Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

penny-arcade.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 256 posts

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#31

Post by devindotcom »

TwistedWeasel wrote: post #17

It's admirable that MS is responding to criticism of their device and working for a solution. However, all the issues he experienced seem like they would be quite obvious to anyone testing the device usage for any kind of drawing application (which, for a device with a stylus seems like a common enough use case to be testing), perhaps Microsoft needs to spend more time and effort on their QA process for the next roun…

Yeah, I'm baffled as to how the button placement made it past any kind of initial hands-on testing. It's hard to imagine a person using the pen on the screen for ten or fifteen minutes not encountering that problem.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#32

Post by stcredzero »

neltnerb wrote: post #8
programminggeek wrote: post #5

The one thing that nobody seems to appreciate when it comes to pushing forward towards retina displays is just how many more pixels, how much more memory, and how much slower everything is on the same hardware. Yet, anyone who has ever been a gamer knows that changing your resolution has a huge impact on your FPS. It is foolish to think that Microsoft can make the screen much higher resolution, have a similar chip, a…

As someone who is not a gamer, I am curious -- why is it not the GPU that is the most critical when talking about the FPS and refresh rate for things like pen input? Is the issue that the CPU is "in the loop"? Is this a matter of the built in graphics on the Haswell chips not being quite good enough for this application, or is it actually the CPU? I mostly wonder because I've found the improvements to the GPU in the…

why is it not the GPU that is the most critical when talking about the FPS and refresh rate for things like pen input?

GPUs are typically about reducing latency for a large amount of parallel processing. Things like stylus latency are more about reducing the latency for a very tiny amount of serially processed data, where the latency requirements are quite a bit more strenuous. (A kerjillion triangles, versus under 4 bytes total for x,y, and pressure, though there is a bit more than just that for rendering a drawn line with attendant mathematics.)

People who edit sound and do studio recording know from experience that people paying close attention can start noticing lags upwards of 5-10 ms or so. When you're concentrating on drawing, you're definitely paying close attention.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#33

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

devindotcom wrote: post #31
TwistedWeasel wrote: post #17

It's admirable that MS is responding to criticism of their device and working for a solution. However, all the issues he experienced seem like they would be quite obvious to anyone testing the device usage for any kind of drawing application (which, for a device with a stylus seems like a common enough use case to be testing), perhaps Microsoft needs to spend more time and effort on their QA process for the next roun…

Yeah, I'm baffled as to how the button placement made it past any kind of initial hands-on testing. It's hard to imagine a person using the pen on the screen for ten or fifteen minutes not encountering that problem.

From the article, it sounds like the Microsoft folks were kicking themselves for that oversight.

To their credit, I've made similar mistakes in my career.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#34

Post by morsch »

ajessup wrote: post #18

OP, surprised that MS (as with any large company) didn't require you to sign an NDA to not discuss unannounced features during development. Bold (and encouraging) move on their part if they didn't.

They'd have to be insane. You can't pay for advertisements like these. Despite the mixed feelings Gabe has had with Surface 3. Just look at this HN thread; every post Gabe made about the Surface caused similar comments.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#35

Post by dublinben »

dman wrote: post #16
dublinben wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like it's already competitive in the market of nerds who draw cartoons on their computers, and need to be mobile. The Wacom Cintiq is probably much better for serious drawing, though you give up the portability of a self-contained tablet computer.[1] I'm not sure the Surface will succeed in any markets other than that though. It just solve any common problems significantly better than the alternatives. [1]…

I think it has pretty good potetial in hospitals, education and insurance where ability to take notes is important. Especially the use case where you are expected to stand and jot down things on a tablet sized device.

Those enterprises have already been well satisfied by the convertible tablets from Lenovo, Fujitsu, Panasonic, etc. for years. I don't think the Surface will make much headway into those fields, beyond the few people who are literally working in the field and not in offices.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#36

Post by TwistedWeasel »

devindotcom wrote: post #31
TwistedWeasel wrote: post #17

It's admirable that MS is responding to criticism of their device and working for a solution. However, all the issues he experienced seem like they would be quite obvious to anyone testing the device usage for any kind of drawing application (which, for a device with a stylus seems like a common enough use case to be testing), perhaps Microsoft needs to spend more time and effort on their QA process for the next roun…

Yeah, I'm baffled as to how the button placement made it past any kind of initial hands-on testing. It's hard to imagine a person using the pen on the screen for ten or fifteen minutes not encountering that problem.

A lot of QA departments these days put their effort behind automated testing, which is very valuable but will never replace actual human usage of a device.

Automation should catch one class of problems but real world usage is necessary to catch a whole different type of issue.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#37

Post by sz4kerto »

GodEater wrote: post #20

It's great to read that Gabe has had such a positive experience with a Microsoft product team - but it seems pretty obvious to me that it's because he's a somebody. His posts on penny-arcade reach an enormous audience, and so of course they're going to do their damn best to make sure he sings the product's praises. My experience is very different. I've been working for an enormous organisation for the last 4 years, a…

Interesting. In the enterprise I worked back then we had a problem that was not MS's fault rather the result of a specific implementation detail related to how we managed software on Windows-based PCs -- Microsoft basically extended the .Net framework because we needed it. (Extended means adding a few methods and events here and there, but they definitely listened -- this was many years ago, by the way.)

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#38

Post by rickyc091 »

devindotcom wrote: post #31
TwistedWeasel wrote: post #17

It's admirable that MS is responding to criticism of their device and working for a solution. However, all the issues he experienced seem like they would be quite obvious to anyone testing the device usage for any kind of drawing application (which, for a device with a stylus seems like a common enough use case to be testing), perhaps Microsoft needs to spend more time and effort on their QA process for the next roun…

Yeah, I'm baffled as to how the button placement made it past any kind of initial hands-on testing. It's hard to imagine a person using the pen on the screen for ten or fifteen minutes not encountering that problem.

They probably didn't have an artist use the device prior to release. They were probably testing the app in OneNote where you could just move the page to center it if you needed more room.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#40

Post by TwistedWeasel »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #33
devindotcom wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm baffled as to how the button placement made it past any kind of initial hands-on testing. It's hard to imagine a person using the pen on the screen for ten or fifteen minutes not encountering that problem.

From the article, it sounds like the Microsoft folks were kicking themselves for that oversight. To their credit, I've made similar mistakes in my career.

Yes, me too. However i'd hope that for a product as big and important to MS as this then there would be more checks and balances in place to make sure that such things don't get overlooked.

It's understandable for one engineer to overlook it, maybe even a whole team but for an entire division of design, engineering, QA, marketing etc? Something is rotten in their process.

Post reply on HN