Microsoft Announces New 'Surface' Tablet, New Hardware and Software Based on Windows 8

[bawbac]

They're already bridging them. It is called iCloud. Difference between Apple and Microsoft here is that Apple is doing it one piece at a time while Microsoft is pretty much making some sort of weird hybrid to try to force the issue. Maybe MS is right and a weird hybrid is the right way. I don't prefer it, though.

Ever heard of Skydrive?

 

[bbeagle]

Probably because it's built into the device itself, and is a rather more elegant solution than the shot you provided.

I'll give you that it's more 'elegant', but not that it's 'innovative'.

 

[foiden]

I'm grabbing the popcorn for this. I hope it actually makes for a good battle. Of course, the tough part is separating such a large population from all their investment in the iTunes/AppStore structure. Some which have done so for decades now (at least with music).

 

[crs.one]

Ping was a failure, it cost Apple. Zune hardware was a failure, it cost Microsoft. Why do some of you need to quantifiy it ? Why does this quantification have to say Microsoft "failed more" ?

What does it hurt you even if it was Ping that cost more in the end ? What does it gain you if it was the Zune hardware ? Why do some of you insist on presenting your opinions as fact ?

Netflix failed with qwikster (embarrassing). HP failed in developing Palm (direction changing.). Rim failed with the playbook. (crippling )There's a difference.

The magnitude of the error is relevant, and to label this relevance as nothing more than feelings or personal preference ignore his many fundamental principles of the business world, and leads the argument into a topic that is less relevant.

The fact is, Microsoft had a major failure in the Zune. This throws questions into the minds of the business world and investors as to whether the surface will be success, or whether Microsoft will botch it like they did the Zune.

Apple has the opposite problem. When they introduced a new device, people always say there's no way they can replicate the success of the iPod/iPhone/iPad/etc.

It is foolish to say that Apple has had any failure (since the ipod) as significant as Microsofts Zune.

 

[NAG]

And users can't screw up anything outside their user registry.

Again folks : the registry is a bunch of independant hives. A user has as much control over certain parts as he has rights on the system. OS X handles plists the same. Both have strict ACLs to prevent modification by unauthorised users.

If you're running as administrator on OS X or Windows at all times and muck around the Registry or the /Library folder, bad things will happen on both systems.

Problem is a lot of people are running their Windows machines under admin accounts. And again, it I'm not arguing actual architecture but how information is presented (seriously, read the post you're quoting). Again, plists are not all presented in a huge long list in a window for you to edit but the registry is presented together. Much easier to screw things up.

Ever heard of Skydrive?

Ever read my post? iCloud isn't just about syncing files. If you think iCloud is a minor feature like that you're going to be just as surprised as you were when iTunes and the iPod took over under Apple's digital hub plan.

 

[Renzatic]

I'll give you that it's more 'elegant', but not that it's 'innovative'.

Who cares? It isn't a magical experience produced by people who think outside the box and pushed the paradigms while completely redefining what we thought of as a "personal computer". Okay. Sure. Whatever. It's useful. That's all that matters.

Problem is a lot of people are running their Windows machines under admin accounts. And again, it I'm not arguing actual architecture but how information is presented (seriously, read the post you're quoting). Again, plists are not all presented in a huge long list in a window for you to edit but the registry is presented together. Much easier to screw things up.

You have to go out of your way to run a modern Windows OS as a pure unrestricted administrator. Anyone who goes through the effort to do so probably knows enough not to screw with the registry moreso than they have to.

 

[LostSoul80]

Can't wait to see more of it. It looks stunning.

 

[KnightWRX]

Problem is a lot of people are running their Windows machines under admin accounts. And again, it I'm not arguing actual architecture but how information is presented (seriously, read the post you're quoting). Again, plists are not all presented in a huge long list in a window for you to edit but the registry is presented together. Much easier to screw things up.

I'd argue the number of users running under an Admin account in OS X is the same and that moving the entire /Library folder or deleting it (same for ~/Library) is as easy as screwing anything up in regedit (which you have to know about to launch). You do realise that is why Apple hid the Library folder in Lion right ?

