And that is called an ad hominem. When you have no desire (or ability?) to discuss or argue the points, attack the other person. Another logical fallacy.
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Microsoft Releases Pricing on Surface Tablet, Ships October 26th
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And that is called an ad hominem. When you have no desire (or ability?) to discuss or argue the points, attack the other person. Another logical fallacy.
Not the sound but the way the Smart Cover snaps on magnetically was an Apple innovation. Prior to that, Microsoft would have bundled a keyboard that would have been attached, perhaps a slider or a reversible cover.
Nonetheless, I like that MS is following Apple's lead on good design. I haven't used or bought a Microsoft product in 10 years but I would buy a Surface or a Windows 8 phone if I were to become unhappy with the future of iOS and OSX.
I still don't get it. Why would I even want to attach a keyboard? So I can use it like a notebook? But I bought an iPad so I could use it on the bus, or lying on my back on the sofa etc. the last thing I want attached to it is a keyboard. So what else does it do, what makes it special? I have no idea, other than it clicks a lot. Oh, and you get a version of Office with it. Great. Now I'm excited. In a strange way, I want this to succeed, because it will drive competition, and that will drive innovation, and that's good for everybody. But I have no idea why anyone would want to lay their cash down for a device that hasn't even been properly demoed, let alone a hands-on.
And Ballmer talking about dedicated devices for dedicated markets? How is this a dedicated device? It's fragmented already, and it's not even released never mind generation 2. I think it has turkey written all over it, and that's a bit of a shame.
In a strange way, I want this to succeed, because it will drive competition, and that will drive innovation, and that's good for everybody. But I have no idea why anyone would want to lay their cash down for a device that hasn't even been properly demoed, let alone a hands-on.And Ballmer talking about dedicated devices for dedicated markets? How is this a dedicated device? It's fragmented already, and it's not even released never mind generation 2. I think it has turkey written all over it, and that's a bit of a shame.
Single sign-on is a big seller for me but I am not terribly willing to give up everything for the walled garden of RT just yet. Maybe I will be in the Atom/IVB tablet territory but it will be under Windows 8 + desktop environment. Then again, where am I going to fit in a laptop that can play Battlefield 3 into that mix and my budget?
Oh and yes, I saw the specifications wars starting up already. Were not these devices supposed to transcend that...somehow?
That isn't an ad hominem attack, man. It's more thinly veiled sarcasm and attempted character assassination than anything.
It's like this. If someone were to walk up to me on the street and say the the sky is made of swiss cheese, and that gas going up 15 cents is proof of an illuminati conspiracy, I wouldn't argue with him. I'd call him a dipstick.
And if he comes back at me with "YOU CANNOT REFUTE ME WITHOUT RESORTING TO AD HOMINEM", then I'd say "well, the fact you think the sky is made of swiss cheese is enough to prove you wrong, and me right".
In other words, there's no point in arguing with someone who has a pointless argument. It's not ad hominem if you call them out on that. In fact, ad hominem isn't really insulting people at all. It isn't a logical fallacy because you're not using the insult to refute their argument. I'm just making fun of you. Now if I were to say "well, that argument is stupid, because you like pixie sticks, and people who like pixie sticks are stupid", then that's an ad hominem attack.
Big difference. The more you know.
It's like this. If someone were to walk up to me on the street and say the the sky is made of swiss cheese, and that gas going up 15 cents is proof of an illuminati conspiracy, I wouldn't argue with him. I'd call him a dipstick.
And if he comes back at me with "YOU CANNOT REFUTE ME WITHOUT RESORTING TO AD HOMINEM", then I'd say "well, the fact you think the sky is made of swiss cheese is enough to prove you wrong, and me right".
In other words, there's no point in arguing with someone who has a pointless argument. It's not ad hominem if you call them out on that. In fact, ad hominem isn't really insulting people at all. It isn't a logical fallacy because you're not using the insult to refute their argument. I'm just making fun of you. Now if I were to say "well, that argument is stupid, because you like pixie sticks, and people who like pixie sticks are stupid", then that's an ad hominem attack.
Big difference. The more you know.
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Would love to sit down and discuss this further with you. Though I never worked for MS (came close once), I have 20 years in IT and lots of experience working with them through partnerships and OEM relationships, so I'm fairly well versed in all things MS, as well as knowing lots and lots of people who used to work there (I'm ex-IBM, so I worked with lots of ex-MS people), but it's such a complex and big subject my view is small compared to others and always an interesting topic to discuss.
