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.

Comments

Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not about the hardware so much Apple as the OS that needs to run enterprise software. I have my doubts Apple will make a lot of progress with just a expensive iPad. So it has a pencil? Big deal, it has to have that. Really IOS is such a lame OS for enterprise.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[NatasRevol]

That's why they've asked IBM to help.

http://www.apple.com/business/...

And they've helped a lot.

http://www.ibm.com/mobilefirst...

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[jtownatpunk.net]

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.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

This is more about the commoditization of employees than the hardware/software/services.

If you can make everything an employee needs to do into an app on a tablet, you've turned the employee into a robot, which makes that employee less valuable (and more replaceable).

Don't misinterpret the fact that they are using iPads as the tool to get this to happen. That's only because of the penetration the iPad has in the tablet segment. It's trivial to port this paradigm to other tablets.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[fluffernutter]

It's just so sad that making things simpler makes them more attractive. Kind of means people who look for complex features had better make it themselves.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[SuperKendall]

It's just so sad that making things simpler makes them more attractive

It's not sad at all, because done right it means more people get the benefit of complex features without having to be very technical.

Having as many people as possible making use of technology to improve their lives is an admirable goal.

Kind of means people who look for complex features had better make it themselves.

The great thing is they still can; nothing stops them from doing so. But there are ALSO the simpler choices. Before, all we had was complexity which benefitted comparatively few.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[frnic]

"it's just a matter of convincing people it's better than sliced bread and Apple's good at that."

Or, here is a thought, maybe it isn't that people need to be convinced. Maybe it just is.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[fluffernutter]

Apple creates their simplicity by removing complex features. Where is the option to add complex features into iOS?

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to develop for iOS and you can make it as complex as you want. Rest assured, an overly complex app probably won't sell.

iPad Pro lets people do amazing things that are significantly harder on a tablet. The stylus and external keyboard are not required except for applications and tasks where the familiarity and/or precision of a stylus is required. It is large enough that the onscreen keyboard is useful and an external keyboard is a luxury.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[zkiwi34]

Oddly enough, when PC's stampeded into business this same argument was often touted - that the employees would be being downgraded to key-clickers.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Its called Xcode and write your own Apps.

The complexity is only limited by your own ability and imagination.

You can then make Apps that will interact with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or if you want, design and build your own hardware fro scratch.

Thus far the only limitation is you.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are asking me to ignore the limitations of the platform and the sdk that prevent me from building true business productivity solutions? Instead of just one app I can now have2 completely siloed apps? Yeah for me. Oh wait, on a normal day I am clicking through 8 or more fully integrated applications. How again do I share my iPad pro screen in a virtual meeting allowing my coworkers to take control?

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[bondsbw]

Oh, nice! So my app will be able to access the iPad's external USB storage, and display itself on my second monitor via the iPad's HDMI port?

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Less complex doesn’t necessarily mean less powerful; it can sometimes mean better designed. And having less complex, better designed software can be a good thing. For example, this guy was more productive with the comparatively simple Garageband on iPad than with the complex pro software on Mac, and this guy has replaced his computer with an iPad for work.

The way I see it, Apple and Google are going at it the right way by gradually adapting their touch-based OS to more powerful devices. That way, developers can make their mobile apps more complex without losing sight that they are targeting a device with a touch screen and running on a battery. On the other hand, Microsoft is still trying to cram a full PC in a tablet form factor, despite 13 years of failing. Since Windows tablets are an insignificant part of the whole Windows ecosystem, developers have no incentive to adapt their software to the form factor of the Surface.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the original IPad had an expansion port where a video adapter could be inserted allowing use of external monitors.

Your argument is more about what you perceive as a limitation in the hardware as being a limitation of iOS.

Not everyone shares your view and find the iPad and iPad Pro to be excellent for their intended role. If you need more capability, you can write apps that can pull data created and manipulated on the iPad and stored on iCloud or another cloud service. Many such apps have already been written that can leverage the "handoff" of data from one device to a comparable app running on another device in a seamless manner.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Grishnakh]

That is odd, because the opposite dynamic is at work:

PCs are far, far more capable than what came before (pens, paper, filing cabinets, typewriters, dictation machines, etc.). It's completely mind-boggling how much more capability PCs have than older methods of information manipulation, storage, and retrieval when you think about it.

Tablets, on the other hand, are less capable than PCs. They can do many of the same things, but more poorly because their input interfaces are much more limited. Their only advantages over PCs are mobility and size/weight. Otherwise, they're just less-capable replacements for laptops and desktops: smaller screens, no keyboards (or really crappy ones), no mice, less CPU power and memory and storage, no wired networking, etc. There's literally nothing you can do on a tablet that you can't do on a PC, usually better (unless it involves walking around while you do it). Tablets have obvious utility in things such walking around a warehouse and doing inventory or whatever, or being used for a customer-facing order-placing system (as many Panera Bread locations have done; instead of placing your order with a person, you go use a tablet that's bolted to a table and punch it in yourself; it's great because you'll find out about all kinds of selections (esp. order modifications) that there simply isn't any time for some cashier to read off to you). But it's really just convenience; these things could be done with PCs as well, tablets just have a more convenient form factor for it.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[unixisc]

Its not about the hardware so much Apple as the OS that needs to run enterprise software. I have my doubts Apple will make a lot of progress with just a expensive iPad. So it has a pencil? Big deal, it has to have that. Really IOS is such a lame OS for enterprise.

Actually, the fact that iOS and OS-X are based on different CPUs is what screws things up for Apple: else, they could have used the same code base and not worried about one market cannibalizing the other. Microsoft has Windows 10 that can work fluently on both a Surface Pro as well as a normal laptop. Apple has an Intel based OS-X for the Macbooks, and an A8 based iOS for iPads. That's what's complicating things for them.

Instead, since Apple has their A series of CPUs - A5 to A8 so far, they could have used it for both their Airbooks as well as their iPads, iPhones and even iPods (maybe spread out the generations to hit different price points). That way, like Microsoft, they'd have had a common OS that could have been used for either. Note that I know that a tablet OS is a lot different from a laptop OS in terms of UX, as Microsoft learnt the hard way w/ Windows 8, but that's not my point here. Rather, by reducing the number of variables that they're handling, they could have been as flexible as Microsoft and had a common hardware platform for their own App store. Also, while Microsoft is based on the Pentium and iCore lines, Apple could have based theirs on their A series, and they would have been mutually exclusive.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[unixisc]

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 quite agree w/ this. I didn't see iPhones as viable for business, but in my last job, that's the company phone I was given. Also, most apps seem to be targeted first at iPhones, then Android and finally, if they are lucky, Windows Phone. (Hopefully, w/ Windows 10 universal apps, Windows 10 Mobile phones will get more love - although I wonder how that'd work when the PCs and Surfaces are based on Intel, while the Lumias are based on ARM.)

Conversely, Windows Phone, which lacks a lot of games, had just a fantastic combination of apps, which, if used, works well together to give businesses what they need. I'm talking about not just Office, but also Calendar, Bing Maps, Mail (which supports Exchange), OneNote, OneDrive, and on top of that, some apps from the store, like unit converters, currency converters and so on. What's more, the typing experience on Windows Phones was just awesome - although in iOS 8, Apple improved a lot. This was just a perfect platform for business, but a lot of app developers just gloss over it, while developing for iOS and Android. Hopefully, w/ Windows 10, they'd support Mobile as well, instead of just doing Web apps.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Grishnakh]

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.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[fluffernutter]

Sure, it is a game that you have to get. But it's not really a difficult game to understand. If anything, the talent was in the fact that they knew new technologies and they took advantage of them before anyone else did. I guess I'm just not that impressed.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

The simple answer to these questions is "don't buy hardware that's not made for work". If you're in business, get a surface pro. Or that lenovo clone. Or any of the hundreds of other Windows tablets. They have the features and capabilities needed for real work.

At the end of the day, put the work device away and pull out the iPad for whatever entertainment you want.

I don't know why people treat this like it's a religious decision, where you can only ever use One True Tablet.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you share it so they have control? Um... Hand it to them?

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

He's referring to video conferences. Haven't you realized that no one wants to share a room with him.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

In this age, why do you even need a USB storage for a tablet? Maybe you should just keep up with time

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

GP Ignore these guy. Friend of mine had to replace his hdd on his mac the other day. Horrible experience and I told him before he began this painful escapade he was better off to buy a new laptop.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[bondsbw]

Your argument is more about what you perceive as a limitation in the hardware as being a limitation of iOS.

No, I perceive it as a limitation of Apple, regardless of the subsystem in which the limitation is implemented.

If you need more capability, you can write apps that can pull data created and manipulated on the iPad and stored on iCloud or another cloud service.

That's fine, except when your constraints do not allow that. Those are the kinds of constraints that come up in the real world professional setting... hence my view that the iPad "Pro" is not actually "pro".

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[xeno]

Fair call on much of this, but citing the Pontiac Aztek as "incompetent" would be inaccurate; it was a niche product that had an insanely high customer satisfaction rate among those that bought it. ("The Aztek had among the highest CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) scores in its class" and JD Power 2001 cites: "The Aztek scores highest or second highest in every APEAL component measure except exterior styling)."

Most people didn't like it, but the mark of incompetence would have been producing the Aztek as the main-line product. (Oh wait, they did: the Buick Rendezvous; just as ugly but without balls.) Producing weird shit that the corners of the market eat up -- Pontiak's Aztek, Nokia N900, Apple Newton, Saturn EV1, the first decades of online "remote" shopping and of television, and other things we love(d) to hate but keep talking about or ended up using -- they generally fall in two categories: they move the entire market/industry forward significantly despite losses, or their makers lanugh all the way to the bank. (Cadillac's styling for their entire current lineup owes more to the Aztek than any other ancestor. It just took GM a while to figure out who wanted Klingon cars.)

To the point: It may take a decade for a ballsy move like the Aztek to translate into a shitpile of cash, but it's better than standing still. Microsoft's failing is that they keep making a large number of unremarkable things, while competitors like Apple and Google make fewer things that are much more memorable, much better milestones. Do you remember what search was like before Google Search? Tablets before the iPad? Can you recall many jumps forward in Windows, Office, or Azure that feel the same? Google ships Chromebooks to schools and makes "lost homework" and quaint archaic idea, and Microsoft shuffles buttons in the ribbon, has us scrolling sideways in Metro, and ships a tablet with a flaccid keyboard. Utterly forgettable if not a step backwards. Repackaged Windows that brings back Win7 UI features? A kickstand idea they got from Archos? Active tiles from IOS? Win10 and Surface: New, yes; revolutionary or memorable beyond the next product announcement, no.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[bondsbw]

When it does not have enough storage available, or when it is used in a professional setting that puts constraints on usage (such as no internet connectivity), or when I have a large existing drive that I want to use for backup instead of paying for a cloud service, or when I need a physical mechanism to transfer files (because the other device has USB storage but no other transfer mechanism like Ethernet/WiFi/Bluetooth), or when I would like to boot a USB drive into a different OS or even the same OS with a different configuration.

And that doesn't cover many other reasons you might want a tablet that is capable of USB host, such as adding a USB mouse and keyboard, connecting a USB printer, adding a USB joystick or game controller, ethernet adapter, and specialized devices... specifically if you already own these things, and don't want to have to pay for a new device just because it is compatible with an iPad.

(I'm still talking about Pro... so don't act like these things don't matter, because they do in a professional setting.)

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

You're completely wrong about iOS and OSX. iOS was originally a fork of OSX, and today they are codeveloped. The major difference between the two is UI. Pretty much everything under the hood is shared code. Bugs found in iOS are fixed in iOS and the code changes are forwarded to OS X, and vice versa. If you don't believe me, go look at the open source releases, particularly xnu.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Back then, there were two kinds of smartphones: Blackberries and WinMo phones.

You are forgetting Symbian. Smartphone does not mean "touchscreen phone", though Nokia did have few phones with touchscreen. No one really cared about them though, numpad/keyboard were good enough things back then.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

No really. Apple has handled 3 CPU architecture transitions fairly seamlessly in the past 2 decades. The big thing apple has going for them is a common development platform for all their devices. The model and controller for an app on phone/tablet or OS X can stay pretty identical and just be hooked up to different views. iOS already runs on intel, if apple decide they want to stick an Intel cpu into a phone or tablet. And you can bet OS X already runs on ARM too.

Trying to force a single UI everywhere like Microsoft has tried to since Windows Mobile in the 1990s is just never going to work. It didn't work in 2001 and it doesn't work now.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[farble1670]

Their only advantages over PCs are mobility and size/weight.

and you'd have to deny the smartphone and tablet revolution to dismiss that, but i guess you did.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[TheRhinoplast]

It absolutely is about the hardware (and what they've done at the OS level to support that). The resolution and extremely low latency of the stylus makes this a different class of experience - akin to the conceptual break between old touchscreens and modern 1:1 instantaneous response (iPhone, Android 4.1+, etc). It's a distinction lots of people overlooked at the time, but I'm willing to bet it will be as fundamental this time round as it was with touch. I've had all three Surface Pros, each time hoping the stylus input would be good enough for creative work, and it just isn't. It's still just the basic input method that Jobs dissed. If the iPad Pro does what it appears to from the videos, this is conceptually different from any other current device. Though I'm still hoping the Surface 4 has gone the same route...

