<p>I read that the Surface Pro is going to offer up to 128 GB of Flash which probably pushes the price over $1,000. My MacBook Pro has a 48 GB SSD and a 1 TB HDD. My home system has a 120 GB SSD and a 2 TB HDD. I find it hard to imagine a Windows system with only 64 GB of disk space on it unless you’re storing a lot of your files on the cloud and that means that you need good network performance when you want your files. I have a lot of issues with the cloud and prefer to keep stuff locally.</p>
<p>Apple’s MacBook Air is $999 with a 64 GB SSD and $1,099 with a 128 GB SSD and the Surface Pro seems to compare with the MacBook Air moreso than with the iPad. I would expect Microsoft to be a little pricier on their Professional model.</p>
<p>One area that’s going to work pretty poorly on the Surface Pro is the trackpad. The area is very small and Microsoft still hasn’t figured out how to make their trackpads as responsive as Apple’s. The direction in Ultrabooks is towards very large trackpads so that you can do gestures. Microsoft apparently had little room for the trackpad in the Surface Pro because the overall device is so small.</p>
<p>They will have to different kinds of keyboard covers in the Pro model. A flat surface and one where you push down and there is some travel in what you push down. The thing that I like about regular keyboards is that you get positive feedback that you typed a character. The downside on using screen keyboards is that you have to look to verify making it harder to touch-type. From the articles that I read, the media didn’t get their hands on these things.</p>
<p>Microsoft could very well sell their own line of PCs too. They would just have to design them and have the contract manufacturers build them and ship them over here. It would make some sense given that they want to greatly ramp up their retail stores - it would provide them with more things to sell in their stores. They could fully embrace the Apple retail model but I think that they would need more products to get traffic in. One advantage to making their own PCs is that they could offer repair, diagnostic, training and consulting services which would keep people coming in to look at other stuff in the store.</p>
<p>Anyone have any info re: Surface vs ipad if all you want to use it for is to watch movies (i.e., instant streaming)? I can’t see using one of these things to write (keyboards too flat) but I could see the advantage of having something lighter than a laptop or portable DVD player. Also – do you have to buy a separate wifi plan like you do when you get a cell phone? Sorry if these questions are kind of lame – I obviously do not have either device so I’m a little out of touch with how they work</p>
<p>I’m sure that it will be fine for watching movies.</p>
<p>A lot of the questions that people are asking are unknown at this point. The media folks need to get their hands on them and play around with them and Microsoft isn’t allowing that right now.</p>
<p>My understanding is no one was allowed to try typing - or using the thing at all - so we don’t know how well the typing cover works. It has no key travel and it may be that it needs to be on a flat surface as well - which matters, for example, if you are typing on your lap, as I am now. MS says it’s great, that it’s extremely responsive. We’ll see. </p>
<p>2015, you don’t need a wifi plan; you meant a cell plan. You’ll probably have to buy one or pay your provider to tether a phone or other device to it so you can use that plan. Unless they don’t offer cell connectivity, which I doubt but which I don’t remember them mentioning at all. </p>
<p>I happen to like the way Apple approaches the issue of touch; on laptops you touch using the trackpad. I sometimes find myself reaching for the screen after using my iPad a lot, but I think that arrangement works well because that is true to each device. The Surface may be an odd mix.</p>
<p>They supposedly have two types of covers for the Surface Pro - one that has no key travel and one that does have key travel but only a few millimeters. I think that you’ll need a hard surface for typing - a meeting desk would probably work. Would it work on an airplane? I don’t think that I’d want to use the kickstand on an airplane - a traditional laptop, netbook or ultrabook would make for a more sturdy platform.</p>
<p>I am somewhat tempted to download Windows 8 Beta to try it out on a virtual machine. That’s nothing like using Metro though - I don’t have the hardware for that - don’t know anyone in my circle of friends that has the hardware for it either. Apple really needs retail channels where people can kick the tires on Metro. I suppose that I could try Metro using the mouse and imagine what using my finger would be like.</p>
<p>I think Microsoft messed up already by including a keyboard and a stand.
