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Surface RT vs. iPad: a Comparison
First time accepted submitter thetechblock writes "On Tuesday, with the release of pricing and pre-orders for the new Surface RT tablets, Twitter exploded with comparisons to the iPad. So, I decided to put together a little comparison chart to contrast two equivalent models." The comparison is interesting, but note the source; you can discount the conclusions of writer Jeff Blankenburg by as much as you want for his role as "developer evangelist" for Microsoft.
Wake me up when there is a review by someone that isn't on either Apple or Redmond's payroll. This was nothing more than an advertisement.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm thinking the nexus line is more comparable to the surface tablet, mostly since no itunes.
I'm somewhat leery of continued support from Microsoft given their history of Plays For Sure, Zune...
All I got from this article is that once you add in the cost of the Surface's most notable feature, it costs $20 - $30 more than an equivalent iPad.
That 'article' is a joke - of course Surface comes out on top - when 'reviewed' by the guy who wrote the book on Windows Phone 8.
It's also funny - I recall the exact same argument over quantity vs. quality of applications back in the 80's when Apple were the underdog. Seems like MS can't change their habit of... recycling other peoples' ideas.
I also especially like the sign-off... "It’s time for all of you, my faithful readers, to tell me why I’m wrong"... well, we might if there was ANY option to comment on the page.
So, why are Slashdot running this Surface ad under the guise of an article?
-- Always borrow money from a pessimist; they don't expect to be paid back.
I actual bothered to click the link to the article, and all I see is a comparison of the cost of a few accessories and apps? Where's the comparison of the technical specs? How is this garbage even worth posting?
Tech specs seem less relevant when comparing high-end tablets from different manufacturers running completely different operating systems - I'd rather see end-user impressions.
Does the higher resolution of the iPad make any difference in real-life use? Is the larger screen of the MS tablet better or worse than the slightly smaller iPad screen with higher dpi? How fast is the device? Can it run multiple applications and switch smoothly among them? Can I play a video in the corner of the screen while I'm browsing the web? Does it load webpages quickly? How easy is it to use the UI?
Those are the questions I'd like to see answered, if I really want to know what CPU the tablet is running, I can look that up, but knowing the processor and RAM specs tells me nothing about usability.
The other day, MS's engineering team did an AMA on reddit where they answered the question of screen resolution:
Hey this is Stevie. Screen resolution is one component of perceived detail. The true measure of resolvability of a screen called Modulation Transfer Function (MTF), not Pixels. MTF is a combination of both contrast and resolution. There are over a dozen subsystems that effect this MTF number.. Most folks just focus on one number out of dozens that effect perceived detail. Without good contrast resolution decreases. Check out contrast sensitivity of the human eye graph (http://www.telescope-optics.net/images/eye_contrast.PNG) and if you want more see the links below. Basically, as resolution/DPI increases the eye has becomes less sensitive. So as a result, the amount of light in a room and the reflections off the screen have a huge effect on the contrast of the display. In fact, a small amount of reflection can greatly reduce contrast and thus the perceived resolution of the display. With the ClearType Display technology we took a 3 pronged approach to maximize that perceived resolution and optimize for battery life, weight, and thickness. First prong, Microsoft has the best pixel rendering technology in the industry (cleartype 1.0 and 2.0) .. these are exclusive and unique to Windows, it smooths text regardless of pixel count. Second, we designed a custom 10.6” high-contrast wide-angle screen LCD screen. Lastly we optically bonded the screen with the thinnest optical stack anywhere on the market.. something which is more commonly done on phones we are doing on Surface. While this is not official, our current Cleartype measurements on the amount of light reflected off the screen is around 5.5%-6.2%, the new IPad has a measurement of 9.9% mirror reflections (see the displaymate link: http://www.displaymate.com/iPad_ShootOut_1.htm). Doing a side by side with the new iPad in a consistently lit room, we have had many people see more detail on Surface RT than on the Ipad with more resolution.
