That's what I thought at first and then thought 'I bet that feels like typing on a microfiber cloth, and the keys can't have much travel, if any at all.
Can't imagine it being worse than typing on a glass plate where the virtual keyboard takes up screen real estate. However the real question is how well using the touchscreen works while in upright mode, perhaps it's not that stable and touching it will wobble/move it.
I feel like it would leave very odd patterns from the oil on the screen, and it honestly looks like something I'd find in the clearance bin at staples.
I used to have a rollable keyboard - it was impossible to use, despite it's novelty factor.
I hope this works well - lots of design/manufacturing issues here - How durable is it? Is it at least as good as an onscreen keyboard? How much does it cost to replace when it does wear out or take a coffee spill?
Looks interesting - I'll be excited when I try it out.
They have a video on the main page. The video is a minute long. They have asked for my attention for a minute.
In that minute, they have not told me anything about what the Surface can do for me, and why I should care about it. I'm absolutely baffled by that.
Yes, I might know what it is, and have some idea about what it can do, but if this was a television commercial, I'd bet money that such a campaign would be a quickly forgotten failure.
I noticed that as well. Us geeks know what it is but non-geeks are probably like, 'Is that a new iPad?' Contrast with Apple's iPad ads that show 'real' people actually doing things with the device.
If General Motors aired a commercial showing a stationary car, and some bouncing objects, my default reaction is not to go to a Chevrolet dealer to ask further questions. My default reaction is probably a non-reaction, which is to quickly forget what I just saw -- or more accurately, what I didn't see.
That's a misleading analogy. Microsoft's goal here is not to get you to visit a Microsoft store, since the device won't come out for months anyway. This is the first step in a months-long marketing campaign leading up to launch.
The goal is not to convey information, but rather to form an emotional bond, whether conscious or subconscious.
Definitely a teaser. I keep replaying it just for the music and I actually want one now, even though I don't have a use for a tablet. If anything can move me to buy a gadget I don't need it is a video like that. (especially if they guarantee kickstart on the back making that metallic sound :D)
Which one do you think he will understand? To which can he relate more?
(Btw. I don't say iCloud is good. Microsofts Skydrive on win8 (or whatever they're calling their cloud offerings now, I really don't have an overview anymore) seems quite compelling - but it seems to me like they can't really communicate well enough what it does.)
It's a shame the website had a white background, and the video had a black background. The borderless, chromeless video could have looked awesome if it had the same background color as the webpage itself - it would have merged in nicely.
Instead the video stood out as a black box - it looked a little incongrous just 'stuck there' in the middle of the page.
Honestly (and I think I represent a certain segment here--the people that really are interested in a tablet but have to deal with Office and other Windows-shackled things) all they need to show is "Hey it's an iPod + Office so you can do your damn work sometimes without always lugging your laptop about". For the people that understand this, that's implied by the Windows logo. The closest I got to settling on an iPod/Android tablet was when OnLive came into existence. Partly, if I could just use OnLive from my linux workstation, I'd almost reach nerdvana and I wouldn't need my netbook for the windows anchorware. But I still sometimes need/enjoy thinking by scribbling with a pen on paper and I want a device for that. Smearing fingers doesn't cut it.
I wonder how large the market is for buyers with this sentiment. I believe that part of the appeal of the iPad (and iOS) is that it's not Windows on a tablet, but instead, a more intuitive computing experience.
One of the executives in my company was using Citrix on his iPad. He kept expecting the Citrix app to be, well, more app like. Instead he was stuck using a Windows application published by our Citrix farm on a touch interface. It wasn't a good experience, and now we're investigating converting a lot of our in house applications to iOS etc.
Now the Windows administrators? They're all over this type of thing, though they would never give up their workstations.
And do you think it makes sense to convert "a lot of our in house applications to iOS" because "one of the executives" hadn't a "good experience"?
I hope the investigation will take into account the costs and the benefits (benefits other than making this executive happy with his iPad, i mean)
I'm not criticizing you, this sh*t happens to me every time too... (executives that want toys etc..)
You got more than I did. I got slugged in the face by a demand for a silverlight update and then my browser crashed and I lost all my open tabs. I hate that.
And thank goodness a technologically competent company is hosting the advertising for this new technological product. Such hosting is apparently beyond the technological capabilities of the maker of said product.
Edit: Ok all snark aside, this looks a pretty freaking cool piece of hardware.
Still, the website being off-and-on down on launch day is pretty facepalm.
Still, the website being off-and-on down on launch day is pretty facepalm.
It might actually be a hidden benefit. When I saw the error messages I thought to myself "wow, there is a lot of demand for more news of this..." Therefore, I must know more! (refresh, refresh, refresh... ahh... interesting.)
For all intents and purposes this should never happen on launch day for a groundbreaking product, BUT, in this case the marketing folks at Microsoft should chalk this one up as a success. In a big company like Microsoft, a marketing effort that causes an infrastructure problem is a big win for the marketing guys.
Now, Microsoft has to deliver the product. And the infrastructure guys have to deal with the traffic while the marketing folks are toasting each other with champaign. There aren't any OEM partners at that party though...
and the video is a youtube embed.. you'd think microsoft would bother hosting the video on its own server when this is the centerpiece of the page announcing a completely new product.
What I got was mercury, dust/particulates, fractured minerals, and the sense of invasive magnetic fields. I think they were going for power and ... something. Instead I get toxicity, contamination, brittleness.
