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Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

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Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#681

Post by dredmorbius »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #669
huggyface wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is their an Android tablet that hasn't been dead on arrival There have been millions of Android tablets sold. In most product spaces that is an incredible success, and it's only relative to the astonishing success of the iPad could that be called "dead on arrival". And that was the rather terrible phase one. The incomplete Honeycomb, the rather terrible Tegra 2, and toothing pain hardware. I've noticed my online elec…

This is true, only if you compare every android tablet across manufacturers. People who like to tout android vs apple love to do this. But the fact is, android tablets have not been a success for a single manufacturer. There's only so long companies will keep dumping money down this rabbit hole hoping to get lucky. Android tablets have been a success for Google. for everyone else, not so much.

They're also arguably a success for those who are interested in building off the platform. While Google certainly counts, I suspect this goes beyond them.

As far as the hardware goes, I suspect it's going to be a very low-margin market. Razors to the blades.

This doesn't make it unsuccessful. At all.

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#682

Post by sjwright »

evilduck wrote: post #629
nitid_name wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly a naive question: what's the difference between a simulator and an emulator? Presumably an emulator copies the actual instruction set, while a simulator... only pretends to copy the instruction set?

In the iOS sense of the question: An emulator would be binary compatible with the actual device by emulating the ARM instruction set on top of x86. The iOS simulator doesn't do this but instead runs a flavor[1] of iOS natively directly on x86 that is API compatible but not binary compatible (i.e. compiled binaries for the simulator cannot be ran on the devices). [1] The simulator OS also has distinct limitations that…

Even if the environment was "truly emulated", there would still be no motion detection, accelerometer, compass, location data or multitouch input.

Nor is it likely for the emulated environment to be able to provide a sufficiently accurate performance analogue to the devices' CPU and GPU.

The simulator is the ideal development environment: stupidly fast, and completely reliable for most day-to-day development tasks. For Apple to provide more accuracy in the simulator would be a waste of their time, when you can just as easily run your app on a device.

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#683

Post by Arvuvg »

eurleif wrote: post #528
Arvuvg wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best part about all the people making the comment about "Microsoft trying to copy Apple's Retina" is that Microsoft's "ClearType" has been around for so, so many years longer (I remember seeing it in Windows XP, but it may have even come in before that).

Microsoft has been using the name ClearType for years, but for something completely different: subpixel hinted font rendering. This "ClearType display" has nothing to do with that, besides the name.

From what I've read, this is just their continual expansion of ClearType (which was not intended to be synonymous with subpixel font rendering, but rather a larger framework for which the subpixel font rendering was merely a component).

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#684

Post by simonh »

barista wrote: post #651
simonh wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can a product that hasn't shipped yet be 'ahead of the curve'? I have an iPad in my bag right now. Microsoft aren't even on the curve yet. Apple also started blending elements of the iOS UI into OS X, such as multi-touch gestures over a year ago. Maybe MS will leapfrog them. Surface does look interesting, I'm not discounting it, but we'll have to see where Apple and Microsoft stand relative to each other when Sur…

I don't know why you'd think that Microsoft is not even on the curve here. Surface is just the hardware aspect of the complete solution. The Software has been out in beta for a few months now. It's the software that is more responsible for the blending of tablet and laptop than the hardware.

By that argument Microsoft were on the curve in 2010 with Courier, supposedly due for launch later that year but cancelled in April.

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#685

Post by Spooky23 »

the_mat wrote: post #660
Spooky23 wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Apple's vision for tablet-computer integration is to dumb down the computer. Microsoft can't afford to do that.

The main thing Apple did with the iPad was make it work without any major gotchas. Sure, you could have stuck a desktop CPU and desktop OS in a touchscreen device. Other people tried that. It wasn't appealing. The iPad gave long battery life, a comfortable form-factor, solid usability and reliability, an impossibly low price point for such high-end hardware, and most importantly it was a tablet above all else. Every…

What Apple did was remove all of the barriers that got in the way of a good tablet experience for individual consumers. In essence, they made the iPad an application platform instead of a general purpose computer.

They combined that with their amazing manufacturing and engineering prowess and created a real winner.

From my perspective, the iPad is a dumbed down device. I only have access to the underlying operating system via API, don't have an ability to directly access shared corporate resources that are interesting to me, and cannot run arbitrary software without alot of hassle.

Dumbed-down devices are fine -- i own and love my iPad. But they're fine until you need to do something that the vendor doesn't want you to do, and Apple is a vendor who likes to define a single "one true path" to do many things.

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#687

Post by repoman »

slurgfest wrote: post #471
heyitsnick wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It strikes me as an entirely natural development and something that will appeal to many consumers. I get the feeling Apple have always wanted iPad to be an extra - an extension to the desktop experience. But the divisions between phone, tablet, "ultralight laptop" and "main laptop" are arbitrary and increasingly opaque. Many people are starting to see tablets and real possible replacements: for light users, it handle…

There is no disappearing division between devices, there is rather a stronger division between mobile platforms (including tablet and phone) and PC platforms. And that division is only going to get stronger. Maemo and Meego are dead. Chromebooks are not likely to blow up. If small ARM machines get popular it will be by running some weird mobile-type OS. Native apps seem to be much more commercially attractive than pu…

I agree. The division is stronger. Well, the only reason why people build native apps is because it is faster to build native apps. Even when HTML5 is completely published, if you have to write a game on the browser, it can take forever to actually find out the bug you have. Browser bugs are not fun to learn!

Chrome will die, and replaced by Android. Google can't have both.

I don't give a damn about these electronics anymore. I use my iPad for video and books, and my computer for gaming and everything else. I say the new MS tablet will be more convenient to use...

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#688

Post by Shorel »

romaniv wrote: post #576
abrahamsen wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Microsoft's third or fourth attempt on a tablet PC, the earlier attempts all pre-date Apple's creation of the market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_for_Pen_Computing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XP_Tablet_PC_Edition#Tablet_PC_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_PC

Good point, but why label those as "attempts"? A decade ago PDAs were pretty good devices with decent amount of free apps and an interesting range of possibilities. (For one, they were extensible via cards. Something that's not available in today smartphones I know of.) You could read books, play games, use internet via WiFi, plus there was a lot of business applications for them. Heck, my old Asus MyPal has better b…

Pricing.

Windows tablets used to be more expensive than laptops, and Apple tablets are significantly less expensive than laptops.

Windows CE PDAs were also very expensive, about three or four times what a current smartphone costs.

So the tech was there, but their pricing made the market very small.

Re: Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

#689

Post by jongalloway2 »

jongalloway2 wrote: post #461
prezjordan wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright fine I believe you. I can't pinpoint why I have such an issue with VS. I mean, I don't have much use for it since I'm a(n) RoR developer, but I don't really know why I hate it so much. Freshman year of high school I took my first CS class in Visual Basic and I really liked it. I said "I" 9 times. Sorry.

Try running Visual Studio in safe mode to see if it's an extension / add-in that's causing issues: devenv /safemode Some other tips here. Like everyone else replying, Visual Studio 2010 launches in under 10 seconds for me; Visual Studio 2012 RC even faster.

Forgot the link to the other tips - here it is: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2516297
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