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Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

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Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#531

Post by regularfry »

Bud wrote: post #243
jrockway wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, nearly ever doctor or professional I've seen using a tablet was using a Thinkpad with a pen rather than an iPad with their finger. Screwing around with iTunes and doing work are two completely separate use cases, and it seems that Microsoft is more interested in "the Enterprise" than Apple is. So with that in mind, they're trying to accommodate all use cases. (I did have one doctor that insisted on…

"Screwing around with iTunes"? You've either both not worked in any large companies lately AND never really used an iPad, or you are just blinded by platform bias. The fact is that iPads are being massively adopted in Fortune 500 companies. And I can assure you that those users are not "screwing around with iTunes". In fact, iTunes doesn't even exist on the iPad, so you don't really know what you are talking about, a…

Wondering about the downvotes?

    You've either...
    you are just blinded...
    you don't really...
Don't do that.

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#532

Post by hollerith »

makecheck wrote: post #172

Apple was smart to release the iPad 2 with a design that practically "had to have" a special cover. This allowed them to legally advertise the iPad's price at one amount even though the majority of their customers would really be paying more (i.e. $549 after shelling out for a $50 cover, instead of only the base $499 amount). Microsoft probably has the same plan here. A cover that contains a keyboard can be even more…

>the iPad 2 with a design that practically "had to have" a special cover

Friend of mine has an iPad 2 and never bought a cover for it.

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#533

Post by jpadkins »

tmzt wrote: post #450
numo16 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, see the Verizon Droid ads that pushed android into being a major competitor to iOS..Android didn't do it all by themselves; Verizon put together commercials that evoked emotional responses that brought in the people who wanted the phone that was a robot.

But how much did those adds sell android versus somebody walking into the Verizon store lookinga for a better phone. Can we separate the two as the occured nearly simultaneously?

uhh people don't drop $200 for just a better phone when a replacement regular phone is $0-$50.

Do you really think android was far superior product to Palm Pre? Or maybe the advertising had a bit to do with it...

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#535

Post by regularfry »

Produce wrote: post #306
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For crying out loud. Ofcourse styluses are the way to go if you want any degree of accuracy. The difference between yesterday and today is the difference between resistive and capacitive touch screens. In other words, the new type is far more sensitive and doesn't require having to tap a spot ten times to get it to register. Fingers are still good if you're doing things where accuracy is not important - e.g. tapping…

Good resistive screens are as responsive as capacitive, and they don't need a conductive stylus so you can easily flip between accurate and inaccurate modes. Seriously, if you get a chance to play with a Nokia N900, you'll see what I mean.

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#536

Post by hollerith »

anonymoushn wrote: post #502

I wonder if Microsoft's new keyboard will work with my iPad.

It is easier to carry two flat objects around when they have the same dimensions and can be "stacked up" against each other, but this cover cannot have anything close to the same dimensions as an iPad because they have drastically different aspect ratios (what looks like 16:9 versus the 4:3 of the iPad).

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#537

Post by peterkelly »

rimantas wrote: post #522
peterkelly wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OS is fine, except for the lack of a user-visible filesystem. It's the apps that are often limited, compared to their desktop counterparts.

Oh god, there we go again. You can forget user-visible filesystem. Normal people don't care about "files". They care about their music, photos, videos and documents. Filesystems are vestige from the past, not the future.

Perhaps I should rephrase my statement. I'm not suggesting that iOS should provide full access to the entire root directory tree in the way that OS X, Windows, or Linux do. The default setup of these systems literally leaves tens of thousands of files sitting around on the hard disk in a complicated directory hierarchy that no user should ever need to see.

What I'm really referring to is the ability to organise your music, photos, videos, and documents (all of which are files) in a way that is based on topic/project, not application. For content consumption I think the current approach is fine, but for content creation it's often necessary to deal with multiple types of documents (e.g. a spreadsheet, word document, and some photos) and it's really awkward to deal with this in the current model.

If you are working on multiple projects, you want all the stuff for project A in one place, and all the stuff for project B in another place. This is especially important when A and B are for different clients, or you want to collaborate with someone on B but not on A, and easily send others a copy of everything relating to B.

I've seen first-hand how novice users can sometimes get confused about the location of their files, e.g. my documents vs. desktop vs. whatever, and I definitely agree that we need a better approach than currently provided on desktop OSs. But I think iOS goes too far in the other direction, and we're still yet to see a solution that scales well with user skill level and needs.

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#538

Post by photon137 »

flatline3 wrote: post #376
photon137 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't - it provides a perfectly equivalent platform. In all cases, it will be the codecs registered with the OS that would be used - so the quality of the media cannot be better/worse. Where this differs is from a developer perspective - you don't have to learn a non-standard UI API (XAML/WinForms/MFC/COM/ATL/Qt/Gtk/Swing/awt/whatever) or a language you're not familiar with (C#/C++/Java - pick any). But you can…

It's perfectly equivalently poor. What makes those platform APIs useful are all the tools they provide to simplify the creation of great, well-performing UIs that exceed the user's expectations.

Well, MS provides Visual Studio for this - which isn't a bad toolchain, in my opinion.

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#539

Post by ddddaaaa »

runako wrote: post #62

"Unexpected error occurred." at http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ Not a good omen. (Edit: they fixed it.) Without having seen the product, I'd say that its fortunes will be based largely on its price point. They need to have a compelling offering in the $499 range, or this is going to be a blip on the iPad/Kindle Fire market.

Still unexpected error occured lol..

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#540

Post by ddddaaaa »

runako wrote: post #62

"Unexpected error occurred." at http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ Not a good omen. (Edit: they fixed it.) Without having seen the product, I'd say that its fortunes will be based largely on its price point. They need to have a compelling offering in the $499 range, or this is going to be a blip on the iPad/Kindle Fire market.

Still unexpected error occured lol..
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