Some more links to share if you want to know more (http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF.html)... Also This is a great book to read if you really want to get into it: http://www.amazon.com/Contrast-Sensitivity-Effects-Quality-Monograph/dp/0819434965 or more here http://alexandria.tue.nl/extra2/9901043.pdf
So it seems that Microsoft has data that suggests that, despite the lower resolution, the Surface has greater precieved detail than the iPad. (although I find it annoying that they've muddied the waters by re-using trademarks - they've repurposed "Cleartype Display" as the MS equivalent of Apple's "Retina Display")
OMG - don't y'all know that car salesmen (er, people) (including USED car sales, er, people) are absolutely truthful, honest and sincere when selling you an automobile - or whatever it is you're buying...??? C'mon - don't ya reckon that both Microsoft and Apple are like, ya know, totally truthful, honest and sincere when pushing their products down our throats and have only ultimately, our best interests in mind? (Where's my meds)
YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
Is this Microsoft's attack on the App Store?
"When I hear about 600,000 apps, I’m just in awe. As I’ve said many times before, however, I don’t think it’s the right number for comparison. Nobody is using more than a couple dozen applications on their device."
Even If I don't count the many games and educational apps my kid use I still see many more than a couple dozen apps that I used in the last week on my ipad.
Also I don't think hooking a mouse to a tablet is a great feature for surface. It just shows me Microsoft doesn't know how people use tablets. Perhaps they should goto a coffee shop and look at all the people using there competitors tablets. the keyboard can make sense if you type large emails or even do word processing, but I would guess most don't use physical keyboards enough to need to purchase one.
Why would I want to buy a Windows tablet?
That's it. If they can come up with a good answer for that, they'll be able to sell them. Thus far, they haven't been able to. "Windows" itself is a negative brand name that carries a ton of baggage from crapware infested poor quality OEM PCs, and not something that makes people feel good about buying. The market tolerates Windows because it doesn't have a choice, it doesn't love Windows.
Only problem is that in the tablet space, the market *does* have a choice. There's a clear leader, and it's not Windows. Why would I want Windows instead of the market leader? A lower resolution screen and Office are not exactly compelling selling features for home users.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
"Ever wish you could charge your phone with your iPad?"
No. I can charge my phone with my Android tablet if it weren't the stupidest suggestion I've ever heard. But it is.
Well that was a stupid post. I see now looking back he has a keyboard and a smart cover, I mistook the keyboard cost for a cover cost... the comparison seems fair (except for not comparing the 16GB model which has almost as much usable storage).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
10 years ago, people were paying £450 for a full Office software suite, so the idea of spending an equivalent amount for Office on a tablet isn't that much of a dealbreaker when you consider it.
Its not 10 years ago. In the modern world have a plethora of cheap and free on-line and off-line competent Office suites.
Just wait until you try to open an Office document that uses a font outside the small subset of fonts included with the Surface. Hell, just opening a PPT on any laptop other than the one it was created on often requires last minute editing to get everything on the screen.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Well, here's what my 16GB iPhone says:
Capacity: 13.5GB
I don't have a 32GB, but the parent's estimates don't seem to be too off. Of course, it's important to note that Apple reports size (in OS X, at least; not sure about iOS) in base 10, not binary. This makes the capacity reported by the OS and the capacity "guaranteed" by the manufacturers in agreement; unfortunately, other OSs use binary, so you see some discrepancy there.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Apparently you have not seen the new retina screen. Nothing prepares you for it because you can't see it on any monitor you have now. Letters look like they are carved in the glass with a diamond stylus. They just pop with sharpness you never knew you were missing.
The microsoft people are just blathering about anti-aliasing on fonts. You can take a tiff of that and it will look how it looks on your screen.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
How about this for two equivalent models:
iPad 32GB with 2560x1536 pixels : $599
4xMicrosoft Surface 32GB tablets to yield a combined >2560x1536 pixel count : $1996
---
iPad looks like a much better deal to me.
