Hacks? Its an x86 windows machine with a full USB port. You can just connect a cd drive or USB key and install. You can do this on day one, nohacking required.
You have 58 GB to control after formatting. Windows is about 20GB. Then you have pagefile, hibernation file, recovery partition, and apps - all of which can be adjusted or removed. So if you're using windows you have 38GB of flex space. Another OS might have more.
Sorry this is misleading. The recovery image can be on any drive. It can be moved to a USB drive. What you're meant to do if your entire HD dies is backup from an external image. Deleting a preinstalled image after you backed up to an external source has no I'll consequences.
You're very perplexing. You first argue that people should not have the option to use SD cards because they are slow, but then you go on to argue that users are well served because they can use a wifi harddrive option, which is even slower than SD.
You say the SD card is a terrible idea, and then come up with all thes "but... but... but..." excuses which all have their own set of shortcomings and don't even fully solve the original problem: a simple way to *permanently* increase the capacity of your device. I can install a 128GB card the day I buy the tablet and forget it's even in there. A dongle does not do this, as it extends the body of the device, can fall out, and must be taken out if you want to project anything (or charge, connect to a dock or other peripheral, connect to a host device, connect a USB device... the port is really overloaded). A wifi hard drive does not do this, as it requires a battery to use, among other short comings.
And why should 90% of users pay for the inclusion of something only 10% of the people want or need?
All of a sudden you're concerned about what users are paying? This feature costs pennies to add to a device. If users were educated about how it can be used to expand storage with a simple card instead of being steered toward high margin high storage devices, perhaps it would see more use.
If you really want to attach an SD card to read movies or media from just buy a camera connection kit and attach it to the iPad that way.
The vast majority of storage is needed for media such as movies and pictures. In fact, this is what Apple cites as their rationale for releasing a 128 GB version.
Companies regularly utilizing large amounts of data such as 3D CAD files, X-rays, film edits, music tracks, project blueprints, training videos and service manuals all benefit from having a greater choice of storage options for iPad.
These users might have been better served by cheap expandable storage that can grow with their demands, rather than expensive disposable iPads. Apple is basically saying 64GB wasn't enough for these users, so instead of selling them a memory upgrade for $50, we'll sell them a memory upgrade for $800. I don't see any reason why the read/write speed of an SD card would not be perfectly suited here.
As for "Just buy the optional $30 adapter" why don't I just buy a tablet that in the first place supports SD cards out of the box?
A true always on Internet connection may exist for some subset of users, but it's not a guarantee. For those like my who cannot rely on an always-on cell connection, or cannot afford to pay for one, running software locally is the best option.
I love python, and with numpy and matlibplot I can get by for a lot of tasks. But I also have a enough Matlab scripts and toolboxes from over the years that I can't fully invest myself in python.
Is it the same reason God invented ubiquitous, always on internet connections? Oh right, those don't exist. We're talking about portable devices here. Some of us actually go places and do things (like use Matlab) where *gasp* internet is not available.
If you think this will stop anything, you haven't been paying attention to the litigation. Copyright trolls don't care if you did the downloading or not. Already, wihtout proxies they cannot identify who it was who did the downloading, as it could have been a friend, spouse, child, neighbor, or hacker... anyone who had access to the Internet connection accused of doing the downloading.
This proxy business changes nothing. The subpoenas and settlement letters are worded such that they scare you into settling. They say "Illegal downloads have been traced to YOU, the account holder" even when they have no evidence. And they say "We will name YOU, the account holder, in a lawsuit if you don't pay $X thousand dollars by next week." Nothing about finding the true perpetrator and executing justice. It's all about making a quick and easy settlement. Does it matter that there's at least a 30% (admitted by trolls) error rate with the current methodology? No. They accuse 100% of account holders anyway.
The bottom line is with the way clueless judges are granting out ex parte discovery requests from copyright trolls, if you pay the bills, and your name is on record by your ISP, if your IP shows up in a tracker that some troll is watching (or seeded himself), your name and address will be subpoenaed, proxies or not.
You don't seem to be comprehending me. Paragraphs 2 and 3 in my previous post have nothing to do about GUI. Thus all the benefits of running a touch screen, having a pen, having a.5" thick device I can use while standing in the field are fully realized with an x86 processor. The more powerful processor alone makes running even tablet specific applications better.
Let me put it this way, in two weeks I will be making a tablet purchase. My specific need is as follows: I need to collect data in the field, then analyze it right after. A common task in my profession.
Do I:
A) Buy an an ARM tablet like (Surface RT/iPad/Nexus), rewrite or at least port all the data collection libraries, rewrite the front-end, and also lug around a x86 laptop for subsequent analysis.
B) Buy a Windows 8 tablet, use exiting libraries, just rewrite the front-end, and analyze data on it, leaving the second laptop at home.
Choice B is the obvious one for me. In hassle-saved alone the Surface is worth the extra money.
