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Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

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Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#211

Post by rlu »

mikestew wrote: post #112
richardlblair wrote: post #43

When MS is cornered (when they are losing in one area or another), and they are determined to win the competition should be scared. They are very good at committing to a project, and being in it for the long haul.

> They are very good at committing to a project, and being in it for the long haul. How so? I can think of several projects ( especially hardware) that they abandoned after the first version. Granted, they gave the Zune a fair shake (though I don't think the iPod had much to be scared of). SPOT, too, considering that smart phones were starting to get useful about a year after SPOT's release. But as a counter example,…

There are plenty of examples of Microsoft releasing a product which initially had little uptake but that eventually, after several releases, did well. Even big ones like Windows, Office, and SQL Server are examples of this.

As for unreleased products: I think that is an orthogonal discussion.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#212

Post by tallanvor »

rthomas6 wrote: post #156
balls187 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office 2013, specifically Excel and Word are fantastic.

Except for my use case, which is when you have a 1,200 page document with hundreds of tables, lists, and pictures. The thing grinds to a halt and has all sorts of problems. Yes, I know that MS Word is not the best choice for documents that big, but it's not up to me.

Have you tried the 64-bit version? People still normally install the 32-bit version (mainly for add-on supportability), but if you're working with very large documents, the 64-bit version should work better for you.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#213

Post by tfinniga »

josefresco wrote: post #56

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.

> the gamer

If they get Gabe happy with it, then they will get a ton of free PR in front of a lot of gamers. For example, see this post of his (especially the second half) about the original surface pro: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/02/22/the-ms-surf...

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#214

Post by dingdingdang »

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…

Why don't you try contacting Gabe directly and get a few contact emails off him, might well be worthwhile!

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#215

Post by pdw »

balls187 wrote: post #172
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…

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)

There are no standard CSV files. There's even no "Excel standard": Excel uses different delimiters in different locales. It's a huge pain.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#217

Post by mcintyre1994 »

gsteinb88 wrote: post #152
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I didn't doubt Windows so much for programming stuff I'd really like to get one for university - looks like the perfect machine for lectures and also everything else I need a laptop for. For any students but CS I think it's awesome.

In my experience, I found that I was far more productive/successful in undergrad when I used Windows as my main OS and set up *nix virtual machines for the my computer science classes. Having the computer just _work_ and not needing to worry about software/configuration conflicts between classes was a huge improvement over trying to do everything inside of a single native OS. That said, I now have a Macbook Pro and l…

Yep fair enough, Windows is a lot nicer to deal with but it just doesn't seem to have the same developer support. My alternative buy is definitely a Macbook but I do think the surface would be better for other student use cases - that said plenty of people on campus have Macbooks so it's not exactly a painful choice.

VMs are a good point and probably pretty much equalise things technically but OSX seems the better main OS for just doing work that happens to be programming/using developer tools etc.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#218

Post by mcintyre1994 »

jacobolus wrote: post #192
hyperliner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There’s no good way to collaborate with multiple authors without hellish document synchronization effort." Based on just that, I don't think you have used Office in a really long time.

[Sorry that this is all quite off topic for a conversation about surface.] So imagine you have 4 authors: person A writes a document, and person B makes one set of changes, while person C makes a different set of changes, with person D working off of C’s version. Now person A wants to accept some but not all of C’s changes, and some but not all of B’s changes, and person D wants to “rebase” his document to add the ch…

Not sure about the first but for the second Office online does that now. Not sure if you can do it completely in the desktop app but the online UI isn't horrible from what I've used of it.

Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

#219

Post by jodrellblank »

reallysure wrote: post #190
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.

"Actually MS has always listened." Really? http://www.jax184.com/projects/filenames/filenames.html

Your one link to demonstrate Microsoft "don't listen" is where the person refuses to report it through the proper channels, gets it reported via an unofficial channel then after Microsoft have listened, doesn't like their answer therefore pretends it didn't happen?

Convincing.

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