 

[NAG]

You have to go out of your way to run a modern Windows OS as a pure unrestricted administrator. Anyone who goes through the effort to do so probably knows enough not to screw with the registry moreso than they have to.

Ugh, I'd like to think that but sometimes people seem to find ingenious ways to screw up their machines. I mean, you'd like to think most Mac users would understand that zapping the PRAM did nothing most of the time but people kept doing it (or repairing permissions under OS X). I mean, you have genius bar people telling iOS users to manually minus out apps from the multitasking tray even though it does absolutely nothing most of the time. Don't take anything for granted.

I'd argue the number of users running under an Admin account in OS X is the same and that moving the entire /Library folder or deleting it (same for ~/Library) is as easy as screwing anything up in regedit (which you have to know about to launch). You do realise that is why Apple hid the Library folder in Lion right ?

Yup, you just proved my point. Assuming both Admin the information presented is more likely to end up with someone screwing up the registry worse than they could screw up plists resulting in a broken machine.

(And come on, people can do google searches easy enough to find out how to launch regedit.)

Again, how the information is presented.

That is my argument.

 

[crs.one]

Educated guess says it was probably about the same. Microsoft probably spent more than Apple on the Zune endeavour, but in the end, they recoupped some of the costs through sales of a number of units and the introduction of their Zune service (which is now available to PC subscribers and Xbox users I believe).

Apple probably paid less up front for Ping, but the service was free. It cost them in programmer time/Q&A/data center space and infrastructure support with probably quite a few "artist deals" to get some artists on board in a bid to draw users (Lady Gaga on day one... yeah...).

Hence, my guess and opinion is that both were pretty equal in terms of financial costs in the end, without actual data to present as fact.

You want to guess subjectively that Apple "won" in terms of the lesser failure. Why do you feel you need Apple to have "won" ? What does it change in your life if they did or didn't ?

Factor two years (plus maybe another year for research and development) of "programmer time/Q&A/data center space and infrastructure support" and a small marketing budget (seriously, even if gaga's name wasn't already licensed by a previous iTunes deal, they could offer her top billing on the home page for a length of time in exchange. Not a substantial expense in the marketing world). Compare to nearly six years of Zune, with multiple models, not all of which sold. So six years of "programmer time/Q&A/data center space and infrastructure support "

Also. Isn't it QA, not q&a?

This is all beyond the overhead, manufacturing costs, thin margins to remain competitive, warehousing, shipping, promotions, unsold inventory, etc that ping never incurred. Do you seriously think it breaks even?

You continue to frame the issue as a personal vendetta. The issue at hand is that Zune is a sound reason to look at the surface with skepticism. And you can't dismiss that by saying "apple made mistakes, and it didn't stop them."

 

[spinedoc77]

First off I am not down on Windows 8. I think it is a great solution. And I see your points. Putting 2 products into one package likely has it's advantages overall. Apple is starting to dabble with this all in one option too (it appears at least).

Judging by how well the current options are selling, it appears that the general public doesn't miss having a full OS when using these devices. But keep in mind, most of us on here are not the general public.

We (I am talking all of us posting here) have to remember, that users of Tech forums and websites tend to ask a bit more from our devices than the general consumer. It is highly likely that iOS and Android are not a great fit for everyone (and I never said it was), it simply is enough power to do what most of their consumers need.





I think the writing is on the wall for Apple to bridge the gap between iOS and Mac OS, by either making OS X more mobile and touch screen aware, or, combine the two Operating systems into one unified OS. Feels like every OS X update brings in more iOS features (often with it's share of people complaining about them).

Perhaps they will release an iPad Pro, and or, finally unleash OS XI which will function on either device.


One question tough..

Would you expect to see more Android, or iOS users flock to the Windows 8 tablets? My guess would be android, simply because of iOS and Apple products having more of a walled garden.


I have no idea what the future will hold, just posting my opinion, so just take it as that and ignore the moderator tag .

I don't think we can actually say the public doesn't miss having a full OS on a portable tablet. I think the ipad is pretty awesome at what it does and millions agree with that and also purchased one, but it doesn't mean all those people purchased an ipad to replace a PC.