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Dog-Cow]

Then don't buy one. Apple doesn't want shit-faces like you for a customer anyway.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's completely mind-boggling how much more capability mainframes have than older methods of information manipulation, storage, and retrieval when you think about it. PCs, on the other hand, are less capable than mainframes. Their only advantages over mainframes are mobility and size/weight. Otherwise, they're just less-capable replacements for mainframes.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[TheRaven64]

Back then, there were two kinds of smartphones: Blackberries and WinMo phones

Oh, and there was that other company that had 80% of the smartphone market...

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[thegarbz]

I didn't see iPhones as a viable business phone but I was wrong.

As a matter of interest, why not? The only thing that was missing compared to a blackberry was an app or two to integrate with whatever enterprise suite you run, and an ability to lock it down. Both of those are pretty trivial from a software perspective. Otherwise the iPhone was every bit as good as making calls, monitoring a calendar and sending messages as any other corporate phone that preceded it.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[thegarbz]

The two are not exclusive. Windows panders ever more to the idiot, yet the latest version includes Powershell installed by default. That's just an example but there is a lot to be said for simplifying things. Fundamentally that is what we, even as advanced tech heads have always done.

Do you manually run backups by invoking some unknown number of different rsync commands, or do you use a program or short script that does it for you? Does ls display the folder tree in colour on your system due to an alias or do you manually type in ls --color every single time?

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[nospam007]

"It's completely mind-boggling how much more capability PCs have than older methods of information manipulation, storage, and retrieval when you think about it."

Mindboggling indeed.

In the EU they don't seem to know that. You need 20 minutes (sic) to enter a refugee's data into the EU-wide refugee database and that is when the refugee didn't lose his papers at sea and if he understands the language the civil servant is speaking.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[nospam007]

"They can do many of the same things, but more poorly because their input interfaces are much more limited. Their only advantages over PCs are mobility and size/weight."

Exactly! That's why millions of hospital workers, storage employees, shipping etc will use them to fill checkboxes with the pen instead of using paper and hand them over to a second employee to enter them in those capable PCs.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[nospam007]

"Apple creates their simplicity by removing complex features. Where is the option to add complex features into iOS?"

There's an app for that. :-)

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[nospam007]

"Oh, nice! So my app will be able to access the iPad's external USB storage, and display itself on my second monitor via the iPad's HDMI port?"

It's no longer the century of the cable. Nowadays those things work wireless.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[bondsbw]

They had better appreciate this shit-face, our house is using pretty much all Apple products (for non-professional use).

Care to engage on the merits of Apple's iPad Pro as a professional tool? Or does middle-school-level argumentation suffice for someone whose mom is so fat that when she sat on Wal-Mart, she lowered the prices?

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

But, where is the new or better idea from? HP and their medical records system of the 80's? IBM and their allowing a TV device to pass thru to be viewed on the monitor? Late 70's, or the ability to add communications to the system, DARPA? Or record from over the air, adobe, or was it Sony? And display it on your computer? On, yeah, packaging. I got it.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Grishnakh]

Maybe instead of being a snide jackass, you could actually read my whole comment. I addressed this exactly: it's entirely possible to do the same thing with a laptop computer, but it's clumsier so the tablet's smaller/lighter (and not-clamshell) form factor is a significant advantage here, and the task doesn't benefit from the improved input device capabilities of the laptop because it's simple and doesn't require high-precision pointing, so tablets are a natural fit here.

A laptop could also do everything a little Raspberry Pi can do too, but the RPi is much smaller and cheaper so it's used instead for many things.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Grishnakh]

According to Edmunds, the Aztek killed Pontiac. It's one thing to make a niche product, but to make it an important part of a large, mass-market company's product line is asking for trouble. There's lots of other products out there which are really niche product, but they're usually sold by small, niche companies--look at Lotus for example, or any other high-end automobile.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Grishnakh]

I guess you're missing the point entirely. Go back and re-read my post and try to understand.

Also, laptops technically can't do everything a smartphone can; they can't connect to cellular voice networks so that someone can dial your number and talk to you on one. Theoretically, it could be made to work somehow with custom hardware, or you could just ask people to do Skype instead. But even if you could, it's so clumsy that almost no one would want to bother.

This is very different from comparing PCs to pens and paper.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[bondsbw]

Not the ones I already own.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Grishnakh]

That's a rather stupid comment. Because yes, mainframes generally could do everything PCs could do, only more reliably. The problem was cost. PCs brought those capabilities to where far more people and companies could afford them. And then they extended the capabilities, as PCs had big advantages with graphics (I've worked with graphical mainframe terminals; they were sssslllloooowwww).

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[fluffernutter]

There was also the HP iPac

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[fluffernutter]

But once you have to go into the app layer for that, your're done. I've had this conversation ad-nauseum with others. Having an app that stores files and allows your certain protocol options to transfer them is NOT an equivalent for full access at a filesystem level.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[fluffernutter]

I do develop for iOS. I couldn't even make a freaking app run in the background forever. No problem in Android. Apple removed this feature for some got forsaken reason. So now Apple people get a hacked together solution.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[fluffernutter]

"Then don't buy one. Apple doesn't want shit-faces like you for a customer anyway."

So you've admitted your wrong?

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[fluffernutter]

When your storage is full and you cannot use iCloud for legal reasons.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[fluffernutter]

The two don't *have* to be exclusive. In a great tech company they would not be. If Apple were to allow advanced users to switch file level support on in iOS I would be totally impressed. But they don't do that, so the two DO become mutually exclusive.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[fluffernutter]

Apple would have impressed me if they did it without the walled garden, without gobs of advertising, and without chopping features that had already become standard by the time. Apple is an impressive force in marketing and locking people into the way they want them to work with their devices, but that just doesn't impress me.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Back then, there were two kinds of smartphones: Blackberries and WinMo phones

Oh, and there was that other company that had 80% of the smartphone market...

Nope. Around the time the original iPhone came out, Palm was more or less on its last legs and WinMo was the market leader.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[flargleblarg]

Instead, since Apple has their A series of CPUs - A5 to A9 so far,

FTFY

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[flargleblarg]

No really. Apple has handled 3 CPU architecture transitions fairly seamlessly in the past 2 decades.

Those would be what?

1. PowerPC to Intel (circa 2005)
2. Intel to ARM (internal testing only)
3. ???

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[xeno]

...And KBB consumer reviews of the Aztek are 8.2/10 over those product years, which just go to show that opinions are all over the map. It's a slow morning, so...

Just the numbers: 119,700 Azteks sold
estimated they needed to sell 30,000 per year to break even (150,000)
sold 23,940 per year on average = about 6060 cars short of hitting that mark (30,300 total)
avg mfr invoice minus holdback for those 5 years = about $17.5k
530m shortfall over 5 production years = 106m/year loss

GMA (just the cars, not the rest of GM) had a 2001-2004 net income/profit of about $1 billion/year over net revenue of $150 billion/year before badder things happened in the larger economy. ...so the Pontiac Aztek accounted for a 0.07% dent in revenue, and 10% reduction in total profit. Ow.
BUT, consider that the same assembly line made the Buick Rendezvous (the blander version of the Aztek) which substantially exceeded targets of 30k/year at about 57.9k/year. The two products off the same assembly line, same tooling, same costs totalled up, were a net positive (about 82k/year over a combined break-even point of 60k/year) -- meaning GM had a net profit from that production and assembly line, exceeding break-even production by 35%+. They didn't actually lose money.

One might argue that's a way of shuffling losses, but if you dig into GM's reports and strategy, they say (GM AR 2003, p 6):
>> GM brought brand differentiation to the world back in the
>> 1920s, when Alfred Sloan created the price ladder of GM
>> marques that offered “a car for every purse and purpose.”
>> ....
>> Those lessons are now being applied in North America to
>> our volume leader, Chevrolet, to our performance-oriented
>> brand, Pontiac, and to Buick, which is restoring its reputation
>> for refined, dignified elegance.

GM's Pontiac brand was *supposed* to be the edgy just-break-even part of the business (e.g. the subsequent GTO), the product and assembly lines were specifically structured that way, and GM's balance sheet was combined in a way to handle that. The whole notion of the Aztek/Rendezvous::loss/proft rests on the dumb assumption they were going to sell the edgy-version vs mass-market version of the same car at a 50/50 ratio. Want to see what killed Pontiac? Look at page 19 of that 2003 Annual Report, which shows in page-filling bold type the demise of Pontiac and Saturn were just speed bumps in GM's idle mismanagement:

>> Here’s what’s new
>> about GM’s strategy this year:
>> Nothing.
>> Our 2003 plan is the same as 2002.
>> We’re getting better, year by year.

Wow. Bankruptcy was about a year away.

Net net is that Edmonds can print hyperbole about a car they hate, and weirdos like me can spend a Sunday morning rattling on about what we like, but the long and short of it is that the Aztek was wasn't really significant in GM's 9-million-vehicles-per-year business, any more than the Newton MessagePad killed Apple. IMHO what is significant is the design influence, the things we talk about years later, and the encouragement to go do ballsy things despite the risk of failure.

Coffee, I need coffee.
-J

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[unixisc]

How are executables shared if one is ARM based and the other x64 based?

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[unixisc]

1. 68040 to PowerPC

2.PowerPC to Intel

3. Intel to ??? (since Macs are still Intel based)

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[unixisc]

You missed what I wrote above

Note that I know that a tablet OS is a lot different from a laptop OS in terms of UX, as Microsoft learnt the hard way w/ Windows 8, but that's not my point here.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! That's why millions of hospital workers, storage employees, shipping etc will use them to fill checkboxes with the pen instead of using paper and hand them over to a second employee to enter them in those capable PCs.

I think we're long past the point where you actually needed to draw a tick in a checkbox to mark it. In the case you've specified the pen is completely unnecessary.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[exomondo]

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.

What they need is file sharing between applications on the device. Not being able to work on one file in multiple applications is a real hindrance for productivity on iOS.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Then don't buy one. Apple doesn't want shit-faces like you for a customer anyway.

LOL! I know this is hard for you to understand but Apple does not give a single fuck about what kind of person you are. Sorry if that bursts your bubble about being a special Apple customer.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[exomondo]

How are executables shared if one is ARM based and the other x64 based?

Executables aren't shared precisely due to the architectural differences. GP wrote that "code" is shared but code is then compiled into architecture-specific exectuables. That code can be compiled into an executable for any hardware that supports its requirements and those of its dependencies.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Motorola 68K series -> PowerPC
PowerPC -> Intel x86
Intel x86 -> ARM

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

That whoever is Kent Sullivan, and you can read the (very interesting) story of the Start menu here: http://www.sigchi.org/chi96/proceedings/desbrief/Sullivan/kds_txt.htm
He still works at Microsoft, but it's on the Cloud and Enterprise Division according to his LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentsu

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[b0bby]

I do develop for iOS. I couldn't even make a freaking app run in the background forever. No problem in Android. Apple removed this feature for some got forsaken reason.

I would venture to guess that the reason is battery life. My Android tablet, which is always updating tons of apps in the background, has abysmal battery life; even if I don't do anything on it, it dies within a day and a half. My wife's iPad 2 (which is older) lasts a lot longer (days) when just sitting untouched. Sure, it's nice that my Android devices will upload my photos to dropbox without me having to open dropbox, but it seems to me that Apple has prioritized "stuff the user is doing" over "stuff an app developer wants to do", and when I pick up my tablet to find it dead, I can't say it's a totally wrong choice.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[fluffernutter]

It is because of battery life. Yet even if I go through extremes as a developer to protect battery life, as I have done, Apple users will still be missing functionality from my app and there is nothing I can do. If I am using Android and I find an app is eating battery, then I can go to the developer to fix it or I can not use the app. But I can still have all that app's functionality.

This also goes to Apple's unwillingness or inability to add an advanced feature switch. If I own an iPhone and I want to allow apps to run in the background, why can't I enable a mode to do that and then accept responsibility for it?

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason these things objectively do less, but sell like wildfire.

Anyone who supports any amount of computer users for a living, when asked about this notion, will grab you buy the ears and scream "LESS IS MORE" in your face until their voice give out.

"More" is a double edged sword. Every added feature brings an exponential increase in complexity and cost. It also carries likewise exponential decrease in reliability and ease of use.. Every added feature reduces development time devoted to other features.

On the quest for "more" you end up neglecting core features and you end up with a product that does everything in a half-assed manner that is useful to no one.

The average person will take an ipad pro over a surface pro /because it can't run the full Microsoft office suite/. Not the other way around.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Grishnakh]

Very interesting. I wonder what Kent thinks of Metro. From his own paper, they're already doing things that he specifically determined were bad ideas:

Under "Separate UI for Beginners":
If just one function a user needed was not supported in the beginner shell, s/he would have to abandon it (at least temporarily).

I've found this with the control panel in Metro: it doesn't have much stuff in it, so you have to go hunt down the old Windows 7 control panel.

The beginner shell was not at all like the programs users would run (word processors, spreadsheets, etc.). As a result, users had to learn two ways of interacting with the computer, which was confusing.

This describes Metro to a tee; it's an entirely different way of interacting with the computer than the regular desktop.

Another key finding:
Beginning users and many intermediates relied almost exclusively on visible cues for finding commands. They relied on (and found intuitive) menu bars and tool bars, but did not use pop-up (or "context") menus, even after training.

