows 8.1 on it, 27" display and a low-res 24" display, Windows 8.1 fixed the scaling for the 2nd monitor now that you can set different scaling on each monitor.
I am going to bet "no". Sure, you will be able to get a driver working, but there are no OneNotes for Linux and the rest of the OS generally has zero concessions to touch.
From my times playing with tablets, Linux trails Windows 5-10 years.
Better performance might help this sell, but the second I saw the "Surface Music Kit," I got excited.
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.
You do not need an app, if you get Surface Pro 2. I have been running Ableton Live 9 on it. It runs without any problems, I usually hook it up to my APC 40 and microKorg.
I have a friend who is a dj and has been struggling to get his music apps to work properly on his Surface; he ended up having to disable to a bunch of stuff to get it to work glitch free. So I would definitely wait to see how other people get on with the new models before jumping in.
Also, Traktor DJ and a Kontrol S2 is definitely a pro level setup for iPad...
It depends on what type of DJ you are I guess. Looking at your 'ultimate equation' it sounds like you might be a wedding DJ so Traktor isn't really your bag.
Why, oh why is there no version with 3G/LTE? That is by far the biggest bummer, imho. For people that are on the road a lot that makes such a difference, and pretty much all other tablets offer that option, so it seems really lame to not have that. Also, if I spent $1800 for a Surface Pro in the best configuration, I really would expect it to have the same connectivity as a iPad mini... Other than that, this seems like the perfect device (the Pro version).
There isn't a great story for dropping one more device - the phone. And that story is quite unlikely since you wouldn't want to carry your tablet with you on a night out, etc. I could see myself using this and dropping my phone if I never did things like out of band experiences. I'd eventually have enough situations per year where I wanted my phone, not my tablet, that I'd end up with a phone - but maybe I'd live with a 3-5 year old phone for that...
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.
Well, sure, for a consumer device that I use on my couch in the evenings, I certainly don't need LTE. But the Pro seems pretty geared towards business, right? For business travelers this makes a huge, huge difference, though. And it seems to me that the high end Pro version is probably exclusively targeted at business users, at its price.
The top edition already is $1700, the cost of adding LTE must be a pretty small fraction of total cost at that point.
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 actually think 3g on tablets is rather silly now. With basically all mobile phones having the ability to share internet, why do you need to pay additional money for another mobile plan...
Most of the issues that I had with Surface Pro seems to have been resolved by this update:
- 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.
Microsoft should never have released Windows RT. The one reason, and the one biggest reason that people use Windows is backwards compatibility... By breaking that, they essentially undermined their own monopoly power, and now everyone is developing to be platform-agnostic.
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...
"And let's face it - no one has actually liked MS products in a decade, they've simply put up with 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).
And yet Apple is the platform making gains (with OSX), especially in people's homes - and has been for the better part of a decade. I don't know when you last walked through a University, but Macbooks make up the majority of laptops students are using. What people 'want' isn't a Windows PC (as their sales are showing - especially in higher price points).
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...
Was it the device itself that caused such poor sales? I assumed all along it was a marketing/image problem which remains unsolved. Has relentlessness by a company ever overcome this issue in the past?
I think it's a long term problem. Microsoft and its partners trained customers to buy $300-500 PC's in volume (with razor thin margins). Now, they are trying to get people to spend 2-3x as much on what many of them see as a machine that "does the same thing".
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.
It was the Surface RT that did so poorly. $900M writeoff that forced out Ballmer. Which is why I'm so surprised that they're attempting to do it again, with the Surface 2.
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.
Not exactly sure what you mean, Windows apps work fine on the tablet. You either plug in the keyboard and a mouse, or you use an on-screen keyboard or the stylus. I looked at a lot of the hybrid machines before buying a Surface Pro and was pretty happy with the purchase.
Surface marketing was everywhere. I don't think it was particularly bad marketing at that.
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 don't think it was particularly bad marketing at that.
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.
>I think Microsoft marketing was definitely to blame for their failure to properly distinguish the two (Surface Pro vs. Surface RT).
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.
Office RT being a desktop app is as it should be - no learning curve, and each pixel works harder than in Metro. What was wrong was the lack of Outlook at launch, and then the other things like no AD integration, and the inability to run non-signed desktop apps.
...which is one reason why I think a lot of people were really infuriated by the Surface RT.
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.
On the other hand, if your workers produce Office documents (which pretty much all of them do) then you can give them Surface RT machines where they are in theory* using the same Office so don't need retraining. They also produce documents that fit right into your workflow without the screwups you get with alternatives.
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.
I agree with your reasoning, but this actually rather points towards Software being the problem. Office in tablet mode is worse than what you get on an iPad, giving away the biggest advantage MS could have in that space - and this remains unresolved with the new generation, at least from what I get in this article.
Marketing could still be an issue if they aren't sending the right message that resonates with their target consumers. Personally I haven't seen a surface ad in a while except the commercial another poster commented on above. It was a commercial that certainly did not induce excitement - just run-on-the-mill flashiness.