When you put the very very long list of things a PC can do that the ipad cannot do you realize that most will have a laptop or desktop at home in addition to the ipad. Of course there are those who don't need a PC for any reason and are happy enough with the ipad, but I don't see that as being the majority of ipad owners, although I can't say I have numbers to back me up so at this point I'm just discussing my opinion and personal experience.

Apple will always have a ton of consumers, they are just that kind of company. I have no doubt that they will answer this challenge with their own genius, although what bums me out is that it took this kind of a challenge to draw attention to the shortcomings of iOS. But I really see microsoft taking a big chunk here, with so many PC and windows users there has to be a ton of people who want to take their windows with them, but have it in a tablet formfactor.

It will certainly be extremely interesting, I kind of get the feeling Android will be the big loser here. They have such a fragmented system which is at the whim of the big carriers, fragmented updates tainted with the carriers bloatware along with the weakness they share with iOS of not being a full OS, and without the incredible hardware or style of Apple.

 

[KnightWRX]

Yup, you just proved my point. Assuming both Admin the information presented is more likely to end up with someone screwing up the registry worse than they could screw up plists resulting in a broken machine.

(And come on, people can do google searches easy enough to find out how to launch regedit.)

Again, how the information is presented.

That is my argument.

It's your opinion. My experience (14 years doing pro IT work) is that I haven't seen a registry screw up preventing system boot and easy repair (beyond redoing a user profile) since NT became the standard in the Windows world and I've also rarely seen any users delete their entire ~/Library folder, much less the system /Library folder.

Like you say, computer illiterates will try anything they find on Google (delete the preferences in /Library vs "type regedit"), this doesn't make the registry any more or less solid than OS X's XML files.

 

[Centsy]

It's your opinion. My experience (14 years doing pro IT work) is that I haven't seen a registry screw up preventing system boot and easy repair (beyond redoing a user profile) since NT became the standard in the Windows world and I've also rarely seen any users delete their entire ~/Library folder, much less the system /Library folder.

Like you say, computer illiterates will try anything they find on Google (delete the preferences in /Library vs "type regedit"), this doesn't make the registry any more or less solid than OS X's XML files.

Well my experience working at a college campus IT help desk (with about an equal ratio of Macs to PCs) is that users have a much easier time messing up Windows than Mac OS. Sorry bud, your experience cannot be extrapolated to the rest of the world.

 

[Renzatic]

Ugh, I'd like to think that but sometimes people seem to find ingenious ways to screw up their machines. I mean, you'd like to think most Mac users would understand that zapping the PRAM did nothing most of the time but people kept doing it (or repairing permissions under OS X).

How long has it been since you've seen the registry? I'll tell you, it's a hard to find obfuscating mess of subfolders within subfolders within subfolders filled with little files that mention hexes and strings, and really mean absolutely nothing unless you know exactly what you're looking for. It's a scary looking place to be, in other words. If a regular mom 'n pop type were to somehow accidentally end up there, chances are good fight or flight will kick in, and they'd reboot the computer before touching a single thing in there. Or punch the screen.

The only people likely to mess up the registry are geeky teenager types who think they're leet haxors by going in there and changing things around. You know, the type who know just enough to be dangerous. And hell, they'd mess up anything.

I mean, you have genius bar people telling iOS users to manually minus out apps from the multitasking tray even though it does absolutely nothing most of the time. Don't take anything for granted.

Shut up. I do that.

 

[KnightWRX]

Well my experience working at a college campus IT help desk (with about an equal ratio of Macs to PCs) is that users have a much easier time messing up Windows than Mac OS. Sorry bud, your experience cannot be extrapolated to the rest of the world.

Are these "mess ups" exclusive to registry problems or did you never find out what was wrong and just "format" the system ? My experience is not that Windows is not easy to mess up. It's that any OS is easy to mess up by clueless users with too much rights.

My experience is also that most Windows IT people don't know their ... nvm. Heck, I've seen experienced Windows admin wanting to "reboot" a Citrix node in a farm afterhours because a user couldn't log on. He went when in 3 seconds I launched regedt32, found the proper user using the registries "Volatile Information" to identify his SID and simply went "Registry->Unload Hive" allowing the user to log on normally.