My feeling is that this behemoth is dying, and slowly. They are first and foremost a software company, built on something, whether you believe a monopoly or as you say "a leveraged opportunity" (a fun point to discuss some other time), and they find themselves in a world where that former ubiquitousness of their OS doesn't apply any longer (though they struggle to find ways to prolong it).
They won't die for a long time, due to their entrenchment in systems, especially and mostly related to the business world. If they were mostly in the home vs. in the office, they'd die sooner, but that's not the case. That said, nothing they come out with any more is new or innovative, they can't even begin to lead in any way, they merely follow, and more and more by years behind others. They never were leaders, but they just seem to lag further and further behind these days, and nothing I see contradicts this feeling of mine that they are dying, especially not this latest product (which is a deviation from what they are - they are a S/W company, not a H/W company, what are they doing??!!). They are dying and lost and using an odometer as a compass to find their way out of the world in which they find themselves. Sad story really.
Eh, hard to say. I admit the Smart Cover is a very well designed and pretty damn clever, but I wouldn't say it's Apple's alone. And even if it is in that instance, you could say the MS keyboard is an innovation upon their innovation, considering it does a good bit more than just snap on. It's an improvement upon a previous idea, which means they're not straight up copying. They're innovating themselves.
Yeah. Same here. If there's one thing I'm truly thankful of Apple for, it's making attractive, well designed hardware a necessity to compete in the marketplace.
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Intel Core i5 in a tablet seems pretty cool for the Surface Pro...Main reason I want it.
They're hardly dying. No other company even comes close to matching them in enterprise. Sure, there are alternatives, but none of them quite offer as complete a package as MS does. You can hit up Ars Technica, or any other tech site that generally knows what they're talking about and see that MS is still as strong as they've ever been, and continually improving on that front.
What's in danger here is their hold on the consumer market, which, while not quite beaten in pure numbers, isn't nearly as secure as it once was.
Thanks for agreeing with me. That is exactly what I said.
BTW, their marketshare in mobiles and tablets, which is where the world is going is????
They are not as ubiquitous as they once were, they have nothing interesting to offer except entrenchment, they will find themselves just another s/w company at some point, with no more market share than others.
It is an interesting subject to discuss, but it will also be (as I said earlier) a business school case study.
And what benefit does that provide you? Does Grandma or Mom or Brother/Sister not in IT understand the benefit of that "feature"? Do you even know how it performs? Why do you think that Apple stopped advertising detailed specs in its devices? It's because the world doesn't understand or want to understand details of specs to that degree, and also because they are largely irrelevant. i5 vs. A6 vs. AMD, who the ****** cares? Which is better? Only engineers and morons would argue one or the other, like a bunch of men with greasy hands standing around a car with its hood/bonnet up while looking at the engine feeling that their manhood is wrapped up in knowing the parts of the engine and being able to comment on them. The world is moving beyond that time/era. Do I want a device that performs? Do I want one that performs well, hell yes. Do I care what processor it has within? Not one bit, and Intel can go suck a lollipop for all I care, they and others want you to care, but we as consumers should not care one bit, and consumers largely don't. It's the IT crowd that haven't figured this out yet.
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I'm surprised people are shocked at Microsoft's pricing of Surface. Their biggest competition is there OEM partners. If they price this too cheap then they really screw over Lenovo, Sony, Asus, Dell, Acer, HP, etc. I'm sure they were sensitive to their OEMs when pricing this.
As far as the touch cover I think $120 is ridiculous. Even if it works it's obvious it's not going to be anything like typing on a good laptop keyboard. I find it interesting that Microsoft's so focused on the magnetic attachment of the cover versus the fact that the cover can be used as a keyboard. Makes me wonder how good the keyboard actually is. Since Apple has already done the magnetic cover that's the last thing Microsoft should be focusing on.
As far as the touch cover I think $120 is ridiculous. Even if it works it's obvious it's not going to be anything like typing on a good laptop keyboard. I find it interesting that Microsoft's so focused on the magnetic attachment of the cover versus the fact that the cover can be used as a keyboard. Makes me wonder how good the keyboard actually is. Since Apple has already done the magnetic cover that's the last thing Microsoft should be focusing on.
The consumer and enterprise markets are entirely separate. MS could lose the consumer market and still be absolutely massive, just not as massive as they once were.
Though considering their popularity in the console market, which they're slowly transitioning to an AppleTV like service through software, it's doubful they'll ever lose it completely.
Mobile? Dropped significantly, now slowly, slowly, sllloooowwwyyy rising. They're not beaten their either. Rather, they took an unexpected beating from the iPhone.