You're right. Where Apple tends to emphasize family, connectedness, ease of use, utility, and general happiness, Microsoft has chosen to emphasize technology in a harsh, dominant manner that reminds me of the Borg.
The imagery is amazingly negative and oppressive. Especially considering the market they are trying to sell into. The most positive aspect (?) to it is maybe the sense of dominating as opposed to being dominated.
Definitely doesn't make me want to buy one for a child or other family member.
Edit: I could see an image piece like this working as part of an XBox or game machine marketing. But seriously, the thing it makes me think of is a hypothetical Ridely Scott version of The Andromeda Strain.
Beauty != profit. If it makes people productive enough to offset the additional purchase cost (and then some), then I'm sure businesses would consider purchasing prettier devices.
Successful companies have learned that a (shockingly) large proportion of consumers form impressions and make decisions on a primarily emotional, rather than rational or practical, basis. That's what this video is designed for. It inaugurates the brand, piques the viewer's interest, and plants the seeds of desire.
Trust me, there will be plenty of time in the coming months for in-depth product reviews, spec comparisons, etc. ad nauseam.
Ok, your argument is that this stuff works for the other 95% but it won’t appeal to us hackers. My question to you is, how does Apple make ads that appeal to the rest of the world and something like 75% of the hackers?
When the iPhone first came out, there was no nonsense about the brand and emotion without substance. They made EVERYONE want one.
Microsoft may have chosen not to appeal to us. But Apple has shown that you can do both.
> Ok, your argument is that this stuff works for the other 95% but it won’t appeal to us hackers. My question to you is, how does Apple make ads that appeal to the rest of the world and something like 75% of the hackers?
Asking that question is like asking an Olympic sprinter why he can't be as fast as Usain Bolt, or scolding a successful musician for not selling as many records as Lady Gaga.
Compared to Apple, pretty much every company sucks at marketing. So what? Apple is an extreme outlier in its PR success, owing to a number of unique factors other companies cannot realistically replicate.
How would you answer your own question? Do you think there's a simple solution Microsoft hasn't figured out?
I said you, not us hackers. Perhaps an appropriate follow-up is, don't pretend you're HN. :P Others have answered about Apple and I don't remember everyone wanting an iPhone when it came out.
Perhaps it's because I haven't received my crystal ball in the mail yet (Soon! /crosses fingers), but people seem to be making absolute judgments of a few hours. Microsoft can have other ads and other ways to promote it; it wasn't 'one ad or die'.
But the entire site is crap. And I'll admit I'm saying that on a primarily emotional, rather than rational or practical, basis. The images are just straight links, the renderings are poor half-assed CAD drawings, and the colors make it seem like a play-dough ad.
I'm sorry, but this is not professional work. It looks like something I did in high school, in one weekend. As good as the product might be, the site is not good marketing, no matter how you spin it. It's shoddy and lazy. I'm honestly surprised at how poor it is.
It's entirely fair when it's in response to a claim like this: "It looks like something I did in high school, in one weekend."
Personally, I think the site is fine except that I'm getting some pixelation on some of the images (especially the main one, which is scaled to match the screen size). But then, I work for Microsoft.
Oh, I do too. The site is fine, you're right. But for a company with the amount of resources yours has, and for a product launch as important as this is, fine is not good enough. It needs to be exemplary. This isn't—it's just OK.
In other words, see the Verizon Droid ads that pushed android into being a major competitor to iOS..Android didn't do it all by themselves; Verizon put together commercials that evoked emotional responses that brought in the people who wanted the phone that was a robot.
But how much did those adds sell android versus somebody walking into the Verizon store lookinga for a better phone. Can we separate the two as the occured nearly simultaneously?
People weren't really looking for a better phone at the time, though. Everyone knew you had to go to AT&T to get an iPhone, and if they didn't want to change carriers or shell out $$ for the iPhone, they were fine with the cheap feature phone. Cue the Droid advertising campaign, which let people know there was a smartphone on Verizon that did pretty much everything the iPhone did for a bit cheaper. That's pretty much how I saw it go down, but maybe I missed something and it was your average Verizon store rep that upsold it enough to make android a contender.
Remember the original iPod commercials? They were completely devoid of "meaningful content"; it was just people dancing. Consumers went apeshit for it.
That was not the "original iPod commercial" that was an early iTunes-era iPod commercial. The original iPod pitch was "1000 songs in your pocket" which was great copy and got right to the point.
At least there was some convergence with the theme of music and enjoyment. The Microsoft ad is pretty abstract. Reminds me of the Mr. Plow ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTY5EKN6bzM
The dual CPU thing still worries me. I think it's going to cause a ton confusion for consumers when Windows 8 comes out. These two tablets look the same, they're named the same, they use the same accessories. One will cost more than the other. They look like a 13" MacBook Air vs 13" MacBook Pro.
But it won't be, because they run completely different OSes. The ARM one won't run your old software. It won't run the windows desktop you're used to. Some big game comes out? I wonder if it will run on WinRT. Since all the devices will have lower specs, will AAA titles be available?
You could buy the more expensive one. I bet it has lower battery life. It won't come with Office, so not only do you have to pay $200 more for the device (random guess), but you also have to pay $100-$500 for a copy of Office on top just to match what's on the ARM tablet.