So instead of waiting a day without access to the shared applications, the user got to log on right away and be productive. Biggest secret in IT : Unix admins know more about how Windows works than the Windows admin do. I hate working in Windows.

----------

Shut up. I do that.

Don't worry, I do it to. 2 reasons :

- Keeps it clean. That damn "A list of every application you've opened since you've last cleaned it" is quite useless otherwise.
- Some apps do keep running some tasks in the background forever and some are notorious battery drainers (Google Plus, Gmail being very bad offenders, I don't know what Google does, but god...). Making sure to clean them up after using them is the only way to restore the battery usage to normal.

So it's wrong to say that cleaning that damn "task bar" in iOS is useless.

 

[Centsy]

Are these "mess ups" exclusive to registry problems or did you never find out what was wrong and just "format" the system ? My experience is not that Windows is not easy to mess up. It's that any OS is easy to mess up by clueless users with too much rights.

My experience is also that most Windows IT people don't know their ... nvm. Heck, I've seen experienced Windows admin wanting to "reboot" a Citrix node in a farm afterhours because a user couldn't log on. He went when in 3 seconds I launched regedt32, found the proper user using the registries "Volatile Information" to identify his SID and simply went "Registry->Unload Hive" allowing the user to log on normally.

So instead of waiting a day without access to the shared applications, the user got to log on right away and be productive. Biggest secret in IT : Unix admins know more about how Windows works than the Windows admin do. I hate working in Windows.

----------



Don't worry, I do it to. 2 reasons :

- Keeps it clean. That damn "A list of every application you've opened since you've last cleaned it" is quite useless otherwise.
- Some apps do keep running some tasks in the background forever and some are notorious battery drainers (Google Plus, Gmail being very bad offenders, I don't know what Google does, but god...). Making sure to clean them up after using them is the only way to restore the battery usage to normal.

So it's wrong to say that cleaning that damn "task bar" in iOS is useless.

Reformatting is our last resort. We do it on occasion when things get hosed beyond repair, but more often than not, we fix the problem. The problems we encounter aren't exclusively registry problems, but they do happen on occasion. I've never had a Mac user mess up their system from messing with plists. Sure, it's possible, but how often does it actually happen?

 

[KnightWRX]

Reformatting is our last resort. We do it on occasion when things get hosed beyond repair, but more often than not, we fix the problem. The problems we encounter aren't exclusively registry problems, but they do happen on occasion. I've never had a Mac user mess up their system from messing with plists. Sure, it's possible, but how often does it actually happen?

Enough for Apple to hide the folder it seems.

 

[bbeagle]

So it's wrong to say that cleaning that damn "task bar" in iOS is useless.

The apps each take some of the system memory.

Owning an iPad 1, with only 256mb of system memory, I continually have to delete apps to make room for new ones. A couple are big memory hogs, even if they are dormant. (USA Today used to be one - but they have fixed this app since).

 

[Defthand]

Tablets aren't meant to be laptops... yet.

Every time I hear someone complain of tablets lacking traditional keyboards, I cringe. This example is why Apple forgoes Consumer Focus Groups. Because most people can only imagine existing solutions to challenges--rather than "think differently". Tablets are a first step in redefining how we interface with applications and the Internet. Adding a physical keyboard to the mix compromises the efforts to invent the future.
I suspect that even the virtual keyboard within today's touch devices will go away eventually. It might remain in apps specifically for wordsmiths but won't be necessary for the terse phrases that people use for socializing.
Fortunately, I think the keyboard crowd is a minority; otherwise, Apple would still be selling the keyboard dock and Netbooks would have trumped tablets.

BTW, this reply was accomplished on an iPad with no keyboard.

 

[840quadra]

I don't think we can actually say the public doesn't miss having a full OS on a portable tablet. I think the ipad is pretty awesome at what it does and millions agree with that and also purchased one, but it doesn't mean all those people purchased an ipad to replace a PC.