As for using legacy x86 apps, given the choice between using a legacy app built for mouse, or no app at all, I'll take the app built for mouse. The stylus isn't a terrible stand in for a mouse, and there is an actual utility gain. Maybe some day you can argue there is no utility because there are alternative touch GUI apps available, but you cannot make that argument today or for the foreseeable future.
Since, going forward, it's likely most developers will be writing software to run on both x86 Windows 8 and ARM-based RT, legacy x86 means squat.
This would be true if all legacy x86 applications were ported over to WinRT. This will of course never happen. I bought Photoshop CS4, and it works fine for me. Adobe will probably never update Adobe CS4 for WinRT. They might release a new product and want me to pay for that, but that doesn't interest me, because the software I already own is perfectly usable with a stylus.
This further applies to libraries that are x86 only. I have various libraries that apply to my field that are pretty old and are not released for ARM, and probably never will be. But I still need them. I have various back-end applications that use these libraries, and have no GUI of their own. They work in the background and work just as well on desktop, laptop, or tablet.
Finally, Intel's x86 processors are currently vastly more powerful than ARM offerings, and there's no indication ARM will ever contend for the performance crown. Even without x86 backwards compatibility, the sheer power of these processors is useful for someone like me who values computation time more than total run time. I'll gladly take the 50% hit in battery life if it means the computations I'm trying to perform don't take forever.
What's that? I need to tap on a very small area to activate this button designed for use with a mouse?
Stylus.
I need to hover over this item as I could if I had a mouse?
Stylus
I need to right click this item, as it was designed to work with a mouse?
Stylus
Running x86 windows applications is not an advantage on a tablet.
It is if you want functionality not provided by any touch app. It's about options and flexibility. If I'm out in the field and I need a certain x86 application, I might be able to get by just fine with a 2lb,.5" tablet I can hold in my hand. If I have an iPad, I need to bring a second laptop (possibly thicker and heavier) and find a place to sit it down to achieve what I could do standing with a stylus. It won't work for every application, especially if it's keyboard heavy, but it will work for many.
I knew you'd be responding after I read what I wrote. I have a tendency to conflate Surface Pro and Windows 8 tablets in general. Surface Pro, the Samsung 700T, the Acer W700, and others like them all fill a niche that iPad, Kindle Fire et al. don't. As far as I'm concerned, The 700T and the Surface Pro are in the same class in terms of utility. The only reason I don't own one today is I like the smaller screen of the Surface. Otherwise it's perfect.
Yes, I'll admit most people will have a difficulty using applications with tiny buttons. This is all solved with the stylus: it covers clicking tiny buttons, hovering, and right clicking.
There's a reason those god awful windows XP tablets from years ago never caught on –it's because they weren't actually capable of running any of the software that "ran" on them.
Yup, they were underpowered, overpriced ($2000+), thick as hell (1+"), and lasted about an hour if you were lucky. Surface Pro has none of these problems.
What you're missing is that there are different degrees of usability. Programs like Excel or yes, Quickbooks, which are very keyboard and data input intensive will not work well on tablet. But a program like Photoshop has many advantages on a tablet, even in its current form, such as being able to draw freehand with a pressure sensitive stylus. No, the buttons and interface are not touch friendly, but you'll have a stylus in your hand which is just as precise as a mouse. It's all about what you want the tablet for.
I don't need a tablet that can run x86 apps. Users don't give a flying shit about "x86" they just give a shit about having good apps to run.
I know you don't care about that. But don't say "Users don't give a flying shit" as if you're speaking for every user. *I* do. I know many other users that do as well. You might even be speaking for *most* users, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that Surface Pro is useless for *everyone*, especially businesses, which have been ill-served by the current tablet offerings.
I used to work for a company in 2009 that supplied Tablet PCs to regional businesses. We sold to schools, hospitals, contractors, government, warehouses, construction.... this was back in the day of Tablet PCs before the iPad. They loved these machines, but I heard several complaints more than any other: weight, thickness, battery life, processing power, and cost. Notice none of what I listed has anything to do with touch optimized apps. Surface is half as thick, half the weight, half the price, twice the battery, 4x the power as some of these systems we used to sell. These same large corporate customers are going to be eating tablets like this up.
And the Samsung Galaxy Note supports the stylus in ALL apps, not just specially written ones... Apparently, you're not too hip on the tablet scene. It's thinner, lighter, cheaper, has longer battery life, 3G, and is designed for use with a stylus, etc.
I'm quite "hip" thank you very much. My first tablet was the Compaq TC1000 in 2003, so I've been using tablets of various makes and models for about a decade now. You might have missed where I said *powerful*. I thought I was among geeks here. With a core i5, Surface has more horsepower than any Andrloid or iOS tablet available. You cannot get away with blasting battery life but not admitting the tradeoff is a much much powerful processor.
