SeaOfMadness
Member
Does anyone know what kind of pen digitizer is in the Pro? Is it a Wacom, or something else?
Microsoft Surface Tablet announced
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fluffydelusions
Member
I don't know. Depends on the user I'd think. RT will have full on MS office included at around the same price as an iPad which is important to the majority of students out there. Also, Windows 8 will come preinstalled on some 90%+ of PC's so developers will want to get their apps out there. So there will be no shortage of apps. That much is certain.
smothpocket
Neo Member
Intel just released a phone with an x86 based atom processor in it with no fans. They're working on it.
Consensus seems to be Wacom.
SeaOfMadness
Member
... and a touch screen. That's a pretty big differentiator from the Air. We'll see how it compares on battery life, however. (hopefully soon).
Yeah, its inevitable sadly.
But that's the thing that makes me wait for future revisions. I don't want to have to treat my tablet like it's a fragile ultrabook.
fluffydelusions
Member
I just want a release date. I thought RT is supposed to come out before 8 sometime this summer. I was really excited about the Nexus tablet next week now I just can't bring myself to care after seeing that surface tablet lol.
SeaOfMadness
Member
OK, yeah I should have been clearer. Perhaps not all x86 procs, but certainly anything i5 or similar.
My MacBook Air has a fan and I lug it around exactly like I would a tablet.
iPod, iPad, and iPhone are the reason they have become the company they are. If not getting a virus was the reason then Macs would have more than 6%-9% market share.
Intel came into my office a few weeks back to pimp Ivy Bridge procs for us to lap up. They also had a quite detailed release document for that platform and the one following it into next year. Heres what I can say .. and it looks neat.
Intel uses a "tick-tock" development strategy for their line of procs. They alternate a tick and a tock for every calendar year of development. A "tick" is always a reduction in cost of the existing platform, usually more efficiency and streamlining. A "tock" is a new architecture platform. So in regards to Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.. Sandy Bridge is last years architecture, but it was the "tock". Ivy Bridge is the "tick" this year and while it only brings marginal power increases over the Sandy Bridge platform is revolutionizes power consumption and efficiency across the board. Intel was boasting battery life on Win 8 ultrabooks running Ivy Bridge nearly double whats out there today.
At the end of the pitch they went on to say that next years "tock" is focused mostly on fan-less CPU and innovative power efficiency as well. Additionally, the Atom line of procs is not what it used to be.. and Intel should really rebrand them. Atom procs today, and going forward with Ivy Bridge are beasts on output while skim on power. Intel just recently released an Atom x86 based phone, that has no fans. And don't let the proc name fool you, this isn't the old Atom that we all grew to hate. The Atom line is Intels direct competitor to ARM.
I suspect that this time next year we'll be hearing about a Windows 8 Pro Surface 2.0, which will feature some new kind of Intel Atom based architecture that will be more powerful than current Ivy Bridge, yet fit into the bezeling of the Windows RT Surface model and weight the same.
Okay this is true, but once again its the sort of thing I would rather wait out and see. I got really hyped over the vita, but I decided to not be an early adopter and am still holding out for that. But it should have a strong launch with most of the population still using windows. Students will indeed make up most of their sales too going into the fall.
I think another big part of Microsoft's strategy needs to be having special features tied into with the next Xbox and Windows 8.
I was at a friends house and they are all Apple fans, they have the newest iPad's, iPhones, Apple TV, etc., and I loved how you can watch something on the iPad and flick it on the TV. Stuff like that is something Microsoft needs to do to create an ecosystem. They can do some really cool stuff with a tablet, the next Xbox, and the Kinect or Next Kinect.
I was at a friends house and they are all Apple fans, they have the newest iPad's, iPhones, Apple TV, etc., and I loved how you can watch something on the iPad and flick it on the TV. Stuff like that is something Microsoft needs to do to create an ecosystem. They can do some really cool stuff with a tablet, the next Xbox, and the Kinect or Next Kinect.
fluffydelusions
Member
I'm thinking you can drop $100 off each of those prices. I think the 32gb RT will be right in line with the lowest iPad entry
I'm hoping the Pro comes with Haswell if it isn't coming until 2013.
Indeed, thats part of why I think Microsoft might possibly be delaying the Pro Surface release. Its not necessary for the first model though, 2.0 would suffice but I'm with you on this.
Kung Fu Jedi
Member
I think they're headed that way. NextBox, Kinect, Win8, Xbox Glass, WP8, etc. are all steps towards a more cohesive Microsoft device strategy.
Napoleonthechimp
Member
The reactions over at the macrumors.com forums are pretty crazy. I expected people to remain level-headed and look at new hardware objectively but it is pretty weird to see how they fit Microsoft's new tablet into their pro-Apple narrative.
From watching a liveblog and the GAF reaction live, I thought Surface sounded like it had positive hype/interest behind it. Then I watched the Youtube video of the actual keynote where you can see the camera view zoomed in, and you see how unresponsive and buggy the tablet actually is. This thing is not ready for primetime, and that live demo was a disaster.
I suspect it has more to do with the HW not being final than trying to hide anything (same with the price).
Signs point to RT using Tegra 3+ (Wayne), and the Pro using a new rev of Ivy Bridge. In both cases the chipsets aren't finalized. To some extent, the OS's aren't necessarily even done either, etc.
Good question. If I had to guess they'll eventually move away from the desktop once/if Office is running under WinRT. I wouldn't expect them to expose whatever subset of Win32 is being used currently.
This is currently for compatibility since the Office team is running under a different schedule.