The tablets are clearly quite different. They should be positioned differently, they should look physically different.
I really want to see how consumers take to Intel vs. ARM. I can't help but think it's going to be a disaster.
As for these tablets? The cover looks great, and MS does know how to make hardware (I've loved my Natural keyboards since '95 or '96). It's great to know there will be one device on the market that (should be) well made and not crazily under-specced for cost reasons.
But does all this make third parties very nervous. Are these "demo" units to start the market, or the first wave of MS competing directly?
Microsoft said on their technet blog that their ARM devices will be clearly labeled and marketed as not being able to run traditional Windows software.
I think it's pretty safe to say that this is Microsoft going all in on the consumer market.
1. Video doesn't really show anything but it is admittedly well made.
2. You have to actually download the tech specs.
3. The tech specs have little meaning. (At first glance what is ClearType HD Display, some sort of Retina?)
It's like they took the apple philosophy even further.
Not sure how I feel about this but I guess now finally all the windows people have what the metro really is made for.
Oh and a little detail.
2100 Likes so far and not a single tweet (which obviously can't be true for reasons I am not yet aware of.)
And apple of course had it right. If you want to bring something new to the table, call it something new. Don't mix unrelated terms in a monster called ClearType HD Display.
Something new, and meaningful too. Retina is a specific reference to the limits of the human eye, it tells you pretty directly what DPI a display should have at a given viewing distance.
I think the best part about all the people making the comment about "Microsoft trying to copy Apple's Retina" is that Microsoft's "ClearType" has been around for so, so many years longer (I remember seeing it in Windows XP, but it may have even come in before that).
Microsoft has been using the name ClearType for years, but for something completely different: subpixel hinted font rendering. This "ClearType display" has nothing to do with that, besides the name.
From what I've read, this is just their continual expansion of ClearType (which was not intended to be synonymous with subpixel font rendering, but rather a larger framework for which the subpixel font rendering was merely a component).
I believe the 2100 likes is due to the fact that they basically took over the URL (http://www.microsoft.com/surface) from the Surface computing platform that they had been working on with Samsung, and the likes are probably residual (Facebook likes are linked to a URL)
> At first glance what is ClearType HD Display, some sort of Retina?
They say "ClearType HD display" and "ClearType Full HD display". I'd take this to mean 720p and 1080p respectively, so a bit of a way off "retina" in the iPad context.
i can't believe they've got the windows logo on the front bezel. super ugly and distracting. even apple, who loves its logo as much as any corporation, kept the front of the ipad logo-free.
I don't see a sticker telling me what kind of processor is in inside, nor do I see a sticker telling me which version of Windows this is. I'm a bit confused.
The Win8Pro version has about the same 42 W-h battery size as in the new iPad. I doubt it can manage the same battery life, especially if it has to have vents.
On the flip side, as it runs full Windows, it's also your laptop.
For reference, I can get ~6hrs out of my 13" MBA, which packs a 50Wh battery. Going to guess the Surface Pro is running a lower-clocked part (as the 11" does, presumably for heat reasons), so with good power-management software at least 6-7hrs doing tablet-y things is definitely plausible. Obviously, opening Visual Studio or Photoshop will constrain that a bit, but these are things one can't do on an iPad.
Most consumers don't use Photoshop or Visual Studio.
What do MOST consumers need full Windows for these days?
Office? Most consumers could get by on iWork.
I guess if they want to use their favorite virus scanner or anti-malware program they would now be able to do that.
Windows dominates the market for consumer PCs because it's cheap and because of games. These same games will not work well on tablets. iOS already has enough games, Windows is at a severe disadvantage in terms of touch friendly games.
I'm actually a Windows user (although I own an iPad), but you have to be a bit humored by all this. As usual where Apple has used a feather Microsoft have used the whole chicken with keyboards, screws, different versions, the whole enchilada. I'm only surprised there's no stickers. "ClearType display"? really, you felt you had to brand it just to compete with "Retina display".
Despite all this the tablet might actually be good, and seeing another quality tablet contender is always good for competition. I am however getting a bit worried by Microsofts "me too"-attitude and the reek of desperation these days. They could be making awesome stuff but they lack follow-through and the finer points of taste
It's a pity they won't put their chips down on things that actually were original, like the courier or mainstreaming the surface (the table). In the end they didn't have any choice since they couldn't surrender their enterprise tablet/smartphone customers to Apple. The Courier was innovative but perhaps too niche so its not even sure that was a bad call.
I guess I'm just arguing about the finer points about their attitude and execution, with Microsoft I'm always afraid that in-company bureaucracy will manifest itself into some stupid decision on the consumers behalf. Apple are fanatics (and splending assholes in some cases), but atleast you feel they pretty much set the consumer first and have some taste
Having said all this I'm still kinda rooting for MS since they ironically enough seem to be the underdog nowadays, how the tables have turned...
I'm not going into an originality discussion, certainly that argument has been made thousand of thousand times on forums all over the internet.
Very few companies are truly original. Even fewer are successful while being truly original. But having the guts to go all in, be consistent and going that little extra mile will get you pretty far.
I agree with your thoughts about originality, but people always saying Apple does everything original is wrong. For both Microsoft, Apple and others they'll rarely ever launch something that's truly original.
Apple's timeline was iPod > iPhone > iPad
(You could even argue that without the theft of millions of songs aka MP3's Apple wouldn't be bankrupt).