By not including them with iPad, apple allows consumers to find the one they like the best.</p>
<p>I have a case with a stand and am looking at Bluetooth keyboards, but frankly I am a one handed typist anyway, so the touch screen keyboard is fine for me.
My H also appreciates that it is quiet so he can sleep as I work in bed.</p>
<p>Your article is interesting - it appears that the cover/keyboard uses bendable plastic as the hinge - I assume that this will eventually crack or tear and require eventual replacing. It’s also very thin and rigid - what happens if you accidentally bend it - I guess you buy a replacement.</p>
<p>The kickstand itself is very thin (0.7 mm) and rigid and sounds like it could be damaged resulting in a bent kickstand. With a third-party device, you can build something more sturdy as it isn’t integrated or the third-party device could just fail if bent - but you could easily replace it.</p>
<p>“I think Microsoft messed up already by including a keyboard and a stand.
By not including them with iPad, apple allows consumers to find the one they like the best.”</p>
<p>I disagree. It is impossible to find a good stand and a keyboard for an iPad, the keyword being “good”. The market is flooded with crap, but functional ones are hard to come by. I ended up getting an Apple Smartcover and a pouch for storing the device. A Smartcover is $40, and a decent keyboard is at least $100, which adds significantly to the cost of the gadget, yet they still do not solve the Excel spreadsheet problem I mentioned above. :)</p>
<p>BC, I think they used some sorts of materials that make thin objects very strong and not prone to easy breakage. Let me see if I can find the video where a tech dude discusses the materials.</p>
<p>I also disagree on the stand. I tried a number of stands and bought the Apple keyboard. The keyboard has been gathering dust after a few days of “use.” I ended with the standard Apple cover. For what I do on the iPad, the tactile keyboard is more than fine, as it serves the machine and its intended uses really well. In so many words, as soon as you MIGHT need an extended keyboard, you realize you are on the wrong … piece of equipment. </p>
<p>Fwiw, I marvel at the dedication of anyone using Pages, Numbers, and similar programs. I find it absolute torture … but then I do not have the time nor the patience to try very hard. </p>
<p>In the end, none of us really know how attractive the Surface will be. It might be a complete Zune affair again. But I am happy that we might have more alternatives for spending our hard earned cash. :)</p>
<p>Leadership is an elusive concept. Innovation is often the enemy of good execution. Did Apple really invent the smartphone? Companies such as HTC or Nokia had similar products but failed to capitalize on their early lead. Did Apple invent the tablet? Well, you know where that is going! </p>
<p>It is hard to dispute the recent commercial and financial success of Apple, but it’s not always been the case.</p>
<p>Apple’s major innovations in phones and tablets was multitouch which came out of trackpad gestures on their laptops. Nokia had smartphones but their interfaces weren’t very good. Apple also rolled their own lightweight OS that made for very responsive and efficient iOS devices. An Intel engineer discovered this while trying to figure out why iOS devices were more responsive than Android devices with similar hardware - Apple had fewer abstraction layers to go through.</p>
<p>Microsoft has an interesting prototype. It appears that some of the media got to handle it for a few minutes. They need to execute - something that they’ve frequently not been good at for the first release of a product.</p>
<p>Yup, agree. So far, it looks very promising - to me and other heavy Office users, who need portability once in a while. I loathe the fact that I need both machines when I travel; of course, I can just leave my iPad at home, but I like to use it as a reader and some more.</p>
<p>xiggi, Apples day of reckoning is likley not too far off,without question…Many former market leaders of many industries have seen their time of success disappear, for example Rimm, et al…but i am fairly certain it won’t be Microsoft who takes them down…</p>
<p>Perhaps it might be Googlesoft, or Faceazon. ;)</p>
<p>For those of you who trash the Zune, have you ever tried one? The first generation may have been a clunker, but the Zune HD is by far the best music player I’ve had, including numerous iPods and the Creative zens. The Zune software is much more elegant, functional, and intuitive than iTunes, and I can download all the music I want for $15/month. (I can keep 10 of those songs so it’s basically free.) </p>