Metro isn't discoverable, at all. In fact all the new UIs these days are like this: there's hidden functions when you move the mouse to a corner of the screen, etc. That's a bit unavoidable on a phone because there's just not much room there, but on a 23" monitor there's no reason for requiring swiping motions and the like.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[brantondaveperson]

Their only advantages over PCs are mobility and size/weight

And instant power-on, and finally doing away with the notion of saving and loading, and cheap software, and cheap price.

But apart from that, what have tablets ever done for us?

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Grishnakh]

My laptop does instant power-on too (well, it's a couple of seconds out of sleep mode, but that's the same thing a tablet does).

Saving and loading? You have to do that on every computer of any kind. It's not like tablets keep everything in RAM all the time.

Cheap price? You can get laptops for $250 or less these days. Any decent tablet will cost at least that much.

Cheap software? I can get all kinds of free software online; I'm not stuck with purchasing ad-laden "apps" from an "app store" with a laptop.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Miguelito]

Note that I know that a tablet OS is a lot different from a laptop OS in terms of UX, as Microsoft learnt the hard way w/ Windows 8,

I actually bought a Surface Pro 3 (with Windows 10 on it) a couple weeks ago, mostly for some on the road (but still actual PC) gaming, and it's... interesting. It's not a bad little computer, but the tablet mode... well frankly, it sucks. It's barely that usable, the keyboard popping up or not when needed is sketchy at best, and the pinch to zoom type features are complete shit. At least as an ipad user for browsing the web for some time now, it's horrible by comparison on the SP3 in tablet mode.

So they still haven't learned yet. Or at least not the right lesson.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Miguelito]

akin to the conceptual break between old touchscreens and modern 1:1 instantaneous response

This can't be stressed enough to people that haven't experienced other touchscreens much.

I have a Harmony Ultimate One remote at home, and the last couple of days the touchscreen part has gotten very laggy, especially at scrolling the menu. It is super annoying after being used to things always responding on everything else I use. I found how to reboot the thing and am going to try that tonight to see if it helps.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[unixisc]

Yeah, but the App stores contain executables. The code would be there w/ the software authors, not necessarily Apple. Unless they are stored in some intermediate code like Dalvik in Android, or ByteCode in Java

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[unixisc]

The third hasn't happened - to date. Apple still has OS X on Intel, and on ARM, they have iOS

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[unixisc]

I have a Winbook, where I've tried both. Some of the local apps, such as Movies & TV, or Groove - work fine w/ tablet mode. Some of the others, like anything that requires typing - it's better in laptop mode. One beef I have - Windows Explorer is very hidden in tablet mode - unless one pulls in a shortcut to the start menu.

Re: Apple doesn't get it

[exomondo]

Yeah, but the App stores contain executables.

Right but you said iOS and OS X could have "shared the same codebase" which, as the AC above pointed out, they indeed do. Because the "codebase" is code, not an executable and is not on any "App store".

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

While true I believe you have down-played an important factor: Casual use.

Your comment seems to be mostly business oriented. In personal use there was clearly a substantial market for a computer that was simpler than a PC. The tablet seems to have hit on that market big-time. Even in business, lots of people will have a full PC for daily use but a tablet for light use or on the road. Plenty of road-warrior use cases involve modest amounts of input, definitely read heavy and write lite. A tablet is a great fit for this.

And let's not forget that most tablets are instant on. This just adds to the convenience appeal.

Re:Apple doesn't get it

[Grishnakh]

I didn't mean to downplay it, because you're exactly right: tablets did hit on the casual-use market big-time. They're smaller, lighter, and simpler than a regular PC or laptop, so for simple tasks and casual use, they can be a better option. If you just want to watch a movie on an airplane, for instance, a tablet is definitely a better choice than a full-size laptop, because it's so much smaller and lighter.

My whole point was that I was comparing the pre-PC days to the days of PCs and laptops, and then comparing that to tablets. There's nothing you can do on a tablet that you can't do on a laptop PC, though it may require more arm muscles and might be awkward at times (trying to walk around and enter stuff on a form on a laptop would be a PITA, but it's possible, you'd just have to stop and set it on something for instance). However, there's a whole world of things you can do on a laptop which you simply couldn't do before the microcomputer revolution, or would be utterly impractical or would be so expensive that most people had no access to it.

As for instant-on, that's not true; a tablet is simply in a sleep mode, no different from a cellphone which "comes on" instantly when you hit a button, and that's no different from a laptop that's in sleep mode. There's no way a tablet cold-boots to the home screen in less than a second. Cellphones certainly don't; they usually take a minute or so to do a cold boot. People just think it's "instant on" because they keep them in sleep mode all the time and recharge them frequently, and don't restart them very much. I do the exact same with my laptop.

First Post!

[cpotoso]

Yeah! Baby :)

Re:First Post!

[lucm]

It's probably that smiley that slowed you down just a nanosecond and prevented you from being first. And it doesn't even have a nose! How can you lose the frist over something that hasn't got a nose. Lame.

It's not the size

[MikeMo]

It's the software and OS it runs that matters.

Re:It's not the size

[Teckla]

It's the software and OS it runs that matters.

A friend of mine owns a Surface 3, and it doesn't sound that great.

* A somewhat loud, whining fan, that cranks up far too often

* Bad keyboard

* Most of the software it runs is not touch friendly

* Windows 10

It still looks like a combination of a poor laptop and poor tablet to me.

Re:It's not the size

[R3d M3rcury]

* Most of the software it runs is not touch friendly

And there's the rub.

"It has to run Windows! I have tons of software that only runs on Windows and it has to run on this new-fangled tablet thing."
"It doesn't really support the latest/greatest version of Windows."

One advantage that Apple has in this realm is that while they may not have the bulk of business software running on the iPad, what they do have works with touch and takes advantage of these things.

Re:It's not the size

[fluffernutter]

I don't really get when people say that software isn't compatible with touch. All a mouse does is points and clicks, which you can do with your finger. I use a remote desktop app called 'Jump' on Android and it works on a regular desktop just fine.

Re:It's not the size

[jtownatpunk.net]

I've tried to use tablets as a primary computing device while travelling but it's always more of a PITA than just taking a laptop. If I need something more than my phone, it's because I need an efficient input device. If I'm carrying a tablet, I'm also carrying a keyboard and maybe a mouse. If I'm going to carry a tablet and a keyboard, I may as well just take a laptop.

Right now, my travel computer is an Asus X205T. Not the fastest in the world but it's small, light, and plays 1080p video on an external monitor just fine so I can bring movies with me and play them on a TV. Handles 128 gig MicroSD cards. And it's fanless so I don't have to worry about blocking vents. Cost less than the keyboard for my Tab S 10.5.

Re:It's not the size

[SuperKendall]

Touch is really different than mouse input. Sure it's possible to control a mouse UI by touch through something like VNC, but it's obviously non-optimal and not something you'd want to do all the time. Touch obscures where you are "pointing". Touch means you can't really hover well (well, at least before 3D touch). Touch means instant teleportation of the pointer to an element on a screen instead of a traversal which can be monitored...

The models of interaction are just different enough you really can't combine them well.

Re:It's not the size

[spire3661]

I think you mean Surface 3 PRO. The Surface 3 has no fan.I have a Surface 3 and I will admit its a compromise between laptop and tablet. I bought it for use in the field with my DSLR, and in that use case it absolutely excels. I don't type on it a lot, so I didn't even get the overpriced keyboard (seriously I can buy whole computers for less than that thing) Its not all things to all people, but it is a great piece of tech.

Re:It's not the size

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on how you use it. I've got a Surface Pro 3 both at home and at work. For the most part, it is in its dock, connected to dual monitors (using an MST display port hub since the SP3 supports display port 1.2 but my monitors don't so I need the hub) and all the normal peripherals that you are used to on a desktop or docked notebook. When I want to take it to a conference room or the like, it works pretty well for that with a bluetooth mouse and the keyboard. At home, if I want to sit on the couch and watch Netflix or Football or the like and use a screen for browsing during commercials, etc. it works fine as a tablet in that configuration. So although it isn't a perfect tablet and is far from a perfect notebook, it works as a desktop in the dock and handles the other duties well enough. All in all it is a pretty good device. Of course it isn't really in the same market that the iPad Pro is in. The iPad Pro is a touch first device running a tablety OS - iOS. Microsoft had a competitor to that in its own non-pro Surface line and also Nokia (before purchase by MS) had the 2520 (I have one) tablet. That "RT" OS was OK, but of course Microsoft made the blunder of bringing it to market with nothing worth mentioning in their app store and competing against the iPad and Android tablets which both had (and have) thriving app stores and ecosystems. It was obviously a non-starter even though the hardware was OK and the OS was OK. Surface Pro though is more of a competitor to Macbook Air since it is Windows vs OSX (both fully functioning operating systems and not neutered versions like Windows RT was or iOS is). Microsoft has a slight advantage here in that Windows 10 will run both regular Windows apps and the tablet / phone apps. Mac OSX cannot run iOS apps yet. So the iPad Pro and the Surface Pro 3 might compete for mind share - but they really aren't intended as competitors in the marketplace as they fill separate niches.

Re:It's not the size

[Chris Mattern]

All a mouse does is points and clicks, which you can do with your finger.

Wrong. A mouse also drags, which can be difficult to do with a finger.

Re:It's not the size

[fluffernutter]

Right, but what I am saying is, while it may not be absolutely optimal in the end it works just fine and kind of a silly thing to gripe about.

Re:It's not the size

[fluffernutter]

You're right. A mouse does more than touch does. Although now with pressure sensitive, I imagine a harder press will drag.

Re:It's not the size

[Joviex]

Touch means instant teleportation of the pointer to an element on a screen instead of a traversal which can be monitored...

The models of interaction are just different enough you really can't combine them well.

Completely and utterly wrong. You have to transition your entire finger, hand, or arm, unlike with a mouse that is only a wrist flick.

Re:It's not the size

[Teckla]

I think you mean Surface 3 PRO. The Surface 3 has no fan.I have a Surface 3 and I will admit its a compromise between laptop and tablet.

Indeed you are correct, thanks for the correction.

Re:It's not the size

[jedidiah]

If anything, touch focus and control is much more crude than a mouse, keyboard, or stylus. Thus Jobs screeching about a precision control feature (the stylus) that eventually showed up everywhere else. It will probably show up on Apple sooner or later too (just like smaller tablets).

Re:It's not the size

[Anonymous Coward]

Fan - running i5 or i7 - I have the i5. Fan seems to mostly come on when watching HD videos for a while. It's a noticeable noise, but not loud by any means. Room for improvement here for sure.

Bad keyboard? I'm sorry, it's a great keyboard - that is my major pet peeve with Apple, I find their keyboards IMPOSSIBLE to type on.. Surface is actually comfortable and works well.

Most of the software not being touch friendly - yup - that's because it's mostly desktop apps. The metro style apps are touch friendly. Important differentiation on what sort of app you are running

Windows 10 - It's funny how that works, I prefer Windows 8 - so strange.

Poor notebook/tablet combo - maybe, but they are trying and I don't see how that poorness differs from the new iPad. It's nearly impossible to comfortably use the Surface on your lap with out worrying that the keyboard will disconnect and the tablet will drop to the floor. Works perfectly on a desk or as a tablet on it's own.

I'd say the BIGGEST advantage is you only really need this ONE computer. It's a full computer, not just a stripped down tablet (ipad). All your stuff is in one place (ya sure, cloud, but having it in one spot is even better - just back your stuff up)

  Buy the docking station and you'll know what I'm talking about. It actually saves you money from not having to buy a tablet, notebook and desktop. It's all of these things in one.

No I don't work for Microsoft - just a satisfied customer. If they made the MacBooks like they used to with the older style keyboard that would change my opinion about Apple a lot. Kinda like the whole BlackBerry folk out there... hanging on to their blackberries because the keyboard is great. I didn't think I could make the switch away from my BlackBerry years ago to a touch only device, but I did, and it was fine. I've been trying to get used to the MacBook keyboard - nope, sorry, it totally sucks. I am just one person in several billion however.

Re:It's not the size

[AmiMoJo]

Hardware too. Once you get used to wireless charging, for example, you don't want to go back.

Re:It's not the size

[Carewolf]

It's the software and OS it runs that matters.

Which means iPad Pro is double fucked, because it doesn't run a real OS.

Re:It's not the size

[ChunderDownunder]

Which is why I can't stand trackpads on laptops.

Middle click paste, selection of text, drag and drop are all dexterity fails on my part.

Re:It's not the size

[PopeRatzo]

But it's still the best tablet every made for mobile music production. Runs a full version of ProTools with VST support and all plugins. And full touch support.

Apple iPad "Pro" isn't pro until you can run a full version of ProTools or at least Logic Studio.

I don't really care about other applications for the Surface Pro 3. For this one niche, it's the ideal tool.

Re:It's not the size

[swb]

I've used Jump on iPhone and iPad to connect to Windows PCs.

It was kind of a toy with the iPhone, occasionally useful to restart a service or something trivial, but the screen size mismatches alone made it crazy to try to actually do anything that wasn't simple.

I was super enthusiastic about doing RDP with an iPad and a BT keyboard, but in the end it turned out to be super annoying. Touch is just not compatible with a typical mouse-driven interface.

