“Twenty years ago, when Microsoft was on the rise, it decided to spend the then princely sum of $100 million on an ad campaign to tell the world about itself. The image spots asked ‘Where do you want to go today?’ While the actual commercials were sometimes a bit weird, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella might want to dust off the question itself right about now,” Mark Rogowsky writes for Forbes. “After the launch of the new Surface Pro 3 this week, the company seems completely lost.”
“This is a product in search of a market. And it’s a market Microsoft has been insisting is the next-big-thing since at least 2002. Microsoft seems as unclear as ever on people want tablets and, for that matter, why they want laptops like the Macbook Air — the product they kept comparing Surface Pro 3 to. Tablets are inherently touch products, held in the hands, used intimately. While keyboards are brought out by a small minority of users for note-taking and document creation, that’s the rare case, not the raison d’etre,” Rogowsky writes. “Great laptops are built around great keyboards and trackpads (or still for some, the little red eraser head of the ThinkPad). The Macbook Air’s most amazing attribute is its bulletproof construction, best exemplified by its remarkable rigidity. Surface Pro 3 is basically a series of compromises to achieve some destination that remains ambiguous — where does it want to go?”
“It’s not an especially good buy as a laptop, with prices ranging up to $1949 (Surface Pro 3 starts at $799) and it’s unlikely to be a great laptop given the kickstand and a keyboard/trackpad combo that no one who touched it felt was best in class,” Rogowsky writes. “And more importantly, it’s not a laptop that’s replacing anyone’s tablet. At 1.76 pounds, it’s way too heavy. An iPad Air checks in at just 1 pound and personally I returned one for a 3/4 pound Mini after deciding it would get tiresome to hold for long periods. Surface Pro 3 is also far too large to use for any length of time as a handheld device.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The unmerciful beating Karma is finally doling out to the oh-so-deserving Microsoft is pure schadenfreude on steroids.
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