Microsoft's timeline was DOS > Windows > Server Products > Dynamics etc.
I would say it's very rare that doing something completely different than your baseline business is going to work. For that reason and the fact that the shareholders want you to be profitable is why you'll not see very many established companies pushing the edge.
You mean a compact music player with a 2.5" HDD, room for 5GB of music, with 20 minutes of skip protection, a FireWire port for 50MB per second transfer, a click wheel for navigation, and a user friendly interface?
I had an Archos before the iPod came out. A tiny bit bigger than the iPod would be, but a 30gb hard drive, usb 2.0, and a much better way to find music than a wheel.
Archos killed the iPod. The iPod was one of the first times I distinctly recall thinking that actual fashion (like Vogue magazine) could trump pragmatics and technology in the tech sector.
A lot of people try to compete against Apple in design. Wrong. Apple isn't doing design, as much as they're doing fashion.
If they were doing fashion, they would change to a new look every year. Remember the disappointment when the iPhone 4S kept the iPhone 4 design? Apple doesn't care about fashion, they care about good design.
You're right! I remember it being one size smaller than the other HDD players at the time. I thought it was the 2.5" that had just come out, but it was 1.8".
All-in-all, it's a big, big play on Windows 8/RT. A kernel that can perform optimally on ARM/Intel on mobile devices and also support PC devices is a huge achievement - the entire thread-library would have to be one super-cool piece of software engineering. That and elsewhere within the OS, is where the innovation lies, in my opinion.
And now you can see why JavaScript was made a first-class language for the WinRT (not Windows RT) API - content-consumption via touch is now going to be a big feature for Win 8 and nothing serves this better than HTML5/JavaScript.
I'm kinda sad though, in a way, I always considered MS an engineering company - now it's gone the Apple way (which for all its merits is technologically ok-ish if not boring).
DOES it perform well though? And by that I mean things like native hardware video decompression without having too much impact on the battery, real-timeyness of the touch UI and overall low power consumption. These are IMO the underlying technologies where Apple innovated the most with their iOS platform and these metrics are yet to beat by others. Do we already have hands on tests with windows 8 on ARM? I at least haven't seen any.
"native hardware video decompression without having too much impact on the battery"
- that's actually where ARM and Intel innovated, not Apple - MS is probably mature enough to deal with processors at least as well as, if not better than, Apple.
As regarding tests, I haven't had access to devices running Windows on ARM - WOA is something of a mystery - they haven't released a full WOA SDK as far as I'm aware - although they do provide a cross-compiler for ARM in the upcoming Visual Studio. So yes, no concrete numbers here.
Yes, they're discouraging Win32 use overall (even in the x86/x64 space). But that does not mean you can't build native apps (ie non .NET) for WOA - you can use C/C++ out of the box. You are just bound to use MetroUI and WinRT as your primary APIs - both of which are native subsystems.
> And now you can see why JavaScript was made a first-class language for the WinRT (not Windows RT) API - content-consumption via touch is now going to be a big feature for Win 8 and nothing serves this better than HTML5/JavaScript.
I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. I race for a native app when it comes to content consumption, and native is also required to provide the requisite stream DRM used by Netflix, HBO GO, etc.
Heck, I wish Netflix would hire a better development team and stop trying to do their app in HTML. It's poorly designed and frustrating to use.
It doesn't - it provides a perfectly equivalent platform.
In all cases, it will be the codecs registered with the OS that would be used - so the quality of the media cannot be better/worse.
Where this differs is from a developer perspective - you don't have to learn a non-standard UI API (XAML/WinForms/MFC/COM/ATL/Qt/Gtk/Swing/awt/whatever) or a language you're not familiar with (C#/C++/Java - pick any). But you can be sure that the experience will be precisely the same - no API hacks to achieve something specific, nothing at all.
What makes those platform APIs useful are all the tools they provide to simplify the creation of great, well-performing UIs that exceed the user's expectations.
If it makes you feel better, ClearType was a brand Microsoft has used since the late 90's/early 00's. I know it as some weird pixel display thing designed to make text look sharper in WinXP. But, it was a hidden option that required third-party software to reveal to me.
In Microsoft's world, they assume themselves to be the sun and thereby everything revolves around them and their cheesy need to synergize jargony things. Too bad momentum isn't in Microsoft's favor these days.
Thats what made it so funny. I can see the Microsoft meeting:
-Hey so everyone talking about this Retina thing how are we going to compete?
-Let's make up our own word! Do we have anything lying around we can use?
-Developer: Well, we have this ClearType thing but it's really more about software...
-Marketing Guy: Software Hardware, what's the difference. ClearType Display it is!
-Developer: I quit
ClearType has been around for a very long time. It's basically subpixel-rendering that improves the visual quality of text (sort of effectively tripling the LCD resolution). Last I checked, Microsoft had patented the hell out of it (and I last checked a few years ago).
I think they're right about touting a technology that effectively triples text-display resolution.
And for your other observation about the whole enchilada, look around you-- do you see people that use external keyboards with their iPad? These would be willing customers for a tablet that is actually is pen+touch+type (ditto with people who try and augment their iPad with screen pens, even on a screen that has trouble with palm touches).
Lastly, I'm skeptical about "companies-with-taste". Steve Jobs certainly had good taste, but I'm not sure the whole of Apple is comparably good. I think, sans Jobs, Microsoft is doing the best they can-- prototyping for months and trying to understand where they fit into a market.
