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And Microsoft stock is is essentially flat today so this announcement didn't do anything to excite Wall Street.

Microsoft stock is flat on their announcement of barely changed crappy surface tablets, while Apple stock dropped 6% or something with their announcement of two new iphones (which would subsequently break sales records by almost double)? The market surely didn't get this one right.
 
Too expensive

The product is too expensive given the fact the platform lacks good application when com paired to iOS and Android. MS should price the RT at or near cost and maybe developer will get the encouragement they need to develop apps as sales of the RT device go up.
 
Microsoft just doesn't understand that one of the big differences between Windows and Mac is as follows; Every Mac regardless of prices comes with the great iLife package of apps in addition to excellent mail, calendar and contacts apps. You can buy a new Mac and instantly start doing things.

If the Windows Essentials apps (or whatever they're called this year) were as complete and great looking as iPhoto, iTunes, iDVD, Mail, Contacts and Calendar I would be switching back. I prefer Windows 8 (desktop) over Mac but the total software integration of Mac OS and Mac to iPhone just cannot be beat.

This weekend I bought an iPhone 5c. I would have rather had a Windows Phone 8. They have bigger screens and the Metro squares that I hate on the desktop are better to use than those small, and now ugly, iOS icons. But again the Windows phone is not a complete system like an iPhone is.

Microsoft's biggest enemy is Microsoft.
 
Or it wouldn't because Apple would come up with a new way of doing the whole thing.

They could always shift undo levels and layers off to virtual memory. But god...that'd be terrible.

When it comes to certain things, there's no way you can get around the ram issue. By itself, freshly opened, I think Photoshop consumes about 80-200MB of ram. It's not much. Adobe could pop Photoshop as is onto an iPad now.

...but it'd hit a wall very, very quickly. See, there's a reason why PS ends up consuming upwards of 8GB of ram. When you start throwing in 20 levels of undo, adjustment layers, alpha masks, multiple high resolution images, all in a single .psd file. Work in CMYK, and you'll see your ram usage triple due to PS having to keep track of a much larger amount of data at a much finer level of detail.

Yeah, you could say they could make a way to compress layers you're not actively working on, but that'd only make the whole process of editing much, much slower and more cumbersome than it is now. The CPU would still have to uncompress the layer when you make it active, and compress the one you're leaving. But that'd spike CPU usage, and probably end up using more battery far more than having an extra couple GB of ram in there. That'd be a lot of effort on Adobe's part for what's ultimately a negative gain.

Sometimes you just need more ram.

Then again not that many folks, looking at the whole picture and not just the geeks on sites like this, really need 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity. A quarter of that would be more than enough for most users. A tenth that even.

What is really needed by almost all users are things like better display quality for outdoor use, better sensitivity for handwriting etc. If smaller sensitive points came with thousands of levels of pressure great, especially if it didn't greatly affect battery etc. If not, most would say ditch the tons of levels for now. Better to be able hand write clearly with only 120 levels or such.

Here's the way I see it. There are a ton, and I mean a TON of drawing apps and photo editors out for the iPad. For a surprising amount of people, it's a major reason why they use one in the first place. Even one of Apple's showcase apps, Paper, is dedicated to drawing.

You could argue that if people are using their iPads to draw now, why do they need more? Simple. Convenience. To emulate pressure, you have to fiddle around with tons of sliders and spend more time to get the same results you'd get just by pressing down a little harder on a Wacom digitizer.

Now Apple should always take battery usage into consideration, but I say if they're gonna do it, don't half ass it. They should go with at least 512 levels of pressure. They should try to make it feel as natural and intuitive as possible while using a minimal amount of battery, but not sacrifice so much it's nearly useless.

And remember, Apple focuses on the majority so they would think that way as well.

The thing with the majority is that they'll use what they've got, and ignore what they don't. Like I know this older lady who has a Galaxy Note 2. She's hardly what I'd call a geek. Doesn't even have a computer at the house. But damn if she doesn't love that stylus. She's drawing pictures, writing notes, doing all kinds of stuff with it.

When I showed her my iPad, the first thing she did was pull out the stylus and attempt to write notes with it. Needless to say, she ended up being rather disappointed when it didn't work, and will probably never buy an iPad because of that.

So what does the majority want? Who knows? What seems like a useless feature to some, might be a killer feature to others. Having a bit of stylus support would, in my opinion, help Apple out far more than hurt them.
 
The Surface Pro is a tablet for people with real performance needs. I understand that the iPad crowd doesn't want to pay for those specs when they can get a Facebook machine for half the money.

Comparing it to the Air is daft. The Air is not a tablet, the Surface is not an ultrabook.

