Witness Ridicules 'Hands-On' Reviews of Surface

Freshly Exhumed writes "Danny Sullivan over at Marketing Land has been tipped over the edge by various colleagues: 'After seeing yet another "hands-on" review of the Microsoft Surface tablet, I thought it would be interesting to shed more light on what exactly the journalists who assembled in Hollywood this week for the Surface launch event actually got to do with the tablets. In short, not a lot. Come along as I explain the hands-off reality of what I saw.' In response to Sullivan's criticisms, TechRadar contributor Mary To Many rebuts that merely touching something that does not operate nor even truly exist equates to an actual hands-on review. So, what do Slashdotters expect a "hands-on" review to reveal and/or include?"

Comments

"Reviews"

[tsa]

Most "Reviews" I see on the 'net are just summaries of what you find in the product folder, nothing more. So what's new about this?

Re:"Reviews"

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's probably going to get even worse now that so much of the new hotness is in functionally embedded systems that ship tied to hardware...

With software, the vendor essentially faces the choice of keeping it under wraps, or of having pre-release builds leaking all over the damn place. Maybe if it's just a handful of partner companies with some seriously mean NDAs; but once it gets to the journalist level you can forget about it(analogous to the Oscar screeners that get leaked every damn time, despite being subject to just about everything short of armed guard...)

Hardware, though, with the exception of the occasional unit that...um...goes missing in a bar, is easier to keep a tight grip on. Plus, very-late-prototype hardware, in limited quantities, is inevitably available to the vendor a modest period before retail hardware is available. That sort of thing is perfect for rewarding, or punishing, media outlets. Play ball, and you'll be seeing a sample unit in the mail in time to have your benchmarks and review done before the other guys get back from Best Buy. Don't, and you can read your competitor's reviews while you wait in line to buy something to review...

This sort of thing has gone on for years in the gaming-enthusiast-wanking sector of CPU, GPU, and motherboard reviews; but it hasn't really been all that relevant. Enthusiasts care a lot; but there just aren't a lot of enthusiasts, so it was mostly just sideshow, and the truth usually managed to surface by the time whatever the product was trickled down to the '80% of the speed, 20% of the price' market where people actually buy things.

Now that the 'mainstream' devices are tightly embedded hardware units, though, there will likely be a lot more room for the same sort of shenanigans that rule enthusiast hardware wank to worm their way into mainstream tech coverage.

Re:"Reviews"

[ackthpt]

Tech reviewers step on each others toes to be "first". They all have the quality of "the first post" on slashdot.

While some First Posts have actually had some merit, a lot of First Reviews are missing some real world sit-down-and-see-what-this-can-do impressions. As far as I care a Real Hands On Review means the reviewer has it for the weekend, or such, and takes it around with them, tries various things in various settings. You get more insight from someone who has actually done something with an item rather than been part of the cattle herd at the official event.

Obviously a functional unit

[Karmashock]

MS's problems are really kind of bizarre. It's not for lack of talent or trying they just keep screwing up. It has to be management. You don't get such systematic across the board f' ups unless management is behind it.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[Samantha Wright]

It's management alright. It's been management for years. Microsoft consistently hires the best people in the field (well, those that Google doesn't snag—prior to that, though, they were nearly unchallenged, and consequentially MS has had a huge number of very respectable older researchers and engineers, including a large contingent of ex-DEC people) and then squashes them with bad managers, who spend so much time politicking and infighting that they can't recognize genius like the Courier.

Unfortunately this is an increasing trend in the whole software industry; the very recent example of Diablo 3's utter failure to live up to hype, even though it's now the fastest-selling game in history, can largely be attributed to management changes in Activision. The underlying problem seems to be hiring management and leadership from non-computing sectors instead of promoting from within, although in MS's case it's more like a long-term family feud.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[UnknowingFool]

While some here on slashdot debate who copied whom first, I think we can agree MS tried to copy Apple's style of product announcements but they missed some key details. When Apple announces a new product, the product is already being shipped from China to their stores. As such Apple has a launch date and pricing detailed. The only exception is probably the original iPhone but Apple explained the 6 month lead time was because Apple couldn't keep it a secret as they had to get FCC approval. But Apple did list price and an estimated quarter.

Because the product is pretty much ready, Apple can rehearse the entire presentation ad nauseum to make sure it works. At best MS had a working prototype of Surface. However, the Surface tablet froze in the middle of the presentation. It's an incident that anyone who had done a product demo dreads. The most glaring gaffe at an Apple announcement was when Jobs couldn't get the original iPhone to surf the web via wifi. The technician traced the problem to too many wifi users at once which isn't a big deal. I think MS timed the PR event to follow Apple as Apple had their WWDC a week earlier to try to steal the thunder of everyone talking about the new MacBook Pro Retina displays.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[Karmashock]

I largely agree.

The MBAs are very useful for administration but that doesn't mean they need to be in charge. Subordinate them to secretarial functions and give actual department control to people that actually know what is going on.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[Omestes]

Unfortunately this is an increasing trend in the whole software industry; the very recent example of Diablo 3's utter failure to live up to hype, even though it's now the fastest-selling game in history, can largely be attributed to management changes in Activision [teamliquid.net].