Or, how about we just compare them the way a consumer will:
cheapest iPad: $499
cheapest Microsoft Surface: $499
"The iPad has a nicer screen but the Surface comes with more storage (32GB vs. 16GB). The iPad probably works better and has more apps--decision, iPad."
One thing I don't see getting a lot of play is that there are two different versions of the Surface. On the face of it they both pretty decent and with the keyboard people should actually be able to use on to produce content. The resolution is disappointing, but as has been pointed out elsewhere Microsoft has figured out three different ways to address that issue.
The RT model is the one that just went on sale. That is your toy that is really just a windows version of an Ipad except that it can produce content. However this model has serious drawbacks if you want to use one in a professional setting. You can't load or distribute apps for the Metro interface without using a process called side loading. Side loading can't be used unless your on a domain. The RT model can't join a domain, effectively making this a burden at best to try manage (third party agents etc). You also can't use any traditional application on it as it uses the ARM processor and Microsoft has been very adamant about not allowing any backwards compatibility with x86 or x64 apps.
The Pro version can join a domain and use all the apps that a normal Windows 8 computer can use. This is the model that is meant for use on networks and for use in a professional setting. The best way to keep them straight in your head is to think back to the day when XP came in two versions. The Pro version was the one that was meant to be used for production work, the regular version was the one meant for home users. For all intents and purposes you have two very different products with the almost identical name and size.
If you have to work with them professionally you should seriously considering putting out a memo to only allow purchase of the Pro model. This of course is why the pro model is built this way, because that is where the money is.
I wish the iPad had multiple users. I also wish that my iPhone had work and home profiles. This is one area where Microsoft has gotten it right--and if you don't need or want multiple users, then you don't need to use it.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Why would you ever take it out? I've found SD storage to be incredibly useful on tablets, I've also found USB useful as I take thumb drives from the cad guy and copy drawings to the tablet.
I don't know about most people, but I'd like to put movies, music, and documents on my tablet. That totals for me about 50GB
I have more music than will fit on an iPad but it's irrelevant since I use iTunes Match, and can play any of it at any time. Same thing for many TV shows I bought on iTunes.
Movies I only put on a few at a time, and can easily remove them... I'd have to be managing them on SD cards also. If I really felt the need I'd buy a portable HD with WiFi sharing I could just play movies from on an iPad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For me, it doesn't matter so much how they impact typing speed, but the fact they free up half the screen from being obscured by a virtual keyboard that is appealing.
Apparently you have not seen the new retina screen. Nothing prepares you for it because you can't see it on any monitor you have now. Letters look like they are carved in the glass with a diamond stylus. They just pop with sharpness you never knew you were missing.
Have you seen the actual letters MS based their fonts on? You can't tell from the way they look on your retina display, but in person each letter looks as if it emerged fully-formed from the head of Zeus. When I first laid eyes on the "A" I wept tears of sweet honey and was transported to a world of dazzling rainbows.
Does the higher resolution of the iPad make any difference in real-life use?
Yes. Text is much more pleasant to read, and it's easier to surf the web because you can zoom out more, with small text remaining perfectly legible. It also lets you read PDFs in fit-page-to-screen mode.
Is the larger screen of the MS tablet better or worse than the slightly smaller iPad screen with higher dpi?
This is going to be very subjective. First of all it's not really larger by a notable amount. The bigger difference is that iPad is 4:3, while Surface is 16:9. Again, which one you prefer is subjective and depends on what you use it for.
Can it run multiple applications and switch smoothly among them?
It can, but there are limits on what an app can do in the background. Less strict than iOS, but still much stricter than Android. Of course, there are also desktop apps, which do run in background as usual... but you only get those that come with the device and can't install your own, so it's not as useful as it might sound.
Can I play a video in the corner of the screen while I'm browsing the web?
Yes, but with limitations. You can dock one app on the side of the screen, while another app takes most of the screen, and both apps can show whatever they want. However, you can only do it with two apps max, and screen layout is mostly fixed - snapped app is always of the same width, either on the left or on the right side of the screen. You can flip between the two apps, snapping one and unsnapping the other, but you can't resize arbitrarily.
