All iPads Where is Apple's rebuttal to Microsoft Surface?

[zhenya]

Just curious have you tried surface type cover 2? You did mention you own a Surface Pro and not a Surface 2 Pro, so perhaps you are using the first gen type keyboard? Also please take note sracer said "best keyboard on a cover that I've used". So perhaps he is referring to a keyboard used as a cover.

I bought and returned one after hearing how much it had improved. I found it effectively the same.

As said above, it's "the best keyboard on a cover I've used." That pretty much says it all. It's pretty good as a keyboard accessory for a tablet. It's terrible as a keyboard replacement for a laptop. And the problem is that the Surface Pro makes for a pretty lousy tablet. So what's the point? Make a GREAT keyboard accessory and this product might have a future as something other than a niche.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

I think that the fact some of the Apple faithful can't even bring themselves to acknowledge anything worthwhile in the Surface Pro 3 is evidence of their insecurity... they have some sense of concern.

"mediocre at best", "mediocre at best", "an expensive piece of junk". Psst, your insecurity is showing.

If you want a look at what's amazing in the PC (non-Mac) space, look at some of Lenovo's product line. X1 Carbon in particular. That is some impressive engineering. Razer's Blade series, specifically the 14" version. Razer's Project Christine (or whatever it's called) which is their modular computer concept. Sony's now discontinued Vaio Pro. And so forth. I didn't say every PC is junk, I just said one in particular is. Apple's got some duds too. MobileMe, while fully functional for myself, was a problem for many. iTunes Ping too. It's important to realize that just because one person has the opinion that one product of one company is junk, doesn't equate to that person's opinion of the entire industry. This is something so fundamentally basic and important that you missed in your post. Seriously... if you want to tango at least be able to move your feet.

How's that for insecure?

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No one is going to be using a Surface to do serious photo editing and graphic design work. They will need a real laptop or better.

Exactly. Why bother toting the pen integration when its graphics are basically useless for anything beyond beginner level graphic work? I mean you could do some touch up work with the pen and Photoshop... but the graphics are so weak for anything like a full graphic workflow.

 

[r3m1]

[...]
Secondly, apple very rarely "responds" to what a competitor does. It has its design philosophy and strategic direction, why change that because MS released something.

History shows that Apple does look at what others do - like any normal company - or do you think a 6-inch iPhone was already in the pipeline many years ago?

 

[Ledgem]

I actually have the Adonit Jot Pro. Bought it Macworld. Works well. But haven't picked it up for nothing more than to show someone a great pen can be used on an iPad. Not sure the average consumer will want/need it a pen. Pretty easy to lose pens.

The Jot Pro was a nice idea and I applaud Adonit for doing what they're doing, but it's a glitchy solution. I had the skipping issue with it, and found that I was in good company. To give Adonit credit, they sent me replacement parts and a replacement pen, but they all had the issue, and across multiple iPads (including one without a screen protector).

I use my iPad has a full paper replacement, taking down notes and writing information. Having to write large and with a rubber-tipped stylus slows me down. The Jot Pro had the potential to speed things up and make it a bit more effortless, but it was plagued with problems. I certainly don't consider it an equivalent to the styluses paired with active digitizers.

No one is going to be using a Surface to do serious photo editing and graphic design work. They will need a real laptop or better.

Simply false.

 

[skottichan]

The Jot Pro was a nice idea and I applaud Adonit for doing what they're doing, but it's a glitchy solution. I had the skipping issue with it, and found that I was in good company. To give Adonit credit, they sent me replacement parts and a replacement pen, but they all had the issue, and across multiple iPads (including one without a screen protector).

I use my iPad has a full paper replacement, taking down notes and writing information. Having to write large and with a rubber-tipped stylus slows me down. The Jot Pro had the potential to speed things up and make it a bit more effortless, but it was plagued with problems. I certainly don't consider it an equivalent to the styluses paired with active digitizers.


Simply false.

Really? You're calling Penny Arcade "serious design work"?

 

[MH01]

It's easy to sit here and say, Apple could build something like this. It's another thing to actually build it, have it be useful and easy to use, and keep it priced reasonably.

Microsoft has been trying, and failing, to build tablet PCs since around 2000. Jobs came back to Apple, scrapped the Newton, and stayed away from portable computers smaller than laptops until he dropped the iPhone on the world. He even refused to build a netbook, remember?

I'm hoping Apple sticks with the way Jobs did things, and stay away from laptop-tablet fusion devices until they can build a device that is almost perfect on day one, and then drop that onto the world.

Oww boy are they sticking to the way jobs did things. Still waiting for all these amazing products cook mentions.

 

[rowspaxe]

[/COLOR]
Exactly. Why bother toting the pen integration when its graphics are basically useless for anything beyond beginner level graphic work? I mean you could do some touch up work with the pen and Photoshop... but the graphics are so weak for anything like a full graphic workflow.