When you put the very very long list of things a PC can do that the ipad cannot do you realize that most will have a laptop or desktop at home in addition to the ipad. Of course there are those who don't need a PC for any reason and are happy enough with the ipad, but I don't see that as being the majority of ipad owners, although I can't say I have numbers to back me up so at this point I'm just discussing my opinion and personal experience.

Apple will always have a ton of consumers, they are just that kind of company. I have no doubt that they will answer this challenge with their own genius, although what bums me out is that it took this kind of a challenge to draw attention to the shortcomings of iOS. But I really see microsoft taking a big chunk here, with so many PC and windows users there has to be a ton of people who want to take their windows with them, but have it in a tablet formfactor.

It will certainly be extremely interesting, I kind of get the feeling Android will be the big loser here. They have such a fragmented system which is at the whim of the big carriers, fragmented updates tainted with the carriers bloatware along with the weakness they share with iOS of not being a full OS, and without the incredible hardware or style of Apple.

I agree we can't say what the public wants, we are just two individuals with different opinions, having an adult conversation .

FWIW, the specifications for the Intel Windows 8 Tablets don't exactly scream laptop replacement to me either. It simply sounds like more of a robust and versatile personal computing device than my iPad and many Android offerings.

I also don't think Windows 8, or this Tablet brought to light the limitations of the iPad. I have personally moderated many threads that have discussed that hot topic here on MacRumors over the past year. The limitations of both iOS and Android often come up in such discussions, especially threads in which people are trying to decide between a Macbook Air, or an iPad.

As always, great points. And I too hope to see a new push and focus from both Apple and Android tablet makers.

Good time to be a gadget junkie eh?

 

[Centsy]

Enough for Apple to hide the folder it seems.

Perhaps. We don't know their reasons for doing so. Could be a precautionary measure.

 

[NAG]

Enough for Apple to hide the folder it seems.

It isn't just that. People were mucking around in there doing all sorts of things. Same reason they hide all the other folders at the base directory too.

As far as clearing out apps. If you like your multitasking drawer clean thats fine. No reason to do it other than aesthetic reasons or poorly coded apps that don't get autokilled by the OS (the Google+ app should be autokilled so I don't know what is going on there). People were being told to do this without thinking every 15 minutes which is just silly.

 

[whiteboytrash]

Ugh, I'd like to think that but sometimes people seem to find ingenious ways to screw up their machines. I mean, you'd like to think most Mac users would understand that zapping the PRAM did nothing most of the time but people kept doing it (or repairing permissions under OS X). I mean, you have genius bar people telling iOS users to manually minus out apps from the multitasking tray even though it does absolutely nothing most of the time. Don't take anything for granted.

That is my argument.

Every corporate environment I’ve ever worked in since about 1996 locks down their Windows clients. Most don’t allow you to even use Control Panel or even change the resolution on the screen. Those crying out for full blown OS in the corporate world are dreaming. It could only ever be locked down to a point of having the same functionality as an iOS tablet. No company could manage a roaming base of 100+ W8 tablets unless they were locked down. Can’t happen.

To this point; No one really wants a full blown OS on a tablet. What they want is to run their desktop OS apps on a tablet. Which I’ll never understand. Why would you want to do this? A tablet is a mobile device. Do you really want use desktop apps on the couch? Or when travelling. If so then you’d buy a laptop because you’d at least get the computing power to do use the app. If it’s a hybrid the cost will challenge those who want tablet functionality and weight/battery length would challenge those who want a desktop experience.

 

[geniusj]

Every time I hear someone complain of tablets lacking traditional keyboards, I cringe. This example is why Apple forgoes Consumer Focus Groups. Because most people can only imagine existing solutions to challenges--rather than "think differently". Tablets are a first step in redefining how we interface with applications and the Internet. Adding a physical keyboard to the mix compromises the efforts to invent the future.

You're quite possibly right, but there doesn't seem to be a suitable replacement yet. Currently it's replacing a keyboard with an inferior keyboard.

 

[crs.one]

I don't know what the actual product will be like or if it will ever be able to compete with the iPad, but I DO like the video for it. That's one slick presentation. They did a great job with it.

For the sake of fun...it kind of reminds my stylistically of the SAW franchise