I've used the Galaxy Note 10.1, and it was slow and laggy as hell, even with its quad core A9. Using apps side by side was basically useless. Maybe this has changed with the 4.1 update, as I haven't used it since, but it still doesn't change the fact the processor cannot compare with any 3rd gen i5. Add to that the low RAM and low res screen and the specs don't compare at all.
Second, I can tell you're not very familiar with stylus support in tablets. Windows uses semi-supervised machine learning to actually learn your own handwriting. You train it at first, then it learns over time your vocabulary and handwriting style. The Note 10.1 can pretty much only recognize cursive from my experience, and has a real hard time with my combined print/script handwriting. On my Windows 7 tablet I have probably 99% accuracy (1 in every 100 words wrong), which is better than I can say about my typing.
Windows also has a killer app for stylus input: OneNote. It's the bar against which I've compared every note taking application, and they all fall short. I won't get into why it's such a great app here (unless you really want to know), but it suffices to say OneNote alone makes the stylus a must have feature for a tablet.
USB drives and hard drives? What fucking century do you live in?? And pretty much everyone has a video out capability now
What century? You seriously think portable hard drives and USB drives are antiquated? What would you have me use? The "cloud"? Aside from the obvious security, reliability, and connectivity issues, USB drives and hard drives have much much higher bandwidth (USB 3.0 on Surface) and capacity/$.
As for video out, yes many tablets have this but not in combination with the other ports. Further, their implementation is often crippled, as with iPad; it requires a dongle to use, and when projected, doesn't change the aspect ratio of the display. When I connect iPad to a 24" 16:9 screen I get a 3:4 image, and all the apps are 3:4.
The best is when you play a 16:9 video you get a 16:9 video in a 4:3
Surface Pro is the best tablet that can run x86 applications. Show me another machine that is as thin, light, and powerful with a stylus. You can't.
I'll also save you the trouble of reading two replies to your posts....
It's too heavy, expensive and crappy on battery power to be a good tablet
You might say a tablet is defined by being thin and light and having all day battery life, but that's different from what I want in a tablet. I want a stylus for writing. Surface Pro has this, 90% of tablets today don't. I want ports for USB drives, portable harddrives, video out. Surface Pro has this, 90% of tablets today don't. I want an SD card slot for expansion and swapping cards. Surface Pro has this, 90% of tablets today don't. Hell even Google's Nexus tablets don't have this. So in my book, Surface Pro is the only real tablet out there. It all depends on the user's needs. The Surface pro is a little thicker and heavier than iPad (.5 lbs and.5") but the tradeoff is more power with an i5 and compatibility with millions of applications and devices. So great for you if your iPad or Android tablet is thinner and lighter and lasts all day. I don't care because they are as useless as rocks for my needs, and I'll gladly pay $899 for a tablet that does what I want.
and it doesn't have a real keyboard or adequate screen size to make it a good laptop.
What about this isn't a "real" keyboard? Or the infinite variety of bluetooth keyboards or wired USB keyboards that can be plugged in? I also fail to see how 10.6" is not an adequate screen size but 11.6" on the Macbook Air somehow is. That extra 1" is the threshold? I might similarly say the Macbook Air has inadequate resolution (1366×768 vs 1920x1080 on Surface Pro). Or that Macbook Air is too heavy (2.38lbs vs 2.01lbs). Or too thick (0.68" vs 0.5"). Or too expensive ($999 vs $899).
How clueless can you be? Macbook air has no ethernet port, and surface pro does have a USB 3.0 port. As it runs Windows 8 Pro it supports more hardware than the Macbook air including any optical drive, barcode reader, or digital camera you want to plug into it.
And they haven't been pushing Windows 8 tablets as much as other companies.
On the contrary, I think Dell has been pushing Windows 8 tablets much more than others, with the exception of maybe HP. They have been producing Windows tablet PCs since 2008 with the Latitude XT, which as an okay tablet although decidedly 1st generation and way overpriced. Since then they've released a new version almost yearly, and have done a great job marketing them toward businesses. Their Latitude 10 tablets are some of the more appealing tablets out there (I don't know of many other tablets with a user removable battery), and for full Windows 8 tablets they actually managed to get some sane pricing on them... originally going for $670, but then they added an entry level $580 version. As a tablet PC lover I've been more than happy with Dell's support of this device category.
Which is the lowest it's been since January 2012, and roughly half of what it was in 2009. Don't get me wrong, Apple is a great company and is highly profitable. They make great products that are loved the world over. But they're not Worth $500+ billion in today's market, and the market is realizing that.
No company would be AS profitable if you took away their two most profitable products. It's just a truism, and not worth saying. The point that Apple would still be profitable without them is worth saying. And proves that your accusation of not being diversified enough is false.
In 2012, iPhone and iPad accounted for 72% of Apple's total revenue. At other more diversified companies, the top two products might account for 30% total revenue. If iPhone and iPad take a hit to popularity, as iPhone currently is and iPad just might with the emergent popularity of competing tablets, Apple is going to face a crippling blow to their profits. Apple could have 10,000% margins, but if they don't make enough aggregate profit, they're not worth $500 billion. When the iPhone's dominance is threatened, as it is currently, investors are obviously going to reevaluate what the stock is worth.