Huh? You dont need high end graphics to run photoshop. Maybe starting in c6 with MGE. The processesses of 2d graphics are mostly cpu intensive. While sp3's gaming performance is underwhelming, an i5 or i7 with 8 megs of ram is fine for most graphics work.
And it will also run maya and zbrush pretty well.

 

[MH01]

Exactly. Why bother toting the pen integration when its graphics are basically useless for anything beyond beginner level graphic work? I mean you could do some touch up work with the pen and Photoshop... but the graphics are so weak for anything like a full graphic workflow.

It's a starting point with potential.

Look how far the iPad has progressed in processing power since the original.

 

[rowspaxe]

Really? You're calling Penny Arcade "serious design work"?

He's doing art on a tablet at a significant resolution. So, yes I would.

 

[rowspaxe]

[/COLOR]

Exactly. Why bother toting the pen integration when its graphics are basically useless for anything beyond beginner level graphic work? I mean you could do some touch up work with the pen and Photoshop... but the graphics are so weak for anything like a full graphic workflow.

Its not like going to use your surface pro to play back video from 4k raw files. Oh wait--they did at the sp2 rollout last year

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The Jot Pro was a nice idea and I applaud Adonit for doing what they're doing, but it's a glitchy solution.
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tapa tapa tapa tapa Tap! tapa tapa tapa tap

 

[skottichan]

He's doing art on a tablet at a significant resolution. So, yes I would.

Oh honey. Even at 300DPI, nothing Kahulik does is "serious design work", an iPad could easily handle what he does. Neither the iPad nor Surface have the guts to do anything heavy lifting. I bought a Cintiq Companion for giggles, while nice for sketching and the like, at the end of the day, I have to go to my iMac to do any kind of real painting.

I really wish someone could make something more powerful, PC, Mac, or otherwise. I'd love to be able to sit on my couch and draw.

 

[rowspaxe]

Oh honey. Even at 300DPI, nothing Kahulik does is "serious design work", an iPad could easily handle what he does. Neither the iPad nor Surface have the guts to do anything heavy lifting. I bought a Cintiq Companion for giggles, while nice for sketching and the like, at the end of the day, I have to go to my iMac to do any kind of real painting.

what is real painting? when did the surface become a desktop replacement?

 

[nomanstool]

what is real painting? when did the surface become a desktop replacement?

haha these guys really crack me up. Anyway you can't even run a full version desktop photoshop in an iPad.

--
Sample works done in surface pro 3

 

[zhenya]

iPad artwork

as with most skills, the skill resides primarily in the person, not the tool.

 

[nomanstool]

iPad artwork

Image

Image

Image

as with most skills, the skill resides primarily in the person, not the tool.

very true and very impressive indeed. It looks like finger painting though instead of mechanical drawings like this:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CE9kqUlBtYM/UbVJClVnBgI/AAAAAAAACkY/G8i65eQt5NA/s758/UncannyXMen281Cover.jpg

Another point is be the file format for that? So if these were to be handed for other departments to retouch or change, they would need to get an iPad and download an app? Instead of relying on real programs (not apps) - industry standard like Photoshop, Corel Painter, Illustrator, ZBrush, which an iPad cannot run?

 

[Ledgem]

Really? You're calling Penny Arcade "serious design work"?

Oh honey. Even at 300DPI, nothing Kahulik does is "serious design work", an iPad could easily handle what he does. Neither the iPad nor Surface have the guts to do anything heavy lifting. I bought a Cintiq Companion for giggles, while nice for sketching and the like, at the end of the day, I have to go to my iMac to do any kind of real painting.

He does the usual three-panel strips that are posted to the website, and then he does full-page comics (among other things, it seems). Yeah, I consider him to be engaging in professional graphics design. If the art that you engage in is much more resource-intensive that's perfectly fine, but I don't see how it negates the fact that he's a professional artist who relies on his systems to produce art daily.

 

[rowspaxe]

I am calling bs on the surface art--aren't those magna studio promotional works predating the sp3 release?

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as with most skills, the skill resides primarily in the person, not the tool.

I dont understand this arguement: what do impressive fingerpaint compositions say about the relative merits of pen tools? I would add I dont think the ipad is unusable for light sketching--it just has some serious limitations

 

[zhenya]

I dont understand this arguement: what do impressive fingerpaint compositions say about the relative merits of pen tools? I would add I dont think the ipad is unusable for light sketching--it just has some serious limitations

What makes you think that fingers are the only tools artists use on the iPad? I'd hardly consider these examples above or here 'light sketching'.

 

[Night Spring]

What makes you think that fingers are the only tools artists use on the iPad? I'd hardly consider these examples above or here 'light sketching'.