Er... you realize you have a contradiction in that statement, right? "Utter failure to live up to hype" and "fastest selling game in history" don't really work together. Also you ignore the fact that the Blizzard side of Activision-Blizzard, and the Activision side of it are separate, and wholly autonomous. Or at least I haven't seen a single credible, informed, source stating otherwise. Even your link amounts to little more than a conspiracy theory, linking disparate facts into a structure without any actual evidence towards the premise. Yes, there might be the same masters (which Blizzard has had before), but this doesn't really mean much since you don't actually know whats going on. For all we know they are hands-off of Blizzard since they are the most profitable game company in existence so they must be doing something right (as evident from Diablo 3, which is justifiably making money hand over fist).

That said, and back on topic: I think MS has a behemoth problem, they are so large, and their fingers are in so many pies, that they lack the ability to quickly adapt to anything. I'm going to get flamed here, but many of their "failures" have actually been pretty decent, but they failed to grasp the market, or marketing, needed to make it work. They try to win by sheer weight, and not by finesse. This works sometimes (Office, the IE domination of yore, Exchange), but generally fails in a non-business arena. The iPod and the Zune weren't really that different, with one being better in some areas, and the other in others, but the Zune completely died because you can't compete on pure specs, especially with Apple (the masters of image and sexy). I suppose this does boil down to managment, but also to the fact that they are MS... Its hard to say "Microsoft" (insert picture of Bill Gates/Balmer)" and "sexy" in the same breath, much less sell it to the masses.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[UnknowingFool]

So you're saying that a clogged wifi network causing glitches during the middle of a presentation of product using wifi(which isn't a fault of the product but the network devices) is totally the same thing as a product freezing in the middle of a presentation. What world do you live in?

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[citizenr]

However, the Surface tablet froze in the middle of the presentation.

Not only that, later on presenter was trying to show camera widget and it "only" took him 4 tries :). I stopped watching after that.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[Samantha Wright]

Just to wrap up the Blizzard talk and defend my position: no, it's not a contradiction; the available statistics suggest that a lot of people bought the game, and then have failed to continue playing it. It sold very quickly at first, but now no one wants it. The hype sold it, but the game itself hasn't succeeded in holding onto that player base. Many of the patch changes nevertheless appear to correspond to the agenda put forth by Activision's new management in the aforementioned conspiracy theory, even if Activision doesn't actually have direct influence in Blizzard's management: continued nerfing despite promises not to do so, removing drops from destructible objects, and only slightly modifying the difficulty of Elite monsters all appear to imply that the company wants to force players to participate in the real money auction house in order to finish the game.

Even if you dismiss all of the above as circumstantial, and want to completely ignore the prospect that Blizzard is prioritizing profitability over not alienating their fan base, it's still very apparent that Diablo 3 doesn't have the same class flexibility as Diablo 2, and that a very vocal group of fans considers the game broken. I've heard that Blizzard's testers couldn't actually complete the game on the hardest difficulty, and that they knowingly shipped the game in that state. While a tiny number of people were able to complete Inferno difficulty, Blizzard still decided to patch it to be easier, which they rolled out just last Tuesday. To me, that sounds very much like bad planning (if not another attempt to force people to gear up in the auction house), and the sort of thing we should attribute to managerial failure.

At this point, with Microsoft, I really, truly believe that people are so conditioned to hate their products that they can't rightly succeed any more with their current brands. This is the fate of all greedy computer companies, I think.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[Omestes]

... where sometimes the hype is so great that they score gigantic initial sales and most of those people say it sucks.

I'm not really sure that "most" people actually would say it sucks. In real life (i.e. ignoring Metacritic, Diablo forums, and Amazon) I haven't met anyone who actually thinks it sucks, or is nearly as bad as the internet makes it seem. Same goes for most of the people I've met in random public games. Hell, actually playing it, I can't say it sucks (not as good as some things, much better than others).

Part of the problem is that their audience is much, much, bigger than when their "classic" games came out. And much of the internet is a very different, and much more idiotic and hostile place. A lot of that new audience are WoW players, and thats what they wanted, or expected. A lot of it is nostalgia trumping clarity; "it isn't as good as Diablo 2, therefore it sucks". This ignores that fact that Diablo 2 had a fair share of problems on launch, and also wasn't actually the shining pinacle of gaming that everyone remembers. Nothing can beat nostalgia. It also isn't Diablo 2.5, since they decided to actually try new systems for once. Part of it is that people have philosophical differences with where Blizzard is going (no LAN, real money auction house). Inferno (the end game) is too hard... Classes aren't balanced (its a single player/coop game, who cares?).

There are also a lot of silly conspiracy theories running around, and a lot of uncorroborated group think (the "hacks" scandal). I've actually never seen anything quite like the vocal brouhaha that followed the release of the game. Especially considering that many people HATE the game, but put in 180 hours. I don't think I've actually ever played a game that much, especially in a period of time less than a month, since I was 15. And meanwhile Blizzard is laughing their way to the bank.