They never were truly ubiquitous in the mobile space. Their smartphones were more enterprise toys than anything, with barely any hold in the consumer market. Computers? Hell, the vast majority of the world still owns Windows laptops and desktops. Enterprise? You can't throw a rock without hitting 500,000 licensees. Considering their recent move into virtualization with Windows Server 2012, it's doubtful they'll be going anywhere there.
They're not dying. They're nowhere near dying. They just finally have some competition.
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And that price better be for the clicky keyboard. If it's the flat one, I'll be tempted to smack someone.
Hell, even if it is the clicky keyboard, that's way too much. I was expecting, like, $80 at most.
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I love this argument.
"You want to run Photoshop? WHO CARES? Only idiots insecure about their manhood run Photoshop! The real world is playing Angry Birds".
You're finally getting there. This is what I'm saying. I'm not saying that to insult you, (please understand this) meaning that I don't want to imply that you don't understand, but this statement is the crux of what I've been saying all along. They were ubiquitous, and that was their strength (and it brought money and they used it to bolster their ubiquitousness), and that's why they've survived so long.
Today (as you say) they have competition, and given the fact that they have nothing beyond entrenchment (which is my opinion), they will not survive in the same way except to become legacy when the world has moved on further. They aren't leading, they are merely entrenched (please prove me otherwise), and the world in computing and mobile devices is so different from where it was when MS first started. They can't steal or copy or buy like they used to and still compete, they must do something interesting, and I've yet to see anything that comes close to interesting. The Courier was something that had real potential, but was killed. The Surface is a huge copy of what's already out there, so why do it, especially as a s/w company?? Office, Windows, big effing yawn. Nothing new here, just same old crap updated so OEMs can sell new hardware. Give me something new and maybe you'll start to convince me that MS isn't just walking off the sprint they just finished.
Lol the fanbois are out in full force today. $100 less than an iPad with the same storage, AND comes with word/excel/PowerPoint and runs apps that will also run on win8? Yes thank you. Sold the ipad3 last week and preordered the surface this morning. A superthin mechanical keyboard with touchpad doubling as a cover? Sweet! Turns the thing into a full blown laptop for heavy office use or RDP/Citrix. Sccm management and more. This will be a big hit in the enterprise. I already have a ton of clients clamping for us to roll these out. The Pro version will be even easier to integrate.
They have plenty more than just entrenchment (thought admittedly, that does help them quite a bit). The problem is, you're writing off everything they've done as copycat devices, and not paying heed to some of the interesting things they have done.
Like MS actually has more multitouch experience than even Apple. They've been working on the big table Surface (called Smart Table or whatever these days) since the early 2000's. The current Surface as we see it now is the culmination of what MS believes to be the perfect tablet, which they've been working on (and admittedly haven't had much success at) since around the late 90's. Their idea of the tablet is one that's capable of doing everything a PC can do on a smaller scale, vs. the media consumption/light productivity focus of the current Android/Apple tablets.
Whether their idea of the perfect tablet will net them huge profits or not remains to be seen. After all, the iPad is the perfect device for your average person who wants nothing more than to watch movies, check their email, and play around on the web. They don't need a more powerful device. But some people do. It might not be the absolutely endless amounts of grandmas who want a tablet to play solitaire on, but there is a market. If MS can address both it and the grandmas, then they have a very, very good chance of beating Apple.
That's a pretty big "if", of course. But there's plenty more to MS and the Surface than it being a Me Too device.
http://www.apple.com/imac/
http://www.apple.com/macmini/
I must see a different Apple website than you... the one I see still advertises i5's and i7's in it's CONSUMER products.
Completely misunderstood my point. If you need to run Photoshop, that's the issue, not which chip it requires to run, because people that use it don't give a rat's arse which chip it runs on, just whether it runs or not. But, keep looking at that engine and criticising it because it doesn't have pistons while ignoring the fact it's a rotary engine every bit as good and better in many/most cases.
Now, whether a tablet is the device you should run Photoshop is another discussion altogether, but let's for the moment stick to what I was saying about the world not needing to care about the components that make up the device. If you don't believe me, go ask all the iPad and iPhone and iPod Touch users which chip runs their device, and bring the results back here. If it's more than 10% that can accurately answer the question I'll declare you winner.
The reason why the Android market share is so high in phones is tons and tons of cheap phones running Android. If I want to buy a cheap phone today to make phone calls, I have the choice between some truly ugly phone for £20, or a halfway acceptable looking Nokia for £40, or a nice looking phone with a touch screen for £80 - and the nice looking phone with a touch screen runs Android, but will never be used as an Android phone.