Actually, we've had the cure for cancer for almost a decade now.
Basically, it involves heating the cells 1 degree F internally.
That takes care of 50 percent of all human cancers.
We also have cancer-targeting ligands that allow us to provide docking receptors for targeted drug delivery, have binding tags that add phosphorescent snippets to cancer cells so we can locate any missed cancers during surgery (we actually turn out the lights and the cancer glows in the dark, it's way cool), and we have remote blood sugar measuring with wristwatch devices.
But human trials take a lot longer than you think, and we have to start with mice, which we squish flat between plates to measure cancer growth and then chop open at the end. And that makes you all squeamish. But it works.
Now .. you were saying?
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I cannot comprehend why anyone would think that raw specs are more important than the end-user experience for a device such as this.
Because people want to be able to make snap judgements rather than interpret nuance and/or spend time actually thinking things through.
But here's an example of why you're right... I had one of the first generation iPod Touches - so that had 128MB of RAM. After three years of ownership, I decided I wanted to carry around a single device (smartphone) rather than the Touch and a dumb phone; so I bought a low-end Android phone, the LG Thrive. The Thrive had twice the available RAM (256MB) and a faster processor than the Touch - but the laggy interface drove me nuts. Compared to that three-year-old Touch, my experience with the Thrive was craptastic - but going by specs, it should've been much more capable. Sure there are lots of obvious, explainable reasons for my experience with the Thrive, but that's why comparing specs on completely different systems is largely pointless.
#DeleteChrome
At a Resolution of 1366x768, you get 1,049,088 pixels, and at 1920x1080 you get 2,073,600 pixels. Almost double.
Except that most of the tiny (10") high resolution displays are used to increase information fidelity, not information density. Meaning that while you have almost double the pixels on a 1920x1080 display, it's being used to display the same information, only sharper. For instance, the reason the iPad has such a wonky 2,048x1,536 display is that it doubles the resolution on each axis from previous models, thus enabling developers to easily scale existing applications. So you have 4x more pixels as before, yet the home screen still only holds 20 icons. You're not getting any more information, but each bit of information can be displayed in more pixels.
The reason for this is as you add more pixels, the physical dimensions remain the same. Thus, if you want to increase the information displayed, you have to make it physically smaller... which runs counter to the usability of a touch interface. Even if the UI controls remain constant and the data scales, you will probably end up zooming in on specific regions to even see it, which defeats the premise that higher resolution => more data displayed at once.
Tune in tomorrow for part II, where Tim Cook gives us an in-depth review of the upcoming iPad mini!
First of all, I do have an iPad. And an Android tablet. So I'm not talking hypotheticals here, but basing it on my own experiences using them.
If you want to store more photos, why don't you get a bigger SD card for your camera. At $700/64GB the iPad makes for a very expensive SD card replacement, if that's actually the role you've envisioned for it.
I did not suggest to store photos from your camera on your tablet. The idea is to view the photos from your camera on your tablet, especially when you want to show them to someone else.
It's a lot like the keyboard dock (which Apple no longer sells) in that regard. Once you use the iPad, you really see that there's no sense attaching a keyboard to it.
That is true, but it's because iPad is plainly not designed for use with a keyboard (much less a mouse!). It gives you the very basic capabilities, like entering text in textboxes, but you still have to rely heavily on touch. Consequently, few apps are designed to use the keyboard to its full extent when it's there.
On the other hand, something like Android fares much better, because Google has actually taken care to promote keyboard support throughout the OS - there are many useful keyboard shortcuts, like switching apps or keyboard layouts, and browser has a bunch of its own as well (e.g. Ctrl+L to activate the address bar). They also give you a real mouse cursor when you have mouse or a trackpad connected, which makes it possible to do some precision pointing where it matters. Now, there are still few third-party apps that are similarly attentive, simply because few Android devices come with a convenient arrangement to be used with mouse+keyboard, but those that do are indisposable (e.g. a VNC/RDP client that understands both).