I was really kind of surprised (and disappointed) they were going to continue to refuse to allow a mouse profile to be paired to the iPad. The iPad Pro with an LTE connection would be a pretty nice tablet-that-does-RDP if you could use a mouse, and if you could there's lots of travel/meeting/mobility situations where it would be the perfect substitute for a larger laptop and let you accomplish some real work remotely.

I can see where they might allow the device yet still retain whatever "vision" that prevents them from allowing it to be used. They could allow pairing but not equate mouse and touch events for the UI, and have the mouse only be useful in apps written to handle mouse events -- the home screen, apple apps, etc, could still be touch only while third party apps that wanted to use the mouse could, like RDP apps, maybe some editors, spreadsheets, etc.

I kind of get why they have never allowed pairing of mice -- it forces all developers to work within the touch paradigm and prevents the touch-orient UI from being subverted by people using mice. But at the same time, touch doesn't really ever "scale up" to a mouse in terms of precision or ease of use. Text selection is clumsy with touch and touch kind of works against high DPI displays because it lacks the precision of a mouse, forcing UI elements to not shrink below a certain size.

Re:It's not the size

[fluffernutter]

I don't get touchpads either. They're good for scrolling, and that's about it.

The thing I liked about Jump was that there was a circle next to the pointer that you could move the pointer with. This gave close to precise control (like, almost as close as a mouse).

But I cannot use trackpads.

Re:It's not the size

[fluffernutter]

Did you use the circle next to the pointer to drag it around? I can't remember whether it controlled that way by default or not, but it was amazing. Almost as good as a mouse.

Re:It's not the size

[Ryanrule]

the replacement for a mouse is mental control.

Re:It's not the size

[jma05]

You can combine them. Android can be used with a mouse (mostly) just fine. Touch UIs work OK with the mouse, but the reverse isn't as easy for the reasons you state. One of the main reasons is that the mouse is much more precise than touch. So we have small UI elements on desktop apps that are just hard to hit with touch, but somewhat manageable with a stylus. iOS team took advantage of the coarse aspects of touch and incorporated gestures to great effect.

As we are moving towards high DPI displays on mobile, but not so much on the desktop, perhaps the differences will become less different in the future and mobile interfaces will look acceptable for mouse use. Tooling (Appmethod) is making it easy for apps to simply present two different interfaces for the same functionality. In the end, it will all converge. Windows appears to be on the right track for long term evolution.

Re:It's not the size

[ToasterMonkey]

I don't really get when people say that software isn't compatible with touch. All a mouse does is points and clicks, which you can do with your finger. I use a remote desktop app called 'Jump' on Android and it works on a regular desktop just fine.

I hope your version of hell, should you get there, is eternally manipulating a scrollbar widget by finger in a tiny display which pans around in an infinitely large display. If you move off the track half an inch, it snaps back to to the bottom where a little note says "touch compatible".

Re:It's not the size

[tlhIngan]

I don't really get when people say that software isn't compatible with touch. All a mouse does is points and clicks, which you can do with your finger. I use a remote desktop app called 'Jump' on Android and it works on a regular desktop just fine.

Touch, keyboard and mouse, joysticks are different UI paradigms. In fact, it took Apple to do in one try what Microsoft did several times.

Sure, one can emulate the other, but there are limits to the emulation. (Linux contains a very competent mechanism for emulation)

First off, let's get rid of the right mouse button, because touch screens don't have "right" or "left" clicks. Just "touch" (which most UIs emulate left mouse). Take a normal Windows app and then monitor how many times you have to right-click. Now imagine not being able to do so - this will render quite a few apps unusable. Sure, we can emulate a right click - either through touch-holds or pressure, but it's somewhat ... fiddly. Yes, I know about "3D Touch" and all that, but you can bet even with Apple's refinements, there will be parts of the screen easier to do "right touch" than other parts.

Second, the mouse is a fine pointing device. With it, you can precisely hit small targets (the limit is a pixel). Touch, even with a stylus, is reasonably crude - the smaller the target, the more frustrating it is to hit, and it's possible that it's not possible to hit them. So you need to accommodate the relatively low resolution touch gets you.

On the other hand, gestures are remarkably easy with a touchscreen - flicks, swipes, pinches, etc., relatively easy. On a mouse, not so much. The mouse is crude, and bulky and hard to do these things with. Impossible if you want to multi-touch.

It's all these little things that make huge differences in the user interactions

Re:It's not the size

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really get when people say that software isn't compatible with touch. All a mouse does is points and clicks, which you can do with your finger. I use a remote desktop app called 'Jump' on Android and it works on a regular desktop just fine.

Touch is really different than mouse input. Sure it's possible to control a mouse UI by touch through something like VNC, but it's obviously non-optimal and not something you'd want to do all the time. Touch obscures where you are "pointing". Touch means you can't really hover well (well, at least before 3D touch). Touch means instant teleportation of the pointer to an element on a screen instead of a traversal which can be monitored...

Elaborating on one of the points raised here: you can't "mouseover" on a web page with touch. It's either click or not click, without the mouseover option. 3D is a poor substitute which is not always available on a touch device. So many web sites (like mine, where mouseover calls up a bigger image on some pages) are slightly buggered with a non-3D touchscreen interface.

As to the UI itself, it's up to an application whether it supports the 3D mouseover event (e.g. help text), and they are usually buggered... They're always buggered if you have a 2D interface as it lacks the mouseover event completely.

Re: It's not the size

[Anonymous Coward]

Try thinking outside the box. If the touch screen was used as a giant touch pad like a laptop, those problems you mention are not problems anymore.

Re:It's not the size

[thegarbz]

All a mouse does is points and clicks

Yes and all touch does is clicks. You're already missing half of the input context right there. Incompatibilities with touch include every function where a point but not a click is relevant. For instance menus, popup help, and any application that relies on the direction of travel of the pointer.

Re:It's not the size

[Dog-Cow]

You are a complete and utter moron. Nothing you wrote contradicts the GP. At all. Strangle yourself with a mouse cord. You'll feel better.

Re:It's not the size

[swb]

Yeah, the circle is mandatory for getting any precision in most Windows (or any mouse-driven UI).

It's not that the Jump app was badly written or non-functional -- it's fairly genius how they adapted IOS touch to be useful for RDP sessions (hell, MS should have bought them just for the circle, and Win8 touch may not have been such a flop).

It's that touch is only so useful with a non-touch, mouse-centric UI. Constantly having to reach up and touch the screen for GUI interaction is so clumsy by itself, plus the amount of dragging and zooming to get smaller UI elements is tedious, and mouse tasks like dragging and so forth are clumsy with touch.

Re: It's not the size

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, you didn't watch the Apple event where a guy designed an ad using Adobe CS on an IPad Pro. He easily made changes, resized and dragged objects around.

Re:It's not the size

[Anonymous Coward]

For you it works fine, but for me it is unusable. A touch interface is something different than a mouse interface. And that is where Microsoft was wrong. They tried to shoehorn a touch based interface in a mouse based interface that should also be a keyboard based interface. I've worked with those 'WPF Apps' on a regular desktop with my natural instinct to only use the keyboard and leave the mouse alone. It was just impossible to do. Tab works awkward. Keyboard-shortcuts are non existing. Controls are way too big. Everything seemed to be scaled up from a small screen instead of laid out out for a desktop screen.

Maybe the problem was with the creator of that particular software package (a custom made HR/Customer software package), but it is a trend to develop applications for Windows in a framework that is meant for smart phones. I do not know what the new way of programming is in the Windows world. But I expect that the old school win forms is just there for legacy and that the new 'correct way' is that WPF framework that should have died out with Silverlight.

I'm not a Windows programmer myself, so I do not know about the latest and greatest of Microsoft. But the tools might be nice to work with, the resulting programs I worked with where not.

Re:It's not the size

[Anonymous Coward]

That was my 1st thought too. In my workplace, I support basically everything that my users bring up to me. We do keep to a standard, but when there's QA dept, they have one of everything. I had a chance to handle a surface pro 2 the other day for the first time. Felt like a toy. Felt cheap and flimsy. It was still running Windows 8, and comparatively speaking (to android and IOS) pretty damn expensive. I really wondered why anyone would want it. For my mobile needs, I have an asus transformer with the keyboard dock running android 4.4.4 and it suits me great.

Re:It's not the size

[fluffernutter]

I can only think that you were using it wrong.

Re:It's not the size

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Surface Pro 3 (i5, 128GB) for work - I'm typing on it right now. I treat it as a very portable laptop with the nice feature of being able to remove the keyboard. I spend 98% of my time in the desktop UI (this one's still on 8.1 due to being a corporate toy). The stylus very rarely comes out. When I'm at my desk I have a mouse plugged in, but the touchpad is pretty decent. The machine gets lugged around to all my meetings and presentations - it fits nicely in a slim messenger bag.

The keyboard is fine as long as you are working at a table - it's not so great placed on a lap. The fan is not on often, and is only noticeable in a silent room - it's quieter than my breathing. As far as I'm concerned, it's an excellent piece of kit. Maybe your friend should get the fan serviced?

If I owned one myself, I'd probably try to run Linux on it, though I suspect there may be some hardware that isn't that well supported currently.

Re:It's not the size

[fluffernutter]

That would suit me just fine. I'm an extremely patient person, and I don't much care for the idea of being burned alive.

Re: It's not the size

[Your.Master]

Right, but it would also negate the advantages of touch, chiefly the more intuitive targetting and the availability of multi-touch gestures. You are just operating an actual mouse (mouse-equivalent device) that has unusual non-ergonomic packaging and no physical keyboard.

Re:It's not the size

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple fanboy alert.

Stylus

[nojayuk]

From what I've seen and read the iPad Pro stylus uses the classic capacitive touch sensor of the sort used on all the iPads, maybe with a higher-definition capability. That that means the user can't rest their hand on the screen while drawing. All the videos I've seen of users demoing the iPad stylus show them being very careful not to let their hand get anywhere near the screen, holding the stylus in a rather unnatural fashion.

The Surface Pro has a separate digitising screen for the stylus as well as the regular capacitive touch screen and it's possible to rest a hand on the Surface Pro's screen while writing and drawing as it can ignore the capacitive touch signal.

Re:Stylus

[TrancePhreak]

The iPad Pro does have a separate digitizer. However, the stylus lacks any buttons and no eraser functionality. Currently the suggested way to recharge the pen is to insert it into the charging port of the iPad Pro.

Re:Stylus

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple got outsmarted at their own game... ...by Microsoft, no less.

Interesting times.

Re:Stylus

[frnic]

1. Apple has replied to various questions and you can lay your hand/arm/e.bow on the screen and continue using the Pencil.

2. The system is NOT the standard Capacitive touch screen, but is a system designed specifically for the pencil and has much higher resolution (double?) and much higher input rates (double?) so, it can react faster and with resolution down to the pixel on a retina display.

Re:Stylus

[nojayuk]

The iPad Pro does have a separate digitizer.

This is from the Apple website page describing the Apple Pencil:

iPad Pro knows whether youâ(TM)re using your finger or Apple Pencil. When iPad Pro senses Apple Pencil, the subsystem scans its signal at an astounding 240 times per second, giving it twice the data points it normally collects with your finger. This data, combined with Appleâ'designed software, means that thereâ(TM)s only milliseconds between the image you have in your mind and the one you see on the display.

That doesn't sound like a separate stylus digitiser layer, it's more like the regular capacitive touch layer goes into turbo mode when the Pencil tip gets close to the screen.

We'll find out definitively when the first teardowns occur I suppose.

Re:Stylus

[lucm]

Apple got outsmarted at their own game... ...by Microsoft, no less.

You forgot: "again".

Re:Stylus

[AmiMoJo]

an astounding 240 times per second

LOL, astounding like everyone else has been doing for years. It's been well known that to get good input from a stylus for things like handwriting and artwork you need at least 240 samples per second, preferably more, at higher DPI than the screen itself.

Samsung and Wacom and anyone else who read a patent or academic paper about it has known this for over a decade, and implementations in consumer products have been around for at least five years.

FWIW Samsung uses the standard capacitative touch layer. I doubt Apple would have gone a different way, it's unnecessary and adds cost and thickness.

Re:Stylus

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, to the hand being rested on the screen while using a stylus, it damn well better. If Apple doesn't support that, then they're behind everybody else. But of course I do tend to think that the Apple devout will push this as some revolutionary feature Apple has innovated even though it's been industry standard for a very long time and really is considered expected functionality any more.

Stylus comment was in regards to one on a phone

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2007, Jobs made the comment "If you see a stylus, they blew it", in regards to using a stylus on a phone. Back then (for those of us old enough to remember) phones like the Palm Treo had tiny touch targets and resistive screens that pretty much demanded the use of a stylus. Apple was the first manufacturer to ship a capacitive touchscreen with a large, touch-optimized UI that did not require a stylus for day to day use.

*THAT* is what Jobs was referring to back then. If you're going to toss around the man's quotes, at least get the context right.

Re:Stylus comment was in regards to one on a phone

[lucm]

There's always a fanboi to come out and defend the Prophet when the Church makes a 180 on his Sacred Word. Of course the point is always that the Word was misunderstood, not that everyone now, even in the Church, knows that it was stupid.