In 2007 they sold 7.2 million Macs. In 2012 they sold 18.2 million.
18.2 million in market selling 350 million annually. They've only barely outpaced growth of the rest of the industry since then 2007. So, good on them but again, a company that sells 18 million computers a year isn't worth $500 billion.
And the iPod is mostly sold as part of the iPhone these days. It's silly to imagine "without iPhone" for now and contrast "with iPod" for then.
People are using their smartphones as MP3 players now. If they're not buying iPhones, they're buying other smartphones, and if they're buying other smartphones, they're not buying iPods. Apple without iPhone does not bring back their iPod business, because that market has converged into smartphones.
A cheaper iPhone does not imply margins coming down. You can have exactly the same margins on a car and a paperclip.
No, not necessarily, but in practice this is often the case, due to fixed costs. Apple might sell an iPhone and iPhone "Lite" at the same 30% profit margin. But for the sake of argument, to make the same profit as selling iPhones, Apple might need to sell two iPhone Lites. All of a sudden they need to double their inventory, which has a wide array of fixed costs associated with it. For every advertisement they produce, they need to sell two iPhone Lites instead of one iPhone now. Every iPhone Lite display in every store needs to move twice as many units to generate equivalent profits. Then your competitors come down to your price point, and in order to move more volume, you cut your price again and repeat. Eventually you can't bring your costs down anymore so you have to bring down your margins. Either that, or you remain a premium product with low volume and high margins. This is what's termed a "race to the bottom," which is what happened to the PC industry and resulted in razor thin margins.
You see this dichotomy repeat itself in most markets: either you sell high volume, low margin products (Toyota); or you sell low volume, high margin products (BMW). Apple has enjoyed being high volume, high margin due to their first mover advantage in the smartphone and tablet markets. As history has shown, this will not last as competition in the market increases. Unless Apple invents yet another a new category of devices where they can enjoy high volume high margin, their stock will continue to fall.
There is nothing new about Apple offering cheaper alternatives. With the iPod market, they offered Mini, Nano and Shuffle. And at no time did that ever indicate they were struggling in the MP3 player market. Quite the contrary, no one ever beat Apple on MP3 players.
I'm sure for every iPod Shuffle Apple sold, they would have rather sold a Touch. Introducing cheaper models allowed them to target more price conscious consumers, sure. But to be clear, this is not what made Apple a $500 billion company. With the iPhone they enjoyed the equivalent of selling an iPod Touch to everyone who ended up buying a Nano. Th
Jobs said exactly this at the original iPhone keynote, to tech journalists and Apple customers (the only people who watched that sort of thing in those days). Not just developers. Developers weren't even allowed on iPhone back then, so I don't know how you remember that it was specifically targeted toward developers. From the keynote:
iPhone runs OS X! Why would we want to run such a sophisticated OS on a mobile device? It's got everything we need. Multitasking, networking, power management, graphics, security, video, audio, core animation... It let us create desktop class applications and networking, not the crippled stuff you find on most phones. These are real desktop applications.
Emphasis mine. He unequivocally stated iPhone runs OSX. This was further emphasized on Apple's website under the original iPhone product page, which I think you will agree is targeting consumers, not developers:
iPhone uses OS X, the world’s most advanced operating system. Which means you have access to the best-ever software on a handheld device, including rich HTML email, full-featured web browsing, and favorite applications including Address Book and Calendar. iPhone is also fully multi-tasking, so you can read a web page while downloading your email in the background. This software completely redefines what you can do with a mobile phone
Emphasis mine. So again, from the start, Apple was saying iPhone OS = OSX. Then they went back and changed a single letter, calling it iOS. My girlfriend still gets confused about the difference. So I'm not saying Windows 8 vs. Windows RT isn't confusing, but I think it's a leap to say iOS vs. OSX is crystal clear.
Yes, you are correct. But what I believe the poster was trying to say is that while Apple would be profitable, in the sense they make more money then they spend, they would not be as profitable, in the sense that they do not make as much total profits. As you point out, the iPhone alone brings in more revenue than all of Microsoft, but this goes to show that Apple is not diversified. Without iPhone/iPad, Apple is back to where they were in 2007. Mac hasn't grown much since then, they've all but killed their enterprise efforts, and iPod is no longer what is once was.
There's now talk of a less expensive iPhone coming out. This is what the original poster you replied to is referencing as margins coming down. Apple was once able to charge $600 for an iPhone on contract, because they were the only game in town. Now everywhere you look there's competition, and it's not clear their current strategy, which earned them the high market valuation, is sustainable. Thus you see their valuation receeding.