I think it was the device. If you read the reviews (or better yet, used one) you'll see that it suffered from severe performance issues. That seems to have been resolved in the new one (the demos on stage looked convincing, but you have to take that with a grain of salt).
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.
For the RT, it's marketing (which was lame), confusion (it says it's Windows but it won't run any actual Windows apps), and a lack of any compelling apps. It's Microsoft trying to use their dominance in Windows to extend to the tablet. That's why we're all forced to use the half-assed Start Tiles on the desktop when running Windows 8, so they can put 'Modern' apps (which suck on a desktop) front and center.
If they would just make commercials that show artists using the surface as a portable digital easel, authors/students using it as a digital paper replacement, and even some of what they hinted to at the event earlier with someone editing footage on the go ... I think they'd do a heck of a lot better.
Focus on what this device does fantastically, rather than poking fun at what "siri can't do".
My opinion is that it's a combination of firstly a massive, massive marketing error, and secondly them shooting themselves in the foot a little bit by packaging a heavy app like word on the RT (which most early reviews I saw slammed it for its huge performance lag).
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!
I think it's the size. Tablets that size have not done well except the iPad. I think what people primarily want from tablets is small portable computers they can carry around easily, and the Surface is the opposite of that.
It was terrible marketing. Microsoft went through a period where they treated Apple as an ally instead of as the company that was eating their lunch, and it was reflected in their "just like Apple" advertising. Quirky music, aspiration lifestyle stuff -- that doesn't work when you're an underdog and someone else is owning the market. Microsoft seriously seemed to fear offending the Gruber and Sieglers of the world.
Their more recent advertising that goes directly at the iPad is much more compelling, and will have a very positive impact on their sales.
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.
Actually if you are thinking of connecting your PC to your TV then Windows 7 is still the best bet. It's a well kept secret but a quiet PC connected to TV beats any other media solution out there hands down.
Yes, but that's an expensive option compared to ARM-based devices. I mean, you can get a pretty good Android-based ARM device with a spiffy remote for like $80. You'll be spending 5X that much for a decent X86+Windows solution.
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.
Surface RT owner here (freebie). LOVE the interface. Love the hardware (nice solid feel and excellent touch recognition). Wish kickstand would have 2 positions.. It's slower than a pro but I can deal with that. Crappy cameras, but not a show stopper.
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.
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.
I came away from today's presentation thinking that he was an unusually bad presenter. IMHO he failed to explain why the Surface Pro 2 was better at the things he was claiming it was better at, didn't give concrete details on basic specifications (saying "25% better battery life" is useless unless you know what his supposed base is), and made too many lame jokes.
Yeah, it's weird. Maybe it's just poor choice of photos by Ars, but the guy looks like a bored, minimum wage employee hawking those things at a mall kiosk.
That is insulting. Perhaps you earn more than "minimum wage", but please be respectful to everyone. Everyone out there is doing a job and deserves respect, even if he's earning a minimum wage or if he's working at a mall kiosk.
Still no keyboard that can be used without a table. Most people spend less than $700 on a laptop. Not many people are going to spend more than that on a device that was intentionally rendered less capable so Microsoft could sell gimicky keyboard covers. Microsoft knows how to make nice hardware. All they need to do is create a true hybrid device that sets the example for the industry.
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.
On-screen keyboard for "not on a table" scenarios. Compromise? Yes. But acceptable compromise? Probably; how many people do "productive" input-oriented work that isn't on a table?
I write essays for my classes and even code a little bit pretty much everywhere. In the car, lying in bed, on the sofa. The funny thing is, I did most of this on an iPad with a Clamcase Pro.
If someone didn't want to do productive input-oriented work, why would they need a tablet with a Haswell processor?
Couldn't you get something like the clamcase pro then for the surface? This type of cover is for people who want something as minimal as an ipad smart cover.
No one has made one yet, because the Surface wasn't popular enough to make it profitable.
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.
Why is there a photo of an external monitor with 3840x2160 and nothing is mentioned about it? Is it because it's just a hypothetical display that could be connected via the Mini DisplayPort, had it existed?
I was really hoping they'd announce that they are releasing such a display, to go along with the new Surfaces. I'd have bought one, along with a Surface Pro 2 and a docking station.
> Another cover that's totally out of left field is the "Surface Music Kit," a Touch Cover with a mixing deck instead of a keyboard. All the new Touch Covers are pressure sensitive, so for the Music kit, the harder you hit the Touch Cover, the louder the sound plays.
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 like the Pro, but the non-Pro Surface doesn't strike me as any more competitive than last year's model. It's heavier than it's main competitor with lower resolution and orders of magnitude fewer apps. And it does nothing to address the wave of great mini tablets. Maybe I'm alone here, but I don't want to hold anything heavier than a pound for more than a few minutes.
