Microsoft Surface Tablet announced
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MS would have to have a monopoly in the markets windows RT competes in for them to not be allowed to do this. In fact it hardly seems to matter as BOTH apple and google have preinstalled browsers and apple doesn't allow other browsers not using safaris frame work on to their devices.
For ms to get introuble the other two companys would have to get in trouble first and MS would have to get a dominate market share in tablets for this to even be discussed.
I don't think the ipad will be able to compete with the surface pro in the busniess world. The windows eco system is leagues ahead.
My school district wont be rolling out ipads ever after this surface announcement.
We're talking about bundling MS Office, not browsers.
The EU doesn't seem to care about marketshare as much in investigating anti-competitive practices. Google is already being investigated with its use of FRAND patents, and they'll probably investigate Apple for the App Store stuff. Requiring manufacturers to bundle an Office Suite running on an exclusive Desktop mode that other apps can't reach would definitely trigger some alarm bells.
Edit: In fact, the EU did investigate Apple for requiring XCode-only apps, and dropped the investigation after Apple started allowing 3rd party development platforms. This was before Apple even had close to 20% of smartphone marketshare in the EU.
Manufacturers are not required to bundle Office suite with windows RT.
Aside from that , both ios and andriod both come with their own suite of word processing tools. Why should MS be handicaped by having to ship without the same tools ?
Can they actually remove MS Office from Windows RT?
iOS does not bundle the iWork office suite with iOS, you need to purchase it separately; QuickOffice Pro makes more money on the App Store than the iWork apps. The Google suite is on the web, if there are apps, the manufacturers don't need to include them.
There still can be an investigation just based on the bundling in Surface.
The EU did investigate Apple for requiring XCode-only apps, and dropped the investigation after Apple started allowing 3rd party development platforms. This was before Apple even had close to 20% of smartphone marketshare in the EU.
Already done.
Almost no enterprise market will be rolling out surface pros either. What company will give their employees thousand dollar tablets when the vast majority only give cheap dell laptops?
It is downright delusional to think the pro will be big in enterprise. It is way out of the price market CIO's are willing to spend.
The market for thousand dollar laptops/tablets is extremely small. Very few spend that kind of money. Windows pc sales in both the consumer market and enterprise is dominated by laptops that cost far closer to 500 than 1000.
A very cheap dell enterprise focused tablet could take off in the enterprise market but the surface pro is a consumer niche product at best. No one spends that kind of money on hardware.
I am convinced those here and the bloggers who think the pro will be a hit in enterprise have never worked a day in the business side of a IT department in a big corporation.
I haven't read through all 109 pages and obviously someone might have brought this up already but here's why I think Microsoft have come out swinging in the tablet market.
Microsoft's biggest seller is their operating system as they said in their keynote. Over 1 billion users. But the problem recently has been Apple eating away at their sales, but it hasn't been from their OS. There's only some 50 million users on Lion. Nevertheless I think Microsoft is worried. The reason is that business users have slowly moved away from RIM Blackberries to iPhones. So many companies now have staff carrying iPhones rather than Blackberries. But they are still using Windows computers (fortunately for Microsoft) cause nobody can be bothered replacing the whole lot at once and windows is pretty functional and does not require additional training. The issue is that 75% of tablets now are iPads, which work well with iPhones, to make these work really well, you would replace all the computers (starting with notebooks) to run OSX. This will probably start with small business first and then larger businesses.
With Windows 8 we are now seeing microsoft move into the productivity tablet market. This is the tablet you want to get for work - it even has a KEYBOARD and trackpad. at the very least it will keep people from buying an iPad for the time being and then maybe later buy a windows phone. And ultimately its to stop business users from owning an iPad and iPhone and a macbook and swapping to OSX.
Will it work?
It really depends if people enjoy being productive with a tablet.
(Personally you may as well get a notebook to do work, but I'm sure there's people who need a tablet and a notebook)
Microsoft's biggest seller is their operating system as they said in their keynote. Over 1 billion users. But the problem recently has been Apple eating away at their sales, but it hasn't been from their OS. There's only some 50 million users on Lion. Nevertheless I think Microsoft is worried. The reason is that business users have slowly moved away from RIM Blackberries to iPhones. So many companies now have staff carrying iPhones rather than Blackberries. But they are still using Windows computers (fortunately for Microsoft) cause nobody can be bothered replacing the whole lot at once and windows is pretty functional and does not require additional training. The issue is that 75% of tablets now are iPads, which work well with iPhones, to make these work really well, you would replace all the computers (starting with notebooks) to run OSX. This will probably start with small business first and then larger businesses.
With Windows 8 we are now seeing microsoft move into the productivity tablet market. This is the tablet you want to get for work - it even has a KEYBOARD and trackpad. at the very least it will keep people from buying an iPad for the time being and then maybe later buy a windows phone. And ultimately its to stop business users from owning an iPad and iPhone and a macbook and swapping to OSX.