Slashdot Mirror
I love it. Modded insightful already, yet the post is clueless. We already know how big win Rt is: http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-US/support/surface-with-windows-RT/files-folders-and-online-storage/surface-disk-space-faq
win rt + office + apps is 8 GB, so win rt is about 3 GB. This neglects to mention this story had *nothing* to do with win rt.
Hacks? Its an x86 windows machine with a full USB port. You can just connect a cd drive or USB key and install. You can do this on day one, nohacking required.
You can on all Windows 8 tablets. No jailbreaking required.
You have 58 GB to control after formatting. Windows is about 20GB. Then you have pagefile, hibernation file, recovery partition, and apps - all of which can be adjusted or removed. So if you're using windows you have 38GB of flex space. Another OS might have more.
Sorry this is misleading. The recovery image can be on any drive. It can be moved to a USB drive. What you're meant to do if your entire HD dies is backup from an external image. Deleting a preinstalled image after you backed up to an external source has no I'll consequences.
You say the SD card is a terrible idea, and then come up with all thes "but... but... but..." excuses which all have their own set of shortcomings and don't even fully solve the original problem: a simple way to *permanently* increase the capacity of your device. I can install a 128GB card the day I buy the tablet and forget it's even in there. A dongle does not do this, as it extends the body of the device, can fall out, and must be taken out if you want to project anything (or charge, connect to a dock or other peripheral, connect to a host device, connect a USB device... the port is really overloaded). A wifi hard drive does not do this, as it requires a battery to use, among other short comings.
And why should 90% of users pay for the inclusion of something only 10% of the people want or need?
All of a sudden you're concerned about what users are paying? This feature costs pennies to add to a device. If users were educated about how it can be used to expand storage with a simple card instead of being steered toward high margin high storage devices, perhaps it would see more use.
If you really want to attach an SD card to read movies or media from just buy a camera connection kit and attach it to the iPad that way.
The vast majority of storage is needed for media such as movies and pictures. In fact, this is what Apple cites as their rationale for releasing a 128 GB version.
Companies regularly utilizing large amounts of data such as 3D CAD files, X-rays, film edits, music tracks, project blueprints, training videos and service manuals all benefit from having a greater choice of storage options for iPad.
These users might have been better served by cheap expandable storage that can grow with their demands, rather than expensive disposable iPads. Apple is basically saying 64GB wasn't enough for these users, so instead of selling them a memory upgrade for $50, we'll sell them a memory upgrade for $800. I don't see any reason why the read/write speed of an SD card would not be perfectly suited here.
As for "Just buy the optional $30 adapter" why don't I just buy a tablet that in the first place supports SD cards out of the box?
A true always on Internet connection may exist for some subset of users, but it's not a guarantee. For those like my who cannot rely on an always-on cell connection, or cannot afford to pay for one, running software locally is the best option.
I love python, and with numpy and matlibplot I can get by for a lot of tasks. But I also have a enough Matlab scripts and toolboxes from over the years that I can't fully invest myself in python.
Is it the same reason God invented ubiquitous, always on internet connections? Oh right, those don't exist. We're talking about portable devices here. Some of us actually go places and do things (like use Matlab) where *gasp* internet is not available.
If you think this will stop anything, you haven't been paying attention to the litigation. Copyright trolls don't care if you did the downloading or not. Already, wihtout proxies they cannot identify who it was who did the downloading, as it could have been a friend, spouse, child, neighbor, or hacker... anyone who had access to the Internet connection accused of doing the downloading.
This proxy business changes nothing. The subpoenas and settlement letters are worded such that they scare you into settling. They say "Illegal downloads have been traced to YOU, the account holder" even when they have no evidence. And they say "We will name YOU, the account holder, in a lawsuit if you don't pay $X thousand dollars by next week." Nothing about finding the true perpetrator and executing justice. It's all about making a quick and easy settlement. Does it matter that there's at least a 30% (admitted by trolls) error rate with the current methodology? No. They accuse 100% of account holders anyway.
The bottom line is with the way clueless judges are granting out ex parte discovery requests from copyright trolls, if you pay the bills, and your name is on record by your ISP, if your IP shows up in a tracker that some troll is watching (or seeded himself), your name and address will be subpoenaed, proxies or not.
You don't seem to be comprehending me. Paragraphs 2 and 3 in my previous post have nothing to do about GUI. Thus all the benefits of running a touch screen, having a pen, having a .5" thick device I can use while standing in the field are fully realized with an x86 processor. The more powerful processor alone makes running even tablet specific applications better.
Let me put it this way, in two weeks I will be making a tablet purchase. My specific need is as follows: I need to collect data in the field, then analyze it right after. A common task in my profession.
Do I:
A) Buy an an ARM tablet like (Surface RT/iPad/Nexus), rewrite or at least port all the data collection libraries, rewrite the front-end, and also lug around a x86 laptop for subsequent analysis.
B) Buy a Windows 8 tablet, use exiting libraries, just rewrite the front-end, and analyze data on it, leaving the second laptop at home.