Also, with iOS 7 rolling out, MS is going to have a lot harder time playing the "fresh new interface" card.
Because there are already more people using iOS 7 every hour of their day than ever actually used Metro or any single variant of Android. Who was first is pretty irrelevant to average Joe/Jane picking their next phone.
How much of the battery life on a tablet is RAM? I moved down from 8GB to 4 when I switched from a big laptop to surface, and the only performance difference I noticed was substantially improved hibernate times.
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 surprised they didn't stress Windows 8.1 more. I have an original Surface RT ("O.G.") and it was essentially unused in my house until I got Windows 8.1 on it...changed everything. It's a much more usable OS.
I think the problem with the last surface was price: $900 for a mediocre windows laptop with a touch screen or $300 for a mediocre windows laptop without a touchscreen.
Why? Did you even look at the specs? They are far in advance of the capabilities of an iPad. It's a full blown "PC as a Tablet". Even having a DisplayPort output and single USB port on a tablet device immediately makes it worth $200 more than any iPad.
Because you can get a much more powerful laptop for much less, if you need a "real PC". If you need a tablet, you can get one for far less too. Heck, you can get a great laptop + a great tablet for less!
This is a delusional move from a company that's so far behind in this area that it's no longer funny.
With that said, I'd generally agree that if you don't need all of those things, you can do a lot better price-wise. But the hardware itself, assuming it's improved upon the previous generation as claimed, was pretty good last time. They've also finally allowed double the memory and significantly increased the storage.
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."
Wondering if you can get a cheaper version and upgrade the ram and SSD yourself. You can probably get a faster SSD than what they'd include, and pay less for it.
That is not a good comparison. That is like asking someone, why do they need a smart phone when they can get a regular phone + a netbook for half the price. Believe it or not there is a niche market for Tablet+PC forms. It was one of the main reason and the best decision I made when purchasing the Surface Pro. For travelling, I no longer need to carry my Laptop + Tablet. I just take the Surface Pro (It is setup to use my dev environments exactly as on the PC) and when I get back, I sync the changes to the laptop. Not only can I get real work done on the plane but can also switch to tablet mode and play some useless games when tired. However, that is my experience but your mileage may vary.
If this is aimed at a niche market, I suppose it makes more sense. I was just under the impression that Microsoft has hopes of remaining a major player in the computer business; if it's content with marginalizing itself into a niche, so be it.
Microsoft and their partners have been trying to sell to that niche PC-Tablet market since before the iPad was a thing. That market has been proven by multiple players to not exist, or at least not be big enough to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in capturing. Maybe they think its different now due to the iPad, but the market seems to indicate that it is not. People see the iPad as a big phone, not a small computer.
I don't think there is a laptop/convertible/tablet that you can buy with better specs for the price they are offering. Honestly, I think you are just uninformed.
Why? for $900, it seems to offer more than a baseline MBAir (better processor, screen). But with some added touch, especially the pen input (something I'm curious to how well it works) in a tight tablet form factor.
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.
Agreed. It'd be a lot more competitive if they sold the Surface Pro tablet for the same as the iPad. And have options to pay more for keyboard/3g/disk space - just like the iPad
Microsoft sticking to Tegra is an interesting choice. I'm not saying it's bad, but still interesting given the current dynamics of the mobile market.
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.
It looks better than the original Surface, and seems to address the main issues. The better battery will be a huge advantage. Not a fan of the thinner keyboard though, the travel isn't too great anyway with the S Pro 1. Also, who the fuck cares about back-lighting?
some people do.. I can touch type, but sometimes when I need to press some key other than the alphabet I have to search for it.. back lit keyboards are very helpful when I'm trying to use my computer in the night without any lights.
but I do hope there is a hotkey(function key) to turn off the back light when I'm watching a movie or something.
Cross-posting from one of my comments above: 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.
Performance-wise the Pro is no different than the MBA or any other ultrabook, so it all comes down to the form factor. For portable (especially lap) use the combination of kickstand + type cover makes typing a bit more difficult than a normal laptop, but on a desk it works pretty well. There are two caveats though: the relatively small screen and fixed kickstand angles (now there are two different angles but obviously still not as flexible as a notebook).
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.
I hear great things about the Pro. You would definitely not want the RT/ARM models as a developer. Whether you want to spend $900+ on the Surface Pro to use a dev machine is another matter.
the touch cover is not that great but the type cover is awesome for typing. Looks like the second version of it is backlit as well so it does make for a great dev PC
I totally agree with you. The touch cover is useless. I haven't got a chance to try the type cover yet, but I assume it to much tolerable than the touch cover. The only complaint, it doesn't come in colors :(
Yeah, yet Microsoft still believes in that failure. They dont get that nobody want their Microsoft stuffs, they should stick to software. Nobody trust Microsoft anymore. Especially businnesses after X license audits ... I'm glad people understand how dangerous this company really is. They definetly lost the cellphone/tablet battle.
* 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.
[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/microsoft