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Microsoft Wants You To Trade Your MacBook Air In For a Surface Pro 3
mpicpp writes with news about a new Microsoft trade-in program to encourage sales of the new Surface Pro 3. Microsoft is offering a limited time Surface Pro 3 promotion via which users can get up to $650 in store credit for trading in certain Apple MacBook Air models. The new promotion, running June 20 to July 31, 2014 -- "or while supplies last" -- requires users to bring MacBook Airs into select Microsoft retail stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada. (The trade-in isn't valid online.)...To get the maximum ($650) value, users have to apply the store credit toward the purchase of a Surface Pro 3, the most recent model of the company's Intel-based Surface tablets.
What this tells me is that Microsoft has given up trying to promote the Surface as a tablet. It's a laptop that happens to have a detachable keyboard. Note that they didn't even try to offer a trade-in of ipads for the surface, which would be a more reasonable comparison if the surface was successful as a tablet. The ipad is a different use case, and Microsoft just doesn't play well in that space.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The funny thing is, MBA's even early models are still worth a pretty dime second hand (usually 50-80% of purchase price based on condition and age), Surface Pro's won't fetch more than 1/3 of their purchase price.
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Seriously. I love the MacBook Air I got a couple of years ago. The thing works very well, and even runs the occasional VMWare Fusion image of Windows 7 I need to run occasionally off of a portable thunderbolt drive. On a whim I got one of the earlier Surface tablets when the wife and I were in Vegas and they had a Kiosk where they were practically giving them away - but for the life of me still cannot use it for anything truly productive.
Trade in a MacBook Air for a surface?! Sorry Microsoft. You've been a day late and a dollar short ever since Ballmer pissed on the idea of tablets and smartphones and Apple smoked you and ate you for breakfast. Apple would have to skullf**k a small, disabled child onstage during their next keynote to even _think_ of falling behind enough for you to catch up to relevancy.
Microsoft - As long as I can virtualize your OS, take a snapshot and rollback when your OS takes a dive and run it all on a machine that, you know, _works_ I won't buy another piece of hardware branded by you. Ever.
And as another poster mentioned, "While supplies last." Really? Wow, even with Steve "Developers Developers Developers" Ballmer gone, you _still_ have a great sense of humor.
Never have a philosophy which supports a lack of courage
I'm a programmer. I've written GUI code, I've written a device driver that shipped in a commercial UNIX kernel. I've used Windows since 3.1 days (WindowsForWorkgroupsForTheWin!). I've even debugged and configured Windows Vista in Chinese even though I can't read it - I was able to get someone to translate the occasional dialog box.
I can not understand Win8. When my sister asks me to help configure something on her Win8 laptop, I struggle with the UI as if I'm some rookie coming from some stoneage tribe.
I hate hate hate hate Windows 8.
Last time I was in their neighborhood, MS employees were hauling MBPs around as their primary laptops. I never understood how they could get away with that, but "research" was in their job title...
So the magic mouse swipe gestures aren't obvious to people used to regular mice, I was very resistant, but I now love and miss them.
But I otherwise agree, I don't find anything about OSX to be "intuitive" to people used to using windows or linux. OSX is a fine windowing system, but it's a little rough around the hedges when it comes to usability for the portion of the world that simply cannot become Apple converts.
Hardware wise though, I have not found anything that comes close to an MBP. Windows or OSX, it beats the unholy snot out of its competition.
Hold up: you're missing an important distinction.
The MacBook Air isn't just a laptop. It is a laptop. That's all it is, and it's a darn good laptop. It does laptop things really well.
By not just being a tablet, the Surface has failed to be good at being anything at all. If you pit it against laptops, it's under-specced for the price. For that sort of money, you can do a lot better elsewhere. And if you pit it against tablets, it's lacking apps and overpriced. It's in a weird space between the two that no one is interested in. I commend them for trying something different than everyone else and trying to carve out a unique niche (really, I do!), but I don't see how this particular execution of their strategy can be painted as anything other than an extended failure that has yet to turn the corner. I honestly hope it will, but it has yet to do so.