Microsoft unveiled a faster version of the Surface Pro X on Thursday. This updated tablet/laptop has an improved version of the Arm-based processor that debuted in the original last autumn. Performance of first-generation model didn’t impress reviewers or power users. Hence the new iteration.
The Surface Pro X competes head-to-head with Apple’s iPad Pro line. Both even use similar processors.
Microsoft on Wednesday bumped up the display size of its mid-range tablet, just as Apple did last year. The newly-announced Surface Go 2 has a 10.5-inch screen, as does the iPad Air 3.
And this Windows tablet has a range of other enhancements to allow it to better compete with its iPadOS rival. But it doesn’t often come out ahead.
Microsoft claims it won’t adopt the Thunderbolt standard for its Surface laptops and tablets because it’s inherently insecure, according to an internal company video leaked onto Twitter recently.
Thunderbolt was developed by Intel and Apple, and it’s widely used on Macs. It’s also been adopted by virtually every PC maker. But not Microsoft.
Microsoft just unveiled a very innovative dual-screen mobile computer that also makes room for a physical keyboard. The Surface Neo folds, but doesn’t use a folding screen, and combines features of a laptop and a tablet.
Most Surface products compete directly with Apple offerings. Apple is also exploring multi-display laptops and tablets, but Microsoft might get there first. Might, because the device unveiled today won‘t be out for a year.
The newly-unveiled Surface Pro X is a 13-inch tablet that seems designed to take on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Apple dominates tablet sales but Microsoft clearly wants a bigger piece, is hoping this slim and light Windows device will accomplish that.
Microsoft also finally added a USB-C port to the Surface Pro line in the seventh-generation model.
New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick is giving up on the NFL’s experiment putting Surface tablets on the sidelines during football games.
The usually tight-lipped coach unleashed a five-minute rant against Microsoft’s bug-ridden tablets during a press conference today. Belichick said he just can’t deal with the Surface’s problems anymore, so he’s calling an audible and going back to good old paper and three-ring binders.
After making the mistake of repeatedly referring to the Microsoft Surface as an iPad, announcers finally got the right name for the NFL’s sponsor tablet… only for this to be the occasion on which the device stopped working on live TV.
The incident took place during Sunday’s AFC Championship game between the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots, resulting in the kind of negative publicity Microsoft surely never dreamed its $400 million sponsorship would lead to.
Apple PR has sprung into “damage control” mode after Tim Cook uncharacteristically fired verbal shots at Microsoft yesterday — reportedly telling a crowd in Ireland that Microsoft’s attempts to create “hybrid” laptops is, “deluded.”
What is being claimed is that Cook didn’t mean to say “deluded” at all, but instead “diluted” — which is still a diss, but without the insinuations that the good folks at Microsoft are a few sandwiches short of a picnic if they think the Surface will ever be a hit.
Given that today is iPad Pro launch day, it’s no surprise that Tim Cook gave the customary Apple derisory snort to Microsoft’s rival Surface Book tablet hybrid — referring to it as a “product that tries too hard to do too much,” and calling Microsoft’s belief in it, “sort of deluded.”
It’s exactly the kind of Microsoft bashing I’ve enjoyed from Apple for years, and would normally have me rushing to roll out my best “blue screen of death” jabs at the expense of those in Redmond, WA.
The only problem is, I think the Surface Book looks much more exciting than the iPad Pro.
Microsoft is paying $400 million this season to make the Surface the official tablet of the NFL but the league’s announcers still can’t stop calling it an iPad.
The 2015 NFL season officially kicked off last night with the first game between the Steelers and the Patriots. After NBC returned from a commercial break, the network showed a shot of Belichick working with one of the many Microsoft Surface tablets that are provided on the sideline, only instead of talking up the league’s Microsoft partnership, announcer Al Michaels commented how Belichick was ‘on his iPad.”
Watch the clip below:
Five years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad. A giant screen with one button, the iPad represented possibly the purest distillation of Jobs’ tech dreams. Yet at the time it was met with derision. “I got about 800 messages in the last 24 hours,” Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “Most of them are complaining…. It knocks you back a bit.”
Half a decade and multiple iterations on, the iPad is an established part of Apple’s ecosystem. While it’s had its ups and downs, nobody’s flooding Apple’s inbox with iPad-related hate mail anymore.
So what were people complaining about? We hopped in our time machine to take a look at the original criticisms — and what, if anything, Apple’s done about them in the years since.
A CNN political commentator has hit back at reports that he was using an iPad on air, instead of the Microsoft Surface he was supposed to be using.
The gaffe occurred during the coverage for the 2014 Mid-Term elections, when it was revealed that CNN Anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper and others were furiously, err, tapping away at iPads behind the sold wall of Surface Pro 3s that Microsoft had issued the network.
Tapper doesn’t deny that he was using an iPad, but argues that he was just using it for tweeting, while happily using his Microsoft tablet for everything else.
“I liked [the Surface] fine, I just wanted to keep the screen up with exit polls,” Tapper argued on Twitter, branding the online response “idiotic” and a “false meme.”
Looks like Microsoft is up to its old tricks again!
Not happy to simply put out the Surface (and, to be honest, who can blame them?) and then let the market decide if it’s interested, the good folks at Redmond have decided on a new ad campaign that skewers Apple and its “You’re more powerful than you think” strap line.
The Los Angeles Unified School District decided to blow its entire $1 billion tech budget on an iPad for every student last year, but after security hacks and supply issues got the program off to a rocky start, the district has decided to adjust course and let on a few challengers.
