“Have you ever been on a camp-out or a backpacking trip and during breakfast, lunch or dinner someone pulls out a spork? You know, a spoon that half-way up becomes a mini-fork?” E. Werner Reschke writes for T-GAAP. “A spork’s not a really good spoon, and it’s not really a good fork, but it’s functional enough, given an outdoor hiking/camping situation.”
“Microsoft’s Surface 3 is the perfect spork, but would you use it beyond your digital campsite?” Reschke writes. “Surface 3 is really a product in need of a market. It may start at the $500 price range, but what problem it solves and for whom it is intended for is still a mystery.”
Reschke writes, “Unfortunately for Microsoft three years from now the spork will still be with us, used on that occasional camping trip, but the Surface franchise will have traveled the same road as the Zune, and Kin.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last December:
Microsoft’s Surface Pro is a joke. Apple QC rejects more iPads than Surface Pro’s total production run rate – and that’s only a tiny bit of exaggeration.
Microsoft is a broken company that is still half-running off the previous bozo’s “ideas” because they hired the wrong guy, a Microsoft lifer, Nadella T. Clown, who seems to be unable to apply the brakes and stop Balmer’s runaway flops in their tracks. That’s not the way a badly beaten, horribly dysfunctional company is turned around.
In a properly-run Microsoft (which has never existed, by the way), Surface would have been cancelled long ago, in its development stages; the public would have never seen the Surface. It’d be just another stupid idea rapidly dismissed. Steve Jobs would have instantly eviscerated the hapless soul who had the temerity to waste his time with such a stupid, convoluted concept. Only Microsoft would go all the way through to actually producing the things (three generations so far!) and waste oodles of money trying, and failing, to market their slabs of stupidity.
Save your money, Microsoft. You’re going to need it.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Aww… Still sad and pathetic at everything they do.
Before I pass judgment I want to see it compared to the new MacBook. You can practically get three of these for the cost of the new MacBook, and remember that Windows 10 is coming out and is supposedly much less of an atrocity than Windows 8.1.
For those of us who sadly need to waste valuable SSD space on a Mac in order to run a few rarely needed Windows programs, this might actually be a decent solution. It might even turn out to be a good platform for use as an SDR (Software Defined Radio), a function that has been sadly overlooked on the Mac.
Personally I hate all tablets and think they are useless. I have never tried a Surface, but I do like the idea behind it compared to the iPad.
I have the Windows 10 beta and I think it horrible! Yea it brings back the “Start” menu and that alone fixes the horrific Windows 8.x nightmare. But the icons and so fourth are terrible they hurt my eyes. Almost on the same level as Yosemite folders when it first came out. Might just have to get used to them.
I hate to say it, but I think MS if moving in a better direction than when Balmer was running the show. To bad monkey boy still wasn’t running it!
The $499 Surface 3 is the extension of the Surface RT line and really competes with the iPad. At least it isn’t crippled with the RT OS, it supposedly runs a full Win 8.1 (including its 16 GB+ footprint it seems).
The Surface Pro 3 starts at $800, then the keyboard is another $130, making the 11-inch MacBook Air cheaper.
Someone is a little butthurt.
Why are you trying to give the Spork a bad name by comparing it to M$ Surface 3? 😀
Balmer’s Lawsv2.1
Impress the stockholders by describing future ‘innovative products’ (VaporWare) currently in Research & Development phase. Blind the stockholders with brilliance, or baffle them with cryptic jargon, whichever works. Get everyone really worked up by jumping up and down, moving wildly on stage, screaming motivational nonsense, and sticking your tongue out; occasionally throw a chair.
Technology at MicroSoft (M$) is (mis)managed by those who don’t understand the product. Design by committee. Change the design at the last minute. Add all kinds of unnecessary bells and whistles to a product, call it ‘feature innovation’. Flaws will be promoted as innovative features.
If you make a product any fool can use; only fools will use it. A product can be made fool proof; but it can’t be made idiot proof. If there is a way for a product to fail, it will.
If a product doesn’t sell, give them away to schools, for good Public Relations. If the company is failing, don’t blame yourself, fire subordinates and restructure.
Hand pick a replacement as your successor that will (mis)manage the company worse than you (so you’ll look better by comparison.) Retire and cash in your stock before the company fails completely and goes bankrupt. Complain that no one innovates products any more the way that you did when you were in charge. Buy a professional basketball team, then (mis)manage it the same way you (mis)managed your company.
Hush now, please don’t give them a new business plan.
OK, Surface 3: Microsoft’s Snuggie
MS = Missed Shot … by at least 4 years.
At this point with Apple on a monstrous roll and tied in with IBM’s software solutions group, MS is competing with the likes of Asian iPad copiers.
The $ is the ‘shaft’ symbol in M$. At one time it represented the companies and people they shafted. Today it representative of the shafting they give themselves. 😀
As much as I agree and think the Surface is a waste of precious metals, people are beginning to buy them. I’ve seen many more in the wild recently, mostly with business types. Hopefully the iPad Pro and the IBM deal will kick things back into high gear for iPad. That said, I rarely even turn mine on since getting my iPhone 6+. I struggle to find a use for it other than games and video watching.
Yeah, I’ve seen ONE so far … and it was in the hands of a government employee.
When I refinanced my house, a clerk came to my house so I could sign all the papers at home. She had a Surface. I asked her if she liked it. She said she’d rather have an iPad, but she needs to connect a scanner sometimes, and only the Surface has a USB port.
Now I’m curious about why iOS scanning software, which uses the device camera, would be inadequate.
