Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft and Others Mean Stiff Competition For Apple iPad Pro
MojoKid writes: When Microsoft first announced the Surface Pro back in 2012, many Apple fans snickered. Here was Microsoft, releasing a somewhat thick and heavy tablet that not only had a kickstand, but also an odd cover that doubled as a keyboard. And to top things off, the device made use of a stylus. Steve Jobs famously said in 2010, "If you see a stylus, they blew it." But Microsoft forged ahead with the Surface Pro 2, and later with the Surface Pro 3. Not only were customers becoming more aware of the Surface but competitors were also taking note. We've seen Lenovo introduce the ideapad MIIX 700, which incorporates its own kickstand and an Intel Skylake-based Core m7 processor. And most recently, we've seen Apple pull a literal 180 on this design and platform approach, announcing the iPad Pro — a device that features a fabric keyboard cover similar in concept to the Surface Pro and a stylus. Dell and ASUS have also brought compelling offerings to the table as well. However, the big head-to-head competition will no doubt be between the Surface Pro 4, which is set to be unveiled early next month and Apple's iPad Pro when it finally goes on sale.
I dunno. I didn't see iPhones as a viable business phone but I was wrong. People wanted them because they were so easy to use. I didn't think the iPod was going to revolutionize portable music but then Apple went and made it so easy to buy music.
Apple has a way of making things that already exist simpler and more attractive. They've got Adobe products and Microsoft Office on the iPad. Assuming you can connect to network shares from the iPad, it's just a matter of convincing people it's better than sliced bread and Apple's good at that.
I remember the days before the iPhone. Maybe you don't, but I sure do. Back then, there were two kinds of smartphones: Blackberries and WinMo phones. BBs were expensive and highly tied to BB infrastructure (which if you worked for some big company or the government, you'd have, but if you were just Joe Blow, you didn't), and really were meant for doing email on the run more than anything else. The other choice was Windows Mobile.... which just sucked. There's a reason that thing never went anywhere; no one wanted a crappy copy of Windows XP on their phone, which they needed to use a stylus to do the simplest things. The UI was all wrong for mobile usage.
Somehow Apple figured this out, that what people wanted was a big screen with icons large enough to just press them with fat fingers, not tiny desktop-esque icons that needed high-precision aiming with a stylus.
You'd think this should be blindingly obvious, but apparently not. I think part of the reason we never saw anyone else do it before was because of the market-distorting effect of having Microsoft dominating the software industry so much. With very little diversity in OSes and UIs (unlike the 80s where we had tons of microcomputer vendors like Acorn, Amiga, Commodore, Tandy, etc.), and really the only choices for desktop work being Windows (95+%) and Apple Mac (5%), there just wasn't any other company around with the financial and engineering resources to pull off making a smartphone that wasn't yet another WinMo device. And even then Apple was only able to do it because they had such wild (and rather unexpected) success with their iPods. It's not like it's much better now: BB is barely hanging on now, WinMo is still here with a different look and name (and still no one wants it), iPhone is still here, and the other big player is Android, which of course also had a humongous and wealthy company pushing it. This is a market that simply isn't one which some new startup can penetrate. Apple was really lucky (and also really skillful) in doing so well in it.
Now if you're wondering why MS couldn't do it if it's so "blindingly obvious" as I put it, that's easy: MS as an organization is completely incompetent when it comes to UIs. Whoever they had working there and managing the UI stuff back in the early/mid 90s when they invented Windows 95 obviously is long gone, because everything they've done since XP has either just been a re-skin or tweak of Win95, or a total disaster (the Metro/Modern UI). Why they couldn't realize this and put someone better in charge, I dunno, but it's not just them. Look at GM; what kind of incompetent automaker would produce the Pontiac Aztek? There's countless examples of big companies making products which the general public absolutely hated. Much of this can probably be blamed on the top executives, since they either approve this stuff themselves or have close, hand-picked subordinates who do. Steve Jobs obviously had a gift in understanding what consumers would want, whereas other executives just didn't/don't (like Steve Ballmer), and of course are too disconnected to realize this about themselves. It'll be interesting to see how Apple does without him; so far it seems like they're just riding on past successes.
It's sad that fanboys like yourself simply cannot understand what a big difference even slightly lower latency makes.
So people can accurately write, and Surface Pros are being used by graphic artists everywhere including some of our favorite comic writers and anime artists.... and yet the latency is somehow serious enough that it makes a big difference to their work?
We call this "measurbating" quite similar to comparing e-penises or claiming that going from 500fps to 550fps will make you that much better of an online gamer. There are a LOT of complaints about the surface line. But latency is not one of them.