Choice B is the obvious one for me. In hassle-saved alone the Surface is worth the extra money.
As for using legacy x86 apps, given the choice between using a legacy app built for mouse, or no app at all, I'll take the app built for mouse. The stylus isn't a terrible stand in for a mouse, and there is an actual utility gain. Maybe some day you can argue there is no utility because there are alternative touch GUI apps available, but you cannot make that argument today or for the foreseeable future.
Since, going forward, it's likely most developers will be writing software to run on both x86 Windows 8 and ARM-based RT, legacy x86 means squat.
This would be true if all legacy x86 applications were ported over to WinRT. This will of course never happen. I bought Photoshop CS4, and it works fine for me. Adobe will probably never update Adobe CS4 for WinRT. They might release a new product and want me to pay for that, but that doesn't interest me, because the software I already own is perfectly usable with a stylus.
This further applies to libraries that are x86 only. I have various libraries that apply to my field that are pretty old and are not released for ARM, and probably never will be. But I still need them. I have various back-end applications that use these libraries, and have no GUI of their own. They work in the background and work just as well on desktop, laptop, or tablet.
Finally, Intel's x86 processors are currently vastly more powerful than ARM offerings, and there's no indication ARM will ever contend for the performance crown. Even without x86 backwards compatibility, the sheer power of these processors is useful for someone like me who values computation time more than total run time. I'll gladly take the 50% hit in battery life if it means the computations I'm trying to perform don't take forever.
What's that? I need to tap on a very small area to activate this button designed for use with a mouse?
Stylus.
I need to hover over this item as I could if I had a mouse?
Stylus
I need to right click this item, as it was designed to work with a mouse?
Stylus
Running x86 windows applications is not an advantage on a tablet.
It is if you want functionality not provided by any touch app. It's about options and flexibility. If I'm out in the field and I need a certain x86 application, I might be able to get by just fine with a 2lb, .5" tablet I can hold in my hand. If I have an iPad, I need to bring a second laptop (possibly thicker and heavier) and find a place to sit it down to achieve what I could do standing with a stylus. It won't work for every application, especially if it's keyboard heavy, but it will work for many.
I knew you'd be responding after I read what I wrote. I have a tendency to conflate Surface Pro and Windows 8 tablets in general. Surface Pro, the Samsung 700T, the Acer W700, and others like them all fill a niche that iPad, Kindle Fire et al. don't. As far as I'm concerned, The 700T and the Surface Pro are in the same class in terms of utility. The only reason I don't own one today is I like the smaller screen of the Surface. Otherwise it's perfect.
There's a reason those god awful windows XP tablets from years ago never caught on –it's because they weren't actually capable of running any of the software that "ran" on them.
Yup, they were underpowered, overpriced ($2000+), thick as hell (1+"), and lasted about an hour if you were lucky. Surface Pro has none of these problems.
What you're missing is that there are different degrees of usability. Programs like Excel or yes, Quickbooks, which are very keyboard and data input intensive will not work well on tablet. But a program like Photoshop has many advantages on a tablet, even in its current form, such as being able to draw freehand with a pressure sensitive stylus. No, the buttons and interface are not touch friendly, but you'll have a stylus in your hand which is just as precise as a mouse. It's all about what you want the tablet for.
I don't need a tablet that can run x86 apps. Users don't give a flying shit about "x86" they just give a shit about having good apps to run.
I know you don't care about that. But don't say "Users don't give a flying shit" as if you're speaking for every user. *I* do. I know many other users that do as well. You might even be speaking for *most* users, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that Surface Pro is useless for *everyone*, especially businesses, which have been ill-served by the current tablet offerings.
I used to work for a company in 2009 that supplied Tablet PCs to regional businesses. We sold to schools, hospitals, contractors, government, warehouses, construction.... this was back in the day of Tablet PCs before the iPad. They loved these machines, but I heard several complaints more than any other: weight, thickness, battery life, processing power, and cost. Notice none of what I listed has anything to do with touch optimized apps. Surface is half as thick, half the weight, half the price, twice the battery, 4x the power as some of these systems we used to sell. These same large corporate customers are going to be eating tablets like this up.
And the Samsung Galaxy Note supports the stylus in ALL apps, not just specially written ones... Apparently, you're not too hip on the tablet scene. It's thinner, lighter, cheaper, has longer battery life, 3G, and is designed for use with a stylus, etc.
I'm quite "hip" thank you very much. My first tablet was the Compaq TC1000 in 2003, so I've been using tablets of various makes and models for about a decade now. You might have missed where I said *powerful*. I thought I was among geeks here. With a core i5, Surface has more horsepower than any Andrloid or iOS tablet available. You cannot get away with blasting battery life but not admitting the tradeoff is a much much powerful processor.