As beautiful as these artworks are, I'm afraid it doesn't tell us anything about the relative merits of the processing power of Surface Pro vs iPad, which was what started the discussion down this tangent. (The merits of Surface Pro pen vs various iPad stylus came up at some point, but the original issue under discussion was processing power.)

 

[26139]

Huh?

It's been nearly three years now since we saw Microsoft tease what they thought Surface could be. Now with the Surface Pro 3 they've been able to refine their product down to what is a pretty sweet rig.

My question is, where is Apple's rebuttal?
Imagine a "tablet" not much thicker or heavier than the iPad Air running a fully fledged version of OS X, with 8GB RAM and a powerful processor.

Honestly I can't see why this wouldn't be an area Apple would miss.
Thoughts?

You mean besides the $899 11" MBA and the iPad Air?

Was this a serious question?

 

[gnomeisland]

Once again I gotta say it. There is NO reason to try and merge laptops and tablets. They are and should be separate devices so they can excel at the tasks which each device are designed for. As it always happens when you try and do this, the flaws or shortcomings that the hybrid unit will exhibit will hurt the device on in both use cases. I realize that Microsoft has worked hard to make the surface a solid product and this newest one looks OK.

On a hardware level UI I agree but the WWDC keynote has me convinced that Apple is preparing a software/processor level convergence.

Windows 8/Surface/Surface Pro wasn't convergence it was a mashup. I think Metro is actually far more original than Android but it feels very haphazard with 8.1 being acknowledging step backward.

I'm not thrilled with all the iOS-ifications of OSX but the big upside of iOS, optimizations like Metal for example, are very compelling but I don't see them coming to OSX unless they come alongside ARM-based cores. Apple is slowly moving us all toward a unified OS/UI that can be interacted with by either a touch screen or a keyboard & trackpad without any cognitive dissonance.

Microsoft skated to where they puck will be ... but forgot to bring a hockey stick.

 

[s2mikey]

On a hardware level UI I agree but the WWDC keynote has me convinced that Apple is preparing a software/processor level convergence.

Windows 8/Surface/Surface Pro wasn't convergence it was a mashup. I think Metro is actually far more original than Android but it feels very haphazard with 8.1 being acknowledging step backward.

I'm not thrilled with all the iOS-ifications of OSX but the big upside of iOS, optimizations like Metal for example, are very compelling but I don't see them coming to OSX unless they come alongside ARM-based cores. Apple is slowly moving us all toward a unified OS/UI that can be interacted with by either a touch screen or a keyboard & trackpad without any cognitive dissonance.

Microsoft skated to where they puck will be ... but forgot to bring a hockey stick.

Lov the hockey stick comment....

I guess I'm OK with the operating systems coverging but it has to be done right. The last thing I want is my iPad to try and "be" my MacBook Pro and vice versa. I actually like that they can share docs and data but remain their own entities.

We shall see.

 

[sracer]

On a hardware level UI I agree but the WWDC keynote has me convinced that Apple is preparing a software/processor level convergence.

Windows 8/Surface/Surface Pro wasn't convergence it was a mashup. I think Metro is actually far more original than Android but it feels very haphazard with 8.1 being acknowledging step backward.

I'm not thrilled with all the iOS-ifications of OSX but the big upside of iOS, optimizations like Metal for example, are very compelling but I don't see them coming to OSX unless they come alongside ARM-based cores. Apple is slowly moving us all toward a unified OS/UI that can be interacted with by either a touch screen or a keyboard & trackpad without any cognitive dissonance.

Microsoft skated to where the puck will be ... but forgot to bring a hockey stick.

That is gold right there! You summed it up quite well, thanks!

 

[fig]

Huh? You dont need high end graphics to run photoshop. Maybe starting in c6 with MGE. The processesses of 2d graphics are mostly cpu intensive. While sp3's gaming performance is underwhelming, an i5 or i7 with 8 megs of ram is fine for most graphics work.
And it will also run maya and zbrush pretty well.

A higher end Surface with the i7 or so could run Maya decently but not great, the low end with the i3 and 4gb of RAM isn't going to run it especially well.

The thing is, if you are running on that maxed out i7 Surface you're looking at spending as much as you would on a 15" Macbook Pro for a lot less power. Also don't know what the advantage of Maya would be on there, I can see how it'd be nice for Zbrush though.

In any case it'd be nice to be able to run a true version of Photoshop or light 3d apps on a tablet, but for the most part I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything with an iPad. If I truly want a high end pressure sensitive tablet or tablet PC as an artist I'm going to look at a Wacom Companion for the same price as a loaded Surface.

 

[burgman]

You mean besides the $899 11" MBA and the iPad Air?

Was this a serious question?

Put the iPad air screen on the MBA then you have something. Which product line would that cut into??