“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,” Buster Heine reports for Cult of Mac.
MacDailyNews Take: Why wait? Microsoft won’t squash 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,” Heine reports. “Yep, the baseline model of the Microsoft Surface Pro will be priced at $899. For the nearly the price of two iPads with Retina display you’ll be able to buy a 64GB version of the Microsoft Surface Pro that comes with regular Windows 8 rather than the crummy Windows RT that comes with the Surface RT. Oh, and that $900 you’re going to shell out on the Surface Pro doesn’t include one of their really awesome Touch Cover keyboards. You’ll have to buy that separately for $129.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yup, “really awesome” at splitting open and spitting out wires:
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: DOA.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Microsoft’s Surface tablet flops, orders reportedly cut in half – November 29, 2012
TechCrunch’s Siegler reviews Microsoft Surface RT: ‘It’s time for a drop test – right into the garbage can’ – November 19, 2012
Slate reviews Microsoft’s Surface tablet: Too slow, mercilessly buggy; why is it so bad? – November 6, 2012
InfoWorld reviews Microsoft Surface RT: A disappointment; you’re better off with Apple’s iPad – October 31, 2012
Gizmodo reviews Microsoft Surface RT: Do not buy; inferior to Apple’s iPad; the worst of both worlds – October 25, 2012
The Verge reviews Microsoft Surface RT tablet: ‘The whole thing is honestly perplexing; who is this for?’ – October 24, 2012
ZDNet’s Kingsley-Hughes: Microsoft’s Windows 8 is an awful, horrible, painful design disaster – June 8, 2012
Analyst meets with big computer maker, finds ‘general lack of enthusiasm’ for Windows 8 – June 8, 2012
Dvorak: Windows 8 an unmitigated disaster; unusable and annoying; it makes your teeth itch – June 3, 2012
The Guardian: Microsoft’s Windows 8 is confusing as hell; an appalling user experience – March 5, 2012
More good news for Apple: Microsoft previews Windows 8 (with video) – June 1, 2011
Jesus. Hmm..MacBook Air..or a wannabe tablet with floppy keyboard. Not a tough choice.
@ M: spot on. As I’ve been saying for a long time now, let’s hope Apple gets serious about enterprise. By overpricing its tablet, MS just handed them a gift. Apple needs to offer CIOs some bulk deals on MacBook Airs pronto.
As for consumer market: Apple iPad users should be breathing a sigh of relief. Had the Surface Pro undercut the price of the iPad, everything could be different. Microsoft still has a HUGE edge in Windows legacy software developers. We can only hope that Cook gets off his duff and works on cracking that nut instead of focusing all attention on predictable incremental iPhone updates & iPad derivatives and that unprofitable “hobby”, Apple TV.
The best part is, they didn’t exactly “over price it”. Thats probably competitive for all the crap they shoved into it that a tablet doesn’t need. That also means they won’t be lowering it to squash the iPad any time soon.
There was never any chance that they could have got anywhere near an iPad price without zero or minus profit margin. Its an update of an old idea/product that has always been expensive and uncompetitive compared to true laptops, now more than ever with Air type laptops. They are hoping that Tablet mania will help hide that fact and likely that will have some effect at least initially. But this price looks like a disaster for long term serious sales potential.
Apple TV isnt quite the hobby its made out to be its a long term plan that will become clearer over time, meanwhile this hobby is selling better than many so called market hits and is making a fair amount of money for Apple just not compared to its market dominating products… yet.
Other than Office being on the ugly thing. If Microsloth didn’t have the Office software they’d have gone under a few years ago. It’s the main thing keeping them alive and they know it.
I’m sure that they’ll sell at least 2.
To Ballmer’s children for Christmas… Poor kids!
I say “child abuse” to that house rule of no Apple products!
(A rule he has bragged about in past interviews.)
You Mac people are always wrong. It will be double of what you predict. 4! So you guys are wrong again!
What is it about Ballmer that has him superglued to the CEO role of this failing behemoth?