I've used the Galaxy Note 10.1, and it was slow and laggy as hell, even with its quad core A9. Using apps side by side was basically useless. Maybe this has changed with the 4.1 update, as I haven't used it since, but it still doesn't change the fact the processor cannot compare with any 3rd gen i5. Add to that the low RAM and low res screen and the specs don't compare at all.
Second, I can tell you're not very familiar with stylus support in tablets. Windows uses semi-supervised machine learning to actually learn your own handwriting. You train it at first, then it learns over time your vocabulary and handwriting style. The Note 10.1 can pretty much only recognize cursive from my experience, and has a real hard time with my combined print/script handwriting. On my Windows 7 tablet I have probably 99% accuracy (1 in every 100 words wrong), which is better than I can say about my typing.
Windows also has a killer app for stylus input: OneNote. It's the bar against which I've compared every note taking application, and they all fall short. I won't get into why it's such a great app here (unless you really want to know), but it suffices to say OneNote alone makes the stylus a must have feature for a tablet.
USB drives and hard drives? What fucking century do you live in?? And pretty much everyone has a video out capability now
What century? You seriously think portable hard drives and USB drives are antiquated? What would you have me use? The "cloud"? Aside from the obvious security, reliability, and connectivity issues, USB drives and hard drives have much much higher bandwidth (USB 3.0 on Surface) and capacity/$.
As for video out, yes many tablets have this but not in combination with the other ports. Further, their implementation is often crippled, as with iPad; it requires a dongle to use, and when projected, doesn't change the aspect ratio of the display. When I connect iPad to a 24" 16:9 screen I get a 3:4 image, and all the apps are 3:4.
The best is when you play a 16:9 video you get a 16:9 video in a 4:3
The Surface Pro isn't good at anything.
Surface Pro is the best tablet that can run x86 applications. Show me another machine that is as thin, light, and powerful with a stylus. You can't.
I'll also save you the trouble of reading two replies to your posts....
It's too heavy, expensive and crappy on battery power to be a good tablet
You might say a tablet is defined by being thin and light and having all day battery life, but that's different from what I want in a tablet. I want a stylus for writing. Surface Pro has this, 90% of tablets today don't. I want ports for USB drives, portable harddrives, video out. Surface Pro has this, 90% of tablets today don't. I want an SD card slot for expansion and swapping cards. Surface Pro has this, 90% of tablets today don't. Hell even Google's Nexus tablets don't have this. So in my book, Surface Pro is the only real tablet out there. It all depends on the user's needs. The Surface pro is a little thicker and heavier than iPad (.5 lbs and .5") but the tradeoff is more power with an i5 and compatibility with millions of applications and devices. So great for you if your iPad or Android tablet is thinner and lighter and lasts all day. I don't care because they are as useless as rocks for my needs, and I'll gladly pay $899 for a tablet that does what I want.
and it doesn't have a real keyboard or adequate screen size to make it a good laptop.
What about this isn't a "real" keyboard? Or the infinite variety of bluetooth keyboards or wired USB keyboards that can be plugged in? I also fail to see how 10.6" is not an adequate screen size but 11.6" on the Macbook Air somehow is. That extra 1" is the threshold? I might similarly say the Macbook Air has inadequate resolution (1366×768 vs 1920x1080 on Surface Pro). Or that Macbook Air is too heavy (2.38lbs vs 2.01lbs). Or too thick (0.68" vs 0.5"). Or too expensive ($999 vs $899).
How clueless can you be? Macbook air has no ethernet port, and surface pro does have a USB 3.0 port. As it runs Windows 8 Pro it supports more hardware than the Macbook air including any optical drive, barcode reader, or digital camera you want to plug into it.
And they haven't been pushing Windows 8 tablets as much as other companies.
On the contrary, I think Dell has been pushing Windows 8 tablets much more than others, with the exception of maybe HP. They have been producing Windows tablet PCs since 2008 with the Latitude XT, which as an okay tablet although decidedly 1st generation and way overpriced. Since then they've released a new version almost yearly, and have done a great job marketing them toward businesses. Their Latitude 10 tablets are some of the more appealing tablets out there (I don't know of many other tablets with a user removable battery), and for full Windows 8 tablets they actually managed to get some sane pricing on them... originally going for $670, but then they added an entry level $580 version. As a tablet PC lover I've been more than happy with Dell's support of this device category.
Which is the lowest it's been since January 2012, and roughly half of what it was in 2009. Don't get me wrong, Apple is a great company and is highly profitable. They make great products that are loved the world over. But they're not Worth $500+ billion in today's market, and the market is realizing that.
No company would be AS profitable if you took away their two most profitable products. It's just a truism, and not worth saying. The point that Apple would still be profitable without them is worth saying. And proves that your accusation of not being diversified enough is false.