Win8 is designed to be used for convertible devices from the get go. So when you attach the keyboard (and, to remind, it also has a trackpad), it's a fully supported use case throughout the OS - and don't forget that it has the classic desktop, too. Much easier for things like file management in Explorer, or when you have to surf that website with Flash that wants hover. Or Office, which is probably the biggest deal. Even more importantly, because it is, essentially, the "standard configuration" for Win8 tablets, all third-party apps that are published to the Store will take it into account, and will be designed to be not only touch-friendly, but also keyboard-friendly.
If you don't get my point, my suggestion to you would be your own: try it. Find a store that has Asus Transformer (an Android tablet with a keyboard/trackpad dock that makes it look like a laptop) on display, and see how it works compared to your iPad.
As long as they continue to produce the yugo of the computer world, the snarky drivel will continue. Simple as that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
ClearType increases that apparent resolution in one direction only by about a factor of two. In theory it sounds like it should increase resolution by a factor of three, but that would result in coloured fringes around the letters, so filters are applied which reduces the benefits but prevents the issues.
A second problem is that that the direction in which ClearType works depends on the physical arrangement of sub-pixels on the screen. On a normally aligned PC monitor, this is great, because text needs horizontal resolution more than vertical resolution, as most glyphs have thin vertical lines close to each other. However, as soon as you rotate the screen the benefits of ClearType are hugely reduced. In the PC world this is rare, but with tablets it's common. I'm reading an eBook right now on my iPad in portrait mode, because that matches the page layout of a typical book. Reflowing the content for landscape mode isn't always possible, for example with PDFs.
The iPad has ~4x the resolution of the Surface tablet, and it also has anti-aliasing to further refine the edges of fonts. Sure, it doesn't have ClearType, but it doesn't need it!
On top of that, the Microsoft marking guy is carefully skirting around a much more important detail: ClearType does exactly nothing for all other graphics, such as vector art or bitmap images. The iPad meanwhile has 4x the pixels to throw at everything, not just text.
Sure, I could waste my time reading his reference, or... just open my eyes and look at the obvious difference.
That is simply, factually, incorrect. Win8, including Windows RT, supports sideloading. It's free and can be enabled via a simple command in Powershell. Third-party software must be packaged as .appx bundles, but it doesn't have to be approved for distribution in the app store. In fact, one explicit use case for unlocking Windows RT devices in this manner is to allow installing corporate or other organization-internal apps.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/Hh974578.aspx
Android and iOS support sideloading too. However, your average Joe user will not understand that or be capable of it. The fact that you would have to go to the PowerShell is even worse - since now you're doing things that even most Windows Programmers don't do - e.g. it's there for the corporates not your average user.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Long involved biochemical reason why. Basically, the easiest way to kick in the apotosis chain is to heat the internal cell temp by approx 1 F. Heating to 1 F kills circa 98 pct cancer cells and impacts 2 pct non-cancer cells. Heating to 4 F kills 100 pct but kills 20 pct non-cancer cells, which causes organ failure and terminal death for person.
Methods for doing this vary. Trials underway right now.
Science never sleeps, it just doesn't always get attention when it says stuff, cause people get distracted by useless things like football and celebrity weddings.
Good point re fevers. Note risk factors in medical science for very old or very young in running fevers. Much higher than for 20-60 yo. Sadly, cancers crop up later in life.
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"Long involved biochemical reason why. Basically, the easiest way to kick in the apotosis chain is to heat the internal cell temp by approx 1 F. Heating to 1 F kills circa 98 pct cancer cells and impacts 2 pct non-cancer cells. Heating to 4 F kills 100 pct but kills 20 pct non-cancer cells, which causes organ failure and terminal death for person."
That is interesting but seems to be contrary to experience. A 1F change in body temperature is close to the normal diurnal variation. If a 4F rise "kills 100% cancer and 20% non-cancer cells", then a) you could cure cancer by giving people a good dose of the 'flu and b) I and many others I know shouldn't be here, having had sustained body temperatures in the order of 103F when ill at some point in their lives...