He must have incriminating pictures of Bill Gates from the dorm room they shared at Harvard. My guess is Ballmer caught Gates in a Richard Gere gerbel moment with a prototype computer mouse he stole from Xerox.
A Windows 8 notebook or laptop would be preferable, and cheaper. No advantage whatsoever and plenty of disadvantages. Yeah, a Macbook Air looks pretty good at the same price with keyboard.
Agreed though most laptops don’t let you manipulate objects by touching the screen. I personally don’t need to touch the screen if there is a keyboard and touch pad but then again, if you want to use a tablet, buy a tablet (iPad).
Hope there isn’t a two unit limit, like with Apple, I need alive total, NOT …..
What a joke!
My *SMIRK* muscles are getting sore today!
Funny….
My insides are sore!
And from what I read before, that 64GB is only partially useable as Windbloat fills up a good chunk of it.
The RT version of windows, with all it’s tools and Office, takes up 16 gigs of space. This may very well take up more space since it’s the x86 version.
64GB storage – 32GB used (by Windows)
Its only 16gb for the OS but still…
That was for “crummy” Windows RT, missing most of the Intel-centric legacy support components. Now, imagine how much space the “full” Windows 8 will take up…
The Intel full windows 8 install is about 20 gigs. Ouch
Now add the full Intel-based Office, and other bloated (designed with laziness for huge hard drives) Windows apps, that the user considers essential for the “pro” Windows experience…
Indeed. Office 2010 Pro install (depending on features selected) is another 1 – 2 gigabytes of space.
Don’t forget the fan whirring away while you are counting all the disappearing digital storage.
Yeah, I forgot the damn thing has an actual fan and vents. Is it a tablet or laptop?
It’s a touchscreen laptop, without the keyboard half, that requires an “optional” keyboard to be useful.
And what about the battery life?
It proves you can jam a desktop OS into a slim package, but that doesn’t make it usable.
It was 16GB for Win RT. Full windows will likely be a bigger behemoth. Damn shame.
Oh, my frackin’ goodness! $900! Well, perhaps each of them is handcrafted and made of some rare metal. What? Plastic? Bwahaha!
So they not only decided to start copying the idea of an app store and anything else that Apple already do, they thought they would have a go at premium pricing too, as if a high price somehow means that what you purchase for all that money endows the device with high quality and faultless performance. They have totally lost the plot.
M$ keep shooting themselves in the foot at such a rate they must be using an automatic.
M$ keep shooting themselves in the foot at such a rate they must be using an automatic. I was thinking it was a shotgun loaded with flechette shells. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flechette) Not a pretty sight when all those needles hit your foot at point-blank range.
Wait for full release of Win 8 Pro before passing judgement? Whenever that happens, then will they say they need to wait for Win 8 SP1 ?
Oh, wait. Maybe they are waiting for someone to actually purchase and use a retail version of Surface Pro! The final act for Best Buys is to take delivery on a bunch of Surface Pro’s — and set ’em up between the Blackberry and Nokia displays.
Ok, we can definitely challenge MS over their lack of quality. But in all fairness, my new Verizon 64 gb 4th generation iPad just arrived. The price was $829. I paid it with no regrets. And I would have more than likely made the purchase if was $899.
So, let’s not pretend that somehow $900 is an unrealistic price for a tablet. And let’s not compare the 16 gb version of the iPad with this 64 gb offering from MS.
Is the Apple product the better one? In my opinion, it is most certainly. But it’s not better because it is cheaper than the 64 gb Surface.
You make a good point. A tricked out iPad can cost a lot of money.
But, this $900 entry level Surface Pro only has 45 GB of usable storage space, so it’s not really comparable to a 64GB iPad storage wise. It doesn’t have any cellular connectivity. The battery on the Pro lasts only half as long as the RT, so less then half of the iPad. On top of that it will be thicker, heavier, hotter, etc.
And the only (potential) upside of the Surface Pro is it can run regular Windows programs, but regular windows programs absolutely suck in a touch screen environment.
