Isn't this the wrong time for a press conference? It's good for the west coast, USA, but who else is really paying attention? Most of the east coast & are at home eating dinner or getting ready for bed & it's very early morning in Asia, right? Am I missing something here?
If they are waiting for the markets to close, does this mean they aren't even confident in their new device? Why have the live press conference anyway?
"We believe that any intersection between human and machine can be made better when every aspect of the experience, hardware and software, are considered together."
I need to lay down... I wouldn't be half as surprised if Steve Jobs would announce in 2010 that they'll abandon making hardware and license iOS and OS X.
That was a new thing altogether, and they did that from the very beginning. Admitting that maybe the integrated approach could work better on the PC (they consider tablets a new form factor for PCs) is totally not in the same ballpark.
Who said I never read anything Ballmer said?! On the contrary, I've read and listened to a lot of his interviews and follow MS news moderately well for someone who hates Windows but like (new) Windows Mobile and Win8 (because I think they have talent, but have stuck with poor management), so I guess I'm qualified to judge about Ballmer and I claim that almost none of his remarks on the direction of technology in the past 4-5 years were actually true.
Why would this be even remotely surprising? Microsoft is currently trying to cargo-cult what Apple is doing. That they ape the same philosophy isn't unexpected.
Are you really implying that Apple's end-to-end ownership of their product has little to do with their success?
What a funny, looking-for-an-argument response. You know what, though- I'll humour you.
Do you understand what a cargo-cult is? Are you really implying (groan) that end-to-end ownership is the precusor to success? With this transition, Microsoft is guaranteed super success, right?
But let's go back to Apple for a moment: If you want to attribute their recent success to it, you must also attribute their prior failure to it as well, as they went through well over a decade with dismal products and brutal sales. During the same time that Microsoft, who didn't have end-to-end ownership, was the darling of the tech industry with unheralded success.
I don't know why this sort of sophistry that is so common on here rubs me so raw. I think it's that so many are so desperate to try to simplify the world into clear differentiators, with a seeming blindness to the exceptions and the history behind their ridiculous claims.
Not without signing your boot image, AFAIK. Microsoft had a program for allowing companies to sign UEFI boot images, but I'm not sure that will extend to ARM machines.
Yeah, I feel that Microsoft is bastardizing or abandoning everything that Microsoft Surface (the table computer) was supposed to be by repurposing its name into Microsoft Surface (the tablet computer) just to compete with iPad.
It's an already vetted name that is pretty good for a tablet. Might as well reuse it since no one outside the tech community even knows what a Surface is.
Edit: And the old Surface is now "Samsung SUR40 with Microsoft Pixelsense"
I watched WWDC via Engadget using the same interface. Everything about this presentation, from the timing to the lame device they are actually announcing, seems poorly thought-out and downright boring compared to Apple's keynote.
Just one of the reasons why "Surface" was a poor name choice: Surface is trending on Twitter right now, but a search for 'surface' includes lots of tweets unrelated to Microsoft or this product. Example:
Terms of Virgo @VirgoTerms
#Virgo can appear emotionally cold on the surface when they repress their natural kindness.
A similar search for 'iPad' shows zero results that aren't referring to Apple's iPad.
Yes, but they were jokes about the iPad. Do a twitter search for 'surface' and you will see a significant number of tweets which are unrelated to Microsoft's tablet in anyway.
Yeah, cover as a keyboard is along the lines of Apple-like innovation. I think that's not a bad design decision, so long as it's a choice (i.e. SW keyboard is also an option).
It's windows 8, so the software keyboard is there.
I think that the cover will be sold separately. They announced it as "Surface Cover", and coming in different colors, it makes sense to be sold separately. So, there's no other option but to also have a software keyboard. If not, the possibility of detaching the cover would be worthless.
You can do 90% of what you'd want to do on a laptop without the laptop. Why carry both?
A lot of people I know in a certain live coverage niche have already switched to iPads over laptops for composing and publishing content on the fly, with and without external keyboards. A tablet with keyboard makes a lot of sense over a laptop where mobility is important.
Yeah seriously. Microsoft might actually become publicly cool someday soon. This was the most impressive thing I have ever seen Microsoft do -- both in terms of quality of presentation and product. I guess we'll see if it is as impressive hands-on.
What better vehicle for an OS generally panned as a poor marriage of touch and keyboard - than a tablet marrying ... touch and keyboard. Touchscreen laptops have been a hit so far... I suggest they add a pen.
Even the engadget page is strikingly confusing. "Hey we can use javascript to switch images as the scrolls down the page" - sure, that doesn't mean you should have such bizarro design. If the reviews are correct here, malform follows malfunction..
I wonder what Microsoft's hardware partners think of all this. It's not just competition, they actively disparaged the others by saying that it was as powerful as all the ultrabooks out there.
Kudos, Microsoft. Glad to see somebody give Apple a little competition. Been looking for a way to get my Chrome extension and scripts onto a tablet form-factor.
I didn't know of it while the presentation was happening. But now I've checked it, and you seem to be right, it looks much better.
Also, had checked a live coverage from Ars ( http://s3.amazonaws.com/liveblogs/microsoft-tablet/index.htm... ) but they had just a few pictures. (Now, it seems that he had a problem: "I wish I could take pictures, but EOS Utility is being awkward for me unfortunately." )
Launching with Windows 8 (and 3 months later for the pro version). Pricing starts as competitive with other tablets for their 32gb and 64gb variants, going up to ultrabook range for their 128gb version.
