For the past few decades, Microsoft has absolutely dominated Apple when it comes to the number of Microsoft devices sold versus Apple devices, but 2013 will be the year that everything changes.
A report from Gartner claims that Microsoft’s reign is coming to an end, as 2013 will be the first year that more Apple devices are purchased than Windows devices.
Teardown specialists iFixit have published a new tablet repairability guide that quickly tells you how difficult it’s going to be to mend your broken Android, iOS, or Windows 8 slate. The guide features 18 popular tablets, which have been given a repairability score between one and ten. The higher the score, the easier they are to repair.
Unsurprisingly, Apple’s iPads are some of the hardest tablets to fix, second only to the Microsoft Surface Pro — the only tablet with a score of one. Amazon’s Kindle Fire’s, on the other hand, are relatively easy to repair, as are Dell’s devices.
The first Microsoft Surface RT tablets were supposed to be Redmond’s answer to the iPad. They have a cool design, with a fancy keyboard and an innovative new operating system to boot. Sales have been abysmal. The reviews were bad. And we weren’t too impressed either.
Microsoft swears that the Surface Pro is going to be way better though. It’s going to actually run a full version of Windows 8, meaning it will have access to a lot more apps than its Windows RT counterpart. It’s totally going to compete with the iPad 4 now, except the problem is the Surface Pro is going to cost nearly as much as a MacBook Air.
Microsoft Surface is supposed to be Remond’s answer to the iPad. It’s beautiful and has a cool keyboard. But the reviews for the Surface RT were pretty underwhelming. We played with it too and though it was cool, but definitely no iPad killer.
The common consensus in the tech world is that we’ll have to wait till Microsoft releases the Surface Pro with full Windows 8 before making a judgement on Microsoft’s dreams of squashing the iPad. Well, things aren’t looking too promising because Microsoft just announced that the Surface Pro will be available in January 2013 except it’s going to be expensive, like holy-crap-I-just-blew-$900 expensive.
We had a feeling Microsoft was a little optimistic about the Surface RT’s display.
Shortly before Microsoft began shipping the Surface RT tablet, the company claimed its ClearType display was superior to the third-generation iPad’s Retina display. We had our doubts, and now Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies has confirmed we were right to dismiss Microsoft’s claims.
In a display comparison between the third-generation iPad, the Surface RT, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, Soneira found that Apple’s device offers significantly better color saturation and color accuracy, and sharper text.