All in all, I think the value proposition of the Surface Pro sucks, especially compared to the iPad.
Your point is well taken. I haven’t had the chance to see the Surface, so I can only comment based on what I’ve read. But, I have been a satisfied customer with all things iOS.
While I’m the furthest thing away from a Microsoft person. I do have to say you can add an microSDXC card for more storage. Not that’d I’d ever buy that huge pile of junk.
If you think of the space need in terms of percentage, then the baseline ipad 4 vs baseline surface pro would be correct. apps for the ipad are much smaller in size for comparable apps that run on windows 8, so I think it is a fair comparison. Plus as any windows user knows, as time goes by, the free space will keep shrinking on the surface pro just by using it, as alot of cruft keeps accululating, plus you know it will need a full time anti-virus program running also. It is a full blown version of windows after all. . . . . .
Well, I’ll probably be in line to buy one once they actually appear. I have an app (SAC) that runs only on x86 PCs and my current table (HP TouchSmart laptop) just doesn’t work well. I have three iPads at home/work and half a dozen iPhones and wish there were an Apple solution for me, but it’s gotta be Windows…
Bloat by Windows on the 64GB doesn’t matter, as I only plan on running a single app on it.
True, my single purchase probably won’t turn things around for Microsoft, but they’ll get at least one or two sales from me (unless a “partner” offers something better real quick.
Can’t you run your x86 app on an intel computer and then use it via remote desktop, VNC, or the Parallels iOS app?
That sounds much preferable than wasting your money on a thick, heavy, battery hogging, Windows running tablet. Ugh.
“Can’t you run your x86 app on an intel computer and then use it via remote desktop, VNC, or the Parallels iOS app?”
Sadly, no.
It’s a realtime 72-channel live audio mixer. Using VNCs produce a large latency that creates performance problems.
MacBook Air.
It’s still not a tablet that you can hold in one hand and operate with the other.
Just got done pre-ordering mine. Can’t wait to see what I threw my money away on this time.
If you’ve got money to throw away, throw some in my direction!
W.T.F. – Windows Tablet Fiasco
Seeing the Surface sales numbers for the last month, MS had to postpone release of the Surface Pro to January. They realized that if they released in time for the holidays, the profound lack of sales would look all the more stark.
The sagging failure that is Surface (and Win8 generally) will rightly engender more ridicule than even Vista did. We are witnessing managerial incompetence on a scale of historic proportions. Windows 8 will be in textbooks.
Window Vista was bad because Apple’s constant (and justified) goading with the “Get a Mac” campaign caused Microsoft to abandon its ambitious but long-delayed “Longhorn” project and start over (using the Windows Server 2003 codebase). They needed a replacement for XP yesterday… Windows Vista was the resulting rush job, with bugs and omissions (most users kept using XP). Many such problems can be fixed with “service packs,” including Windows 7, which is what Vista should have been.
Windows 8 is bad BY DESIGN. There is no way to remedy its problems, except to abandon it and go back to the Windows 7 codebase for the next version of Windows.
Windows has always been bad design. Nothing has changed.
True. 🙂 But it was more or less “useable.” With Windows 8, Microsoft intentionally (by design) made usability much worse for the majority of its existing users, while trying to attract new tablet customers. Sacrifice the cash cow to compete (poorly) with iPad. That’s a very bad mistake.
Within six months, I predict Microsoft will announce plans for a separate Windows for “desktop and laptop” computers. They will go back to Windows 7 and release a “service pack” followed by a “new” version as soon as possible to “purge” the memory of Windows 8 (like with Vista). Meanwhile, the tablet “RT” version for ARM will continue on, without ties to legacy support. Essentially, Microsoft will copy Apple (once again)…
Apple’s advertising had nothing at all to do with MS’s failure to ship longhorn. That project was a textbook case of management incompetence.