Re:Stylus comment was in regards to one on a phone

[AmiMoJo]

Small but important correction, Apple were not the first to do a usable touch interface with large targets for use with a finger. Various other phones did it earlier, but perhaps not with as much style and hype as the iPhone. In other words they had a good touch interface with large targets, gestures and so forth, they just didn't pitch it as "revolutionary" and the dawn of a new age, just an incremental improvement.

Apples(tm) and oranges comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

The comparison is complete nonsense. The Surface Pro runs stock x86 Windows; the iPad Pro would have to be running OSX on an x86 chip for any sort of comparison to be meaningful. Even comparing the late, unlamented Surface RT to the iPad Pro is suspect, despite the fact that both are ARM based, since the former ran full blown Windows as well; it had the desktop version of Office bundled into the firmware.

A meaningful comparison would between the Surface Pro 3 vs. Macbook Air or the iPad Pro vs. the flagship Android tablets.

Re: Apples(tm) and oranges comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bought a Motion Computing R12. All told about $3650. Blows away whatever disposable toys ms and apple are offering. It's basically a portable win7 12.5" 2.9Ghz desktop with the added and most important benefits of being droppable and rained on. Getac has a comparable and somewhat faster offering but with a higher cost. It's cool to be able to actually draw pictures and take notes using the incl. wacom pen. Plus it has both an optional desktop dock and car options which makes what apple has look just like what it is, a toy.

Re:Apples(tm) and oranges comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has put the Surface RT out to pasture. They learned their lesson, and rightfully gave up.

I don't know why you are recommending that we limit our comparison? Is it because you are an Apple fanboi?

The only reason the iPad exists is because of its battery life. As x86 shrinks and gets more efficient, that advantage is negated. The PC tablets are full blown computers. The iPad OS makes what could be a full blown computer into little more than a terminal where you can access content and do light duty tasks (and only with permission from Apple).

The fully functional PC tablet is where it's at. iPad is a limited capability appliance.

Re: Apples(tm) and oranges comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather condescending attitude you have there, not everyone can afford a four thousand dollar tablet.

Re: Apples(tm) and oranges comparison

[lucm]

That's hardly a tablet. More like a cinder block. Twice the weight of an iPod, almost four times the weight of a Surface Pro 3. Might as well be sturdy because people who carry this kind of brick around are more likely to drop it.

The conclusion here is not that iPads or Surface Pros are toys. The conclusion is that you bought a heavy, overpriced laptop disguised as a tablet that probably never leaves your desk. Why didn't you buy a big Alienware or Lenovo gamer workstation instead? For that same dollar figure you'd get a lot more horsepower and more or less the same portability.

Re: Apples(tm) and oranges comparison

[jedidiah]

That's kind of how Apple took over the market. They went cheap. They didn't make the first tablets. They made the first really cheap ones. If you're talking about "serious work", especially in creative fields then there's a good chance that a cheap consumer gadget isn't going to cut the mustard.

Re:Apples(tm) and oranges comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why you are recommending that we limit our comparison? Is it because you are an Apple fanboi?

You got low marks for reading comprehension in school, didn't you?

Comparing the Surface and the Ipad is stupid

[HoodeMoons]

JUst because a skateboard and a car both have 4 wheels doesn't mean its the same product. Just because Surface LOOKS like an Ipad doesn't mean its the same kind of product. Surface is a COMPUTER. A Windows computer. People Buy Ipads and Amazon Fires to get AWAY from computers. I can see why Microsoft would LIKE to compete in the Ipad market.......but its stupid to do so. They LOOK alike......beyond that they are in completely different categories. Its actually a stupid comparison. They serve completely different purposes. The reasons for buying each is all different. People who buy tablets don't WANT to Maintain a computer. They don't WANT to deal with the malware etc computers have. People who want to SKATE buy Skateboards. People who want to DRIVE Buy a car.

Re:Comparing the Surface and the Ipad is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why you comment got voted down, I feel the same way. I own a Surface and an iPad - two similar LOOKING devices, I use them completely differently, as a matter of fact I tend to use the Surface more... probably because I've always used windows.. had a mac since, well, forever too - always tended to use the windows PC more - not sure why, just worked out that way really. Maybe because there is still this hatred for MS by folks, this is why stuff gets voted down. Computer is a computer. All of this Apple Vs PC/MS stuff reminds me of Commodore vs Atari crap from the 80's! All computers suck, some just a little more than others - whatever you like to use is best. Because you or I might like to use MS/PC more than Apple (maybe) doesn't mean you should be voted down. Seems like a software sort of racism.

Re:Comparing the Surface and the Ipad is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another similar looking device:

http://www.amazon.com/Ozeri-Professional-Digital-Kitchen-Tempered/dp/B006N0OIIG

When cooking, I regularly go to move it out of the way thinking it's my iPad ;)

Re:Comparing the Surface and the Ipad is stupid

[SuperKendall]

The amusing thing is that product also offers Force Touch... :-)

Re:Comparing the Surface and the Ipad is stupid

[lucm]

I can see why Microsoft would LIKE to compete in the Ipad market.......but its stupid to do so..

This is correct. It would be stupid to compete in a dying market. Looks at the sales numbers - iPads will be the next thing to disappear from the top menu on Apple's website (after the iPod).

Apple sells a lot of iPhones, a decent number of laptops, and they make money on App Store and iTunes commissions. Everything else on their website is over or a fad.

Re:Comparing the Surface and the Ipad is stupid

[Tony Isaac]

What you apparently don't realize is that enterprise software doesn't run on iOS. It does run on Windows. Yes, they are completely different categories, which is why Microsoft is making inroads into the enterprise that Apple can't touch.

Re:Comparing the Surface and the Ipad is stupid

[Hoodeus]

Whether or not IPAD is a dying market is not relevant to the point. THe points is a ford truck is not a skateboard anymore than a surface is an IPAD......or a tablet. Surface is a windows computer that RESEMBLES A tablet. IOS doesnt run enterprise......so what? People who BUY IOS dont WANT enterprise or they would be buying the surface. I have no dog in the hunt....I own neither product. But I have used both products. People that buy IPads DONT WANT COMPUTERS.....if they DO they already have one at home. One product isnt better than the other. There is obviously enough demand for BOTH types of devices. I can see why MIcrosoft would LOVE to compare themselves to an ipad but its laughable. THey serve different functions for different consumers. UNless you work for MIcrosoft, I don't see how you can make a different argument. BOTH Products appeal to different people for different reasons. A Surface is a computer and IPad is a tablet. One shouldn't be compared to the other for obvious reasons.

Re:Comparing the Surface and the Ipad is stupid

[Hoodeus]

THe point is if Apple WANTED to go enterprise they wouldn't be going IOS. THere are some that want enterprise and a shitload of people who dont for whatever reason. Apple has NEVER truly gone after enterprise. So what? MIcrosoft has always been enterprise. THey aren't making inroads.....they have always been there. But there IS A market for NON enterprise or the smart phones and tablet MANY companies are making would be starving to death. Surface is a decent product. I am not critiquing it. I am simply saying thery are two different products for two different kind of consumers.

Re:Comparing the Surface and the Ipad is stupid

[Hoodeus]

Thats exactly what it is. Or some Microsoft engineers didnt like me getting in the way of their propaganda lolol Oh well

So you've seen nothing?

[SuperKendall]

Even the basic product photos AND the demo showed the hand resting on the screen.

If you weren't aware, you can rest your hand on an iPad today while drawing with your finger or stylus... Apple does input discrimination very well.

The Surface Pro has a separate digitising screen for the stylus

That is all very nice but the Apple Pencil looks to have much better latency which is what really matters.

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Latency? What latency? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YaMDNVYbwI4

-- Yeeeeah ffaannbbooi

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[SuperKendall]

You really can't see the latency in that video?

It's fast, but not instant.

Look at when they draw the lowercase y....

Also easier to get low latency for very small strokes over a tiny area... which is why the longer lower case y starts to display more latency.

It's sad that fanboys like yourself simply cannot understand what a big difference even slightly lower latency makes.

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

> throws fanboy rocks
> you simply cannot understand what a big difference even slightly lower latency makes

ha ha oh wow
someone get me some rock climbing anchors so i don't get sucked into this wind tunnel of whoosh
- different AC

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[Carewolf]

Even the basic product photos AND the demo showed the hand resting on the screen.

If you weren't aware, you can rest your hand on an iPad today while drawing with your finger or stylus... Apple does input discrimination very well.

The Surface Pro has a separate digitising screen for the stylus

That is all very nice but the Apple Pencil looks to have much better latency which is what really matters.

No it doesn't.

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

A $99 pencil is something I'd expect to find in a sex-toy shop and I'm sure apple users are use to the size.

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[thegarbz]

That is all very nice but the Apple Pencil looks to have much better latency which is what really matters.

Have you used a Surface Pro? One of the interesting things I've found about it is that the latency issue only exist in the hover state. As soon as pen is on paper (so to say) the latency is near enough to zero that you can rapidly swing the pen wildly from one side of the screen to the other like a 2 year old does with a colouring in book and it still records the input perfectly.

Do that in the hover state and the cursor doesn't seem to move with the pen. It's quite a bizarre situation but as long as you ignore the dot on the screen in the hover state the Surface Pro 3 doesn't seem to have any noticeable latency at all. Interestingly also is that the Surface Pro 2 didn't have this issue. But they did use a different digitiser for it (Wacom) as opposed to whatever they used in the Pro 3.

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[thegarbz]

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.

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[serviscope_minor]

No it doesn't.

No it really does, see, because it's got an apple logo on it. I think apple invented low latency input at around the same time they invented rounded corners.

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yyyeeaahh fffaaannbbooi! Here's an apple video, and as you can see at around one minute with fast movements, the ipad pro lag is pretty bad: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IQHp4kxm3xk

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[SJ]

No, they're using them because they haven't been shown anything better.

Easiest way to measure this? Count how many used Surface Pros show up on eBay once the iPad Pro comes out.

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[thegarbz]

Easiest way to measure this? Count how many used Surface Pros show up on eBay once the iPad Pro comes out.

Have you ever heard of correlation vs caus... err forget it. People hate something but don't complain about it or don't know they hate it. Yes I can see your argument is borderline religious.

Re:So you've seen nothing?

[Piata]

Latency of a stylus is determined by a lot of factors; usually the software, the size of the file being worked on and the computer hardware. The iPad Pro's demo was likely done on a light drawing application with an extremely small image. I have a Cintiq Companion and I can work on a poster size image at 300dpi without latency.

So saying Apple Pencil looks to have much better latency is really disengenous. It's like saying a Logitech mouse has much better latency than an Apple Mouse.

Competition is good!

[BoRegardless]

We get better tablet devices and tablet software much quicker than we would otherwise!

The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[SuperKendall]

The Surface competes far more against the Macbook than it does against the iPad Pro.

The iPad Pro is all about touch input (still), while the Surface treats that as an extra.

Also the Stylus comment was about requiring the stylus for input - which the iPad Pro does not, you only get the stylus if you need finer-grained input than a touch can give you.

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for not paying attention

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[SuperKendall]

Only an idiot would think because the iPad pro has an optional smart cover with keyboard very similar to the Surface key cover, that the device itself is the same as the Surface.

The Surface basically requires a keyboard to use, the iPad (pro or otherwise) does not.

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[spire3661]

Surface does NOT require a keyboard to use in any way. The software keyboard works very well. You don't have to buy that insanely overpriced integrated keyboard. The ONLY thing that keyboard does well is integration. It fails on ALL other fronts.

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[SuperKendall]

Surface does NOT require a keyboard to use in any way.

I know it has a nice software keyboard also, but come on - have you ever seen anyone using a Surface without some kind of keyboard? Being Windows it's heavily keyboard centric and keeping the keyboard up consumes a large part of the display.

iPad apps all bring up a keyboard as sparingly as possible and try to make controls take as few presses as possible to use, while Windows apps often bury lots of things in deep menus or right-click menus (which require the trackpad part of the smart cover to access quickly).

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[Bing Tsher E]

I am entering this comment on my Acer Transformer Book, a tablet that runs Windows 8.1.

Have you ever used a Windows tablet? You seem to know little about them, and how they work.

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they fixed keybord input support in ios yet so that you can tab between input fields?

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[Anonymous Coward]

Try pressing ctrl+alt+delete to change your domain password on a surface pro 3 without the physical keyboard. Take as much time as you need.

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[Anonymous Coward]

And yes, I've run one (actually 3 of them due to hardware failures) as my primary Windows machine at work for almost 12 months.

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[bemymonkey]

Agreed. This isn't a competitor for the Surface 3 or Surface Pro 3, but rather for the Samsung Galaxy Note series.

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[AmiMoJo]

The iPad Pro will be competing against much cheaper 12" tablets running Android and Windows, and comparably priced Samsung tablets that also have a stylus. There are basically three potential users:

1. People who just want a big tablet. A cheaper one will be their best bet.

2. People who want a stylus interface on a big tablet. Samsung is more established, we will have to wait and see how well Apple's offering compares.

3. People who want an Apple for some other reason, like lock in or fashion.

Re: The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad news for Samsung then since they doesn't seam to care about their customer. I am writing this on a Samsung Galaxy Note pro 12.2, a device that they seam to not care for.

