> 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.

Home/pro would have worked well. It would be nice to have a different name for the ARM stuff though, to avoid confusion.

"Home" is not so great for a mobile device...

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.

They should kill Metro/Modern UI on desktop ,it's the stupidest thing Microsoft has ever done.

> it's the stupidest thing Microsoft has ever done.

Microsoft Bob? Active Mates Barney? It's a big change, but it's nowhere near the worst thing they've ever done.

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.

Metro <--- Was pretty stupid.

(* see https://www.soluto.com/reports; people argue over what the data means, but the raw numbers are pretty compelling)

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.

There's a harder change, too: give up on an Apple-style 30%-cut closed marketplace.

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.