-jcr
You’re right… not advertising. It was the existence of Mac OS X, versus the aging Windows XP. But it was the Apple’s advertising that highlighted the problems with XP and let everyone know about it in an amusing fashion, to Microsoft’s annoyance.
Obviously, Apple’s marketing had “nothing at all to do with MS’s failure to ship longhorn.” That’s Microsoft’s fault. But it had a lot to do with the decision to abandon Longhorn and do a rush job on Vista instead.
Get your facts right idiot. M$ said the pro version would be released about 90 days after the RT version was released in Oct back in June.
Guys, you’re forgetting the sound of a luxury car door. That alone is worth the $500 premium. Some of you just don’t get it.
Wow! $900 bucks + the mandatory (according to every review I have read) $130 cheap a$$ keyboard thingy, really?
If I didn’t know better I would wager that SPJ is doing a ‘I see dead people’ number on Frankenballamer.
Goes Like this….
Ballmer: Hmmm, how should I price the Surface Pro….
Shade of SPJ: Well Steve, it is a premium product and needs a premium price AND it has a physical keyboard so business users will love it as an email machine. *snicker, snicker, LOL, LOL*
Ballmer: $500 fully subsidized…….
Shade of SPJ: No, no, no! $500 is bullshit for such and awesome product. *snicker, snicker, LOL, LOL*
Ballmer: $600 bucks + $50 bucks for the keyboard thingy…..
Shade of SPJ: No, no, no! $650 is bullshit for such and awesome product. *snicker, snicker, LOL, LOL*
Ballmer: $900 bucks + $130 bucks for the keyboard thingy…..
Shade of SPJ: Thats more like it. You are going to sell millions and millions and Apple will sell zero..
Shade of SPJ:I like our strategy, I like it a lot. *snicker, snicker, LOL, LOL*
Microsoft has been peddling tablets for a decade now, with little success. The primary difference now is that technology has improved enough that a full version of Windows can run on the new hardware, vice an embarrassing version of WinCE. The open question is why anyone would want a tablet profile device running a full version of Windows, and if they do, is the ~40GB of free space going to be enough for their full fledged commercial software needs? Why not, indeed, a full fledged laptop with a capacious hard drive? At $900 + $130 for a keyboard, what’s the point? Certainly not portability, or cost savings.
My iPad has 160 single purpose apps on it, still over 30GB free. The new Surface Pro will have Office, and little room left over for other standard Windows stuff. A laptop, for around the same price, and weight, would provide a full Desktop experience.
This Surface Pro device will be compared to other laptops, not an iPad.
You are right… And Windows 8 will spawn a new generation of “convertible” laptops (“tablets” with built-in keyboard and hard drive), as a way to compete with iPad. They will probably come with a stylus. It seems the only way to compete with iPad is to go where Apple will not go.
Unfortunately for the competition, it has already been tried, and they were not very popular. Even with the latest Intel-based tech, they will weigh at least twice as much as the Retina iPad, be twice as thick or more, and run for less than five hours on a battery charge. And cost about the same as this Surface Pro (with its required optional keyboard).
iPad is twice the tablet for half the price…
Sorry… meant as reply to @Dave Marsh.
Hopefully, the Microsoft tablet computers will not have any fiascoes such as Apple had with maps and Siri.
Genuine question; I’ve never used Windows 8, is it still an essential requirement to have anti virus running constantly?
Don’t forget the antivirus app!
The surface pro will have half the battery life of an iPad too!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57556307-75/microsoft-surface-pro-to-get-half-the-battery-life-of-surface-rt/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
MDN, I wouldn’t be so sure about it being DOA. Windows phone 8 not the dud that you hoped it would be.
Actually, MDN has always said that Windows Phone will be a success, but thanks for playing. Your parting gift is a POS 9 pound, 2-inch thick Nokia Lumia.
Uh… It is a dud.
Giving Steve Ballmer the benefit of the doubt and believing his claim that WP8 is selling 4x than WP7 did last year means that WP8 is DOA anyway.
Four times better than insanely abysmal is still a failure.