Very true, big companies are usually as good as their despot. At least when it comes to taking risks and "saying no". Apple could go all-in because Jobs had the clout to give marching orders to the whole company. Microsoft has Ballmer, who is more of a salesman/business guy and probably with less clout (perhaps fortunately)
I too have a bit of worry for Apple now that Jobs is gone. Ive has taste and seems to have gotten some power to go with it. However, the next time it is time to go from evolution to revolution they won't have Jobs to kick them there.
I don't know how they're going to make subpixel anti-aliasing work if you can rotate the display. I wouldn't be surprised if they just are re-using the ClearType name and it's not actually sub-pixel anti-aliased, just regular anti-aliased (like the iPad).
The OS knows, at some level, the orientation it's displaying the screen in. So in principle, there's no reason it can't use subpixel rendering appropriately. Although it might be hard to achieve - I don't know how the graphics stack works.
Good point, since most pixels are taller than wide (it'd suck even more if they can't sub-pixel render in portrait mode, as it seems the more natural reading position).
It's an intriguing assertion, but there are too many variables. Which would really look better for rendering video or text at sub-optimal resolutions? 1920x1080 video or desktop stretched on the RD? Surface RT? It seems to me the safer bet would be that it depends on the task and the context. I'd bet money someone will do an appropriate comprehensive usability study within a year.
This device doesn't look like it will work well in my lap. I use a 5 year old laptop that I'm pretty happy with. I have a tablet that I never use but that's mostly because I don't like touchscreen interfaces, except on phones where they are lesser of 2 evils (the other evil being super-tiny keyboards).
It is a bird's eye view of a human holding a laptop in an armchair, said laptop composed of a touchscreen docked into a keyboard/case apparatus thusly.
It's astonishing to me how little discussion there has been of this. One of the primary places people use a laptop is, well, in their lap, and this doesn't look to be usable for that. I can't imagine that not being hugely frustrating.
Good to see MS trying to compete with the iPad. Not sure that they'll have any more success than the Android based systems, but at least they're not ceding the market to Apple.
I'll be very interested to see how the OEM partners view this.
The key will be in pricing. If it's $499 for the base version, it might have a chance. Pricing it "on par with Ultrabook-class PCs" will leave it Zuned.
I'm also surprised that Microsoft was able to keep this under wraps for this long.
If this lives up to the promise, it will definitely replace my netbook. This looks like something that will perform well as a tablet for apps and light internet usage, and is an easy form-factor to take to a coffeeshop for some hacking or writing as a netbook replacement.
EDIT: Why downvote ?? I don't care about the points, just curious if you are MS haters or something.
In which the return was handled pretty well. It was a fairly painless procedure when I turned mine in, call them up, spend 5 minutes on the phone, they send you a box with free shipping and another one is dispatched to you as soon as they receive the one you sent. They then redesigned it to prevent the issue happening again.
The Xbox 360 was one of the worst user interfaces I've used in a long time.
They forced me to register an account and enter information in about 20 text fields using my xbox controller before I could do anything with the device. After being pissed at that, it started spinning up its fans and sounded like a small airport.
That was the point when I first thought about returning it to the store (which I later did).
I know that it has been a while since they released it, but the missing attention to detail was always one of Microsofts biggest Problems. They usually seemed to strive for "good enough" rather then perfection. I really hope they are able to change that with their new line of products.
A lot of people praise VS - I just don't see it. It's so bloated, so slow, and so ugly. It takes 60 seconds to open on my high quality workstation and it crashes if you click the mouse when you're not supposed to.
See, I always get this response, but no one has yet to prove to me that VS can open and be ready to use in less than a minute. I'd like to see video, until then I'll keep believing VS users are incapable of keeping time.
Actually, I was responding to the bit about it crashing when you move the mouse wrong.
Complaining about how long VS takes to start up is about as useful as complaining about how long it takes the computer to boot. Neither are part of my daily work flow. I don't shutdown the computer, and I don't generally close VS 2010.
Anyway, I was curious and I timed it. I clocked about 12 seconds to completely start VS2010 on a computer with a spinning disk. And just for you, I made a video.
Do you use resharper? I had a nasty issue with something involving resharper and/or mercurial and/or my SSD where it would take 10 seconds to change documents and literally 10 minutes to close after a day's work. I re-cloned my project, started working out of the new repo and it was snappy again. Went from 10 minutes to close VS to about 5 seconds.
Mine opens in exactly 1 second. But of course, it all depends on the machine specs. I have an i7 2600k, with a vertex 3 ssd. That makes it super quick.
Is it a high quality PC or some overrated super hyped Apple workstation ? Cause on my 3 years old PC with a new SSD I just blink and I can start typing code. If it has no SSD .. it's not high enough :D.
Ugly, bloated ??? Omg, youtube.com/watch?v=G1iaVD-B2IA
I just clicked again on a small project just to see the load time. I'm not bullsh*ting but it was up and ready in ~3 seconds.Quadcore 2.5Ghz on some 3 years old Asus MB with 4Gb RAM and a brand new SSD (Crucial m4 i can recommend).
Alright fine I believe you. I can't pinpoint why I have such an issue with VS. I mean, I don't have much use for it since I'm a(n) RoR developer, but I don't really know why I hate it so much. Freshman year of high school I took my first CS class in Visual Basic and I really liked it.