Will it work?
It really depends if people enjoy being productive with a tablet.
(Personally you may as well get a notebook to do work, but I'm sure there's people who need a tablet and a notebook)
For businesses to switch to osx it would require thousands of companies to bring out mac versions of their software when a lot struggle to keep their PC ones up todate
Keylime
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Something that isn't getting a lot of attention is how the product being show on stage is pretty clearly in the rough phases of development.
The initial presenter had to swap out tablets because using IE put the Surface into a state where it would no longer work, a lot of the swipes weren't registering properly...and to top it all off, they wouldn't let anyone in attendance play with the keyboard covers at all. Also no battery life mentions and no price.
Not at all damning the Surface as a product (I've said before that I'm impressed with the concept, not entirely convinced about the execution yet)...but I really wonder how ready this thing is for primetime. Obviously it's not releasing for a bit, but I think there is still a lot of work to be done.
Just wish what we saw more more of a product and less of a tech demo. I'm already jealous of the keyboard cover idea and want to know if that thing works as well as they say it does.
The initial presenter had to swap out tablets because using IE put the Surface into a state where it would no longer work, a lot of the swipes weren't registering properly...and to top it all off, they wouldn't let anyone in attendance play with the keyboard covers at all. Also no battery life mentions and no price.
Not at all damning the Surface as a product (I've said before that I'm impressed with the concept, not entirely convinced about the execution yet)...but I really wonder how ready this thing is for primetime. Obviously it's not releasing for a bit, but I think there is still a lot of work to be done.
Just wish what we saw more more of a product and less of a tech demo. I'm already jealous of the keyboard cover idea and want to know if that thing works as well as they say it does.
That is basically not the direction things are heading...nearly anything can be sold on Windows Store
brotkasten
Member
Except for other DD services like Steam or Origin.
Keylime
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The resolutions are apparently locked in:
1366 x 768 for the Surface Vanilla
1920 x 1080 for the Surface Pro (they said Full HD screen during the keynote)
They said the Pro is "Retina" from 17 inches which is "less than arms length away". I think it would get a pass, because the Pro being heavier will mean that people would be more likely to be using it on their lap or a desk + stand vs. holding it in front of their face like they would a phone.
Tegra 3+ is not Wayne. It's a clock speed bump. Wayne isn't coming till 2013.Hahaha oh wow ... hadn't thought of that
That gave me an interesting thought. Thinking long term, once high-refresh color eInk displays become available, will that actually replace the small-scale tablet? I could see a focused 'tablet' ala Nook/Fire that has a week or two battery life pretty much killing off small tablets.
Not really?
They seem to be implying it's some new generation or custom version of Ivy Bridge for the Pro. So at worst, look to how the HD 4000 performs.
For the RT unit, rumors are pointing to it actually using Wayne (Tegra 3+), which looks to be an incredible ARM SoC. However there aren't benchmarks for it since it too isn't complete.
better late than never
Yep, first time.
And it certainly is a huge deal, though obviously they aren't moving directly into Apple territory. For the most part, this is more akin to how Google handles Nexus products than anything. They aren't moving away from an OEM model.
The one area where things get more interesting however is in their tight handling of HW specs for Windows Phone and Windows RT. That's the more interesting move IMO (though it's been discussed for a while via WP7). What's more amusing is no one has really bothered to comment much on Intel's entire Ultrabook specification which is pretty tight as well. Especially given most see the Ultrabook (and related hybrids) as being the future of laptops.
The genius move MS made in all of this was to include WinRT in Windows 8. Since there's an automatic userbase, expect app development to escalate faster than it original did for other ecosystems 'starting at 0'.
Apple - the OT Nintendo
A bit extreme, but I feel ya'. Tegra 3 was always supposed to involve a die shrink, but delays prevented it so they went forward with kludge-fest anyway.
The interesting thing for nVidia though is that this will actually help the marketing for Wayne. The jump is going to be pretty insane given it involves the move to Cortex A15's, and entirely new GPU design, and a die shrink from the previous model.
3rd quarter
22 degrees only. Could be a problem for some use-cases. The good news is the screen has fantastic viewing angles, so if that's your concern don't worry.
Yes all signs point to Apollo running the WinRT API, but that's hardly 'letting it die'.
You need to separate the UI and feature-set from the kernel and API. The change that's happening is Apollo is dumping the Win CE kernel in favor of NT, and utilizing the WinRT API. The rationale is simple. MS is basically moving all of the consumer devices to said kernel and API in order to allow app compatibility and services sharing. They are going after a single ecosystem and UI to chase Apple.
If anything though, WP7 heavily influenced WinRT. The UI, overall design language, even app contracts are all evolutions of WP7. And Apollo is not going to look all that different from WP7. So really it's kind of the opposite. While the underlying codebase may be changing, the core front-facing experience will remain and its basis is expanding to all parts of 'Windows'.