There is too much ire to be simply people not liking it, or merely sucking. There are thousands of games that suck, that die in obscurity. But for some reason this one needs the internet to run around making mouth noises about it. Playing the game, and ignoring my shining memory of Diablo 2, I can honestly say that it is a pretty damn decent game.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[dead_user]

By Blizzard, to Activision.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[Karmashock]

Perhaps a better phrase would be "hollowed out"... the insides sucked out leaving a shell.

Everything that was special about blizzard will soon be little more then a memory if they don't change course and quickly. D3 is a continuation of the WoW path. Blizzard might have made most of their money from WoW but WoW isn't why customers trusted them enough to sign on to WoW.

They built that on the back of their RTS and hack and slash franchise history. They pulled that community. It will only accept so many betrayals. And once it's gone well, it has to be reearned. And most companies never earn that sort of trust. Ever. So the ability to reearn that sort of thing once lost is minimal.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[Omestes]

he available statistics [xfire.com] suggest that a lot of people bought the game, and then have failed to continue playing it. It sold very quickly at first, but now no one wants it.

You might be right, but I can't tell from that. I don't know how they are measuring this, and I have no clue what Xfire even is. Also, I don't know what to compare that too, how does a game launch of comparable size compare. Again, for all I know, you are 100% correct.

Many of the patch changes nevertheless appear to correspond to the agenda put forth by Activision's new management in the aforementioned conspiracy theory, even if Activision doesn't actually have direct influence in Blizzard's management: continued nerfing despite promises not to do so [battle.net], removing drops from destructible objects, and only slightly modifying the difficulty of Elite monsters all appear to imply that the company wants to force players to participate in the real money auction house in order to finish the game.

I think the community has a lot to do with the nerfs. Inferno was supposed to be impossible, and everyone complained about it NONSTOP, and very loudly. If anything they made the penultimate difficulty LESS difficult, which, one would think, would lessen the need for cash purchases of items. There has been a lot of changes that the community has spun into "Blizzard wants money!!", that can also be seen at face value. Nerfing some builds did open other options, as much of the Demon Hunter nerfs did, they increased the amount of perceived viable builds. I'm okay with this. I wouldn't be okay, though, with them nerfing things to benefit the RMAH (real money auction house). I haven't seen much evidence of this. Companies always patch games, especially Blizzard. They are known for being aggressive patchers, look at the patch notes for Diablo 2 and expansion.

I've heard that Blizzard's testers couldn't actually complete the game on the hardest difficulty, and that they knowingly shipped the game in that state.

When they said that, my mind screamed "hyperbole". But I still, if true, wouldn't take that as a negative. Further, you don't need to really ever use the auction house, the RMAH, or any other social feature of the game to have fun. It might be more work, but it still fun to try. I'm working my way through Act II, and haven't spend a cent of real money, and only a small amount in the in-game money AH. I probably die more than the people who want to spend money, but I'm fine with that.

I probably sound like a "fanboy" or some such here. I do have complaints about the game, but I figure its pointless to voice them since they've been said by others ad nauseum. I also really can't tell how it stacks against Diablo II, since nostalgia rears its ugly undependable head. I'm also much older than I was back then, I have a life now, I have hobbies that don't involve sitting in front of a computer in a dark room, I have experience with more things, and my tastes have changed. I want to say Diablo 2 was better, but I can't really. I was in the Torchlight 2 beta, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I felt I should have, or would have 10 years ago.

At this point, with Microsoft, I really, truly believe that people are so conditioned to hate their products that they can't rightly succeed any more with their current brands. This is the fate of all greedy computer companies, I think.

I don't even know if its hate... On places like Slashdot, sure, but out there in userland... I'm pretty sure it is mostly apathy. When you (Joe Sixpack) think of Microsoft you think of Windows, something that you are forced to use at work, or Office, something that you are forced to use at work. Or you think of that incomprehensible beige box sitting in your home office, that your kid has to fix for you. The problem with Microsoft, for most people, is probably that it leaves no impression on them.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[UnknowingFool]

Do you understand what network congestion is right? Cause it seems that you seemingly don't understand the term "bandwidth". You do understand how a router works right? During the demonstration, many devices including the iPhone had problems getting data from wifi as the network was swamped. As soon as Jobs asked everyone to stop using the network, suddenly the iPhone was able to pull data. The next demonstration, Apple set up a network just for their devices so it wouldn't happen.

To use a car analogy, that's as idiotic as a car manufacturer trying to demo off their new model in a rush hour traffic as a test of handling and acceleration. Again clogged network full of too many devices that the wifi router cannot handle is the same as a device freezing in the middle of nothing but a hand gesture to you.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[dbIII]

I thought "Exchange" was an instruction on what to do with the software at least back in 2000 or so. These days it apparently hardly ever loses mail, live backups are actually possible and it could almost be considered ready for release.

Re:Obviously a functional unit

[Samantha Wright]

Some of us still call it OpenVMS/2 Warp, thank you very much.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[Anonymous Coward]

But you CAN actually use an Apple product when they are showed to the press. An unfinished product could be miles away from the promess made so the surface reviews are a moot point

I would drop

[Anonymous Coward]

I would drop the most basic things like
1. Weight on hands (as every person finds it different)

2. Feel on fingertips (every person finds it different, and I mean personal opinions "This feels nice" but you can say if there is texture or rubber or it is slippery)

3. Where the slots are (you can find them from screenshots, but I would like to hear which way the slots are if they are under cover, meaning some MicroUSB ports are wrong way installed so you need to plug cable other way as well).

