Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Microsoft Surface Estimated to Have Sold Only 1.7 Million Units Since Launch
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Microsoft has a history of nailing it by the third version, I'm sure that they will be working on and making a better Surface. We'll see.
Microsoft still doesn't get it. In the name of trying to present something Apple-like and "cool," they try but wind up with Bizarro-world interpretations of what Apple is and creates (examples: Zune and the Microsoft Surface commercials).
They are so cynical in their corporate worldview and so lack an understanding of their potential audiences, it's like Ballmer thinks, "Yeah, let's add a bunch of young people and have them do some hippity-hop dancing thing...that'll help sell more Surfaces!"
I see your point, I do agree with you. But what many consumers don't understand, and that's MS fault for crappy marketing, is a windows tablet CAN be just as good as an ipad at being what I like to call a "dumb tablet". You can go into Metro and never ever touch the desktop if you don't need to, but if you want to run legacy programs you have that option, if you want to draw on a wacom screen that option is there, if you want to view a flash or java website that option is there, etc etc.
I also understand if you don't want to give up your laptop, but many of us do. I know the ipad wasn't marketed towards replacing a laptop, but still many of us had that hope when it was released. I'm just saying that with a windows tablet it is VERY viable to consider giving up your laptop instead of carrying both around. I do disagree that you need a laptop though, and that disagreement is based primarily around the fact that I have a windows tablet and you have an ipad. Nothing wrong with either scenario, but in my scenario I don't "need" a laptop.
Sentiments aside the numbers speak truth.
Personally I like MS morso than android and wanted to give MS a fair try. I wanted to like the surface very much but as soon as I began messing with it I quickly realised that it simply failed at the two most important aspects for me. It's a grossly weak lap top and a hugely wack tablet. From there I turned my back on it and forgot it even existed until this thread.
Personally I like MS morso than android and wanted to give MS a fair try. I wanted to like the surface very much but as soon as I began messing with it I quickly realised that it simply failed at the two most important aspects for me. It's a grossly weak lap top and a hugely wack tablet. From there I turned my back on it and forgot it even existed until this thread.
You're totally right, they should have made a mobile OS that works pretty good on an ARM SoC (maybe the Tegra 3 for example), made it 90% "metro" with the promise to move the remaining ASAP. If only they made that mythical device, with the ARM chip.
IF ONLY.
:|
It was part of a larger quote that he gave to Isaacson during the interviews he gave to him for his biography. Isaacson left it word for word to close out the book. I'm assuming he said it sometime around 2011.
I think their low numbers have to do with their advertising. When I bought mine, I used it in our band for that clicking noise it makes when you connect the keyboard. I also took it to work and during a meeting jumped on top of the table and started dancing with it. It was only a month after purchasing it that someone sat me down and pointed out it was actually a computer! 
That gimp Nvidia SOC certainly doesn't help MSFT's cause, that's for sure,
I swear those Tegra chips are absolute ****.
All fair points. I think in your case win8/metro works well.
But for real estate brokers, sales people etc. they just can't deal with a laptop if they're mobile - ie not a desk based worker.
iPad sells 57m per year or thereabouts. It goes a long way to show that in the example of the real estate broker most just want something simple that compliments their lifestyle and job.
RT/Pro sold about a million. So he's there are people who need the hybrid. They're just in fewer quantities or buy a laptop instead.
When I was with the broker I asked her what she used before the iPad. She said nothing. She used to print out all the apartments off the web in her office and show them to clients. They'd throw out what they didn't want and then she'd walk around with the print outs, making notes on each one as she visited each property with her client. Prior to that just a note pad and pen.
In this context she no longer needs to go to the office. It's all on her iPad. She can work from anywhere and between appointments without the need to return to HQ. She also told me that if a client is undecided she emails the notes from each viewing to assist them to help make up their minds. She said she closes so many deals now whereas before the client would just get confused and not select a property and move to a new broker.
I was an awe or this process. This person was by no means tech savvy. She simply applied some basic technology to make her job so much more effective and successful. For me that's the difference. Arm this lady with a laptop and it becomes a hindrance not an asset.
No one ever said "wait for Windows 8" once 7 come out. It's still considered to be one of the best OS releases around. People were only looking forward to Win8 to see what it'd add.
Actually its about 27 actual sales when you take out the copies that shows have been using (like Under the Dome and Elementary)...
What would have worked this time around, would have been Windows RT for tablets, Windows 8 for desktops,
Now, the windows 8 Desktop version would have been an iteration on Windows 7, complete with a start menu, and an "RT interface" so you could run your RT apps on it (id love apple to add into OSX the ability to launch my iPads on the desktop sometimes)
The surface would be as it is now,
but the surface PRO, that would have used the orientation sensors and perhaps a sensor to know if the kickstand was open or not to appear like the RT when using it as a tablet, but as soon as you put it down, with keyboard attached, it "knew" and flicked back to full desktop OS.
Sadly MS instead delivered a Tablet centric touch desktop OS into a market where people dont have touch screens and thought it would sell the tablet version if they looked the same....
But then MS never seem to get the product placement right (Xbox One, media device that plays games, instead of a games device that has some media functions which is what the core audience actually wants)
Hopefully they will get shut of barmy balmer and get someone in to turn the ship around
Last edited:
I hate to tell you this, but the iPad is pretty popular with writers. Set it in portrait and pair it with a keyboard, and it's a perfect little document machine.
The iPad isn't popular because it appeals only to the lowest common denominator. It's popular because it can do a little bit of everything in a very portable package, and it's only going to get better at doing a little bit of everything as time goes on. Eventually, it's going to come a point when tablets are going head to head with laptops.
For a lot of people, it IS still needed.
There are millions of crappy little access databases out there that provide "glue" logic to link business processes together.
And there's still no real replacement for excel.
If Libreoffice or iWork can do what you need, good for you, but if you try to do too much beyond the basics it just doesn't work as well.
I mean, I tested Base recently as an access replacement. I opened it, created a table with a single field, a pimary key integer, and it crashed...
Its not there yet.
Yes .. one of them has been there even before the iPhone. It's called XBox .. Ever heard of that?
Or even a good one when there's an established leader.
For the Surface to succeed it had to be superior to the iPad in a paradigm-changing way.
Yup. This is the biggest problem with the RT. The Surface isn't a bad product, it's just that there's nothing about it that grabs you by the face and screams "BUY ME CUZ I'M AWESOME AND 1000X BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE" to the general public. It's only one higher end tablet among many in what's becoming a crowded market, and one without strong app support at that.
Though going against an established leader, it was bound to not be a 100% surefire hit from day one. MS has to start from somewhere, and that start isn't necessarily going to be as strong as what the competition already offers, no matter how hard they try. The biggest problem wasn't that it was a slow seller, but that Ballmer expected a billion of them to fly off the shelves from day one.
Well the biggest mistake with RT, besides confusing and splitting their customers, was the notion that they could out ipad the ipad. If everything else is equal, battery life, screen, thinness, weight, size, then what really matters is the App market, basically MS came to a gunfight with a pocket knife. They left their gatling gun at home, which is all the legacy programs windows has. They were morons for trying to compete directly with the ipad on an app level.