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[spire3661]

Windows key + power is supposed to be the hardware alternative to ctrl+alt+del. Normally i just pull out my $20 logitech k400 out of my laptop bag and start typing...or my lenovo n5901 with dedicated ctrl+alt+del key

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried, it's a massive PITA once you leave the Metro apps.

Re:The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[exomondo]

Being Windows it's heavily keyboard centric and keeping the keyboard up consumes a large part of the display.

Windows doesn't really have anything to do with it, when I want to launch a program on Windows or iOS it's the same mechanism: If it's on the homescreen then press it, otherwise search - which brings up the software keyboard on both platforms.

iPad apps all bring up a keyboard as sparingly as possible and try to make controls take as few presses as possible to use, while Windows apps often bury lots of things in deep menus or right-click menus (which require the trackpad part of the smart cover to access quickly).

Well that depends on what software you're using I suppose. Photoshop for Windows is a lot more capable than Photoshop for iOS which is why functionality resides in menus. But it also goes the other way - take web browsing for instance - Edge on Windows has the browser options in a dialog that you bring up from the side menu, Safari on iOS doesn't even have the options for the browser in that program at all, you have to go into an entirely different program and find Safari to get to its options.

It's not that one is better than the other, both have their advantages and disadvantages in certain areas which is why one is not a wholesale replacement for the other.

Re: The Surface is a laptop, the iPad Pro is not

[bemymonkey]

Agreed. I have a Samsung ATIV Smart PC 500T (the Atom Windows 8 tablet with pen), which was hella expensive (700+€), and the support has been absolutely shitty. The drivers are buggy as hell (regular BSODs), and the device is pretty much stuck with Win8.1 and Samsung is telling us to fuck off instead of making sure the device will get Win10.

What competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who in their right mind would buy a watered down iPad, when they could buy a full featured computer (Surface, Lenovo MIIX, etc.)?

The only advantage an iPad has is battery life.

Tabletized PCs are where it's at. Full functionality.

Re:What competition?

[frnic]

I expect there are a few million people not in the right mind, at least by the end of the year.

But, thank you for your positive contribution to the conversation. It is always a pleasure reading intelligent well thought out comments like yours.

Re:What competition?

[lucm]

iPad sales are down 22% year over year. Soon enough people who own one will even be shy to bring it out in public, like teenage girls tearing down their One Direction posters.

You're amazingly misinformed for someone that arrogant.

Re:What competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if iPad sales go down *another* 22% year over year, it'll still sell an order of magnitude more units in that quarter than the entire Surface line will all year, and almost certainly more units than the Surface line has since its inception (I'm having trouble finding unit sales metrics for the Surface, but it has only recently had it's first $1million+ quarter).

You're amazingly arrogant for someone that misinformed.

Re:What competition?

[lucm]

(I'm having trouble finding unit sales metrics for the Surface, but it has only recently had it's first $1million+ quarter).

You're amazingly arrogant for someone that misinformed.

Weird. I did not have trouble finding sales metrics for the Surface at all. But whatever is the reason for your lack of google skills, I'm sure you will be surprised to learn that Microsoft is making more than 1 million dollars per quarter with this product. They even make more than that per day. Isn't that amazing?

Are they outselling iPads? No, not yet. But the iPad, which used to dominate the market, now has at best a 20% share. So the real competition for Microsoft is not the iPad, it's that cluster of Asian Android manufacturers.

I would also like to point out that you're way less clever than you think in your comments. You sound petulant, not righteous.

iPad is for cows.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOO! MOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU iCOWS!!

Ugh. Hate those keyboard covers

[93 Escort Wagon]

We've deployed a few Surfaces at work. First thing the users ask for is a regular USB keyboard and a mouse to plug in while they're on campus. Second thing they ask for is a regular USB keyboard and mouse they can take home with them when they've got the Surfaces there. Nobody is willing to use the awful cover.

Re:Ugh. Hate those keyboard covers

[fluffernutter]

I'd ALWAYS rather use a USB keyboard and mouse to a touch screen or touch pad.

Re:Ugh. Hate those keyboard covers

[FranTaylor]

I'd ALWAYS rather use a USB keyboard and mouse to a touch screen or touch pad.

even when you are on the subway?

Re:Ugh. Hate those keyboard covers

[Anonymous Coward]

Which makes me wonder, are there any keyboards or peripherals with USB-C connectors that can be used to charge tablets?

Re:Ugh. Hate those keyboard covers

[bemymonkey]

Try a keyboard with a decent trackpoint... i.e. a Thinkpad. It's the only mobile input device that can hold a candle to a full desktop keyboard + mouse.

Re:Ugh. Hate those keyboard covers

[fluffernutter]

I'm using one right now! I just didn't mention it because I thought people were tired of me talking about it. I love trackpoints. I generally use second hand Thinkpads with trackpoints.

Re:Ugh. Hate those keyboard covers

[bemymonkey]

Haha, I'm typing this on fully loaded X220. 7-row non-chiclet FTW! :D

Nothing new

[markdavis]

>" many Apple fans snickered. [...]Steve Jobs famously said in 2010, "If you see a stylus, they blew it." [...]And most recently, we've seen Apple pull a literal 180 on this design and platform approach,"

This is nothing new. Apple and/or Apple fans tends to ridicule anything they don't have (note I didn't say "design", because MANY things were first to market in other devices... most notably in high-end Android phones.) Remember smart watches in 2013-2014? Remember notifications? Remember Google Wallet? Remember NFC? Remember large sizes? Just a few things that quickly come to mind.

Apple tends to have some great designs and solid equipment. But they are rarely first anymore- they are more reactionary now.

Re: Nothing new

[Karlt1]

The difference was that you needed a stylus to use the smart phones before the iPhone. You still don't need a stylus to use the iPad Pro.

The Surface running Windows 8 was poorly implemented. You couldn't do basic stuff easily with the Surface without a keyboard. Even Office worked better on an iPad without a keyboard than it did on Windows tablets.

As far as smart watches before the Apple Watch, they were horrible geeky looking things that were far from fashionable.

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like Apple is really first with anything. iPod? Diamond Rio or MPman.... iPhone, there were phones running Windows long before the iPhone. Tablet? There were windows tablets long before iPad. PDA's? Apple had the Newton (which was AWESOME) they screwed that up. Palm/USRobotics did a good job with the electronics available at the time.. they didn't try to get the electronics to do more than it was capable of. When I speak of electronics I mean battery/processor/form factor/weight/ports/etc. Other companies tried long before Apple.... Apple was just keen enough to wait for electronics to catch up to where they needed to be (long after other companies tried and failed because they tried far too early). When things were right, Apple would make a super slick looking new product, really put their focus on the user experience. Really smart of them. I just don't know why other companies didn't decide to try again when electronics got better. Microsoft could have been Apple, but Microsoft was loyal to their channel partners/manufacturers. Microsoft allowed their software to work on shit computers and awesome computers. Apple didn't really have awesome computers available at good prices. PC's did this for all of us. Not one size fits all from a budget point of view. MS enables all sorts of shapes, sizes and price ranges on computer equipment. As far as apple making their own chips - whatever, if they didn't make their own some other chip would have more or less done the job. Got to hand it to apple about making some really sleek hardware with a relatively smooth user experience - that count's large. I own a Surface Pro 3 - it's great, would not trade that in for anything right now. Not as sleek as some apple stuff, but very close and way more usable, with a lot of options, and USB/SD/display port ports and docking station port expansion too!.

Re:Nothing new

[lucm]

Totally agree. I clearly remember fanbois (here and in the Apple biased mass media) making fun of large screen Android phones. But when the iPhone with a big screen came out, it was suddenly the greatest thing in the world.

There was also the "death of PC", which is now swept under the rug as Apple is making more money with laptops than with iPads.

Apple was cool in 2008-2010. Now it's just like a former high school jock who ends up selling lawn-mowers and power tools at Home Depot, his glory days over.

Re: Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

apple watch? another distraction enabler. You'll just use your iPhone anyway - what's the point... really.

Re:Nothing new

[frnic]

I am not sure how you define glory, Apple is a business, it's sole purpose is to make money. It is one of the most successful companies in history - financially, and continues to grow profits in an industry that is constantly losing money.

You post sounds a lot like Wall Street after Apple Announced the most profitable quarter in their history and Wall Street yawned and Apple stock lost $20billion dollars. Because it wasn't enough to constantly grown faster than any other company in the industry, they had to meet Wall Street "predictions" or they were a failure.

Re:Nothing new

[Bing Tsher E]

You're conflating a lot of things. A company can 'soar to the top' on Wall Street and at the same time become exceedingly uncool to users, and especially to nerds.

Retorting with 'but.. but.. look at all their money...' very very uncool. Apple's success has led them in a totally different direction than 'cool'. When companies have great success a whole different sort of people scurry on board.

Some of us noticed it very early. I remember when the iTunes craze was in full fruition. There were promotions all over the place, even on bottle caps and pop cans. Pepsi. I thought back to Jobs' comment to Scully about 'spending the rest of your life selling sugar water to kids' and enjoyed the irony. In the time since it hasn't changed.

The Surface Pro, stiff competition for the iPad?

[Apharmd]

Hahahaha... ahahaha! How much did Microsoft pay for this? If anyone has ever spent any significant time with a Surface Pro, as well as an iPad, they would know that these devices aren't even in the same league. My organization has deployed some of the original Surface Pro's, and some 3 Pro's, and, combined with the stillbirth that is Windows 8, these devices are absolute dogs. I think my favorite part about them is that the official dock's video output only works intermittently. Well, that, and the fact that we've seen a failure rate of the Pro 3's of about 30%. I'm not Apple fanatic, not by a long shot, but the iPad just generally works, and it's easy/simple to use. The iPad is also not designed for the same thing the Surface Pro is. It's a pure consumption device.

apple products are a walled garden

[circletimessquare]

when apple innovates a *large step* that everyone lusts after, which they've done well for awhile, apple rules

but when innovation is more iterative, *small steps*, what happens outside the walled garden is much more cutthroat and much more capable of producing something novel that people want

there's also the issue that what was once state of the art extremely rapidly becomes just another commodity, it's brutal. and apple sits at the cutting edge of this game, and has to carefully stay there

as long as it can surf that wave, apple will continue to do well. but the moment large innovative steps become out of reach due to technology coming up short on the bleeding edge, then apple stumbles, and their market passes outside of the walled garden into the realm of the commodities

what amazes me is apple played its game in the 1980s. then in the 1990s apple began dying because there were no great leaps to achieve. it kind of eked out an existence on the edge as a fetish item. when the 2000s and 2010s came along, apple picked up the same game it played in the 1980s with a number of technological and design breakthroughs. which is a rather impressive achievement, to seize that position twice

but the 2020s are coming, and if apple can't find that must have next leap, apple goes the way it did in the 1990s

no steve jobs this time around though to save it in the 2030s

unless their actual product in the 2030s is "steve jobs himself cloned for your desktop"

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[Karlt1]

Apple almost died in the 90s for three reasons - classic MacOS was piss poor, Motorola and IBM couldn't keep up with Intel, and they had horrible logistics.

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[circletimessquare]

the 90s was also a period of no massive change

the 1980s saw the rise of the pc

the 2000s saw the mp3 player and the smartphone

apple made its mark in by being on the cutting edge of all 3

what was in the 1990s?

cell phones. but cell phones weren't in the mass consumption computer world. yet

nothing else. pcs and laptops really did not change from 1990 to 2000 (they got faster, more powerful, more capacity, but their use and design did not change). all apple could do is make some edgy cases:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

apple rules when massive technological and design change become in reach

when it is out of reach, apple sinks

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[zkiwi34]

Reason 4 you seem oblivious to.

It being that Microsoft (courtesy of IBM's entry into the market) had essentially locked up both business and home user market.

Given that, what was the likely fate of Apple (and the other PC makers)? Well, going out of business was one, and switching to be (yet another) PC manufacturer was the other. Apple managed to survive by being Apple; partly luck, partly because they had enough Apple fans, and partly because they started doing some things right. Since the advent of the iPod, iPhone, OS/X and everything after they've kind of found their feet and gone on with it.

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[Carewolf]

what was in the 1990s?

cell phones. but cell phones weren't in the mass consumption computer world. yet

nothing else. pcs and laptops really did not change from 1990 to 2000 (they got faster, more powerful, more capacity, but their use and design did not change)

Did you somehow miss the internet. How are you posting on slashdot without using the internet, which became a household thing in the 90s?

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[Anonymous Coward]

classic MacOS was piss poor

MacOS classic used to be great back when it was called System 7.1. I used it on 16, 25 and 33 MHz CPUs and it had amazing response times, in fact so good that lag from opening menus and stuff like that appeared to be faster than what I see today. Then came MacOS 7.5 with many added features and it became bloatware. It ran slower. MacOS 8 stuck to that trend and became even slower. In fact opening a menu on MacOS 8 on a 100 MHz CPU was slower than on a 25 MHz in System 7.1. Apple never really fixed the performance problems, but the move to OSX moved away from the bloated classic system.

Also while I never had stability issues with System 7.1, I did have crashes on MacOS 8 or later. If there is something an OS is not allowed to do, then it is to crash or break data.

Rather than saying that classic MacOS was poor, I would say that it is a good example of how to ruin great software. It's like they made a list of wanted features and then assigned people to make those addons. This feature gaining frenzy came at a cost of performance and it certainly isn't the only time I have seen that happening.

