Err, new tablet, Surface.

It's 9.3mm thick, but in most shots I've seen, it looks 2-3x thicker than an iPad which itself is 9.4mm thick. My first impression is that the screen is way too small. They should have gone for something closer to the 10" iPad form factor. Hmm, I think the smallness might again be an issue with the images I've browsed. I just read a quick spec that says it's supposed to be over 10", however in a widescreen aspect. So that sounds good.

I haven't gotten many details yet because Engadget does their liveblog backwards with new content at the top. If it were already impossible to read/follow anything with this kind of layout, the page auto-refreshes so that while you're reading something the text will suddenly jump somewhere else on the page. Brilliant.

One gem I just picked up is that there will be multiple different tablets to cover the different flavors of Windows 8. Troubling.

damn, not even waiting till the event is fully over to come here and trash it. I think this is a record for you :P

The (basic?) ARM version actually looks pretty good. It's just that apart from XBOX (and mice I suppose), MS doesn't have a successful track record with hardware.

I do have an issue with MS's last-minute launch and muddled/fragmented Windows tablet strategy, but I'm hopeful this thing is going to do reasonably well. Apple needs some competition and as consumers we need to see some new original ideas. Apple continues to slowly iterate and Google continues to slowly regurgitate. MS seems to be doing something new - and something they in fact pioneered and put on the miss of the tech crowd in the first place (touch computing in the large-scale Surface product).

I think it looks cool. But I'm not as vitriolic as you so I'm probably wrong.

It doesn't *look* that bad IMO, it's just a bit troubling the lack of information; ok, so maybe it's not a consumer launch (because, well, it's not available yet) but no detail on price, battery life, screen res, wireless connectivity options...?

That seems a bit too handwavey to me. The main thing it would appear to do is to annoy vendors who announced they were going to make windows 8 products, like Asus. Nothing like competing in a market with thin margins against someone who doesn't have to pay an OS vendor!

Looking at it more, I'm intrigued. Probably not enough to jump back to the Windows ecosystem, but more interested then anything RIM or Google and their Android partners has done in the space.

Windows 8 (the Metro part) does work well on a tablet. It's going to be a strong competitor, much more sot then Microsoft's past attempts with XP Tablet edition. With solid hardware and software direct from Microsoft, this is also going to be a strong competitor against some of the companies Microsoft is currently allied with. I wonder how this will strain those relationships.

The keyboards (they have a tactile and pure touch version) looks pretty slick, and nowhere near as bulky as the iPad keyboard solutions out there.

The only thing I'm not sure about is the widescreen aspect ratio. I see this as a mistake that most of the Android tablets also make. Widescreen works well for desktops and laptops, but I personally find I use the iPad more in horizontal mode for reading and browsing. HP seemed to agree with the 4:3 ratio on the short lived Touchpad.

The announcement is a bit strange though with no dates or pricing information for either version. It will be interesting to watch the sales numbers of the ARM and x86 variants. I still believe strongly that desktop/laptop applications have no place on a tablet with a touch interface. The ARM variant is also more iPad like in portability, where the Intel one bumps that up a bit to the MacBook Air range. Microsoft is supporting a pen on the Intel version, so it may become pretty popular with artists. And perhaps the desktop style apps for that market make a bit more sense.

With an Apple iPad, your only decisions are: do you want a 3G modem, and do you want the super-resolution display? That's it.

With Windows, it's already much more complicated. Do you want ARM or Intel? What exactly are the tradeoffs? Performance? Battery life? Legacy compatibility? Which keyboard variant are you getting?

As to the Windows OEMs, I suspect that they're ambivalent about Microsoft's I-love-you-I-hate-you waffling. You engineer an ARM-based tablet. You get it running Android. You get it running Windows RT. You tweak the case a bit so you can give them different SKUs, and you offer both for sale and see what happens.

Since Android is "free" (although you need to hire your own devs to get it working on your hardware) and Windows costs money (and you may or may not need your own devs), it will be interesting to see whether Android devices end up costing less money. If that happens, Microsoft's in trouble, because for many consumers, there's Apple or Other, and Microsoft is lumped into the Other category. We know that Microsoft's solution to this problem is to try to place a patent tax on Android. We'll see how that shakes out.