I'm very excited by the i5 packing version with DisplayPort out; being able to take the same device from your bedside table to reading on the train to cranking out code at work is the Star Trek-esque vision of computing I've had in my head since I was a toddler, and it's nice to see it finally starting to come to fruition.
I agree with you. This is the device I want. I want a device that I can take with me, plug into a proper monitor, keyboard and mouse when I need to work, but use as a tablet when on the move or when lazing around.
As a happy iPad owner, and with knowing next to nothing just from first impressions, I can say this genuinely looks like a very intriguing effort by Microsoft. I love the smart cover with keyboard and it looks to be a perfect platform to showcase Win8 on. Hope this gets some real success, would be great to have some decent competition in the tablet space to keep Apple on their toes (I know there are other tablets, but they suck or are just trying to be ultra cheap etc).
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[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 313 ms ] threadI hope this works well - lots of design/manufacturing issues here - How durable is it? Is it at least as good as an onscreen keyboard? How much does it cost to replace when it does wear out or take a coffee spill?
Looks interesting - I'll be excited when I try it out.
In that minute, they have not told me anything about what the Surface can do for me, and why I should care about it. I'm absolutely baffled by that.
Yes, I might know what it is, and have some idea about what it can do, but if this was a television commercial, I'd bet money that such a campaign would be a quickly forgotten failure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpzu3HM2CIo&feature=playe...
However, as far as giving information about the product, I don't think it was too bad. Features from the video:
* Cover is a keyboard on the back * Cover is removable, and comes in many colors * Kickstand on the back * A little thicker than a USB plug
Look at the video they have for the consumer preview of Windows 8 ... it's more in the vein of what you are talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM5pFkNQ7no&feature=plcp
Come to think of it, perhaps General Motors is using a similar ad agency?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_OfzaZcz9Q
The goal is not to convey information, but rather to form an emotional bond, whether conscious or subconscious.
And that minute long video, which screams Dudes, Droids, and ferrofluids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpzu3HM2CIo&feature=playe...
Which one do you think he will understand? To which can he relate more?
(Btw. I don't say iCloud is good. Microsofts Skydrive on win8 (or whatever they're calling their cloud offerings now, I really don't have an overview anymore) seems quite compelling - but it seems to me like they can't really communicate well enough what it does.)
Instead the video stood out as a black box - it looked a little incongrous just 'stuck there' in the middle of the page.
And that's probably going to be the big selling point. "It's a bit like an iPad, but it comes with a cover that's also a keyboard".
MSFT should be able to do better and show the kinds of things we can do with this that would get us excited.
One of the executives in my company was using Citrix on his iPad. He kept expecting the Citrix app to be, well, more app like. Instead he was stuck using a Windows application published by our Citrix farm on a touch interface. It wasn't a good experience, and now we're investigating converting a lot of our in house applications to iOS etc.
Now the Windows administrators? They're all over this type of thing, though they would never give up their workstations.
I'm not criticizing you, this sh*t happens to me every time too... (executives that want toys etc..)
Seriously. How hard was that? I have to do a browser plugin upgrade just to watch and ad?! The whole ship is made of fail.
edit: no flash or silverlight, and yet both the MS video and the youtube one play fine
And thank goodness a technologically competent company is hosting the advertising for this new technological product. Such hosting is apparently beyond the technological capabilities of the maker of said product.
Edit: Ok all snark aside, this looks a pretty freaking cool piece of hardware.
Still, the website being off-and-on down on launch day is pretty facepalm.
It might actually be a hidden benefit. When I saw the error messages I thought to myself "wow, there is a lot of demand for more news of this..." Therefore, I must know more! (refresh, refresh, refresh... ahh... interesting.)
For all intents and purposes this should never happen on launch day for a groundbreaking product, BUT, in this case the marketing folks at Microsoft should chalk this one up as a success. In a big company like Microsoft, a marketing effort that causes an infrastructure problem is a big win for the marketing guys.
Now, Microsoft has to deliver the product. And the infrastructure guys have to deal with the traffic while the marketing folks are toasting each other with champaign. There aren't any OEM partners at that party though...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj2A0LybwPA
Definitely doesn't make me want to buy one for a child or other family member.
Edit: I could see an image piece like this working as part of an XBox or game machine marketing. But seriously, the thing it makes me think of is a hypothetical Ridely Scott version of The Andromeda Strain.
Trust me, there will be plenty of time in the coming months for in-depth product reviews, spec comparisons, etc. ad nauseam.
I think there's about 10s worth of content there.
When the iPhone first came out, there was no nonsense about the brand and emotion without substance. They made EVERYONE want one.
Microsoft may have chosen not to appeal to us. But Apple has shown that you can do both.
Asking that question is like asking an Olympic sprinter why he can't be as fast as Usain Bolt, or scolding a successful musician for not selling as many records as Lady Gaga.
Compared to Apple, pretty much every company sucks at marketing. So what? Apple is an extreme outlier in its PR success, owing to a number of unique factors other companies cannot realistically replicate.
How would you answer your own question? Do you think there's a simple solution Microsoft hasn't figured out?
When it comes to successful marketing, companies like Apple literally manage to mess with your mind:
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/17/bbc-loving-apple-looks-like-a...