I don't know why some people are expecting Haswell either. That's Spring-Summer 2013. It's Ivy Bridge, as confirmed in the keynote.
Ivy Bridge is the 3rd generation in the Core [iX] family. Nehalem -> Sandy Bridge -> Ivy Bridge. It's used everywhere for its marketing.
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/ww...rd-gen-core-family-mobile-vol-1-datasheet.pdf
Not entirely. Cross-architecture, sandboxed desktop applications are entirely possible using current APIs but there isn't any way to install them on ARM devices.
The Dutch Slayer
Member
Posted already? Thought it was pretty funny 
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**shiver**
I wouldn't wish outlook upon my worst enemy.
The iPad and Pro are substitute goods. If someone got an iPad then I doubt they're going to get a Pro and likewise(I'm not talking about people who have an iPad 3 currently as they didn't know this was coming out). That's like someone saying the Kindle and iPad don't eat away at each others sales.
That kinda depends on the company. A lot of it companies seem to like getting good quality thinkpads for their employees due to them not braking apart if you look at them in a funny way. We at work actually got a choice in our laptops and it was either a 2000 thinkpad or a macbook air (that is a lot cheaper). Having to pay 300-500 euros extra for a good quality laptop is most likely going to end up being cheaper then having them break down all the time and thus having a worker not doing anything for a day and needing extra tech support resources.
You should wish Lotus Notes upon your worst enemy.
NinjaBoiX
Member
Could you explain why asking for flash support is "silly"? I don't think I follow.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
Or they are smaller, or are adjustable.
Oops, sorry, misinterpreted. When you said releasing for desktop I was thinking a desktop PC. Wasn't thinking of non-Metro applications. But you are correct, desktop applications can only be linked to from the store. Doubt you would ever see them being sold and installed directly from there.
My company is on the T420 ThinkPads now. Those are around what $800 or so? Think they are pretty common in the enterprise market too.
Mobile flash is dead. Adobe even said so. It's not on chrome for android now, not on windows phone, and very limited on metro for windows 8.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
Got a source for that? My wife works for a Fortuen 500 company and has a laptop that costs ~1K. I work for a large company and our laptops are around 1300.
I can see these being very big in enterprise.
NinjaBoiX
Member
Really? So flash isn't even going to be used anymore? Hmm.
I'm curious too. Although flash can be quite buggy at times, it's really convenient when I want to watch videos through the Web Browser on WebOS.
EDIT: Oh right. Because its dead and will eventually be replaced with HTML5. What about Silverlight then?
i_am_ben
running_here_and_there
the first handful of links on Google tell me Tegra 3+ is Wayne. If it indeed is not wayne, then the winRT tablet should be cheap as hell, no one should have to pay good money and get a tegra 3 in return
edit... it seems going further down is more information about Tegra 3+ which is just a spec bumped Tegra3... well then, 299 for 16gb and 399 for 32gb would be a sweet spot for the tablet.
Only time I've seen it used was in IBM because it was free to them, does anyone use that garbage anymore?
infinityBCRT
Member
Gary needs to see this:
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/microsoft-surface-tablet-1085839/review
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/microsoft-surface-tablet-1085839/review
The Surface tablet also balances well on the hinge, which has two long rubber feet to stabilise it.
With the Touch Cover on, we were able to balance the Surface on a lap for typing like a notebook without it falling forward or tipping over backwards; compare this to the Asus Transformer Prime which always wants to fall backwards, and you'll appreciate this weighting.
Fjolle
Member
Unfortunately....
or, you know, they'd handle it like anyone else who uses a tablet. do you constantly hold your iPad up to your face?
Kung Fu Jedi
Member
I don't think anyone is going to get a lot of time with them until right before release. Which is still some nebulous time off in the future.
That's interesting, your lap wouldn't get hot either since all the junk is in the top part.
yep - i wonder why they decided to show it so early... there really was no need to do it unless they want to show shareholders where they were going. after watching plenty of apple keynotes which usually go off without a hitch, this one was quite jarring. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt but they have a lot to learn from apple.
Secondly the bald guy coming after steve ballmer looked really nervous, and nowhere near as smooth as the guy after him. the last guy was a bit arrogant, spoke well but didn't really like him much. And it was really awkward that the bald guy kept looking at the teleprompter. If you can't remember your speech keep it simple or let someone else do it.
its the app ecosystem that will make or break this, lets hope microsoft has learned something from apple and its own xbox live system.
actually id be worried about the instability of that on your lap. most of the heavy stuff is in the screen. it'd be ok with two points of contact on your thighs and if you kept your thighs flat but by the looks of it, it would be easy to tip over.
runningjoke
Member
My job is making HTML email newsletters for various companies. Obviously they want the email to look good on their own mailclients, and that is a nightmare for the ones that still use Lotus Notes 6.5 (not even kept up to date).
POWERSPHERE
Member
Is there a touch pad, or just the touch screen, because that'd be a bit annoying.
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