4. Opinions of color (you can only mention available versions but not opinions are they cool looking etc).

5. All the typical "This is "X-based"" and so on. No need to mention "This use Android Ice Scream Sandwich" as it is enough to mention at start "Android 4.0".

6. Use correct names for software systems, like not "Android Ice Scream Sandwich" but "Android 4.0" as that way people know better what it is about, so leave code names to ignorance nerds and wannabe teens.

7. Do not show basic stuff... like "this has a touch screen" unless it is something new and special way, like having touch screen on keyboard etc.

8. Again, leave all personal opinions out unless you really want to focus for specific fans.

Re:I would drop

[Lonewolf666]

6. Use correct names for software systems, like not "Android Ice Scream Sandwich" but "Android 4.0" as that way people know better what it is about, so leave code names to ignorance nerds and wannabe teens.

Depends on how much of a hash the marketing makes of the names. With Android 4.0 you have picked an example where the official name is actually meaningful. So far, so good.

But on the hardware side, the codenames are often more useful to identify the product generation of a certain model. As a particular bad example, consider Nvidia's GT 640: three different models under the same name. Two new ones in 28 nm and one obsolete one in 40 nm manufacturing.
With codenames (in this case "Kepler" versus "Fermi"), you can at least tell which is the obsolete one ;-)

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[medcalf]

I don't think it's MS hate. If someone put their hands on a new model Jaguar, with no engine and which they weren't allowed to sit in, and then called it a road test, their credibility (the reviewer,'s not Jaguar's) would be dead with me from then on. MS announced something that might be vaporware, in the sense of never coming to market, or might in fact be the device that unseats the iPad. But that's not the issue: deceptive reviews are the issue. Is the keyboard as cool as it looks or an unusable monstrosity? The reviewers in question have no way of telling, but are acting as if they do. That's what annoys.

"Journalism"

[arisvega]

How many journalists can you name from the top of your head that follow a code of ethics and perform their function which is to report the news ojectively?

Yea, I thought so.

In this buzzphrase-dominated media society, journalists rank very high on own fart-smelling.

Re:"Journalism"

[Media_Scumbag]

Journalism's been dying for years, but like a frog in a pan of water, it will not flex a muscle to save itself. Though it boils violently in it's own excrement, its' audience can scarcely be bothered, as the spectacle isn't awful enough.

Pardon my anecdote:

I was at E3 2000 when MS revealed another (pardon the pun) "game changer" in much the same way as this "iPad-killer": The X-Box.

There was no case, no controller (it was a Logitech PC controller) and myself and 20 or so journalists sat in a makeshift theatre watched a fly-through demo highlighting what we all knew was a basic PC Direct-X graphics engine. No one steered the flythrough, none of us were allowed to touch the controller or the clunky plexiglass and PC-guts that sat on a small, cloth-draped a/v rack. None of our questions could really be answered, either. To this day, I'm not at all sure why they didn't call individual reporters up to breakout rooms or hotel suites, because those of us who weren't in our early 20's were thoroughly unimpressed.

I'm sure someone gave them props. After all, E3, gaming and the Web (still) were booming, and fact-checked news and Comdex were showing their age.

Read the Web articles of the NYT, WashPo, WSJ, - any of the leading print publications from the past 30 years or more. How often do you see grammatical, spelling, or factual errors? I see them with exponentially increasing frequency. I think it's indicative of the "death of print," and more distressingly, the "dumbing-down of America." No one cares about quality reporting anymore. They want HuffPo, Brietbart, TMZ, and Gawker. They want blood.

Bradbury was right.

Not hands on?

[Sponge Bath]

I guess these reviews just scratched the surface.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[93 Escort Wagon]

Oh come on. This was not like an Apple event at all. The Surface demo made a huge deal about the keyboard, how much better it was than the iPad's soft keyboard - and then the journalists weren't allowed to try it out, even for a second?

Read the story next time before commenting please.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[ichthus]

Why do you have strange character strings where you should have quotation marks? Did you cut and past this as a pre-canned response?

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[Mononoke]

You had to cut&paste from Office to tell us this?

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should at least get a feel for the key functionality and most popular productivity functionality being there.

Show how to touch the screen for control-alt-del

Show Antivirus software with some cool animation as it kills something

Show a drive defragmenter moving things around

And the most important, show an uninstall program running

And if there's a deluxe premium version, show it able to play a DVD or run Solitaire

I think 16:9 tablets don't work regarless of OS

[nzac]

I think the surface will be terrible to use as a tablet just because MS chose the ratio to match current laptop screens.

Its just too thin either orientation.
You loose half the screen for things that pop-out from the bottom or top including the keyboard and if you turn it upright its too thin to deliver a decent experience for most things. Traditionally you use portrait for web-pages buy the arm one does not horizontal resolution to view it naively.