Here is the documentary about this topic. It is fascinating:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011fjbp
For the iPhone maybe, except for the non-subsidized price, but this was definitely not true for iPod and iPads.
The general consensus was the iPad was a giant iPhone and was going to fail among techies and the tech media.
Perhaps it's because I haven't received my crystal ball in the mail yet (Soon! /crosses fingers), but people seem to be making absolute judgments of a few hours. Microsoft can have other ads and other ways to promote it; it wasn't 'one ad or die'.
My reaction? Looks neat; let's see what unfolds.
But the entire site is crap. And I'll admit I'm saying that on a primarily emotional, rather than rational or practical, basis. The images are just straight links, the renderings are poor half-assed CAD drawings, and the colors make it seem like a play-dough ad.
I'm sorry, but this is not professional work. It looks like something I did in high school, in one weekend. As good as the product might be, the site is not good marketing, no matter how you spin it. It's shoddy and lazy. I'm honestly surprised at how poor it is.
It would be a lot more reasonable to ask him to show competitors within a similar industry who have produced a better launch site.
Personally, I think the site is fine except that I'm getting some pixelation on some of the images (especially the main one, which is scaled to match the screen size). But then, I work for Microsoft.
Oh, I do too. The site is fine, you're right. But for a company with the amount of resources yours has, and for a product launch as important as this is, fine is not good enough. It needs to be exemplary. This isn't—it's just OK.
Do you really think android was far superior product to Palm Pre? Or maybe the advertising had a bit to do with it...
http://www.microsoft.com/global/surface/en/us/publishingimag...
WinRT (ARM) and a Intel version. Multitouch keyboard. Full HD on the Intel tablet on 10.6 inch screen (nearly the same density as the MBP Retina)
Also, funny the comments here, the iPad edges are tapered, but the RT version is 9.3mm and Apple says the iPad is 9.4mm deep.
Why oh why are they pushing Silverlight to show the video?
It's as if they decided to rip off both Apple's and Sony's philophies in one presentation.
The dual CPU thing still worries me. I think it's going to cause a ton confusion for consumers when Windows 8 comes out. These two tablets look the same, they're named the same, they use the same accessories. One will cost more than the other. They look like a 13" MacBook Air vs 13" MacBook Pro.
But it won't be, because they run completely different OSes. The ARM one won't run your old software. It won't run the windows desktop you're used to. Some big game comes out? I wonder if it will run on WinRT. Since all the devices will have lower specs, will AAA titles be available?
You could buy the more expensive one. I bet it has lower battery life. It won't come with Office, so not only do you have to pay $200 more for the device (random guess), but you also have to pay $100-$500 for a copy of Office on top just to match what's on the ARM tablet.
The tablets are clearly quite different. They should be positioned differently, they should look physically different.
I really want to see how consumers take to Intel vs. ARM. I can't help but think it's going to be a disaster.
As for these tablets? The cover looks great, and MS does know how to make hardware (I've loved my Natural keyboards since '95 or '96). It's great to know there will be one device on the market that (should be) well made and not crazily under-specced for cost reasons.
But does all this make third parties very nervous. Are these "demo" units to start the market, or the first wave of MS competing directly?
I don't have Silverlight installed, maybe it fellback to Youtube?
1. Video doesn't really show anything but it is admittedly well made. 2. You have to actually download the tech specs. 3. The tech specs have little meaning. (At first glance what is ClearType HD Display, some sort of Retina?)
It's like they took the apple philosophy even further.
Not sure how I feel about this but I guess now finally all the windows people have what the metro really is made for.
Oh and a little detail.
2100 Likes so far and not a single tweet (which obviously can't be true for reasons I am not yet aware of.)
The power of Apple's marketing cannot be overstated here. You're referring to a Microsoft screen by an Apple trademark.
And apple of course had it right. If you want to bring something new to the table, call it something new. Don't mix unrelated terms in a monster called ClearType HD Display.
Probably the ClearType HD is only 1366x768?
They say "ClearType HD display" and "ClearType Full HD display". I'd take this to mean 720p and 1080p respectively, so a bit of a way off "retina" in the iPad context.
For reference, I can get ~6hrs out of my 13" MBA, which packs a 50Wh battery. Going to guess the Surface Pro is running a lower-clocked part (as the 11" does, presumably for heat reasons), so with good power-management software at least 6-7hrs doing tablet-y things is definitely plausible. Obviously, opening Visual Studio or Photoshop will constrain that a bit, but these are things one can't do on an iPad.
What do MOST consumers need full Windows for these days?
Office? Most consumers could get by on iWork.
I guess if they want to use their favorite virus scanner or anti-malware program they would now be able to do that.
Windows dominates the market for consumer PCs because it's cheap and because of games. These same games will not work well on tablets. iOS already has enough games, Windows is at a severe disadvantage in terms of touch friendly games.
Despite all this the tablet might actually be good, and seeing another quality tablet contender is always good for competition. I am however getting a bit worried by Microsofts "me too"-attitude and the reek of desperation these days. They could be making awesome stuff but they lack follow-through and the finer points of taste
It's a pity they won't put their chips down on things that actually were original, like the courier or mainstreaming the surface (the table). In the end they didn't have any choice since they couldn't surrender their enterprise tablet/smartphone customers to Apple. The Courier was innovative but perhaps too niche so its not even sure that was a bad call.
