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Microsoft Retail Stores Offering at Least $200 for iPad Trade-In
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And you need time for devs to optimise their apps for 64-bit. You can't expect an overnight transition. If you release 64-bit hardware the day people absolutely need it, they time apps are ready for it will be too late.
That's a nice offer MS, but not happening. If you give me one for free I'll take it... and then probably sell it to help pay for a newer iPad/iPhone.
MS isn't necessarily expecting a lot of switches.
This is as much about marketing the surface as an upgrade to the iPad to new tablet users, as it is to motivating switches.
And assuredly, if they get more than a million ipads, you can be sure they'll be marketing that too.
More importantly, the A7/M7 is being groomed for the iPad, and the iPad's future is that of a production machine rather than merely a consumption machine. As Cook said, the A7/M7 is future-proofing the product line, and doing so before the competition. And we will be seeing OS/X and iOS merging also
If Apple did this you would be applauding them for their amazing business skills.
Sure, the lack of native apps for remote connection and collaboration, the lack of APIs for video, photo manipulation and low latency audio.
A higher resolution allows you to see more of a remote desktop session at a time allowing you to see the code and various property windows at the same time from the remote machine. With an RT, you are stuck with a 768 resolution or you would have to scroll the remote session.
No LTE means that you have to rely on finding WIFI to work remotely.
Everytime Microsoft sells a Surface (RT or Pro) they lose money. So they are going to do the sensible thing... They are going to sell them to their employees for full price...
Can't blame them for trying to make their money back...
It does seem like a double standard at times. But Apple would be coming from a position of dominance. Microsoft is coming from a position of failure so it's hard not to see this as being desperate.
I think this trade in plan will backfire on Microsoft. It's a bad PR move. IMO most people are laughing at it and MS will have to pull this campaign to save face.
Except that isn't how the retina display works. It has a higher resolution, but it isn't showing more on screen, there is just more pixel data within the same space, making images and whatnot sharper and less grainy.
Having said that, I agree that RT is a heaping pile of crap. The Surface Pro is the only viable alternative.
I was probably not clear enough about my point. It will be a dud if MS doesn't invest in marketing that goes beyond the US. The surface tablets are here confined to places in shops between acer and whatever other tablets, while Samsung and Apple tablets have dedicated displays.
In addition Apple will put a massive campaign behind the new iPad. The general public outside of the US doesn't know about the existence of a MS tablet, while the iPad can be seen everywhere.
It's not about the quality of the product, but about the reach and quality of the marketing. The Surface will be a dud outside of the US.
Edit: it has been on the market for quite a while. It IS a dud...
Err.... you have built in remote computing. Don't make it seem otherwise. As for the resolution difference, that doesn't make any sense. An iPad with a retina display is effectively the same resolution as an iPad 2, but it does pixel doubling.
Fine.
Tell me this mystic point.
I think your logic is pretty bad, comparing a car and the functionality it gets year to year to something like an iPad and technology, where people are expecting new things. Seriously.
The fact that you got 40 thumbs up is embarrassing.
Mmm, I think you'll see the 5S/5C series decline in numbers, for a variety of reasons. First is the "meh" factor. Nobody outside of the aforementioned "zealotry" had that "ZOMG!" moment during the reveals of the new phones, and although plenty of folks have nice things to say about them, nobody's saying "Dear god, you MUST upgrade now!" Second, the competition has gotten what can only be described as *really ****ing good*. Whether your flavor of choice is Android, Windows Phone, or somehow, mysteriously, Blackberry, literally every major platform choice is a good, valid choice. They all sport pretty much the same set of "must have" apps, with very few exceptions, and the others that are represented only in terms of raw numbers, let's be honest, simply do not matter except to the trolls who think that somehow, having 40,000 fart apps is preferable to having a dozen. Finally, I think the other reason you'll see a decline in iPhone marketshare is the very clear case that the majority of the growth opportunity in the smartphone and tablet market going forward is in the budget range, where the customers are people who either can't or won't spend $500+ on a tablet or $2-300 on a phone. And those are markets Apple is simply ignoring. I think their approach is to their own peril, but--that's okay, that's how markets work. Somebody sees an opportunity, makes a mint, gets cocky and misses the next chance so somebody else takes it. That's all good news.
The long story, shortened: we're still at the beginning of the so-called "tablet war" and "smartphone war", and it's really only now, in 2013, that things are starting to become a lot more interesting.
No matter who ends up on top (if anyone does, which I kind of doubt), the good news is that consumers win, because we'll have more good choices at better price points than ever before.
I agree that Microsoft spent a lot of time living on its past successes, but that wasn't pre-2000, it was post-XP. Windows XP launched slowly and tepidly, with much anger by the public, but then it went on to sell a billion copies. When it was clear that XP was an unrivaled success...Microsoft languished. They took over 5 years to deliver Vista, which then turned out to be a complete trainwreck that didn't even have a fraction of the changes it was supposed to have, yet ran like a slug glued to sandpaper. They were in a great position with smartphones (still called pocketpc phones, of course, heh), but there they languished too, trying to cram the Windows desktop UI onto a tiny screen with a tiny stylus (which was sadly one of the best mobile OS's at the time).