In 2012, iPhone and iPad accounted for 72% of Apple's total revenue. At other more diversified companies, the top two products might account for 30% total revenue. If iPhone and iPad take a hit to popularity, as iPhone currently is and iPad just might with the emergent popularity of competing tablets, Apple is going to face a crippling blow to their profits. Apple could have 10,000% margins, but if they don't make enough aggregate profit, they're not worth $500 billion. When the iPhone's dominance is threatened, as it is currently, investors are obviously going to reevaluate what the stock is worth.
In 2007 they sold 7.2 million Macs. In 2012 they sold 18.2 million.
18.2 million in market selling 350 million annually. They've only barely outpaced growth of the rest of the industry since then 2007. So, good on them but again, a company that sells 18 million computers a year isn't worth $500 billion.
And the iPod is mostly sold as part of the iPhone these days. It's silly to imagine "without iPhone" for now and contrast "with iPod" for then.
People are using their smartphones as MP3 players now. If they're not buying iPhones, they're buying other smartphones, and if they're buying other smartphones, they're not buying iPods. Apple without iPhone does not bring back their iPod business, because that market has converged into smartphones.
A cheaper iPhone does not imply margins coming down. You can have exactly the same margins on a car and a paperclip.
No, not necessarily, but in practice this is often the case, due to fixed costs. Apple might sell an iPhone and iPhone "Lite" at the same 30% profit margin. But for the sake of argument, to make the same profit as selling iPhones, Apple might need to sell two iPhone Lites. All of a sudden they need to double their inventory, which has a wide array of fixed costs associated with it. For every advertisement they produce, they need to sell two iPhone Lites instead of one iPhone now. Every iPhone Lite display in every store needs to move twice as many units to generate equivalent profits. Then your competitors come down to your price point, and in order to move more volume, you cut your price again and repeat. Eventually you can't bring your costs down anymore so you have to bring down your margins. Either that, or you remain a premium product with low volume and high margins. This is what's termed a "race to the bottom," which is what happened to the PC industry and resulted in razor thin margins.
You see this dichotomy repeat itself in most markets: either you sell high volume, low margin products (Toyota); or you sell low volume, high margin products (BMW). Apple has enjoyed being high volume, high margin due to their first mover advantage in the smartphone and tablet markets. As history has shown, this will not last as competition in the market increases. Unless Apple invents yet another a new category of devices where they can enjoy high volume high margin, their stock will continue to fall.
There is nothing new about Apple offering cheaper alternatives. With the iPod market, they offered Mini, Nano and Shuffle. And at no time did that ever indicate they were struggling in the MP3 player market. Quite the contrary, no one ever beat Apple on MP3 players.
I'm sure for every iPod Shuffle Apple sold, they would have rather sold a Touch. Introducing cheaper models allowed them to target more price conscious consumers, sure. But to be clear, this is not what made Apple a $500 billion company. With the iPhone they enjoyed the equivalent of selling an iPod Touch to everyone who ended up buying a Nano. Th
Jobs never said that iPhone ran OS X.
Jobs said exactly this at the original iPhone keynote, to tech journalists and Apple customers (the only people who watched that sort of thing in those days). Not just developers. Developers weren't even allowed on iPhone back then, so I don't know how you remember that it was specifically targeted toward developers. From the keynote:
iPhone runs OS X! Why would we want to run such a sophisticated OS on a mobile device? It's got everything we need. Multitasking, networking, power management, graphics, security, video, audio, core animation... It let us create desktop class applications and networking, not the crippled stuff you find on most phones. These are real desktop applications.
Emphasis mine. He unequivocally stated iPhone runs OSX. This was further emphasized on Apple's website under the original iPhone product page, which I think you will agree is targeting consumers, not developers:
iPhone uses OS X, the world’s most advanced operating system. Which means you have access to the best-ever software on a handheld device, including rich HTML email, full-featured web browsing, and favorite applications including Address Book and Calendar. iPhone is also fully multi-tasking, so you can read a web page while downloading your email in the background. This software completely redefines what you can do with a mobile phone
Emphasis mine. So again, from the start, Apple was saying iPhone OS = OSX. Then they went back and changed a single letter, calling it iOS. My girlfriend still gets confused about the difference. So I'm not saying Windows 8 vs. Windows RT isn't confusing, but I think it's a leap to say iOS vs. OSX is crystal clear.
Yes, you are correct. But what I believe the poster was trying to say is that while Apple would be profitable, in the sense they make more money then they spend, they would not be as profitable, in the sense that they do not make as much total profits. As you point out, the iPhone alone brings in more revenue than all of Microsoft, but this goes to show that Apple is not diversified. Without iPhone/iPad, Apple is back to where they were in 2007. Mac hasn't grown much since then, they've all but killed their enterprise efforts, and iPod is no longer what is once was.
There's now talk of a less expensive iPhone coming out. This is what the original poster you replied to is referencing as margins coming down. Apple was once able to charge $600 for an iPhone on contract, because they were the only game in town. Now everywhere you look there's competition, and it's not clear their current strategy, which earned them the high market valuation, is sustainable. Thus you see their valuation receeding.