So then Macbooks were junk too until a few years ago since they didn't sell well? Same could be said of Macs in general for about 30 years.
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Microsoft Surface Estimated to Have Sold Only 1.7 Million Units Since Launch
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So then Macbooks were junk too until a few years ago since they didn't sell well? Same could be said of Macs in general for about 30 years.
Microsoft's problem is they only sell when their product is cheaper. No one pays a premium for an MS product.
The only reason MS Windows became so populare was the business wanted to run MS Office and the PC/Windows platform was the lowest cost way to run Office. Others, him users only wanted to run a web browser and the PC/Windows thing was the lowest cost way. But now there are other ways.
It's the same with Android phones. Of course their unit sales beats Apple. My son just bought a $100 Andriod. They can be cheaper.
The only reason MS Windows became so populare was the business wanted to run MS Office and the PC/Windows platform was the lowest cost way to run Office. Others, him users only wanted to run a web browser and the PC/Windows thing was the lowest cost way. But now there are other ways.
It's the same with Android phones. Of course their unit sales beats Apple. My son just bought a $100 Andriod. They can be cheaper.
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Here is the problem.
IT IS WINDOWS.
Every single person I know has at least one major horror story using a windows computer. Why would they ever want to spend that much on a tablet version of it?
The reputation to windows with consumers is.. well a crappy experience.
Does not matter how many BILLIONS of dollars is spent by microsoft, that reputation of Windows is forever it's legacy.
That is why I and many others, will never go back.
FYI, I still have to use windows on a daily basis, and it is has not gotten better since I switched
IT IS WINDOWS.
Every single person I know has at least one major horror story using a windows computer. Why would they ever want to spend that much on a tablet version of it?
The reputation to windows with consumers is.. well a crappy experience.
Does not matter how many BILLIONS of dollars is spent by microsoft, that reputation of Windows is forever it's legacy.
That is why I and many others, will never go back.
FYI, I still have to use windows on a daily basis, and it is has not gotten better since I switched
Wouldn't be the case if
Surface was a huge disappointment to many...
- They didn't use the gimmicky Windows RT
- It was priced lower than iPad at launch
- Its accessories weren't so pricey
Surface was a huge disappointment to many...
classic disaster
It's not as though Microsoft did not see this coming. And if it did not then it was willful blindness.
There are no apps. Not then. Not now.
Apple was either brilliant or lucky in that it shelved the "early iPad" and switched to iPhone. Smart move. It didn't have many apps but there were a few and - hey - it's a phone ! So by the time they worked on iPad, there were tens/hundreds of thousands of iPhone apps and almost all would run on iPad.
Clear win.
So what does MS do ? Introduce a marginal-hardware tablet with no app ecosystem.
Does the result match expectations ? Yep. Everywhere but Redmond. Maybe Steve Ballmer's reality-distortion-field is stronger than Steve Jobs's - perhaps it is proportional to the speed at which the chairs move in the conference room ?
It's not as though Microsoft did not see this coming. And if it did not then it was willful blindness.
There are no apps. Not then. Not now.
Apple was either brilliant or lucky in that it shelved the "early iPad" and switched to iPhone. Smart move. It didn't have many apps but there were a few and - hey - it's a phone ! So by the time they worked on iPad, there were tens/hundreds of thousands of iPhone apps and almost all would run on iPad.
Clear win.
So what does MS do ? Introduce a marginal-hardware tablet with no app ecosystem.
Does the result match expectations ? Yep. Everywhere but Redmond. Maybe Steve Ballmer's reality-distortion-field is stronger than Steve Jobs's - perhaps it is proportional to the speed at which the chairs move in the conference room ?
I like their strategy. I like it a lot.
Too bad, Sinofsky was so convinced that clicking sound it made would have sold itself. That, and that optically-bonded display, whatever that meant.
Too bad, Sinofsky was so convinced that clicking sound it made would have sold itself. That, and that optically-bonded display, whatever that meant.
Here is the problem.