Android is only free if you are also paying for Windows licenses. Microsoft has made that pretty clear in and out of the court room and it doesn't look like anything is going to change in that department.

Android is a great piece of middleware for many ventures, but for some OEMs and their product lines, it's really nothing but a giant anchor, IMO.

Google is trying to fight Microsoft on the Android patent tax. We also know that Motorola isn't going to pay it, since Google owns them. Maybe that leads to a cost advantage. We'll see how that all shakes out.

Personally, I'm surprised we haven't heard about any Microsoft - Apple patent suits. Maybe they quietly signed a cross-licensing agreement.

Microsoft didn't have anyone serving on the board at Apple, nor were they invited to be a deep part of the iPhone like Google was. Apple targeting Android with patent lawsuits seems to be mostly driven by the sense of betrayal Jobs had for Google/Schmidt, and his opinion that Android has stolen much from Apple.

Most of the other lawsuits Apple have been involved with are more defensive in nature. Nokia, Motorola, RIM, and Kodak filed against Apple first. Apple has been the plaintiff in the Samsung and HTC cases.

I haven't seen Google fighting MS yet where it counts, in the court room. So far they haven't intervened to prevent their OEMs from entering into agreements with MS. Motorola may be the holdout, but considering their position on the totem pole, it doesn't mean much.

But Google has been acquiring patents like a Hungry Hungry Hippo lately, so maybe they'll enter the ring at some point. I don't think it's any coincidence that the legal maneuvers have so far not been between the primary parties themselves.

Personally, I don't believe software or processes of any kind should qualify for patent protection (anywhere), so my ideal outcome would be for every one of these (and other such) patents to be invalidated. I won't hold my breath for that to happen. Things as they are, if MS and Apple ever did pool their efforts to go after Android on a legal front, it would be explosive. The odds-maker in me sees it as at least 10-1 in favor of MS+Apple.

Although in this case beaten in turn by Penny Arcade who were required by their own publishing schedule to trash it before the event even started...

Peter

The way I understand it is the only choice you have is which form factor do you want, tablet or 'ultra-notebook'. Well, that and the size (which is dependent on the form factor). The keyboard and processor are attached to the form, you can't ask for an ARM ultra-notebook - it doesn't work that way.

Of course, if the article I read is wrong, then ignore all this :P

And don't get me started on the keyboard. No-one ever asks if you want a dvorak! It's just qwerty, qwerty, qwerty. I can't even install a dvorak keyboard on my iOS devices, without jailbreaking. Piece of shite, that's what it is. It's goddamned pictures on a screen. How hard could it be? I can't believe Apple gets away with releasing such rubbish.

First time I ever heard of Dvorak was on our //c. It was a push button on the top of the keyboard to switch the layout. Talk about regression.

In the context of a touch screen, it's unclear that either QWERTY or Dvorak is the right answer. Dvorak was optimized for eight fingers going all at once, which isn't at all what you do on a touchscreen. QWERTY was optimized to maximize the likelihood that the type-bars on old typewriters wouldn't collide (so you want a lot of horizontal distance between adjacent key presses). When you think about trying to disambiguate a word being slammed out with lots of errors in it, the QWERTY layout isn't a bad place to begin, because anything that would have lots of near-adjacent key hits would be more likely to be ambiguous.

Consider, for example, the way that Dvorak puts all the vowels together on the home row. That's fine when you're on a keyboard but it's disastrous if you're fat-fingering a smartphone, since there are lots of words with consonants in the same position but different vowels.

I suppose the jury is still out on the absolute optimal way to do text input on a touch screen. I love SwiftKey. Others love Swype.

It'd be nice if iOS allowed the installation of additional keyboards easily. The last I recall apps could define their own but that doesn't extend outside of its sandbox. I would expect that with a taller iPhone screen coming, we may see some keyboard changes in iOS 6. A version with numbers on top would make a lot of sense - PITA having to flip between letters and numbers. But then it's a PITA flipping to reach for a comma or question mark too.

Heh. SwiftKey solves all those problems and has for years.

I can't make this stuff up:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/20/microsoft-introduces-windows-phone-8/

So MS can't even support software on phones released in the same year as their new OS. Shameful.

It looks to me that MS doesn't really have any long-term strategy at all. IMO, MS platforms are not a safe bet for investment. I only see them losing more ground in enterprise, despite their new hardware non-announcement.