Just for the record, Word for mac at that time was dominated by Word 5.1a. It was sort of lightweight, but it got the job done with System 7.1 sense of lag. Then Word 6 came out and it was unusable due to lag. Holding down the arrow keys to move the cursor moved it like a single character each second and people started downgrading to 5.1a to get any actual work done. MS screwed up big time, but I wonder if that poor version of Word made people switch to Windows if they could see how much faster Word was there. Sure it wasn't the only word processor for mac at that time, but it was widely used.

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[circletimessquare]

devices, jackass

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[Carewolf]

devices, jackass

You said use and design. I replied to the your use of the word "use". The use of desktop and laptops changed a lot during the 90s. First of all laptops became actually useful by the end of the decade, and internet became commonplace. Dumbass.

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[circletimessquare]

what are you arguing about? the topic is quite clear. you're changing the topic for the purposes of looking like a moron. the internet is not a hardware object you stupid fuck

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[Bing Tsher E]

The culty-nichey shtick can only play to certain markets. Apple has little chance in the enterprise. Hence the premise of this article. iPad 'Pro' won't make it in the settings where Surface will.

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[MrNaz]

The 90s saw PCs fade in relevance and laptops become more commonplace. In 1991 a portable computer was a rare and expensive novelty, restricted to people with military grade budgets and business expense accounts that include annual maintenance costs in the private jet. By 2000 laptop sales outnumbered PC sales.

The 90s saw the emergence of mobile computing. That's a pretty big shift, and it ticks your "devices, jackass" checkbox.

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[0123456]

I've seen several of our customers using iPads when they visit us. I've seen others using Apple or (increasingly uncommon) Windows laptops. I've never seen one using a Microsoft tablet.

So, on that anecdotal evidence, clearly Microsoft have little chance in the enterprise.

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[circletimessquare]

In 1991 a portable computer was a rare and expensive novelty, restricted to people with military grade budgets and business expense accounts that include annual maintenance costs in the private jet

you're a special kind of lying and ignorant douchebag

this is what we had around the house:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

do you want to know the price or the "annual maintenance costs" (seriously retard?)

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[MrNaz]

Settle down, you'll give yourself a nosebleed.
Perhaps I was a little... enthusiastic in my description of how rare portable computers were in 1990, but here's a chart with data from Morgan Stanley Research that shows that laptop sales growth only really started accelerating at the end of the 90s, and only finally overtook PC sales in 2009. In 1995, when the chart's data begins, desktop PCs were the overwhelming norm. I was unable to find data that went back to 1990. However, I don't think it's unreasonable to presume that the proportional disparity between desktop PCs and portable PCs would have been higher, given that the cost difference between them is higher the further back you go. Perhaps your Google-fu is better than mine and you can find 1990-1995 data that shows that I'm wrong.

So my statement, that the 90s ushered in the era in which portable computing became commonplace, stands. Also, go easy on the ad-hominems dude. We're all friends here.

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[MrNaz]

Oh yea also, from the Wikipedia article you linked:
"The Gateway Handbook was a very small and lightweight subnotebook originally introduced by Gateway Computers in 1992..."

1992 is in the 90s, so unless you had a time machine, that wasn't lying around your house on Dec 31, 1989.

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[circletimessquare]

like this guy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[circletimessquare]

sorry, i'm too busy in private jet with my laptop maintenance team

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[MrNaz]

Look. I did not say portable computing was invented in the 90s, I said it became commonplace in the 90s. The original conversation was about market trends, not the time things were invented.

You're just being obtuse.

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[circletimessquare]

i'm not being obtuse, i'm ridiculing you for your stupid comment

look at this retired general/ business executive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[MrNaz]

Gee, you sure showed me. I'm such a putz. Good thing you were there to show me the error of my ways.
You win, I lose.
You smart, me dumb.
I apologize for causing you inconvenience.
Please accept my humility before your gracious excellence.

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[circletimessquare]

In 1991 a portable computer was a rare and expensive novelty, restricted to people with military grade budgets and business expense accounts that include annual maintenance costs in the private jet

anyone who would write that is indeed a putz

think. then open your ignorant mouth. or better yet, don't speak at all if you don't know what the fuck you are talking about

you're welcome for the education. now look around you and marvel at all the retards babbling about shit they don't know a fucking thing about

this is the problem with the world

Re: apple products are a walled garden

[MrNaz]

lol

Re:The Surface Pro, stiff competition for the iPad

[Anonymous Coward]

Their reliability is shit
I got my wife a surface last December. The first one was returned when it badly overheated and fried the screen. The second one is about to be returned as the touch screen works intermittently on left left inch of the screen. Add to that I just discovered the charger has broken.

1 star, - would not buy again and will actively recommend others do not.

(Not that I'll be running out to lock myself into the apple ecosystem either)

A Digitizer is not new.

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Samsung Galaxyu Note 10.1,
Befrore that Lenovo made one. THinkpad it was called IIRC.

I would rather have separate USB keyboard.

Oh and the case I got for my Notge can act either as a landscape stand or a portrat stand.

Re:A Digitizer is not new.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the pro 12.2, which is what im typing on right now. Built in wacom graphics digitiser and pen. Octocore processor, lte modem. I had to laugh, almost everything apple is claiming for the apple ipad pro, we have had on the note pro 12.2 almost 2 years ago. Plus the note pro will work with a usb or bluetooth mouse and has external storage (sdcard, and onthe go usb). Hint ipads cant handle mice.

Re: A Digitizer is not new.

[Anonymous Coward]

But Samsung doesn't seam to like to update that device. In my country we are still waiting for Lolipop for it. I doubt we ever will se it

I love styluses

[Anonymous Coward]

...but my 2 year old phone came with one and I rarely use it.

Fat fingers

[Anonymous Coward]

An interface designed for precise input from a mouse isn't usually finger friendly. The also isn't a really a "right click". And even a slight dependency on the keyboard, like ESC to cancel an accidental menu can make things awkward.

The buttons usually need to be larger.

The philosophical argument ("seems like a mouse application should be touch friendly") sounds nice, but the Surface Pro has been around for 3 years now.
 
There's no need to rely on a philosophical line of thought, the device has been on the market for a long time. It's not even new.

Charge takes 15 sec for 30 min

[SuperKendall]

However, the stylus lacks any buttons and no eraser functionality.

That isn't much of an issue when touch controls to adjust things can be anywhere on the screen.

Currently the suggested way to recharge the pen is to insert it into the charging port of the iPad Pro.

You left out the part where it takes just fifteen seconds to get 30 minutes of use from the Pencil, which doesn't seem like an impediment. Frankly it seems like the most convenient way to charge such a device other than some kind of charging dock on the tablet itself - but the quick charge means even if it runs out I'm only fifteen seconds away from continuing.

Re: Charge takes 15 sec for 30 min

[Anonymous Coward]

It is an issue when I can currently use my stylus like a pencil and just flip it around to erase.

Re:Charge takes 15 sec for 30 min

[nojayuk]

The digitising system used in the Surface Pro 1 and 2 was a Wacom-based design, it's now an nTrig in the Surface Pro 3. Both of them have pens that are powered by near-field from the digitising surface so they don't need separate power or charging at all. Since Apple are relying on their passive capacitive digitiser to work with the Pencil they can't power it that way.

Wacom provide a range of specialist stylii for artists such as an airbrush model, I'm not sure if nTrig do.

Re:Charge takes 15 sec for 30 min

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't much of an issue when touch controls to adjust things can be anywhere on the screen.

Saying that isn't much of an issue is just a baseless, sweeping generalization. And yes, the controls to adjust things (toggle the eraser, for example) can be anywhere on the screen, completely inconsistent, rather than on the other end of the stylus. The lack of a button on the stylus to trigger a pen-options context menu is also extremely short-sighted and make it inefficient.

As Steve Jobs himself said "If you see a stylus, they blew it", indeed this is what the Apple fanboys said about Samsung and Microsoft's devices but in the post-Jobs era Apple has fallen from innovation to just copying others. It's a shame that Jobs' innovative persona didn't really rub off on any of the remaining Apple execs.

Nah the difference now

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple have invented it!

online shopping

[Anonymous Coward]

visit our website to like more websites of online shopping : http://www.digischooldz.com/

A laptop that can replace your tablet

[Anonymous Coward]

I always found the Surface's catch phrase "a tablet that can replace laptop" a little odd. These devices have always been a laptop first and tablet second, but now with Windows 10 that has been changing somewhat. Touch needs to be improved, but at least with tablet mode you aren't ending up on the desktop, with multiple windows open, when using the thing without a mouse or touchpad attached. That little change has made a huge difference.

Angle of competition you are all missing - Wacom

[SuperKendall]

One thing a lot of articles mulling over the acceptance of the iPad Pro miss, is how it has a very ready market already proven - that currently occupied by the Wacom Cintiq.

Have any of you ever used one? I ordered on a year or two ago, and after day of use I returned it - the display is just OK, and it requires a lot of wires to attach.

At least one article offers an even more informed opinion espousing this same view.

From that standpoint the iPad Pro is going to be successful, since theres a ready made market to absorb even without all of the other people angling to buy one.

The interesting thing is, you could imagine Waccom making iPad Pro software that basically turned the iPad Pro into a Cintiq, using all of the same technology they have today to mirror over a display and forward touch input from the tablet...

Re:The Surface Pro, stiff competition for the iPad

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow you've had a bad run..... A customer of mine bough a brand new surface pro 3... the keyboard port on the surface pro 3 did not work (wasn't a problem with the keyboard). I've had almost no issue with my Surface Pro 3. I have had some silliness with Windows update on it where I had to do a hard power cycle to get it to work again, but that is it. The docking station and ALL ports work with out issue. In the early days of my SP3, I did have a little trouble with WiFi when the system fell asleep, but that seems to have been corrected.

MojoKid writes ..

[nickweller]

MojoKid writes a free advertisement for MICROS~1 ..

Re:MojoKid writes ..

[Anonymous Coward]

You like to think that was free. Advertorial is the word.

Stiff competition huh?

[zkiwi34]

MIcrosoft is bleeding large amounts of money supporting Surface iterations. Apple, not so much, they deign to make a profit.

Not to say iPad Pro doesn't suck or is marvellous, or merely average, but it is hard to see how Surface is going to even survive, let alone thrive unless Microsoft tosses orders of magnitude more money at Surface than they did/are at XBox. So, stiff competition? Well, it seems like those at Microsoft need to drink a few more shots of hard liquor to steady their nerves while flashing shedloads of money until they get to a point of some form of success or pass out drunk and broke under the table.

Re: Stiff competition huh?

[cyber-vandal]

Corporations will buy these by the truckload. There are so many use cases for a tablet that integrates seamlessly with all your other systems.

Re: Stiff competition huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The trouble with corporations buying Surface tablets, is that they are buying them to replace an older laptop. So, rather than Dell, HP, Toshiba, Lenovo etc. gaining a sale, they are losing a sale that is going to their "valued partner" Microsoft. These corps would not have bought an iPad anyway. So, thanks Microsoft for stealing and eating the lunch of all the companies that helped you get where you are today.

Re:Stiff competition huh?

[thegarbz]

MIcrosoft is bleeding large amounts of money supporting Surface iterations.

Microsoft's Surface line has been profitable since Q3 2014. Whether they've recovered the original investment I don't know, but they sure as heck aren't bleeding anything.

It's like VR, its the details...

[barfy]

The key to VR and stylii, is that they have to be not just good enough, they have to be extraordinary. And when they are, they will change the market. Until then, people will think no body wants Stylii, or VR, but that's probably not the case, they just can't put up with not quite good enough yet.

All front page same time --Tim

[Anonymous Coward]

GO MICROSOFT GO!
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/15/09/19/2150259/microsoft-and-others-mean-stiff-competition-for-apple-ipad-pro

OH DAMN, ANDROID MALWARE IS SCARY... HAVE SOME FUD
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/15/09/19/1944236/ask-slashdot-what-to-do-about-android-malware

GO MICROSOFT GO!
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/09/19/1626228/microsoft-spending-75m-to-boost-k-12-cs-education-put-teals-in-4000-schools

HEHE NICE TRY LINUX, GAMES ARE STILL MICROSOFT...
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/09/19/1529247/thanks-to-valve-more-than-1500-games-are-now-on-linux

The 600lb gorilla in the room? Windows 10 is unprecedented-in-the-history-of-Earth global fucking spyware. From keystroke logger, to downloading without asking, to permissions to access all of your files if you accept Microsoft's extremely long "agreement" that very few actually fucking read. And if you are anything but maximum internet savvy... 7/8/8.1 get the backported spyware too.

https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html
http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/how-can-any-company-ever-trust-microsoft-again-3569376/
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2956574/microsoft-subnet/windows-10-privacy-spyware-settings-user-agreement.html

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/08/22/nsa-windows-8-exploit/
http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/07/11/microsoft-gave-the-nsa-direct-backdoor-access-to-outlook-skype/
http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/how-stop-windows-10-upgrade-downloading-your-system
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/195592-with-windows-10-microsoft-could-move-to-a-subscription-based-model
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/205320-microsoft-windows-10-will-be-the-last-version-of-windows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GU5uv28a3I
http://techrights.org/2015/07/31/vista-10-anticompetitive/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwRYyWn7BEo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gghj03J_ri0 [This link was found in Slashdot comments a week ago. It was a guy packet sniffing Windows phoning the mother-ship. Already gone a few days ago.]
http://localghost.org/posts/a-traffic-analysis-of-windows-10
http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/28/microsoft-intensifies-data-collection-on-windows-7-and-8-systems/

THIS.
https://gitlab.com/windowslies/blockwindows

-1 this shit too. again.