IT IS WINDOWS.
Every single person I know has at least one major horror story using a windows computer. Why would they ever want to spend that much on a tablet version of it?
The reputation to windows with consumers is.. well a crappy experience.
Does not matter how many BILLIONS of dollars is spent by microsoft, that reputation of Windows is forever it's legacy.
That is why I and many others, will never go back.
FYI, I still have to use windows on a daily basis, and it is has not gotten better since I switched
Exactly. The quality doesn't matter so much as the namesake in the eyes of most consumers. They know "Windows" to be that slow, outdated pile of junk they are forced to use at work every day. Despite the advances Microsoft has made to their products, the last thing anyone wants to do is spend several hundred dollars on something that has a Windows logo on the front of it.
Perception is reality. They will not achieve any kind of meaningful success until they dump the name "Windows" from their branding and marketing of these products.
Android was crap at first, so not too many people went over to it. Then it got to be useable, so all of the people that wanted something other than apple just because it's not cool for them to like apple finally had something to buy or switch to. Now Android is on par with iOS, so there really is no reason for the non-apple people to switch to Windows 8. At least not enough to make it a overly successful venture. Had they "surfaced" the same time as Android, there might actually be a real 3 way brawl for marketshare.
Yep, it is XD
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All they did was take a Windows laptop, make the keyboard optional, attempt to make it work better as a tablet by "borrowing" a few ideas for tablet UI, and make it a touch screen. In the end, it's still just a nice-looking netbook, their harebrained response to warnings that the PC market is going down the drain. "Quick, make a PC that's not considered a PC!"
In the process, they made the desktop Windows 8 worse. I heard it was like Windows 7 but with optional useless junk added and wasn't too bad, and I used it coming in with moderate expectations, but I'd honestly rather be stuck with Vista (with a non-HP computer) than that. I can't believe they messed it up that badly. The only thing good about it is the pretty, smooth animations.
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I honestly think it is a really cool product, i was gana buy one at the 350$ price range but found out the price reduction was just pretty much them removing the touch pad from the package and actually only cutting the price down buy 20-30$. If they were to include the touchpad at the 350$ price i would buy one instantly.
Can you check your email on it? Facebook? Browse the internet? Skype? So it does what 90% of the people use their tablets for.
hhmmm
Apple has swung for a lot of hits in the past few years, but it has had some disasters. Not many, but I well remember the "Macintosh Portable". Luggable, maybe. Perhaps something Apple had to build in order to teach it what not to do next time. Despite some creative innovations, it was rightly regarded as a dog.
Apple has swung for a lot of hits in the past few years, but it has had some disasters. Not many, but I well remember the "Macintosh Portable". Luggable, maybe. Perhaps something Apple had to build in order to teach it what not to do next time. Despite some creative innovations, it was rightly regarded as a dog.
This is kind of sad, but if Microsoft sold 1.7 million Surface tablets for $835 million and it wrote off $900 million on Surface tablets, it would be very easy to assume that there are roughly 1.7 million Surface tablets in inventory for Microsoft to distribute to its employees (there are roughly 100,000 of them).
It is time for all that productivity hardware to make Microsoft more productive!
The 90s Macs (up until when Steve Jobs fixed Apple) were all bad. Actually, the clamshell iBook was also pretty junky. MacBooks always sold better than this did and were pretty good after the rough start in 2006 with the recalls for hard drive problems.
The post I replied to said that Surface not selling well was proof that it wasn't a good product, hence my post about Apple sales for the first 30 years or so. Just because something doesn't sell in huge numbers doesn't mean it's junk. Or if it does, then Apple made junk for decades.
The problem with Surface (pro as that is the model the article is about) is the actual association with the word 'tablet'.
Tablets are either synominus with Apple iPad or much much cheaper Android tablets. Folks just do not associate full computer and tablet together.
Compare a $329 iPad mini, $499 retina iPad or even a $200 nexus 7 and $1000 for a what they deem a 'tablet' (not a computer) and it becomes pricy.