<p>I still have my Zune 28g and intend to keep it at least until a decent phone or tablet comes out that runs the Zune platform. </p>
<p>My son likes Apple products but he’s a teenager so for him it’s all about style. When he starts to earn his own money he’ll probably realize swag is not worth 3x the purchase price.</p>
<p>I had a look at the size of iOS on my iPod Touch - it comes in at 3.3 GB. I’m downloading Windows 8 Preview and the ISO is the same size. It should be interesting to see what the size of Windows 8 is - I expect it to be at least twice as big as iOS.</p>
<p>I use an Apple wireless keyboard - which retails for $69 but I had an extra - and two little clips called WingStand that slide on to the keyboard and holds the iPad or an iPhone in either orientation. I’ve tried a number of keyboards. Some work well. </p>
<p>The travel on the Surface key thing is 1.5mm. Not really travel, more like a bit of give, which is why I said there is no travel. It appears you do have to lay it on a flat surface. </p>
<p>I don’t think anyone trashes the Zune or the Archos or other devices. It’s that they failed in the market which is important. I also don’t think anyone cares about who invented smartphones because what matters is how the market responds. Apple earns over 50% of all smartphone profits, which is frankly astounding. Much of the rest goes to Samsung. That is why Nokia is cutting over 10k people. I find that sad; I don’t root for all the money to go to Apple just as I didn’t root for it all to go to MS when they had an effective desktop monopoly. It just is. I have no say in it.</p>
<p>I am not a fan of MS’ corporate leadership. It took them forever to bring out a phone OS and just as long to bring out a tablet. They seem to be wedded to their past, like many companies are, and can’t see the disruption to their business until it’s well underway. BillG, to his credit, saw the internet coming and reacted, though the response was weird in the way they kept trying to go in multiple directions at once, from the browser as OS and so on. He also saw that Office was the way to build lock-in. I would have thought the first iPhone would have been enough warning, especially coming after the iPod. Heck, I walked into an Apple store after the iPhone came out, played with the interface for 2 minutes and said to my kid, “They’re going to sell a zillion of these.” We went back when the Touch came out a few months later and it was the same: they had the interface and the OS behind it - a lightweight OS for mobile devices - and we could see that in 2 minutes in 2007. It’s 2012. That’s eons in tech.</p>
<p>I never looked at the Zune or the Archos devices even though they had their devotees. One thing that you notice at the Apple Store (or Best Buy, etc.) is the wide array of accessories available for the iPod. BlueTooth adapters, headphones, speakers, plug-in sound systems, cases, arm-bands. iTunes was good enough for me given some previous mp3 players that I had tried. I was also able to just go into the Apple Store and buy it too. I also have three of them that came free with MacBook Pros. It’s not just the device but the distribution channels, accessories, execution and marketing. iTunes was a pain in the neck from time to time - I was an early adopter of Windows XP x64 edition back in 2004 (Beta) and there were programs that didn’t run on it - iTunes definitely had problems on x64.</p>
<p>Microsoft was king in the 1990s. They killed off Netscape with Internet Explorer and Windows was a monopoly. They got fat and lazy with money pouring in and rested on their laurels. Then their platforms got attacked by malware - a lot of the coding assumptions in the 80s and 90s weren’t geared to security and users hacking away trying to find security holes. Microsoft spent a lot of labor in the past ten years fixing security holes. They also saw the rise of Phoenix, then Firebird, and then Firefox, Chrome and Safari to challenge their monopoly on the desktop side of the internet. So they’ve had a lot of challenges in the last decade. Many engineers became millionaires or far richer and retired or lost focus or didn’t take chances. I have a few friends that worked there that retired in their early 50s on stock options. They’ve had many management shakeups in the last five years and maybe they are back on track now - they are trying different things.</p>
<p>But they have that monopoly behavior where they want to defend existing revenue streams and don’t necessarily look that hard at the competition. I worked for a company like this a long time ago - they no longer exist.</p>