But the failure of Vista (which still sold twice as many Macs as have EVER been sold) was a wakeup call for Microsoft, and they really did start turning things around. Windows 7 was a superb operating system that will continue to have a life for years to come. It fixed everything that was wrong with Vista, made performance a priority and Windows began to slim down. In turn, Windows 8 is smaller, lighter and faster than 7, while offering more features. When they introduced Windows phone 7, it was pretty clear they were taking the critically acclaimed but commercially floppy Zune UI design and making it into something different from the 30+ years of Apple/Microsoft's endless copying of Xerox Parc's UI. But watching them build out that operating system over the 2 years they sold it was something worth considering: as each new update added features, the OS became faster, not slower. It used less CPU power. It used less RAM. Revision after revision improved it, right up until the end of the line with WP 7.8. Try using an iPhone 3G with its last OS, iOS 4: it's a miserable, slow, broken experience. Now try using a Samsung Focus with its last OS, Windows Phone 7.8. It's super usable, it's faster than the same device 2 years earlier with the original OS build, and it's got way more features and a well refined UI. That's not failure--that's learning, that's changing direction, that's optimizing the way you build your products.
There's no denying that Surface and Surface Pro didn't sell as well as iPads. Surface didn't offer enough to justify the $500 pricepoint, and it took MONTHS for Microsoft to get around to communicating to people why the pro cost $900+ and was worth it (and as a Surface Pro owner who traded his MacBook pro to get a Surface Pro, I'll tell you--it's an excellent device that's harmed more by MS's bad communication than by anything wrong with the device itself).
With any luck, MS's messaging post-reorganization will improve. I sincerely hope they have a unified communications team who actually understands the products and is in charge of public facing information, because let's face it: they have made a cluster**** of their communication even when they were offering an excellent product.
Finally, we have to be honest here: Windows 8 tablets are not going anywhere any time soon, and neither are RT tablets. In fact, we already have several new devices announced, with great specs and finally some sensible pricing. That's going to make a difference. A lot of customers out there want a tablet but can't sacrifice the functionality of a laptop and can't afford both. With Windows 8.1 tablet hybrids, they won't *need* to sacrifice one or the other. That's the vision of where PC's are headed, and as the next couple of years progress, you're going to see more and more desktop AND laptop PC's that are tablets with desktop stands in the former case, and tablets with laptop docks in the latter. The more that evolution continues, the more dominant Windows tablets will become. It's only a matter of time and attrition.
But the failure of Vista (which still sold twice as many Macs as have EVER been sold) was a wakeup call for Microsoft, and they really did start turning things around. Windows 7 was a superb operating system that will continue to have a life for years to come. It fixed everything that was wrong with Vista, made performance a priority and Windows began to slim down. In turn, Windows 8 is smaller, lighter and faster than 7, while offering more features. When they introduced Windows phone 7, it was pretty clear they were taking the critically acclaimed but commercially floppy Zune UI design and making it into something different from the 30+ years of Apple/Microsoft's endless copying of Xerox Parc's UI. But watching them build out that operating system over the 2 years they sold it was something worth considering: as each new update added features, the OS became faster, not slower. It used less CPU power. It used less RAM. Revision after revision improved it, right up until the end of the line with WP 7.8. Try using an iPhone 3G with its last OS, iOS 4: it's a miserable, slow, broken experience. Now try using a Samsung Focus with its last OS, Windows Phone 7.8. It's super usable, it's faster than the same device 2 years earlier with the original OS build, and it's got way more features and a well refined UI. That's not failure--that's learning, that's changing direction, that's optimizing the way you build your products.
There's no denying that Surface and Surface Pro didn't sell as well as iPads. Surface didn't offer enough to justify the $500 pricepoint, and it took MONTHS for Microsoft to get around to communicating to people why the pro cost $900+ and was worth it (and as a Surface Pro owner who traded his MacBook pro to get a Surface Pro, I'll tell you--it's an excellent device that's harmed more by MS's bad communication than by anything wrong with the device itself).
With any luck, MS's messaging post-reorganization will improve. I sincerely hope they have a unified communications team who actually understands the products and is in charge of public facing information, because let's face it: they have made a cluster**** of their communication even when they were offering an excellent product.
Finally, we have to be honest here: Windows 8 tablets are not going anywhere any time soon, and neither are RT tablets. In fact, we already have several new devices announced, with great specs and finally some sensible pricing. That's going to make a difference. A lot of customers out there want a tablet but can't sacrifice the functionality of a laptop and can't afford both. With Windows 8.1 tablet hybrids, they won't *need* to sacrifice one or the other. That's the vision of where PC's are headed, and as the next couple of years progress, you're going to see more and more desktop AND laptop PC's that are tablets with desktop stands in the former case, and tablets with laptop docks in the latter. The more that evolution continues, the more dominant Windows tablets will become. It's only a matter of time and attrition.
Steve would never have allowed this...
This is just sad
Allowed what? Microsoft to take iPad trade ins? He wouldn't really have had any choice in the matter