I think it wasn't just the abstraction of computing to consumption that helped Apple here ... it's the fact the UI was designed with touch in mind.
The main thing hurting current touch all-in-ones (and touch Windows in general) is that the UI was simply not well suited to touch. Clickable items are small, both visually and in terms of hit targets, and worse ... the OS purposely pends reactions to clicks to see if the user going to execute a double click. The latter point cannot be stressed enough. That's why prior Windows touch devices felt so laggy. All interactions are queued with a built-in delay ... this is why touch UI's use a single-click model.
Unless I'm misunderstanding what was stated at the onset of the conference though, the Asus, etc. will be using a current Ivy Bridge chipset ... so battery life/performance may not be as good.
For a few reasons, I'd argue it's more like iPad Sr ... not the other way around.
- Dual apps is a big improvement versus current mobile OS's IMO
- Has the full versions of Office apps running
- Is literally running the same WinRT apps as on Windows 8. Not only does that mean the same visual experience, but all the content shares data via the cloud if you wish. Basically everything is completely synced to your desktop
The Pro model obviously will have it ... but yeah, good point ... really hope it's available in the RT model.
The lack of it in Android is pretty annoying.
Actually there's speculation it's running Wayne, so it's totally different than the Prime if that's the case.
MS could learn a thing or two from Apple. Only announce it when it´s ready to kick ass as an actual product.
Slayer-33
Liverpool-2
Bad reactions? What's going on
Good thing it's not shipping yet eh?
For me to consider the RT version I need to see that retail @ launch for £300 for the 32gb version.
I aint even thinking about the pro version as that will just be way out of my budget.
I wonder if it mostly came down to legal reasons why they didn't bother touting it yesterday. They may still be in a legal process to finalize design or verify patent rights.
That doesn't fit into their "Make whatever google are going to announce at IO look stupid" strategy.
They definitely did have a hard time with the RT tablet though, I got the impression Sinofsky was supposed to be showing off more apps other than just netflix but it failed when he opened IE.
Gary Whitta
Member
Hard to believe that people on an Apple enthusiast forum would look unfavorably on a MacBook/iPad competitor.
Kung Fu Jedi
Member
Kung Fu Jedi
Member
Yeah, that's all good until Google shows off a nice tablet, with full specs revealed, a price and release date.
Maybe another OEM will do that. Good chance someone will.
Jayayess1190
Member
Would Microsoft get special access to Haswell before anyone else? Because Haswell isn't coming out until summer 2013.
Slayer-33
Liverpool-2
In other words they mad? lol
I misread the quoted post, thought he might have been suggesting some positive talk, I was too quick to post.
The thing is, it doesn't need to have awesome next generation specs, it just needs to work fast and have a bunch of integrated services.
People in the business could take some points from Amazon as well as Apple. Even tho the Fire had sub par specs, it worked amazingly well for what it was supposed to do, was slick and sold like hotcakes.
Well yeah I didn't say it would work. To me google also seem to have a good (completely different) direction lined up so that will be interesting to see.
Gary Whitta
Member
Looking forward to Google finally giving the Android tablet market the flagship model it's been sorely missing.
I think Fire 2 will move the needle much more than the first one did too.
Between those and Surface and whatever Apple has next I think 2013 will be the first really interesting year in tablets since the iPad debuted.
I think Fire 2 will move the needle much more than the first one did too.
Between those and Surface and whatever Apple has next I think 2013 will be the first really interesting year in tablets since the iPad debuted.
brotkasten
Member
Asus announced a Windows 8 tablet with an Atom and a stylus at Computex.
11.6" is a bit big, though.
I don't know, GAF seems mostly positive.
Kung Fu Jedi
Member
The Fire sold like hotcakes because it hit the market right before Christmas at what was perceived to be a great price point. The tablet is mostly crap though, and sales fell off a cliff once the holidays passed. Amazon's next effort is likely to be their real entry into the tablet space.
Agreed. I'm looking forward to seeing what Google has to show off as well. I haven't been particularly impressed with Android tablets thus far, but I think that's why Google has decided to show the OEM's how to do it right.
Chrome OS seems wholly uninteresting and now the mobile OS's like iOS and whatever novelty treat Google is on seems wholly underpowered.
I don't know what Google can show that will be compelling unless they have some whole new OS.
For testing? Sure, they definitely have partnerships setup deep under NDAs that would give them access. But Microsoft probably wont have any grounds to sell a device with Haswell until after Intel goes RTM with it themselves.
I suspect Ivy Bridge for now, which is great.. a great platform. Haswell for future revisions most likely.
Keylime
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I think Google's problem is that they are betting on the web to be the one true platform, and I don't think the web is ready for that yet. Not saying it isn't getting there (HTML 5 is a great step in that direction), but I don't think it's there yet that you could solely depend on it.
Native apps are still the name of the game, and probably will be for at least the next 5 years.
Kung Fu Jedi
Member
Do you think Microsoft has sent Google scrambling in any way today? They seem to be the ones that have the most to lose from Surface.
Napoleonthechimp
Member
A handful of people are excited about the possibilities of a Microsoft designed Windows 8 tablet, but most of them jump on the anti-Microsoft bandwagon with almost religious fervour. I'm not generally against people supporting brands and products but when they're irrational about it then it becomes weird.
I'm talking about irrational reactions where they skew any possible positive things about the tablet into negative ones as if they're trying to justify their long-standing allegiance with Apple. As I've stated above, the "normal" ones see the benefit of increased competition and appreciate the different approach that Microsoft are taking.
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