So: No immediate launch. No major price advantage (and no pricing details either)
No mention of battery life, which I thought was a glaring omission. Either they think that "tablet" implies great battery life so it doesn't need to be mentioned, which seems unlikely, or the battery life sucks and they don't see any point in calling attention to it.
It's funny that they did a whole presentation like this without mentioning the price, aside from saying it'll be priced "like comparable tablets based on ARM," which doesn't mean much on the face of it. Just recently there was a lot of talk about how Windows 8 is too expensive for tablets running it to be priced in a range to compete with the iPad. One would think that, since Microsoft is making it in-house, it might be cheap enough to compete with the iPad; but of course we won't know until we know.
Will we get a price today, or are they holding that back?
Maybe, just because it was "too expensive for tablets running it to be priced in a range to compete with the iPad", they put their own hardware (without charging themselves the OS license) at the same price of an iPad or Android tablet. That way, they would make the entire ecosystem bigger.
I'm impressed. Construction and overall engineering looks solid, the integrated super-thin keyboard is cool, the stylus input is impressive.
Some nagging questions: battery life? price? availability? (most likely concurrent with win 8 release) screen resolution? (it looked like an IPS display from the screen shots) ram & cpu specs?
I've seen it, that's not a spec sheet. No CPU/GPU info. No RAM info. Not even display resolution info. It doesn't even tell you what wifi standards it supports except through reading between the lines.
I suspect that's because they don't have a final model yet. Notice that this page states: Actual size and weight of the device may vary due to configuration and manufacturing process.
They announce what they know will be there in the final product.
When they have the full final spec, they will show it to us.
I find the stretched rectangle proportions awkward to hold in portrait mode which is how I usually want to use my Asus Transformer. But then I'm more of a reader than a movie/game person.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] thread"We believe that any intersection between human and machine can be made better when every aspect of the experience, hardware and software, are considered together."
I need to lay down... I wouldn't be half as surprised if Steve Jobs would announce in 2010 that they'll abandon making hardware and license iOS and OS X.
What a funny, looking-for-an-argument response. You know what, though- I'll humour you.
Do you understand what a cargo-cult is? Are you really implying (groan) that end-to-end ownership is the precusor to success? With this transition, Microsoft is guaranteed super success, right?
But let's go back to Apple for a moment: If you want to attribute their recent success to it, you must also attribute their prior failure to it as well, as they went through well over a decade with dismal products and brutal sales. During the same time that Microsoft, who didn't have end-to-end ownership, was the darling of the tech industry with unheralded success.
I don't know why this sort of sophistry that is so common on here rubs me so raw. I think it's that so many are so desperate to try to simplify the world into clear differentiators, with a seeming blindness to the exceptions and the history behind their ridiculous claims.
Edit: And the old Surface is now "Samsung SUR40 with Microsoft Pixelsense"
IMO calling it "surface" instead of "tablet" is brilliant. It distinguishes it from tablets and conveys "touch".
The Verge liveblog is much better: http://live.theverge.com/microsoft-live-blog-tablet-announce...
Just one of the reasons why "Surface" was a poor name choice: Surface is trending on Twitter right now, but a search for 'surface' includes lots of tweets unrelated to Microsoft or this product. Example:
Terms of Virgo @VirgoTerms #Virgo can appear emotionally cold on the surface when they repress their natural kindness.
A similar search for 'iPad' shows zero results that aren't referring to Apple's iPad.
Cover is a keyboard? http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2012/06/micros...
That's actually cool
I think that the cover will be sold separately. They announced it as "Surface Cover", and coming in different colors, it makes sense to be sold separately. So, there's no other option but to also have a software keyboard. If not, the possibility of detaching the cover would be worthless.
I'm asking because I find the "live blog" page incomprehensible.
It's called the bottom half of my macbook air.
90% of the time I use my iPad, its on the couch, in bed, or when I'm standing up.
Still, props to Microsoft for this initiative.
A lot of people I know in a certain live coverage niche have already switched to iPads over laptops for composing and publishing content on the fly, with and without external keyboards. A tablet with keyboard makes a lot of sense over a laptop where mobility is important.
More information: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/about.aspx
Looks cool to be honest. With Metro UI it can be game changer.
What better vehicle for an OS generally panned as a poor marriage of touch and keyboard - than a tablet marrying ... touch and keyboard. Touchscreen laptops have been a hit so far... I suggest they add a pen.
Even the engadget page is strikingly confusing. "Hey we can use javascript to switch images as the scrolls down the page" - sure, that doesn't mean you should have such bizarro design. If the reviews are correct here, malform follows malfunction..
http://d35lb3dl296zwu.cloudfront.net/uploads/photo/image/632...
Also, is anyone aware of a way to "pause" a live blog? That would be worthwhile if say you get a call...
Also, had checked a live coverage from Ars ( http://s3.amazonaws.com/liveblogs/microsoft-tablet/index.htm... ) but they had just a few pictures. (Now, it seems that he had a problem: "I wish I could take pictures, but EOS Utility is being awkward for me unfortunately." )
Anyway, while following this coverage, I was also watching the live streaming from Cnet. You can watch also their live-blog: http://live.cnet.com/Event/Microsofts_mystery_event_in_Los_A...
Both, the verge's and cnet's are better for the ones coming now :)
So: No immediate launch. No major price advantage (and no pricing details either)
Will we get a price today, or are they holding that back?
Some nagging questions: battery life? price? availability? (most likely concurrent with win 8 release) screen resolution? (it looked like an IPS display from the screen shots) ram & cpu specs?
http://www.microsoft.com/global/surface/en/us/renderingasset...