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

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

[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: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.

Not hands on?

[Sponge Bath]

I guess these reviews just scratched the surface.

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...

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.

[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.

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.