Yes the surface pro is much more than these other tablets - but the fact that its associated with the word 'tablet' at all means it is going to be directly compared with them on the basic level of what majority of users want tablets for. The average Joe Soap who is in the market for a 'tablet' doesn't necesserily want 'laptop or Ultrabook specifications' or even workload. The fundemental usage of the product is different, most people don't want the tablet to do more on it than the $200 nexus 7 (remember Android and very cheap Android tablets are the bigger percentage of tablet marketshare)...
So yes the surface pro is one of the most impressively powerful 'tablets' on the market - but clearly based on sales alone - incredibly powerful tablets are an incredibly NICHE area.
Surface Pro needs to drop the marketing towards the tablet crowd altogether and go after the high end - Ultrabook market.
Aiming at college Students in their commercials is silly, when most students / college goers would happily pay $399 for a cheap laptop for college for study / word processing and $200 on a cheap tablet for browsing / gaming and still be $300-$400 better off finacially than buying a surface Pro.
Microsoft simply got the market wrong on this one.
Its the reason why those expensive windows tablets of the past never made a dent in the market - fundamentally the surface pro is just like one of them. And the market for that item is just not that big....
What would be interesting is if we could see how many surface pros were sold against some of the other Ultrabooks on the market. I wonder how many other manufacturers sold 1.7 million Ultrabooks.
Tablets are either synominus with Apple iPad or much much cheaper Android tablets. Folks just do not associate full computer and tablet together.
Compare a $329 iPad mini, $499 retina iPad or even a $200 nexus 7 and $1000 for a what they deem a 'tablet' (not a computer) and it becomes pricy.
Yes the surface pro is much more than these other tablets - but the fact that its associated with the word 'tablet' at all means it is going to be directly compared with them on the basic level of what majority of users want tablets for. The average Joe Soap who is in the market for a 'tablet' doesn't necesserily want 'laptop or Ultrabook specifications' or even workload. The fundemental usage of the product is different, most people don't want the tablet to do more on it than the $200 nexus 7 (remember Android and very cheap Android tablets are the bigger percentage of tablet marketshare)...
So yes the surface pro is one of the most impressively powerful 'tablets' on the market - but clearly based on sales alone - incredibly powerful tablets are an incredibly NICHE area.
Surface Pro needs to drop the marketing towards the tablet crowd altogether and go after the high end - Ultrabook market.
Aiming at college Students in their commercials is silly, when most students / college goers would happily pay $399 for a cheap laptop for college for study / word processing and $200 on a cheap tablet for browsing / gaming and still be $300-$400 better off finacially than buying a surface Pro.
Microsoft simply got the market wrong on this one.
Its the reason why those expensive windows tablets of the past never made a dent in the market - fundamentally the surface pro is just like one of them. And the market for that item is just not that big....
What would be interesting is if we could see how many surface pros were sold against some of the other Ultrabooks on the market. I wonder how many other manufacturers sold 1.7 million Ultrabooks.
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It didn't sell because it's not a well thought out product.
Is it a tablet??? Well yes, but it has a keyboard..
Can it be used as a laptop?? Well no because, it has this funky kickstand and the keyboard doesn't support the screen as a base.
Oh, and it runs Windows. Will it run MS Word?? Well yes and no.
One version does, the other version, I'm not so sure.
Then the stinking price was high so it initially, cost more than an iPad and almost what a MB Air cost.
ROTFLOL and busting a gut.......... Bad product.
Is it a tablet??? Well yes, but it has a keyboard..
Can it be used as a laptop?? Well no because, it has this funky kickstand and the keyboard doesn't support the screen as a base.
Oh, and it runs Windows. Will it run MS Word?? Well yes and no.
One version does, the other version, I'm not so sure.
Then the stinking price was high so it initially, cost more than an iPad and almost what a MB Air cost.
ROTFLOL and busting a gut.......... Bad product.
