Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update • Hacker News Board

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#201

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 5:34 AM UTC

dublinben wrote: post #35

dman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#202

Post by steele » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 5:36 AM UTC

tanzam75 wrote: post #142

steele wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wacom released the SD tablet in 1987. Their patent on inductively-powered styluses should have expired by now. (Back then, US patents were valid for 17 years from issue date, but the backlog was also much shorter.) I know that N-trig used to make an inductively-powered stylus about 5 years ago, but for whatever reason, they switched to batteries.

Ah, I did not realize it expired. It is quite strange then.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#203

Post by dharma1 » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:09 AM UTC

I'm kind of surprised they didn't run these type of tests BEFORE releasing surfae 3 pro

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#204

Post by blazespin » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:16 AM UTC

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're not listening to him because he's a somebody, they're listening to him because they realize he's describing what every drawer needs.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#205

Post by ajanuary » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:31 AM UTC

gcanyon wrote: post #198

balls187 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I open a CSV file in Excel 2013, it correctly delimits the file. You may have non-standard CSV files (or at least delimited files that are not properly escaped)

It's important to point out that there is no standard for CSV files, only conventions.

There is RFC4180, but that came way after people were using it in lots or ways incompatible with the spec, so it isn't a huge help when paraing arbitrary files. I'd recommend following it if you're generating files though.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#206

Post by ajanuary » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:33 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #162

jzwinck wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Excel as much as the next guy, but even in 2013 when you open a delimited text file it makes you manually tell it what the delimiters are. A computer should be able to guess whether a large text file is CSV, TSV, etc. This is an example of something Apple would get right, but Microsoft does not, even after more than a decade with this heavily-used feature. A tasteful implementer would make it do something reas…

You might be vastly overestimating the correctness of files being imported. Some coworkers of mine have to deal with CSV/TSV imports from enterprise customers, and the amount of clearly broken scripts is pretty bad. That excel import preview dialog helps non-programmers try to fix these issues beforehand. If that wasn't there, it'd likely be impossible for these people to know where to begin trying to fix the import.

The preview dialog is useful, but the default option for the delimiter could be guessed and the preview dialog used to confirm it.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#207

Post by mukundmr » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:34 AM UTC

Why would people want to use a Surface Pro3 as a drawing tablet? What is the target consumer for this device? The last time I played with the device, it was running regular Windows apps on a small screen and it was a nightmare getting the menus and buttons right. If applications have to be tailored for the Surface, how will they work on the desktop?

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#208

Post by mortenjorck » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:40 AM UTC

quink wrote: post #138

Tloewald wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually MS has always listened. The problem has been (a) whom they listened to (the user has usually not been their customer) and (b) lack of "taste". MS Office is, for good and ill, exactly what you get when you give users what they ask for and have no taste.

Whatever are you complaining about? Little as I am a fan of the WYSIWYG philosophy, Office is a genuinely spectacular product.

Indeed, apart from that WYSIWYG. If Word were focused only on text editing (at which it is peerless) and not at all on design and typesetting (at which it is execrable), it would be a nearly perfect product.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#209

Post by Marazan » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 7:01 AM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #60

"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 t…

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

Yeah it's easy to get listened to by Microsoft, just go create the most popular web-comic in the world and they'll get in touch. Anyone can do it.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#210

Post by huhtenberg » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 7:56 AM UTC

nether wrote: post #48

huhtenberg wrote: post #23

Gotta really give it to Microsoft. The transformation of the company under Nadella's leadership is really impressive. They really stepped up their game. They finally got someone on the PR team that actually knows what they are doing.

Gabe was raving about the Surface even with Ballmer at MS. I guess now it's time to credit anything good happening to Nadella's chairmanship.

Except Microsoft didn't respond to his raves while Ballmer was in place.