If its a poor tablet then and it wont be as good for typing as laptop then its doomed to find its self a small uninteresting niche. This is made worse because its only available online or from an MS store.

Re:I think 16:9 tablets don't work regarless of OS

[anss123]

Traditionally you use portrait for web-pages buy the arm one does not horizontal resolution to view it naively.

Not that I disagree about 9:16 being potentially awkward, the arm surface has the same horizontal resolutions as the ipad 1 and 2 in portrait mode.

Re:I think 16:9 tablets don't work regarless of OS

[nzac]

Looks like they changed it to 16:10 for the current models.

Text and the arranged list of tiles they use to demo the portrait work pretty well because they rearrange without needing to stretch anything.

Re:I think 16:9 tablets don't work regarless of OS

[tuppe666]

A human cannot comfortably read too wide a column of text. That's the reason why most newspapers use multiple columns, even in portrait orientation, and why webpages tend to restrict text width as well.

Newspapers is a really really bad example. This is where I suspect you and I are both out of out depth...so I will refer to an expert. http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/nov02.asp [Bob Bailey, Ph.D., Chief Scientist for HFI, discusses the optimal line length when reading prose text from a monitor.]

The short version is Newspapers optimum line width was 3.6" with a maximum of 4", only the Galaxy note is small enough to work reading text, by your example, but that was with old 10-point printers with black on white text.

For Monitors using larger text...for speed wideris is better 8-9-10 inches about the Width of Widescreen Android Tablet ..but user prefer reading at 3.6-4" which is about the width of a Kindle Fire and other 7" tablets...so Apple tablets are out.

Re:I think 16:9 tablets don't work regarless of OS

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

16:10 and 16:9 are not really useful for anything except watching movies.

Myth. People keep forgetting we work in a window'd environment.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Eh, I don't think that this can be dismissed as 'Microsoft hate'. Yeah, it involves a Microsoft product; but it treats that as a (recent, high profile, and thus salient) example of the phenomenon of absurdly stage-managed 'hands-on'/'reviews'/etc. involved in tech industry prerelease puffery, and the generally supine compliance of the 'journalists' who eagerly enable the hype machine out of some mixture of fanboyism and desperation for ad impressions.

It isn't the world's biggest secret that, even among ostensibly respectable journalists who write about Serious Topics for Serious Publications of Record, 'access', advertisers, and parent companies have pretty severely eroded the teeth of the vaunted '4th estate'; but it never hurts to remind people of that fact. Tech journalism seems to be substantially more dreadful still.

Again, this phenomenon isn't really MS specific; but (given that most of the 'hands on!!!' coverage has politely failed to note exactly how carefully the minders were keeping a leash on things) it is good to have somebody inform us of that fact.

Obviously, a prerelease product is going to have rough edges, which team PR isn't going to want people cutting themselves on in front of the cameras; but a problem arises when most of the coverage simply elides the fact that PR flacks were waving people away from those rough edges, rather than noting them and moving on...

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[X0563511]

I like how you switch from smart quotes to straight quotes and back. What browser is that? It's doing something funny. (Slashdot's incompetence makes it apparent)

Re:That's easy.

[adamstew]

That makes about as much sense as someone saying that they got to sit in a parked sports car that didn't have a steering wheel and they weren't allowed to turn on the stereo or push any buttons.... but since the car was parked on the road it's a "road test".

Re:Was THAT The Best Name They Could Come Up With?

[drinkypoo]

They already own the name, and they therefore don't have to buy a company just to get a trademark that is also a word in a language that is not dead or imaginary.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[hawguy]

Why do you have strange character strings where you should have quotation marks? Did you cut and past this as a pre-canned response?

Copy-and-paste doesn't necessarily mean it was a pre-canned response. Slashdot's comment box leaves a lot to be desired in the editing department, so I'm not surprised at all that someone would write their post in a real editor and then copy and paste it back to Slashdot. Someday Slashdot will enter this century and provide WYSIWYG editing for those that don't want to type HTML. Even the acronym "WYSIWYG" seems to gone out of style these days because it's everywhere.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

But you CAN actually use an Apple product when they are showed to the press. An unfinished product could be miles away from the promess made so the surface reviews are a moot point

This is typically true, largely because Apple's style is typically one of ruthless secrecy until launch; but really orthogonal to TFA's point:

His problem was not that a prerelease product was being shown to the press; but that most of the coverage completely failed to mention how tight a leash it was on.

At what point in the development cycle one chooses to demo a product is a matter of strategy and taste. Only when already shipping? Fine. Pre-alpha, only the boys from the lab can even touch it? Fine. The problem being highlighted is that journalists were(understandably, given the pressure for ad impressions; but very arguably unethically) overstating the amount of information they were actually bringing to their readers. Regurgitating press releases makes you a flack; but it isn't inherently unethical. Re-labelling press releases as 'news' and then regurgitating them is another matter entirely...

angry birds played by a toddler

[circletimessquare]

a hands on review must include a game of angry birds

preferably by a drooling 3 year old

if the toddler plays for more than 3 minutes without dropping the thing and wandering off (weight and functionality), the tablet will be a success

He wrote

[future assassin]

>Again, like I wrote before, if I could have only two of three tablets, I’d go iPad then Windows 8 and not Android, because Android’s not offering me anything I can’t already do on the iPad but with (to me) what’s not an elegant environment. Windows 8 is different, unique, seems to offer some compelling features even without the icing of a kickstand that goes “click” and thin keyboard.