In the tablet market it's different. You wouldn't buy a £100 Android tablet just because it's cheap, because it is useless. There's some minimum price for an Android tablet that is actually worth owning. And as you say, the Kindle Fire runs Android but is not really used as an Android tablet.
The thinner touch cover is $119 and the thicker type cover is $129. The models that have the touch cover included in the price only offer the black touch cover. If you want another color or the type covet you either purchase the 32GB model without the cover and add it separately (which is $20-$30 more than the bundled option) or if you really need the 64GB model you're spending $818-$828 just to get a different colored cover, or the thicker type cover. Stupid.
Are we seriously going to play this game? You're right, I should have said, "started to" before I said they stopped advertising the chips and memory details, but I didn't think someone would ignore trends and current and recently released products. You're parsing my words and trying to find ways to say, "I win" while ignoring the reality of the world in which we live.
Computing is changing, as it should. It's becoming much more something the average person accesses and possesses (being put into the hands of the average person, a great thing in my opinion), and the average consumer is not knowledgeable or aware of details of technology that one needed to know in the past to embrace and use these devices years ago. People shouldn't have to know about chips and memory, they should only have to worry about whether their apps run quickly (whatever stupid apps they may want to run<wry grin>). We should talk about features and benefits. Discussions such as i5 vs. ARM vs. AMD are doctor talk to the lay person, and are irrelevant in a world where CPUs aren't the only thing that matters anymore.
A few posts ago I challenged someone else to go out and ask every iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad user to indicate which chip runs their device; I now challenge you to ask them the same as well as how much memory their device has. Come back to me and if 10% can answer accurately, I'll declare you winner. If, however, less than 5% can accurately name chip and memory, you owe me a beer. How's that for fair?
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While there are some people out there who only look at high end chips simply because they're faster, they're not representative of everyone interested in specs. You don't know why dude guy above wants the i5 Surface. He might want it to run Photoshop, Zbrush, or hell, even games on it. Things he knows he can't do on an ARM based Surface. Don't assume he's one of those aforementioned idiots just because he specifically mentioned a processor.
To cut this down to the absolute minimum, just because Grandma aka the general public doesn't know the difference between an A6 and a door hinge doesn't suddenly mean that specs are suddenly less important than they were before. Truth be told, they never were that important to the general public to begin with, even back in the days of the gigahertz wars. They could tell you the difference between a Core2Duo and a Pentium IV about as well as they could tell you the difference between a 4S and a 5.
Hell, to turn your argument against you, why are all these people running out to buy iPhone 5? Specs don't matter, right? The 5 isn't a massive improvement upon the 4 line? Doesn't even look that much different. So why are they going out and buying them in droves, specially if they already owned a 4/4S. It's basically a spec bump revision upon the previous model. Yet there they are, buying it up because it's new and faster.
The only difference now and then is that instead of some random idiot going "IT BETTER CUZ IT GOT PINNIUM INNIT", it's now "IT BETTER CUZ 5 NOT 4 AND TALLER SCREEN". You want to disdain a whole group of people and paint them all with the same drooling idiot brush, then there you go. The equal opposite to the overly obsessed tech spec geek. Your general buying public.
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If it's an IPS screen, then it's high quality. Just rather underwhelming on the resolution front.
I live in the UK and a few years ago I attended a presentation from Microsoft Research and some of the things they presented were absolutely incredible. They had human recognition technology that identified people and their facial expressions as they walked up to a camera and they animated a computer-generated person in this world (or something like that, forgive if you're from MS research). The point is, it was incredible. I know they have lots of results of research, years and money spent.
I'm also familiar with technology that is discovered or created or innovated and yet never reaches market. I know that MS has put a lot into the Surface, but at market (today) it's nothing new, and a hugely ho-hum product, that merely copies what Apple did, by creating a new OS that runs on a mobile device and migrating it to a bigger device. It's nothing new, it's not leading edge, it's not anything very interesting to be honest and it won't do anything more than appeal to a die-hard M$**t following.
The fact they did a bunch of research before they released this product is moot when the world has already been selling things like this for years. They are late, and very at that, and not for any reason other than their sitting on their collective cushioned and gold-plated arses for the past few years to see what the world does, just so they can copy it (oh, they did spend $8.5B on Skype!). They don't lead, ever. They were led by a (brilliant) college dropout (who never had an original ideal other than to take or buy or steal what others had already created) before, and now they're led by a communications marketing person (brilliant in his former role), but who isn't a product manager.