They put one hand out to greet you and slap you with the other one. Tsk tsk tsk.

I think what we are seeing is their attempt to be a more unified company. It's going to remain messy for a while, and I have to wonder if the management there is even capable of pulling it off right. So many of the problems I've heard at Microsoft stem from way too much middle management, and huge rifts between divisions.

Getting people really hyped up for the Lumia was probably a mistake. Burning the few Windows Phone 7 customers prior to the Lumia probably could have been handled okay. Now they are going to burn a lot of big supporters too, who saw the Lumia as the true start of the real phone effort from Microsoft.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens with Windows 8. I think the tech looks really good- but it also seems that MS is throwing absolutely everything at competing with the iPad. And I suppose they probably have no choice. I just worry that no one will ever compete with the iPad no matter how good the tech is.

Windows 8 is a game changer for sure- but it might be MS jumping the shark and handing the reigns over to Apple.

I just got back from TechEd in Orlando, and what concerns me was the almost total lack of acknowledging that the iPad exists. They talked about tablets in general terms and of course were touting machines that will run Windows 8. And I get it- all they can do is promote their stuff. That being said, talking about tablets and promising developers tools to develop on these platforms without even mentioning the iPad is essentially ignoring the elephant in the room and it's hard to treat the presenters as credible sources of information.

I mean just a simple, "guys, we know the iPad is huge and it's a platform a lot of your potential customers use, but we are confident based on studies that Windows 8 tablets will rival iPads by the year 2014 and you will have a solid customer base to which you can sell your software" would have at least allowed for hope that MS is on top of things. Right now it seems like they are playing catch up and don't even realize it.

I don't think MS is in any danger of going away, but they don't seem to have a clear idea of where it is they're going period. IMO, Windows 8 seems not quite ambitious, but conflicted.

I disagree- I think they are very clear on where they want to go. Whether it is achievable is my question.

And I know they aren't going away any time soon, but if the windows tablet doesn't take off they are going t have lost a LOT of momentum.

Basically, this isn't like Silverlight. That idea failed but they had lots of other competing tech to fill the gap. Here they are putting all their eggs in the basket of Metro apps being the wave of the future- they are going to be hurting big time if they can't get traction in the market.

Meanwhile they have totally alienated phone manufacturers and the developer community...

Surface: I am just sold to the concept. Completely.

I love virtually everything of this thing. It's a tablet form factor, and it's a real PC. And there's a thin cover/keyboard.

And it has Windows 8 which I've come to just >>love<< on both a Lenovo X200 laptop, and on a Asus Nettop, even without a touch screen, and even as a HTPC where the big tiles are just so good on a large Tv screen. I mean, most/all things many hate I just love, which I fing intriguing. The catch-all corners, and the new so-hated-by-many start screen which is just so good and fast, the absence of clutter anywhere, the speed at which you now reach most settings and advanced features, it just good. One for all, the right-click menu you get when you have the pointer at the bottom left, just includes all of the reasons why I would still use the Start button, but it saves you all the submenus and intermediary windows. If they only addressed the Network and Sharing Center crazyness that same way.

in any case, I can't wait to get one, and I am afraid to admit to myself I'll be willing to spend money on it.

I even find it good looking, which is usually never the case for most laptops/ultrabooks/tablets unless it's Apple (which I end up disliking in other more relevant ways, but still find beautiful).

On the other end, I just don't get the RT version. I will never consider it. I dislike just as I do the iPad. Yes, admittedly it comes with a serious version of Office in a dignifying desktop environment, which makes it a bit less useless, but still, no, thanks.

One thing: why it does not come with Thunderbolt?! That's disappointing.

Thunderbolt means PCIe and it is unlikely the ARM RT has PICe anywhere in it.

And apart from that, implementing Thunderbolt is still expensive, too expensive if you are trying to match iPad prices.

And of course the current connector is still far too big for a tablet (though I realise there is no reason why they couldn't use another smaller connector).

Sorry, my wording was confusing: I meant, why Surface Pro does not come with Thunderbolt? Again, RT is of no particular interest to me. I'd happily cash out some more money to be able to expand Surface with, for example, a powerful video card when docked.

Really? It's about half the size of USB-A and about twice the size of microUSB. Hardly gigantic.