Wait wait he bitches about not being able to use the tablet to see what its all about but he prefers it over an Android tablet because there's something potentially magical about it even though he has no clue what that could be...

I've never used it but doesn't Asus Transformer already do the same thing as the windows tablet. Convert from laptop to tablet and vice versa?

Re:Was THAT The Best Name They Could Come Up With?

[UnknowingFool]

Surface Table (now called PixelSense) was purchased and installed in a few places as kiosks. Not many but I wouldn't call it a prototype when it was shipped to customers. From wikipedia

On April 17, 2008, AT&T became the first retailer to sell the product.[8] In June 2008 Harrah’s Entertainment launched Microsoft Surface at Rio iBar[9] and Disneyland launched it in Tomorrowland, Innoventions Dream Home.[10] On August 13, 2008 Sheraton Hotels introduced it in their hotel lobbies at 5 locations.[11] On September 8th, 2008 MSNBC began using it to work with election maps for the 2008 US Presidential Election on air.

Write up is a troll

[kamapuaa]

She doesn't say "merely touching an unworking product makes it hands-on review" at any point. She says that she can give a review that's "hands on" even with just a short time using the product, as long as she's clear it's just an impression and isn't an in-depth review. If you read the review, it's full of qualifiers like "At this stage Microsoft is being very cagey and no-one has had much time using Surface RT yet, but from our experience of trying it out."

Just another unfair article summary by some Slashdot basement dweller with an anti-Microsoft agenda.

Re:Write up is a troll

[rudy_wayne]

She says that she can give a review that's "hands on" even with just a short time using the product, as long as she's clear it's just an impression and isn't an in-depth review.

Holding a device, that isn't turned on, for a few seconds, is not a "hands-on review", except in the world of unethical scumbag journalists.

Re:Was THAT The Best Name They Could Come Up With?

[v1]

That wasn't a "failed" product, it was a prototype.

But that's what everyone is calling the "new surface" now, it's just a prototype, that's why nothing works yet. But just wait, it's coming, we promise! (just like the original Surface)

That wasn't a product demo, it was a dream demo "this is what we are going to TRY to make". They spent most of their time speaking the word "surface" over and over like they were trying to brainwash the viewers, while telling everyone over and over ad nauseum how wonderful the clicking sound of the stand was etc. It was insulting. It wasn't a product demo, they were there to tell us what opinion of their product we are supposed to have, without any physical reason to back it up.

The demo itself was a disaster. That poor guy was up on stage, I felt sorry for him when he kept saying "xxx is wonderful!" and tried to get it to work, and it didn't. And so he just moved on to the next thing, "and yyy is wonderful!" and it also failed to work. He finally gave up and grabbed a hot spare off the table and it immediately failed to work on the next thing. "and it plays great games!" (game fails to launch) "and the video is great!" and the video still opens but the video refuses to start playing. "and this keyboard is wonderful!" (but I'm not going to ever attempt to type on it!) "and these menus are great!" (and no menu will stay open) I bet he headed to the bar after that demo. Considering the train wreck that it was though, he was pretty smooth with it.

Someone else a little above here was saying the difference between MS and Apple demos is that Apple is shipping units to the stores when the put them on demo. MS is demoing a product that may never make it to the stores. They aren't even finished designing it yet. They're so late to the tablet game that they're throwing a barely bootable early prototype up on stage and dangling it on a string over reviewers heads trying to stall for time. All they've done is shown their hand about where they'd like to be in 6 months. By then there will probably be a dozen tablets that have magnetic clicky keyboard cover/stand accessories available for them. This demo is probably going to do them more harm than good. And if they're as consistent with the Surface's "early preview" launch as they usually are, a few of the features they talked about it having won't even BE in the final product.

This thing has "Zune" written all over it. (although at least the Zune's demo went fairly well, before it cratered)

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[thetoadwarrior]

Sounds like the truth upset a fanboy.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that is exactly what happens at Apple events. Two weeks ago when apple showed off all the newest hardware? Immediately afterwards all the journalists got to play with it hands on in finished form. Many were given review models to take home.

*sigh*

[Altanar]

If anyone's want to know exactly what went down at the press conference without being fed a heavy dose of cynicism, you could always check out ArsTechnica's liveblog and post-event coverage: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/liveblog-from-la-microsofts-major-announcement-rumored-tablet-unveil/

Slashdot's reaction to the Surface has been a mixture of amusing and frustrating. The reaction was immediately: "Surface is complete garbage. Horrible fail. After all, Microsoft never makes anything good." A few days later after some of the announced features of Surface disseminated the reaction changed to: "Utter vaporware. Never coming out. After all, Microsoft could never make something like that. They must be lying." Never in my life have I seen a piece of unreleased hardware declared vaporware in mere days of it's announcement. Never. Microsoft must've really touched a nerve with some people.

