Microsoft invented the iPad!
Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet
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Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet
#182I'm actually a Windows user (although I own an iPad), but you have to be a bit humored by all this. As usual where Apple has used a feather Microsoft have used the whole chicken with keyboards, screws, different versions, the whole enchilada. I'm only surprised there's no stickers. "ClearType display"? really, you felt you had to brand it just to compete with "Retina display". Despite all this the tablet might actual…
ClearType has been around for a very long time. It's basically subpixel-rendering that improves the visual quality of text (sort of effectively tripling the LCD resolution). Last I checked, Microsoft had patented the hell out of it (and I last checked a few years ago). I think they're right about touting a technology that effectively triples text-display resolution. And for your other observation about the whole ench…
I don't know how they're going to make subpixel anti-aliasing work if you can rotate the display. I wouldn't be surprised if they just are re-using the ClearType name and it's not actually sub-pixel anti-aliased, just regular anti-aliased (like the iPad).
Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet
#183So they're not just going after the iPad, they're also going after the MacBook Air: The Intel version + Touch Cover was repeatedly shown with the regular desktop and apps on it, and generally spun as a sort of light laptop. Ambitious, and finally makes sense of their Metro/desktop combo OS strategy to a degree. The hardware to go along with it was a missing puzzle piece, and I guess shows just how important it can be…
Pen+touch+type seems like a great idea. It is something no other manufacturer has tried to do. I think the devil will be in the details, but this sure is interesting, because Apple's strategy is "people should buy multiple devices-- iPad, Macbook Air, Mac Pro...". MSFT wants one device that is a lot more versatile.
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Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet
#184Can anyone explain the timing and placement for this announcement? Why now and why outside of a major conference and on such short notice? Is it supposed to be a hip marketing ploy or is there something else happening they wanted to announce ahead of?
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Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pen+touch+type seems like a great idea. It is something no other manufacturer has tried to do. I think the devil will be in the details, but this sure is interesting, because Apple's strategy is "people should buy multiple devices-- iPad, Macbook Air, Mac Pro...". MSFT wants one device that is a lot more versatile.
Pen+touch+type seems like a great idea. It is something no other manufacturer has tried to do. Apple Newton MessagePad, 1993. It had a stylus, handwriting recognition, you could use it with just your fingertips, and you could connect an external keyboard. http://www.flickr.com/photos/atow/4314242537/ That was almost twenty years a go. Newton was a very expensive experiment for Apple, and they have learned the hard wa…
Not everyone agrees. This one is rated pretty highly and apparently selling quite well: http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Touchscreen-Including-Mot...
Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean how like Apple was so original with an MP3 player?
You mean a compact music player with a 2.5" HDD, room for 5GB of music, with 20 minutes of skip protection, a FireWire port for 50MB per second transfer, a click wheel for navigation, and a user friendly interface? Yes, that was pretty novel in 2002.
1.8" HD. All of the other MP3 players on the market until then had been using 2.5", which was why the iPod seemed so much smaller at launch.
Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet
#187Microsoft had the touch-surface interface back like a year before the iphone came out. But they rolled it out as a $10000 restuarant/menu interface instead of a computing/consumer device one. Classic good tech/bad customer targeting failure. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2007/may07/05-29ms...
I wouldn't be surprised to see them directly replace the old surface with the guts of the new one integrated into a 60" multitouch TV (for both table and on the wall use) and scrap the IR object detection for a kinect based solution. Of course this would leave them with the cost of a huge multitouch panel.
Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet
#188They have a video on the main page. The video is a minute long. They have asked for my attention for a minute. In that minute, they have not told me anything about what the Surface can do for me, and why I should care about it. I'm absolutely baffled by that. Yes, I might know what it is, and have some idea about what it can do, but if this was a television commercial, I'd bet money that such a campaign would be a qu…
Really surprised by the really clashing tones of their website (Apple, consumer, colors): http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/default.aspx And that minute long video, which screams Dudes, Droids, and ferrofluids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpzu3HM2CIo&feature=playe...
Well, Microsoft's marketing was never really known for consistency, was it? Compare it to this IE9 ad for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFE4rkSaKOY. Imagine an average consumer seeing these ads and then he sees this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86LxStLXrf4&feature=relmf....
Which one do you think he will understand? To which can he relate more?
(Btw. I don't say iCloud is good. Microsofts Skydrive on win8 (or whatever they're calling their cloud offerings now, I really don't have an overview anymore) seems quite compelling - but it seems to me like they can't really communicate well enough what it does.)
Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet
#189"Hands off entertainme"? Who designed the mobile version of the Surface website? https://twitter.com/designdaisuki/status/214878299669790720/...
Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet
#190I just flashed back to Ballmer mocking the MacBook Air 4 years ago. I guess he did want one after all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYcxvEfUikg
As someone who considers the current MacBook Air to be "the computer", enough to have made it my primary and only machine, the MacBook Air from four years ago was horrible: I laughed at my friends that got it, and I laughed all the harder when they didn't use it for months and then got a usable laptop. The 2010 Air is honestly barely the same device as the one from 2008.
My point: pulling statements from four years ago and attempting to claim that they were wrong because the same words said today are silly or hypocritical is a little dishonest. (The classic example of this: the original iPhone running the original iPhone OS was actually not very good. Yet, people now make fun of people who claimed that, as some newer iPhone running the latest iOS is finally amazing.)