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Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

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Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#51

Post by danudey »

skyebook wrote: post #28
neltnerb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, really? What is the bottleneck on the motherboard?

The problem was traditionally the link between the northbridge (which connects connects the CPU and RAM) and the southbridge (handles peripheral connections like SATA, PCI, PCI-E, etc) components of the motherboard. Intel has now changed their architecture in the last 4 or 5 years to be a single Platform Controller Hub where the CPU provides the functionality previously found in the northbridge chip. In this particul…

In modern Intel processors (especially in portable devices), the GPU is integrated on the CPU die, so pushing updates doesn't count (unless you count pulling data from main memory to provide to the GPU).

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#52

Post by stinos »

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.

Actually the beginning of the first paragraph (repeated below) really made me think 'wtf, apart from the number of people, this is exactly how some meetings with users work at our tiny startup'. Then I realized every engineer/designer/... probably makes such mistakes, maybe becasue of losing sight on the bigger picture, and MS is no different.

I ended up in a conference room with about half a dozen people from the Surface team. More rotated in and out as I worked. I drew and talked for two and half hours while they watched and took notes. Within the first thirty seconds they realised how frustrating the home button placement was.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#53

Post by smacktoward »

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…

While I don't disagree, it's also potentially due to Microsoft being a gigantic corporation with dozens of internal fiefdoms, which can each have wildly varying cultures. It's possible that the people working on consumer tech (or specifically on Surface) are open to user feedback where the people working on enterprise products just aren't.

(Not that I'd say that's acceptable if it's the case, just saying it wouldn't surprise me -- especially given how terrible at these things enterprise-focused people at big companies are in general. Listening to end users and then rapidly responding to their needs is just not part of their culture.)

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#54

Post by Torgo »

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…

They are fixing the problem for every user, not just him, based on his input. I want a drawing tablet, I have been reading every PA post about the surface with bated breath waiting for the "it's now perfect" announcement. As far as I'm concerned, their model is working. Maybe they just need to expand it to other products too.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#55

Post by wlesieutre »

phaus wrote: post #44
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…

>It's admirable that MS is responding to criticism of their device and working for a solution. It is admirable, but their work towards a solution will be fruitless. N-Trig's pressure sensitive stylus technology is vastly inferior to Wacom. Sure, most people can't tell the difference, but most artists can. Sure, artists can still produce professional quality work with an N-Trig stylus, but the experience of using an N…

On the other hand, the N-trig stylus works accurately at the edge of the screen. You can't say the same about Wacom's, and the issue is made worse by the fact that most desktop software puts toolbars full of tiny mouse targets around the edge of the screen.

With their Bamboo/Intuos/Cintiq products, Wacom can avoid the accuracy falloff problems by including an enormous margin around the edge of the active area. On a portable device like the Surface Pro 2, they weren't able to do that and it showed.

There are certainly tradeoffs in going to N-trig, but I don't think it's fair to portray it as inferior to Wacom's tech in every area but cost.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#56

Post by josefresco »

Seems like a small niche to be focusing on. I understand the PR angle (it's a home run for the PR team) but I don't think catering to artists who draw digitally is going to make or break the tablet.

Where's the feel good story about the coder, the gamer, or the office junkie? Each of which makes up a considerably larger slice of the premium laptop/tablet marketplace.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#57

Post by steele »

stcredzero wrote: post #21

It’s very hard to take something like how the device “feels” to draw on and convert that into something engineers can use. I ended up describing it in terms of speaking. I said drawing on the Pro 2 was like having a conversation with someone. With the Surface Pro 3 I feel like I need to either whisper or yell to have the same conversation. I had to press very lightly or very hard, and it changes the way I draw. I was…

In this context, who are the hackers?

"asian knock-offs" seems odd in this context. Wacom is a Japanese company. Also, some inexpensive competitors like the monoprice-sold UC-Logic tablets are generally well-received despite having to shove a battery into the pen to avoid wacom's patented inductive coupling.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#58

Post by rasz_pl »

sergiotapia wrote: post #2

>After I was done they told me they were going to take all the notes they had gathered and go to work on fixing the issues I had shown them. Later >To see them come back to me with fixes for my problems was really amazing. They are putting time and effort into making sure the Surface Pro 3 does what artists want it to do. Well played to the MS Surface team, I hope these fixes make it to production and stay there on t…

More like well player PR team, they failed to fix every single issue. They couldnt even let him have the home button fix, something that sounds like a simple script I could write in AutoHotkey in two minutes tops.

Surface team looks like a committee full of control freaks. cant give users control over home button, cant give users control over pressure curves (they brought two HARDWIRED tablets instead of writing configuration tool?).

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#59

Post by headwayoldest »

itafroma wrote: post #29
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.

> OP, surprised that MS (as with any large company) didn't require you to sign an NDA to not discuss unannounced features during development Mike Krahulik has been a fan of Surface Pro from the beginning,[1] has been very vocal about what he likes and dislikes, and has a very large audience.[2] It seems likely they were counting on him blogging his experiences as soon as possible after his last Surface Pro post,[3] w…

Gabe is just the character that initially represented Mike Krahulik, the artist of PA and the person writing those posts.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#60

Post by krschultz »

"You hear a lot about MS being this massive company that doesn’t listen but that’s really not fair in this case."

Every large company is made up of thousands of individual people, many of which really care about making a good product and making customers happy. The whole question in managing a big company is how to get out of the way of that natural process, while still coordinating all the disparate groups so that the final product works.

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