Don't forget Bill Gates donates toilets to Africa too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesson_of_the_widow's_mite

distrowatch.com

In 2015 and still buying Microsoft shit, even when it's completely malware/spyware. Still 1993 filesystem, all that. Dunce shit.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-dominates-supercomputers-as-never-before/

Stylus isn't half bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Touch is obviously a great technology. However there are some shortcomings when it comes to precision.

For example; signatures. If you've rented a car recently it's likely you had to sign your name on a tablet of some sort with your finger, which basically turns out to be a total mess. Nothing at all like my actual signature, a stylus would resolve this no problem.

Also any type of art would benefit from a stylus. Wacom could be out of business in short order if tablets embraced different input types..

Two different markets.

[CraigCruden]

iPad Pro is a touch first and foremost device. The keyboard is more of an afterthought and used for data heavy input (i.e. document creation), but for most tasks the keyboard should not be an advantage.

The Surface comes at it the opposite way - it is primarily a computer that can be used in a tablet sort of way.... you would not generally buy it without the keyboard.

Apple focuses more on a device for a given task, while Microsoft is trying to make one device do everything (not necessarily the best). Apple focuses on hand-off between devices when you change which one you are using, Microsoft focuses on you are only going to have one device and it will somehow morph into whatever you want.

I prefer the Apple approach to the Microsoft approach, but there are others where Microsoft would be more suited. (Windows user til 2008; OS X user after 2008).

Re:Two different markets.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

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

Gosh! Do you happen to have a Microsoft Pamphlet with you, independent author?

I have to use a Surface at work

[Ukab the Great]

Still snickering

Still snickering...

[Anonymous Coward]

When Microsoft first announced the Surface Pro back in 2012, many Apple fans snickered.

Yes, and most people are still snickering. The total sales of the Surface and Surface Pro still have yet to surpass the sales of the original iPad, much less the newer models. That statement remains true whether you're discussing volume in $ or units. (The Surface Pro just recently had its very first 1 million+ unit quarter.)

Apple Products

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple products are for grandmas a teenagers.

Re:Apple Products

[CraigCruden]

And most of the programmers I know that are not tied to the Microsoft development environment. A company I worked for gave its consultants (mostly programmers) the option of sticking with Windows work machines or getting Apple / "OS X" devices..... and most went with "OS X", some went with Linux, and a minority stayed with Windows (less than 10%).

Re:Apple Products

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, that's odd. In my office we can have Apple, Microsoft or Linux. I'd say Linux makes up about 95% of the developer systems and Apple the other 5%, though pretty much everybody has a VM or secondary partition to boot Windows, since market share requires it.

Re:Apple Products

[Anonymous Coward]

I would not be surprised if even developers who are heavily tied to developing for Windows choose a Mac notebook instead of something from Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. The only notebook that ran Windows and was seriously good was the IBM ThinkPad. IBM, being a badly-run company however, couldn't figure out how to make enough money making ThinkPads and sold the business to Lenovo, who are ruined the product. If the ThinkPads were as good as they used to be when IBM made them, I'd choose a ThinkPad over a MacBook Pro.

The reason only 10% stick with Windows is two-fold: the machines suck and Microsoft has gone out of their way to make Windows suck more and more with each release. This is not helped by the plethora of crappy software most IT departments put on Windows computers to manage them. Strangely, because this crappy software (configuration enforcement programs, garbage like Norton AV or McAfee AV) doesn't exist for Mac, Mac users can sometimes escape being burdened with that junk.

The mid 2000s was like a Dark Ages for non-Mac notebook computers. With the exception of the IBM ThinkPads, everybody else was in a race to zero to create the least expensive notebooks possible and spending as little money on any R&D as possible. Is it any wonder why Microsoft had to step in and create its own hardware?

Re: Stylus comment was in regards to one on a phon

[Anonymous Coward]

There is always a fandroid who wants to interpret statements out of context. Jobs is dead and unable to clarify his statements. But, the context mentioned has little to do with a fanboi worshipping a profit and more a matter integrity.

This article could be believable .... except

[Anonymous Coward]

.... except that combining all the sales for the Surface since it was released (all of them), you don't even get a number high enough to match the sales of one iPad mode during release week.

So how can something that is barely selling be considered "stiff competition" for something that is outselling everybody else combined?

Uh huh

[Anonymous Coward]

So the Apple fan crowd is going to say Apple invented the big tablet with a stylus.

Re: Stylus comment was in regards to one on a phon

[lucm]

Of course. Steve Jobs was all about integrity, not profit. That's why the iPhone is manufactured in China, why Apple takes a huge cut on App Store sales, and why they want musicians to subsidize the trial period on Apple music streaming. Integrity.

sigh

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

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."

Right... as if Jobs would ever have been against the idea of selling an overpriced accessory for the iPad.

Any of you that have ever used a Palm Pilot, PocketPC, or Tablet PC knows deep down what he was really talking about, it wasn't general hatred of styluses.

Re:sigh

[CraigCruden]

I remember the palm pilot - and yes the use as stylus as the primary input device drove most who used those devices nuts. I doubt Steve Jobs ever was really against the stylus for use as what it was designed for -- drawing / diagramming etc. -- just not as the primary input device as the device - or having multiple confusing inputs where sometimes you use x and sometimes you use y (something Microsoft is famous for). I would love a good stylus with an iPad - but really only for electronic Whiteboard stuff etc (existing stylus / iPad is not that great -- in fact down right annoying).

surface is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like someone has received an advertorial from Redmond to create some buzz online.

..and NFL commentors still refer to them as iPads

[D,Petkow]

...then again - generally speaking the sports journalists / commenters are not the most tech savvy people overall

Kill the click-bait!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with more than half a brain knows Steve Jobs was referring to devices that were dependent on the inclusion of a stylus. Only a tiny proportion of Apple's customers will buy the iPad Pro and the Pencil because it targets a specialised market, essentially graphic artists. This is a great development for artistic purposes –it's not a new development (and nobody pitched it that way) but it's a very nice implementation. Comparisons to the stylus comment just brain-dead click-bait. What's happened to this site?

Re:..and NFL commentors still refer to them as iPa

[CraigCruden]

They are "professionals" and the only reason why they have goofed (more than once) is because of passive aggressive pushback at being told to use MS Surface products.

Surface has been a failure

[Anonymous Coward]

You can certainly buy one in a big PC store, but I have never known anyone who actually did so. iPad isn't loosing out to surface - it is loosing out to cheaper tablets, running Android, with good specs. I'm told that Surface devices have an astronomical return rate, which is kind of evidenced by the number of surface devices and related parts in the discount bin, all bubble wrapped without any original packaging. I think Microsoft made a mistake making these devices run a Windows, since nobody wants Windows on a tablet device, and there is very little software that is suited to it. I also think they made a mistake trying to make a single device that works as a laptop, and as a tablet. I don't want that, and I don't know anybody who does. Surface is misconceived, clunky, and polluted by the wrong software choices.

Re:The Surface Pro, stiff competition for the iPad

[timmyf2371]

The iPad Pro is designed as a competitor for the Surface. In case you missed the keynote, there was a large proportion of the time taken up by Microsoft and Adobe demonstrations showing how iPad Pro can be used in a business environment.

As a productivity device, iPad Pro will probably fail. I missed the announcement that it now works properly (i.e. supports screen/application sharing) with business tools like WebEx and Lync. I can't dock it and use a multiple monitor setup. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

If I was looking for a consumer device, the sure. I'd probably choose an iPad for consumption. But for business use, it is nowhere near being a serious competitor for the Surface Pro.

Re:Angle of competition you are all missing - Waco

[Anonymous Coward]

As a designer / animator (2D & 3D) and illustrator... I've found the wacom cintiq essential.

I was one of the first in my country (Australia) to own the original 12 inch Cintiq (not HD), I can happily say I got more than 8 years or so out of the thing before it finally died... (replacing the breakout box however was more than the cost of a new [HD] one).

Upgraded to a HD 13" and I'm happy as Larry.

I also own a Wacom brand stylus with touch sensitivity (via bluetooth) that I can use on iPads.

If the iPad pro and Apple pen can match the Cintiq and allow me to draw as realistically (by connecting to my Mac machines) in software like Houdini, Mudbox, Zbrush, Artrage, Photoshop, Illustrator etc... Then Apple can have my next serious sale. Until then, it's Wacom all the way!

(parent - which wacom cintiq model are you referring to - there are many models. I've most of them - but there's a reason you won't go to any kind of high end creative studio without seeing a cintiq somewhere)

Re:Angle of competition you are all missing - Waco

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and as for "a lot of wires"...

It's power (obviously). HDMI (so you can see what you're doing). And USB (like any other input device).

Hell.. you can even use it as a regular graphics tablet if you don't plug in HDMI, and just go for the USB. Also it offers one powered USB port so you can charge your phone etc...

My 3D monitor needs power and video input (HDMI). My mouse and keyboard both need USB...

What're these other "wires" that you speak of?

Re: Stylus comment was in regards to one on a pho

[Anonymous Coward]

whar does manufacturing in China and maximizing profits have to do with the integrity of his statements about a stylus? FYI, any CEO (or officer) who isn't about fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility to the stock holders won't remain as such for long and may face criminal charges.

Jobs did what was expected of him - he did his duty to the stock holders, demanded products he deemed worthy of the Apple brand and he sold the F out of it.

Btw, take a look where your laptop, Surface, smartphone or other electronic device is manufactured. Most likely, it isn't in the US. That capability was sold out years ago due to the costs of labor and the availability of natural resources such as rare earth minerals used in the production of hitech electronics.

Big head to head competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is for a 13" tablet, there is no big competition, it's a puny market segment.

Notebook

[rybarczykbr]

What we need is a very thin notebook. That's all. Different screen sizes will attend most people needs.

Stiff, as in dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plucky Mickeysoft.

Re: Stylus comment was in regards to one on a pho

[lucm]

whar does manufacturing in China and maximizing profits have to do with the integrity of his statements about a stylus? FYI, any CEO (or officer) who isn't about fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility to the stock holders won't remain as such for long and may face criminal charges.

A CEO has no "fiduciary responsibility" to the stock holders and would definitely never face criminal charges because he refuses to use Asian child labor to lower costs. Clearly you have no idea how the world works. That might explain why you hold Steve Jobs in such high regard.

Um, iOS is OS X and is built from same sources

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, as Mr. Jobs said in the introduction of the iPhone, iOS is OS X. It is substantially built from the same source code. There are different optimizations and configurations. The UI Kit in Cocoa Touch is similar but different from AppKit in OS X, but the Foundation frameworks, Unix/POSIX APIS, Graphics Stack, etc. are the same and built from the same source code.

NeXTstep->Openstep->Rhapsody->OS X->iOS.

The source code of iOS originally ran on a 25 MHz Motorola 68030, then Intel, then PPC, then ARM. It is highly portable.

Re:Angle of competition you are all missing - Waco

[Piata]

That article is pretty much bullshit. It's written by somoene that worked for Apple for starters and most of the conclusions it draws are wrong. I have a Cintiq Companion so let me provide some counter points:

• - Cintiq Companions require no chords. You have a AC adapter to charge the 4+ hour battery and that's it. For desktop displays like the 24HD, you have a power chord and a display connector. I'm not sure why 1 or 2 chords is such a nightmare to handle for the author. You can hookup the second gen companion to your desktop and use it as a drwaing tablet only, but this is a hudge benefit and something the iPad Pro also lacks.
• - Latency is not an issue on my Cintiq Companion and is largely determined by computer hardware and software in my experience.
• - I like the thicker design of the Wacom stylus; it doesn't feel cheap or wobbly. I also like the buttons which are extremely useful to people that work with a stylus every day. There's also an eraser on the reverse side, something Apple's design team failed to figure out. Never having to charge it is also a plus.
• - Cintiq's are heavy but that's because they are well built laptops, not gimmicky tablets. I rountinely take my Cintiq Companion on trips. There are issues with the location of the power button on the first generation companion, but the author hasn't used a Cintiq long enough to know that.
• - There is nothing wrong with the Cintiq Companion's display (minus the air gap, see following point). Older Cintiq displays suffered from poor colours but that is hasn't been the case for a few years now.
• - The only issue she is correct on is the parallax air gap problems with Cintiq monitors. I do wish they would improve this.

My take away from this: Don't get rid of your Wacom just yet. iPad Pro is not a professional tool and doesn't stand up well to a similarly priced Surface Pro or the more expensive and industry leading Wacom line of products.

Nothing obvious

[SuperKendall]

It's power (obviously)

That's already one too many, and one more than the iPad Pro has in use.

Three cables coming off something I was meant to hold in my lap, was way too much for me. With an iPad Pro none of those cables are needed.

My comment

[lecoderx]

Even the basic product photos AND the demo showed the hand resting on the screen.