Re:*sigh*

[tuppe666]

If anyone's want to know exactly what went down at the press conference without being fed a heavy dose of cynicism, you could always check out ArsTechnica's liveblog and post-event coverage: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/liveblog-from-la-microsofts-major-announcement-rumored-tablet-unveil/

Slashdot's reaction to the Surface has been a mixture of amusing and frustrating. The reaction was immediately: "Surface is complete garbage. Horrible fail. After all, Microsoft never makes anything good." A few days later after some of the announced features of Surface disseminated the reaction changed to: "Utter vaporware. Never coming out. After all, Microsoft could never make something like that. They must be lying." Never in my life have I seen a piece of unreleased hardware declared vaporware in mere days of it's announcement. Never. Microsoft must've really touched a nerve with some people.

Slashdots response has been discussion...as always. As for Ars Techinca I believe they have closed their open source section :). I fail to see what is wrong with being surprised that Microsoft is making its first computer ever!? They have always made money from the software and not from the hardware, and have had Fall guys to test the water "Play for Sure - partners" or "Nokia"...and even then not computers, nothing to challenge its bread and butter of OS+Office, and No the Xbox doesn't count....but your wrong this is still vaporware; Where can I buy this product? Lets face it even journalist are not even allowed to use it.

Personally I believe many who advocate open source Os's are feeling a little like Winston Churchill when Pearl Harbour was attacked "So we have won after all!"

Seriously other than some really nasty anti-competitive tricks involving locking the OS to the hardware. I cannot see a downside, and that was already happening...its less likely to happen now. There is little to no threat to Linux based tablets[Google allegedly pricing their tablet at $200] where its best chance to win, is from bottom up. Microsoft have chosen to Directly take on Apple[their only option with x86] in the computer market for the first time in 20 years, rather than to continue to exist in a safe but shrinking duopoly, With a high end; High margin product; Using Brand Power[its like Mexican wrestling]. While giving a whole host of hardware manufactures including Nokia;"Barnes and Noble", Beige box manufactures waiting for windows 8 chance to re-evaluate their now weak strategy; being denied that a piece of that sweet early adopter high margin action after being stabbed in the back. Who here sympathises with these companies, hell these companies probably have a whole host of hardware IP ready to attack Microsoft with, most of them should have a "what will happen when Microsoft screw us over" package...or a button...or a bloke in a bowler hat. I suspect these hardware companies are suddenly going to an gain a healthy interest in software, and Open source is the best way to get to a working solution quickly. Personally I'd be installing libreoffice on all my current Windows 7 offerings, With dualboot into Company themed Debian based distro just for badness. They simply have no other choice, they need to adapt just like Microsoft have.

Personally I think computing is getting exciting again. Thanks to Microsoft being a backstabbing dick.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[gstrickler]

And you missed the parent poster's point. At an Apple rollout, there are typically dozens or even hundreds of production units to play with. People actually get hands on time to play with the machines. They're not on "a tight leash". True, it's not the same as an in-depth review, but it's definitely hands-on, and very different from the situation with the Surface.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[JAlexoi]

Well.... Actually when they announced the retina MacBook Pro they allowed for a hands-on. When they announced iPad, they allowed for a hands-on. I can't really think of any Apple announcement that wasn't followed by a video of a hands-on within 24hrs.(And I'm no fanboi)

Re:More hands-on reviews, please

[davidbofinger]

I will gladly volunteer for a review of Scarlett Johansson.

The point of TFA is that some people got to paw Scar-Jo, but not take her clothes off, and then expressed opinions on her skills in bed.

"It's a metaphor." "I know it's a metaphor." -- Moneyball

... it boils down to ...

[Taco Cowboy]

The problem being highlighted is that journalists were(understandably, given the pressure for ad impressions; but very arguably unethically) overstating the amount of information they were actually bringing to their readers. Regurgitating press releases makes you a flack; but it isn't inherently unethical. Re-labelling press releases as 'news' and then regurgitating them is another matter entirely...

Actually, the entire thing boils down to ... many of those who call themselves "journalists" have neither the journalistic integrity nor the will power to become a real journalist

Those who tell stories should be known as "Story Teller", not journalists .

To be a true journalist is actually not easy - it's always a tight-rope act when the situation demands an independent view

It is one of the reasons why the so-called "journalism" we have today are mostly crap
 

Re:Was THAT The Best Name They Could Come Up With?

[10101001 10101001]

Someone else a little above here was saying the difference between MS and Apple demos is that Apple is shipping units to the stores when the put them on demo. MS is demoing a product that may never make it to the stores. They aren't even finished designing it yet.

Well, that's been SOP at MS for years. Consider Windows and the original Macintosh.

They're so late to the tablet game that they're throwing a barely bootable early prototype up on stage and dangling it on a string over reviewers heads trying to stall for time. All they've done is shown their hand about where they'd like to be in 6 months.

But like most MS products, they may "like to be" at that stage in 6 months, it usually takes at least two years to get to a remotely usable state. And invariably that comes at the cost of stripping out 50% of the cutting edge features. I'd say the big difference here is just how low they're aiming, feature wise.