I guess I'm just arguing about the finer points about their attitude and execution, with Microsoft I'm always afraid that in-company bureaucracy will manifest itself into some stupid decision on the consumers behalf. Apple are fanatics (and splending assholes in some cases), but atleast you feel they pretty much set the consumer first and have some taste
Having said all this I'm still kinda rooting for MS since they ironically enough seem to be the underdog nowadays, how the tables have turned...
Very few companies are truly original. Even fewer are successful while being truly original. But having the guts to go all in, be consistent and going that little extra mile will get you pretty far.
Apple's timeline was iPod > iPhone > iPad (You could even argue that without the theft of millions of songs aka MP3's Apple wouldn't be bankrupt).
Microsoft's timeline was DOS > Windows > Server Products > Dynamics etc.
I would say it's very rare that doing something completely different than your baseline business is going to work. For that reason and the fact that the shareholders want you to be profitable is why you'll not see very many established companies pushing the edge.
Yes, that was pretty novel in 2002.
A lot of people try to compete against Apple in design. Wrong. Apple isn't doing design, as much as they're doing fashion.
And now you can see why JavaScript was made a first-class language for the WinRT (not Windows RT) API - content-consumption via touch is now going to be a big feature for Win 8 and nothing serves this better than HTML5/JavaScript.
I'm kinda sad though, in a way, I always considered MS an engineering company - now it's gone the Apple way (which for all its merits is technologically ok-ish if not boring).
As regarding tests, I haven't had access to devices running Windows on ARM - WOA is something of a mystery - they haven't released a full WOA SDK as far as I'm aware - although they do provide a cross-compiler for ARM in the upcoming Visual Studio. So yes, no concrete numbers here.
Steven Sinofsky: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/02/09/building-windo...
I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. I race for a native app when it comes to content consumption, and native is also required to provide the requisite stream DRM used by Netflix, HBO GO, etc.
Heck, I wish Netflix would hire a better development team and stop trying to do their app in HTML. It's poorly designed and frustrating to use.
Here it is Metro UI (via HTML5) powered using JavaScript (running natively on Windows) - equivalent to a C++ native app with a Metro UI.
In all cases, it will be the codecs registered with the OS that would be used - so the quality of the media cannot be better/worse.
Where this differs is from a developer perspective - you don't have to learn a non-standard UI API (XAML/WinForms/MFC/COM/ATL/Qt/Gtk/Swing/awt/whatever) or a language you're not familiar with (C#/C++/Java - pick any). But you can be sure that the experience will be precisely the same - no API hacks to achieve something specific, nothing at all.
What makes those platform APIs useful are all the tools they provide to simplify the creation of great, well-performing UIs that exceed the user's expectations.
In Microsoft's world, they assume themselves to be the sun and thereby everything revolves around them and their cheesy need to synergize jargony things. Too bad momentum isn't in Microsoft's favor these days.
-Hey so everyone talking about this Retina thing how are we going to compete? -Let's make up our own word! Do we have anything lying around we can use? -Developer: Well, we have this ClearType thing but it's really more about software... -Marketing Guy: Software Hardware, what's the difference. ClearType Display it is! -Developer: I quit
I see the old Surface is now known as the Samsung SUR40
I think they're right about touting a technology that effectively triples text-display resolution.
And for your other observation about the whole enchilada, look around you-- do you see people that use external keyboards with their iPad? These would be willing customers for a tablet that is actually is pen+touch+type (ditto with people who try and augment their iPad with screen pens, even on a screen that has trouble with palm touches).
Lastly, I'm skeptical about "companies-with-taste". Steve Jobs certainly had good taste, but I'm not sure the whole of Apple is comparably good. I think, sans Jobs, Microsoft is doing the best they can-- prototyping for months and trying to understand where they fit into a market.
I too have a bit of worry for Apple now that Jobs is gone. Ive has taste and seems to have gotten some power to go with it. However, the next time it is time to go from evolution to revolution they won't have Jobs to kick them there.
I'll be very interested to see how the OEM partners view this.
The key will be in pricing. If it's $499 for the base version, it might have a chance. Pricing it "on par with Ultrabook-class PCs" will leave it Zuned.
I'm also surprised that Microsoft was able to keep this under wraps for this long.
EDIT: Why downvote ?? I don't care about the points, just curious if you are MS haters or something.
They forced me to register an account and enter information in about 20 text fields using my xbox controller before I could do anything with the device. After being pissed at that, it started spinning up its fans and sounded like a small airport.
That was the point when I first thought about returning it to the store (which I later did). I know that it has been a while since they released it, but the missing attention to detail was always one of Microsofts biggest Problems. They usually seemed to strive for "good enough" rather then perfection. I really hope they are able to change that with their new line of products.
Not my cup of tea.
Complaining about how long VS takes to start up is about as useful as complaining about how long it takes the computer to boot. Neither are part of my daily work flow. I don't shutdown the computer, and I don't generally close VS 2010.
Anyway, I was curious and I timed it. I clocked about 12 seconds to completely start VS2010 on a computer with a spinning disk. And just for you, I made a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oNOmA2OozQ
What has the internet come to?
But thanks for making the video. And nice title, ha.
I said "I" 9 times. Sorry.
Some other tips here.
Like everyone else replying, Visual Studio 2010 launches in under 10 seconds for me; Visual Studio 2012 RC even faster.
The convergence would be perfect for me.