Must me tough having to justify the kool-aid all the time to fit in.
Stop trolling, thanks
 
There are few flaws with your post here. Firstly, MS Windows XP or any version of Windows isn't "the world's most popular operating system". It's the most used. Don't confuse the two. Also did you notice that you said "millions of employees to this day use XP at work?" Right, because they have an I.T. department that runs and maintains the upkeep of the system in the background. The employees aren't doing crap on the system but reading emails, running spread sheets or running any proprietary software.
And you have so much to defend MS for against Apple and Google. Why are here? Just curious? I run an insurance office where we do nothing but paperwork, presentations and such and while MS office is "used", we don't highly depend upon it. Do you actually use Office for business or are you spouting theories? I use it real world and it's relevance is becoming lesser and lesser. And I'm not sure why you thought Ballmer had much to do with XP. Gates was around at the time.

Why am I here? I have been on this board much longer than you have been and much more active than you are, I am an Apple fan, but not a fanboy. Microsoft is on top of my S-list, but I am objective enough to give them credit when credit is due.

I am a consultant. I worked at over 18 different clients from 5 different industries. I can tell you I am shocked how much Excel in particular is used; so many of the 'bells and whistles' (Data menu specifically), which I fankly find confusing and clumsy, are used.

It has its flaws especially in an enterprise environment, But it IS used.
 
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He's been saying such things since the iPad 1 was merely an announcement.

And it takes a while to move something as large as Office. Or do you think that just because Apple was able to provide a neutered version of a neutered Office Suite quickly that Microsoft can as well?
 
I bought a surface. Worst mistake ever! It's basically a dust catcher. In fact I turned it on today and now the wifi card isn't working. This is actually the 2nd one, the first one was a lemon and returned & replaced within the first 30 days. For my experience... its slow. Very slow. And the microsoft store for apps has not changed much since I tried the windows phone several years ago (its now my kitchen calculator). The store is a ghost town with nothing much to download other than xbox compatible games.

I have finally learned my lesson which is to stop straying from apple! :p
 
Come back in 6 months time and re-read my response here:

1) Way too expensive for a "competing" device against the iPad. $449 should've been $229.

2) Nvidia components; it's not gonna be even competitive against the A7X

3) 1080 resolution 16:9 aspect ratio; DOA.

4) Microsoft Surface name - the failure stigma.

5) When the iPad mini 2 w/retina and iPad 5 w/A7X debuts, no one will want to buy a surface 2.

I don't care what you say about the iPad being a toy, a facebook device, whatever you name it - one thing is for sure: the apps that are on the ipad and the hardware itself just blows away everything for the past 4 years.

This surface 2 is just a rehash of the surface 1. If you want to seriously compete, do not name it Microsoft Surface, do not make 16:9, do not market it as an Office device. For f'sake, people want an iPad to NOT DO WORK even though it is fully capable of doing real work.

This is no doubt Steve Ballmer's road map to success. Dump more money into a 2nd generation device when the 1st one is a total failure. Makes logical sense :rolleyes:
 
I bought a surface. Worst mistake ever! It's basically a dust catcher. In fact I turned it on today and now the wifi card isn't working. This is actually the 2nd one, the first one was a lemon and returned & replaced within the first 30 days. For my experience... its slow. Very slow. And the microsoft store for apps has not changed much since I tried the windows phone several years ago (its now my kitchen calculator). The store is a ghost town with nothing much to download other than xbox compatible games.

I have finally learned my lesson which is to stop straying from apple! :p

We must have vastly different devices. My Surface RT might not have a few games I'd like, but overall it has enough. And that isn't even mentioning the emulators. Oh, there are some apps that I do miss.

Goolgle Currents is one of them, a good Google Drive app is another. Though, to be honest, I can just use Drive on the desktop-class browser that I'm using to type up this very post.

Maybe it's because my app needs are lower, since I'm using this for web surfing, typing up documents, messaging people, checking my email, etc. I can hardly wait for 8.1, the mail app is a lot better in the RTM version from what I've seen. But that doesn't come out until October 18th.
 
For f'sake, people want an iPad to NOT DO WORK even though it is fully capable of doing real work.

You just nailed it right on the head. The iPad is a fun device you can do a little work on (for now). The Surface Pro is a tablet you do work on.

It'll never sell as much as the iPad, no. But it's not competing in the same field, either. The RT is, and hey, guess what? The RT sucks. But saying no one wants a Pro because people use iPads a certain way is being very short sighted.

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that's a niche lol try again lol

What is that? Like...a point? It's something people do that can't be done on an ipad. You asked, I told you.
 
You just nailed it right on the head. The iPad is a fun device you can do a little work on (for now). The Surface Pro is a tablet you do work on.

It'll never sell as much as the iPad, no. But it's not competing in the same field, either. The RT is, and hey, guess what? The RT sucks. But saying no one wants a Pro because people use iPads a certain way is being very short sighted.

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What is that? Like...a point? It's something people do that can't be done on an ipad. You asked, I told you.
Microsoft seem to think they are competing in the same field. The bottom line the masses are moving away from windows.
 
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