Officials at the U.S.’s second-largest school district have decided to allow a group of high schools to choose between six devices instead of the iPad, effectively putting distribution of Apple’s tablet on hold district-wide.
Apple’s possible plans for an iPad smart cover reminiscent of Microsoft’s Surface were revealed in a patent application published Thursday. The design differs from Microsoft’s iPad competitor in that Apple’s keyboard would double as a Multi-Touch gesture keyboard, eliminating the need for a touchpad.
Drawings filed with the patent show how it would be possible to use the iPad cover in various configurations. Several hinges allow the iPad smart cover to fold away with the tablet and keyboard, while the cover would feature magnets to lock its various components in place. In one embodiment of the patent, Apple suggests that electromagnets could be used.
There’s a lot of different metrics out there for gauging the success of personal electronics, some more suspect than others. Many companies, for example, favor units shipped to retailers, where as Apple favors the more realistic metric of units sold.
Perhaps the best metric of all, though, isn’t what is shipped or sold, but what people want Santa to bring them for Christmas. And by this metric, the iPad is king.
It’s no secret that Microsoft’s would-be iPad-killer has been a complete disappointment, but now Steve Ballmer, the company’s ever-optimistic CEO, is admitting to employees that the Surface is a flop.
Ballmer held a “rally the troops” event on the Microsoft campus yesterday to go over the company’s quarterly earnings and boost morale, but according to people at the event, Ballmer dove into how disappointing it has been trying to make Surface a success.
When Microsoft launched the Surface with Windows RT, it was supposed to be the answer to all of their iPad problems. It runs on cellphone chips, yet still looks like regular Windows 8. It’s supposed to be awesome. But sales of Windows RT tablets haven’t been strong, and now Samsung is saying that they’re second guessing the platform.
In a recent interview at CES, Make Abary, Samsung’s senior vice president who oversees the company’s tablet business, said that Samsung has decided they won’t launch their Windows RT tablet in the U.S. after discovering there’s not much demand for them.
The tablet wars in a nuthsell: of the tens of thousands of people who opened a tablet on Christmas morning, 7 times as many people got iPads than Kindles, 18 times as many people got iPads than a Google Nexus and 50 times as many people got an iPad as a Surface. Looks like Santa’s an Apple fan.
Source: Reddit
Mall of America happens to have both an Apple Store and a Microsoft Store under one roof. In fact, they’re right across the hall from each other, so it’s a great place to gauge how enthusiastic people are for both brands.
On Black Friday, Gene Munster and his team of analyst from Piper Jaffray spend eight hours counting heads at the Apple Store. They also spend two hours monitoring the Microsoft Store and found that Microsoft didn’t sell a single Microsoft Surface tablet.
Here are some other facts that Munster observed:
Every year Oprah Winfrey makes a list of her favorite things in life and then she gives everyone in her audience free copies of everything on her list. When you got a few billion to burn you can do that. One year Oprah said she just loooooved the iPad. Like, she said the iPad was the greatest thing ever, and middle-aged women across the country wept with joy. Now, she’s saying she’s totally off that and onto the next cool tablet – The Microsoft Surface.
Yesterday, Oprah tweeted: “Gotta say love that SURFACE! Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts. #FavoriteThings” Thing is, Oprah tweeted about her love for the Surface from her iPad. So you know, I guess you can love an object that you never use. That’s cool. Well played Oprah.
Source: Twitter
When Microsoft announced the Surface I was shocked. Not shocked because Balmer was doing something gutsy, but shocked because the Surface actually looks cool. Like, it’s probably the coolest looking tablet I’ve ever seen, other than the iPad, and if that crazy Touch Cover keyboard thing actually works well, then holy shit, the future is here.
Even though it’s not made by Apple, I had to try the “Surface with Windows RT” because I wanted to touch the future, and I really thought that maybe Microsoft was going to pull it off and create something that amazed me. After playing with the Surface and comparing it to an iPad though I found out that the future isn’t quite here yet, but it looks promising.
Apple CEO TIm Cook briefly touched on Microsoft’s new Surface tablet during his company’s earnings call today. When asked about the Surface, Cook admitted that he hasn’t played with it yet, but it looks like “a compromised, confusing product.”
“The toughest thing you do with a product is make hard trade-offs,” said Cook. To Apple, it obviously seems like Microsoft still hasn’t figured out a good tablet experience.
“I suppose you could design a car that flies and floats, but I don’t think it would do all those things very well,” quipped Cook.
The Microsoft Surface looks really neat. It does all the cool things that a tablet can do, plus you can use the keyboard cover to switch toward more desktop oriented tasks. Now that Microsoft has announced pricing and a release date for the Microsoft Surface, we’re finally getting a clearer picture of whether it can truly compete with the iPad, and we think it’s going to put up a good fight.
For dedicated Windows users, the Surface is a dream machine that’s just as cheap as an iPad with an innovative operating system to match. There aren’t as many apps available for Windows 8 RT as there are for iOS 6, but surely Microsoft is going to be throwing dollar bills at developers over the next few months to get them to port their apps over. Are you thinking about getting a Microsoft Surface, or will you just get an iPad Mini instead?
Steve Wozniak recently spoke at the Entel Summit in Chile, and as usual, expressed his thoughts on emerging technology. Wozniak offered his opinion on Google Glass, Microsoft’s Surface tablet, and even the Kim Dotcom case surrounding Megaupload.