It is near impossible for a third party to break monopoly of large two OSes, as Linux experience against Windows and OS X shows. Consumers just don't want too many choices as it becomes confusing. In MS case, it actually tried to sell not one, but two new OSes, Windows 8 and RT, which made the weakest OS (RT) a sure loser even before it went to market. Kudos to MS for being so brave and going ahead with launch of a product in which probably no one at MS itself believed in. Right now, market is already locked between Apple and Android, with Apple taking the higher income segment in its iPads and Android targeting lower end with ever spiraling down prices. There is no place for a third one and even likes of Samsung are beaten by low price Android tablets. Apple will be just fine serving the higher and middlle income segment by iPad and minis and on Android side, expect the cost competition to intensify by Christmas. My prediction is that MS will have to discontinue RT altogether and concentrate on Windows 8 Pro tablets, in which it has actually good chance; but these tablets with Windows 8 so expensive that even in them, chances are very low. I recently tried a low cost Acer tablet/notebook opening Word files just fine and thought that its an end of Office and Windows as well. Wait until Android comes to desktops; that will be real bloodshed for MS.
I don't get why so many of you are saying that it is a good product poorly marketed. Sorry but the Surface RT is a bad product poorly marketed.
You are not actually coming across as more "fair" by such fake praise. People are either going to assume that you are being facetious or are a PC user pretending to be an apple user on an apple focused site.
The surface pro is also a terrible product given the price/performance intersection. If you really want a windows laptop with portability, you are better off getting an ultra book or even a Macbook Air and dual booting it than getting a surface pro. The hardware including the keyboard is abysmal and no pricing structure could redeem it.
I also don't get the cheerleading for competition. Sorry but it is not up to us to make other companies competitive. They have to sink or swim based on their own merits.
You are not actually coming across as more "fair" by such fake praise. People are either going to assume that you are being facetious or are a PC user pretending to be an apple user on an apple focused site.
The surface pro is also a terrible product given the price/performance intersection. If you really want a windows laptop with portability, you are better off getting an ultra book or even a Macbook Air and dual booting it than getting a surface pro. The hardware including the keyboard is abysmal and no pricing structure could redeem it.
I also don't get the cheerleading for competition. Sorry but it is not up to us to make other companies competitive. They have to sink or swim based on their own merits.
Except when Microsoft actually wins and forces everyone to use their stuff. I'm just hoping that Apple wins but won't take so much market share that it's basically a monopoly. Maybe 60% is good. Oh, and I want my 2 friends who use Windows to switch so I don't have to use freaking Skype and Facebook to accommodate them.
Software failure more than hardware failure for me
Because of Apple's reluctance to release a digitizer/stylus version of the iPad, I was very interested in the Surface Pro. I was looking forward to using OneNote and Photoshop on a portable tablet with a real stylus.
I liked the hardware design. It was a good size/weight with the performance of a laptop. The only thing missing was a cell service option.
And then I tried the software. First there were no drivers for Photoshop for the stylus. Then I tried Office -- No Metro interface. This is Microsoft's premiere new product and they didn't update their most popular software to support it? Then I tried OneNote and cried a little. An application originally designed for a pen-based interface and it had no clue it was running on a pen-based device.
Either Metro was rushed to market or Microsoft really has been twiddling their thumbs for the past 3 years.
Because of Apple's reluctance to release a digitizer/stylus version of the iPad, I was very interested in the Surface Pro. I was looking forward to using OneNote and Photoshop on a portable tablet with a real stylus.
I liked the hardware design. It was a good size/weight with the performance of a laptop. The only thing missing was a cell service option.
And then I tried the software. First there were no drivers for Photoshop for the stylus. Then I tried Office -- No Metro interface. This is Microsoft's premiere new product and they didn't update their most popular software to support it? Then I tried OneNote and cried a little. An application originally designed for a pen-based interface and it had no clue it was running on a pen-based device.
Either Metro was rushed to market or Microsoft really has been twiddling their thumbs for the past 3 years.