I’ve seen them all the time on Grey’s Anatomy but then they are a fictional universe close to Microsoft, much like a Surface commercial.
Don’t forget, Microsoft pays through the nose to get product placement. (Apple might supply a few devices,but mostly and simply doesn’t bother- the art directors and the prop people just prefer Apple product on their sets.) So, anytime, yes, anytime, you see a Surface on TV or in a film, that shot was bought and paid for by Microsoft.
It is a viable product for those who speak of Apple with venom in their mouths. Fools.
Those types of people eventually grow up, regardless of which side of the fence they’re sitting.
900 million dollar writ down…
http://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2015/03/31/microsoft-surface-panos-panay-write-down.cnn?iid=ob_article_organicsidebar_expansion&iref=obnetwork
actually, it’s not a bad idea. the iPad is proof. surface 3 is too heavy, it’s under-powered, the OS is too heavy, well. let’s see, if they decrease it’s weight, if they use a screaming but cool running processor, remove the parts of the os that have nothing to do with the device, well… yes, yes, i know there is a device like that in the marketplace already, it’s an iPad.
it would be nice to have another such device. hey windows isn’t all bad. it’s just not good.
maybe microsoft may port their os to iPad. they’re porting every thing else these days. yeah, ok, i could see nobody wanting that either.
M$ is having to compete against a new class of netbook, the Gaagle ChromeBook. Cheap at $149, they are disposable; probably to become known as ‘Trashbooks.’ 😀
Sadly, Apple offers one too. It’s called a MacBook, and it costs ~ $1300. I never thought that Apple would compete in the trashbook category, but Cook is taking Apple in exactly the same direction as Google et al.
Nope.
It’s a fashion thing to go with your gold iPhone and latte whilst sofa surfing or watching TOWIE.
Students and serious users will use the Pro machines or the Airs – if not doing much that needs portable horsepower
I really don’t count the ChromeBook as a computer, it’s today’s equivalent of a dumb terminal — no internet connection, not much computing. In addition to that, what limited OS it has is yet another flavor of Linux, an OS that I’d call more fragmented than Android if not for the fact that Android is a fragment of Linux.
In other words, a Chromebook offers a limited iOS-like experience except a couple things: Apple is better at security and Apple supports only a handful of different hardware configs in iOS.
The more I use any new OS — and that includes the current OS X and iOS — the more I miss Snow Leopard.
I never compared a Chromebook to an iOS device, I see it as a very slightly evolved dumb terminal. Depending on what software you use, you can get a lot done on an iOS device even if you’re not connected.
What was wrong with 10.7 and 10.8? It wasn’t until Jony Ive got his grubby hands into software design that Apple’s operating systems began to suffer.
Oh, and remember, it took Snow Leopard almost 2 years to get to 10.6.8. Now the OS is on a yearly schedule — not much time to get the bugs out and we get to be unwilling beta testers for the first half of that year.
Microsoft doesn’t care if the Surface is a powerful machine, they are transforming themselves into a “services” company. Like Amazon’s Fire garbace, or Google Docs, MS wants to sell you an underpowered machine and have you rent software or rent server space.
It would be easy for Apple fanboys to criticise such a user-unfriendly approach, but Apple is clearly doing the same thing with iOS and constant dumbing-down of Mac hardware and software.
Apple users need to stop cheering blindly as Apple does exactly what its1984 ad warned us against — relying on the Big Brother cloud from any company.
Not a good analogy for my family — we don’t have a Surface 3, but we use Splayds all the time.
Remember the good old days when MDN had all sorts of MS trolls? I miss them.
Take better aim! 😀
Yes, the MS trolls were smarter.
In a Rain Man kind of way.
Much to my disappointment I’m looking to buy a cheap Windows machine for 2 things: a bit of software with no Mac equivalent and taking pen notes that get converted into text. For those reasons alone, I might look at a surface 3.
I know I could run Windows on my Mac, but these days Windows tablets are so cheap it’s less to buy one than it is to buy a copy of Windows + a copy of Office. So if I have to slum it, I may as well get a machine without the extra layer of confusing awfulness that you get from other hardware manufacturers adding their own shovelware on top of Windows.
I saw a brief, clumsy, MS Store presentation on the Surface Pro 3 last night. They’re attempting to compare it to the MacBook Air and the presenter inferred that there was a comparison chart available to MS Store staff, but she had forgotten to bring it. Sadly, the presenter got the size of the Surface screens wrong when asked. (o_O) I was also mind-boggled when she attempted to justify the Surface and Surface Pro pricing by comparing them to the MacBook Air. Oh dear. Without knowing actual prices, she stated that the Surface Pro was cheaper than the MacBook Air. (It’s NOT, especially if you want a keyboard with it). She inferred that the regular Surface 3 model was 2/3s cheaper than the MacBook Air. (It’s NOT).
Wondering about this mysterious MS MacBook Air vs Surface Pro 3 comparison chart, I dug around on the Microsoft site and found the page linked below. Count the number of distortions, as well as the stunning specs in the MacBook Air’s favor. No wonder the Surface Pro 3 presenter managed to ‘forget’ this chart. I think it qualifies as a minor abomination of marketing FAIL:
MacBook Air vs Surface Pro 3
The only point of undistorted envy on the chart is the amount of free space offered on MS OneDrive vs iCloud. It’s a 3:1 difference, 15 GB vs 5 GB.
😾 📢 HELLO APPLE! We told you about this before!!! 📣📣📣
implied not inferred
I always get that wrong! What would I do without you. 😀
Put some Spork on your fork.