By then there will probably be a dozen tablets that have magnetic clicky keyboard cover/stand accessories available for them. This demo is probably going to do them more harm than good. And if they're as consistent with the Surface's "early preview" launch as they usually are, a few of the features they talked about it having won't even BE in the final product.

Well, that's MS. They promise the moon, and they never deliver. The interesting thing is, MS's real problem is that around ten years ago, people were clueless enough about MS's behavior to bet on MS's vaporware which was really good at harming the competition. But, MS's cried wolf too many times, that even when they do deliver a demo of an actually working product, people are reluctant to really trust that MS will devote itself to that product for any serious length of time...unless it's Windows/Office/XBox related. I see Google going down this same route, actually, given how frequently they kill projects.

It all comes down to just how willing MS is to supporting Surface for the long-term, even if that means ten years from now working on maintaining backwards compatibility with misbehaving v0.1 programs on whatever the latest iteration of Surface will be at that time. Personally, I just don't see that happening. And as your Zune example suggests, I don't think you do either. In the end, MS will have to go out of its way to really prove a commitment in action, not in just words.

Vaporware?!?!!

[crovira]

I am sure that Microsoft would never stoop that low. :-)

The actually delivered, uh, the Kin, the Zune, their software is legendary for fitting inside 640k. (Nobody needs more than that...)

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[lilfields]

Since the product isn't being released for a few months, why would they let journalists or potential product spies see the full functionality/feel of the product so that it could be ripped off? That's why Apple announces things and say "available today!" it gives them the jump so no one can replicate the feature. Windows Phone for instance initiated a lot of new features that were quickly copied by Apple and Google. So in their WP8 summit they actually intentionally omitted front end features to prevent them from being copied.

I could be wrong and it might not work at all right now (I doubt this, the person that designed the keyboard is actually pretty well known and quite respected)...but my theory is that they don't want they're product spyed too much. Enough of a taste to scare the crap out of OEMs before the Windows 8 launch, but not enough to give all the technology and production away. Seems logical to me.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[Gr8Apes]

At least they're shipping - or close to shipping - a product. Surface has no date, and may not even be a real working product.

Utter failure to live to hype can mean fastest sel

[aepervius]

Utter failure to live to hype can mean fastest selling together. This simply means it sold like hot cake, but people after a few bites were finding the content bland and forgettable. In fact I contend that even if Blizzard were developing Diablo 4 now, no matter the hype, a lot of people would WAIT before buying it.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[justforgetme]

No, no, no. It is a working product already. Didn't you see IE10 crashing on in the demo video?
I'm telling you man, it's there operational and finished a product as it ever will be!

Re:Was THAT The Best Name They Could Come Up With?

[Tough Love]

Maybe "Zunetab" was already taken.

Not sure about that

[Kupfernigk]

The last head of Rolls Royce was a psychologist, and he did the job that was needed - to get it across to "traders" and "investors" that RR was a reliable delivery vehicle for long term shareholder value and that short-termism made no sense. I suggest that the problem is quite different. Psychopathic personalities tend to accumulate where there is power without obvious accountability. The management of large corporations constitute a perfect field of operations where the complexities and the sheer scale mean that psychopaths can carve out private empires and remain un-noticed for long periods. In a small company, a dysfunctional asshole pursuing his own interests gets noticed quickly.

It is hard for a psychopath to become a good engineer or scientist; it is a career they avoid.

It's interesting (to me at least) that the founders of RIM, faced with a product and management succession crisis, developed a new CEO internally, while Nokia faced with the same crisis brought in a manager from Microsoft. Although both companies are in serious doo-doos, RIM is still profitable and it is Nokia that has been left to develop a load of phones for Microsoft which they are then told will not be supported by the next OS. What's more, RIM owns its next-gen OS and has customers for it in other fields, while Nokia is now completely owned by Microsoft.

Unfortunately it is all too easy to confuse being a psychopath with rugged American individualism.

Hardly matters

[Kupfernigk]

I had a comment moderated up and then moderated down to 0 which was, I thought, a really quite unbiased comparison of the Apple and Microsoft approach which did not attack either company. I concluded, based on this and other similarly moderated posts by other people, that the PR companies of both Apple and MS employ people who gain moderation rights and then moderate down anything which is either a reasoned analysis that might get lifted by a journalist, or a snappy comment that might get picked up by one. In a time of high unemployment of people in the 18-25 age group, this is a relatively cheap PR spend that is easy to sell to managements. Although we often mock it, Slashdot is still perceived in many areas as being influential, especially among developers and IT departments.

I also get comments like this one moderated down - so it's another test post.

Re:Oh please, get a life.

[Serpents]

It's not about whether or not MS allowed the "journalists" to play with the tablets. It's that they lied and said they used and loved something they were not allowed to touch. It's not about Apple/Google/MS product releases. It's about a bunch of people with cameras and press badges calling themselves "journalists", while all they did was copy/paste the press release - something I see more and more often. I really think we should have some kind of a distinction between a journalist as in "someone with minimum professional integrity and IQ above room temperature" and guys who call themselves press just to pick up chicks...

Re:Crafty bastards.

[SeanAD]

Two countries. And the second is really just our hat.

Close. You are just our underwear.

Have a nice day. :)