1. Microsoft Surface in Person

    I finally got a chance to get my hands on a Surface today. Overall, it’s a nice product. The build quality is about as solid as you could expect from something that isn’t made of metal. But you’ve heard about that already. You’ve heard that in the desktop mode, it’s a little sluggish, that the UI doesn’t seem to be fully designed for a tablet-only experience. You’ve probably even heard that holding it in landscape feels awkward, regardless of how much content you can see at once.

    So I’m going to skip all of that. Here’s what you need to know about the Surface. This device is the opposite of what the iPad has become. Today, the large-screen iPad pushes up toward the laptop replacement zone. It has apps that allow content creation, sometimes cleverly, sometimes awkwardly. The Surface, however, pushes downward into the tablet category. From my (admittedly limited) experience with the device, it appears to have been designed from the beginning as a replacement for your laptop that can be used as a tablet in a pinch. As a tablet-secondary device, it is much better than anything that has come before it. As a pure-tablet, there are far too many places where the Surface seems to say, “You’re supposed to use the keyboard for that.”

    ∞ December 5, 2012

     


  2. parislemon: I sort of wish Microsoft had gone retro, back to this logo they used in the early 1980s. So do death metal fans.  It does seem to be a Surface kindred spirit. I wonder if the M slash is at a 22 degree angle.

    parislemon:

    I sort of wish Microsoft had gone retro, back to this logo they used in the early 1980s. So do death metal fans. 

    It does seem to be a Surface kindred spirit. I wonder if the M slash is at a 22 degree angle.

    ∞ August 23, 2012

     


  3. If You See a Trackpad →

    Peter Bright, writing for Ars Technica:

    In a promotional site that’s worryingly devoid of details and useful information, one of the few things that is confirmed is that Surface will come with a combined keyboard/touchpad cover.

    Microsoft is telling both users and hardware manufacturers alike that to get the most out of Windows 8, you’re going to need a keyboard and a pixel-perfect pointing device. Touch alone just doesn’t cut it.

    As many have pointed out, Steve Jobs once said, “If you see a stylus, they blew it.”

    Those words were in reference to the iPhone. But as we know now, the iPad was actually the first touch-based device that Apple developed. Maybe he should have said stylus or trackpad.

    ∞ August 6, 2012