Microsoft Surface Studio
Discussion
durbster said:
Apple... low profit!? 
But yes, they do seem to be lacking balls at the moment. Their next product evolution will need to be special. I suppose it's very dangerous to be bold when your share price has such a long way to fall.
Low revenue perhaps? But yes, they do seem to be lacking balls at the moment. Their next product evolution will need to be special. I suppose it's very dangerous to be bold when your share price has such a long way to fall.
Perhaps they need to get feet behind desks in their new spaceship campus first, but sod the share price. They've got billions to play with, they need to loosen up and realise that it's not 1995 anymore.
I'm not suggesting they do anything that buggers up their main product lines, but surely there's scope for semi-experimental product releases that are let loose on the general public rather than their secretive labs. With the the number and quality of engineers they have, there ought to be serious competition for funky releases of kit.
durbster said:
It's also nice to see an advert from Microsoft that doesn't make you want to punch everyone involved:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzMLA8YIgG0
Great add imho! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzMLA8YIgG0
Yep, it's one of the most puzzling things about Apple. They have enough cash to launch their own space programme but seem very reluctant to play with it. They don't seem to have any interest in exploring new things, rather just continue to polish existing ones.
Consider what Google has created and experimented with in the last ten years and Apple look weirdly dormant.
But then, Microsoft have been throwing all sorts of ideas around for years but rarely seem able to drive them through to a viable product (until the last couple of years at least). Maybe this is the point where it bites Apple's lack of innovation on the arse.
Consider what Google has created and experimented with in the last ten years and Apple look weirdly dormant.
But then, Microsoft have been throwing all sorts of ideas around for years but rarely seem able to drive them through to a viable product (until the last couple of years at least). Maybe this is the point where it bites Apple's lack of innovation on the arse.
Leithen said:
Low revenue perhaps?
Possibly. Apple's revenue from phones and tablets is around 5 times that from computers - and phones can be over 60% of their total revenue. Bringing out a new phone will make Apple a LOT more money than a new laptop and they can do it more frequently.edit: as Durbster says, they don't really need the money, do they?
Edited by peter tdci on Thursday 27th October 17:27
peter tdci said:
Possibly. Apple's revenue from phones and tablets is around 5 times that from computers - and phones can be over 60% of their total revenue.
I think the last pie chart I saw really brought that message home. In financial terms the computer side of the business must be almost irrelevant now. I still remain hopeful that we get a slew of decent Macbook updates this afternoon and not just an option for "rose gold" !Bikerjon said:
I think the last pie chart I saw really brought that message home. In financial terms the computer side of the business must be almost irrelevant now. I still remain hopeful that we get a slew of decent Macbook updates this afternoon and not just an option for "rose gold" !
People buy it in droves, with no development required. It's where the money is. Dial has built in haptic, clicks as you turn it etc
https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2016/10/26/...
https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2016/10/26/...
This is an odd week for me, had Macbook Pros for years and recently switched to the Macbook. Also dabbled with a Surface Pro 3 which I did like a lot but somehow never got round to using that much.
Apple really do seem to have lost the plot with their last few launches.
The Surface Studio gets my vote (and almost certainly my cash) this week.
Apple really do seem to have lost the plot with their last few launches.
The Surface Studio gets my vote (and almost certainly my cash) this week.
I NEVER thought I'd say this but I too would shift from Mac to the new surface pro purely from a work point of view as they have totaly nailed it with this new product. The current mac line up is quite frankly embarrassing and has been in decline since Jobs passed away!
I've just bought a 12 core cheese grater MP, at a silly price, due to them now being sought after given the crap trash can offering from Apple. Ive needs to go IMO, he's had his day and is now just churning out rubbish.
I've just bought a 12 core cheese grater MP, at a silly price, due to them now being sought after given the crap trash can offering from Apple. Ive needs to go IMO, he's had his day and is now just churning out rubbish.
Durzel said:
Obviously apocryphal but I do tend to think that confirmation bias plays a pretty big role in people's minds. One guy earlier in this thread is a classic example in that he seems to have written off anything that Microsoft will ever do.
You make a valid point IMO. For years I was as anti-Microsoft as anyone else you could find - during the DOS years I had both feet firmly planted in the Amiga camp and MS were absolutely seen as the sworn enemy back then. Probably didn't help their cause that the version of BASIC they supplied with earlier versions of the Amiga OS was a bit on the crap side...But then, little by little, as I found myself first needing to use DOS/Windows systems more and more for uni work, and then finding myself *wanting* to use them in order to have access to all the latest flight sims that were no longer being produced for/ported to the Amiga, I started to accept, if not enjoy, using MS products.
Then came Windows 95... For me that marked the turning point, where it felt like MS started to get things right. And all the way through to Windows 7 (OK, perhaps skipping quickly over the Vista years) it seemed like they were on a pretty solid run. Their OSs were getting better and better, their application software was getting better and better, and their hardware has always just been pretty damn sweet (I wonder how many MS haters might have unknowingly used a MS mouse or keyboard and thought "hmm, this is rather nice").
That said, whilst I've been keeping an interested eye on their ongoing hardware developments in recent years, and whilst I think the Surface Studio is possibly the most awesome bit of PC tech I've seen in a long time (and yes, if I had the cash to blow on one then my name would be on the waiting list right now, even though I genuinely have zero *need* for one - they've nailed the desirability factor here), and therefore would no longer consider myself a MS-hater, I'm also firmly in the camp that thinks Windows 10 is the biggest mistake MS have lumbered ordinary desktop PC users with in a long time.
Pretty much every day at work (which is the only place, fortunately so far, where I'm exposed to W10) I find my productivity being sapped by the annoying design decisions and constraints imposed on me by the W10 UI designers. After finding myself yet again waving the mouse pointer blindly over a seemingly blank part of the UI waiting for the pointer to flicker briefly to a different shape so I know which vertical line of pixels I need to click and drag in order to resize a part of the UI that I *know* is resizable but which has no obvious means of doing so, or finding myself trying in vain to resize a part of the UI which is rendered in a way entirely consistent with a resizeable UI element in every previous version of Windows (perhaps excepting 8 to some extent) but which turns out to be fixed in place, or finding myself trying to resize something where the rendered nature of the UI actually does match up with how the UI will behave, but where the active area for clicking on the UI element is offset several pixels in the blank and apparently sterile region to the side of the thing that looks like the active element, I start to wonder if anyone in the W10 UI design team ever bothered to test their creation on a bog standard non-touch enabled device.
Watching all the demos of Surface this and Surface that, or even just watching people using W10 on touch-enabled laptops and phones, much of the UI makes perfect sense. And the underlying OS does seem to be a genuine improvement over everything that's gone before. But on a PC where the input devices are keyboard and mouse, and where I've grown accustomed to being able to take advantage of ever increasing screen resolutions to fit more stuff onscreen, being faced with a touch-centric UI that keeps on clogging my screen with massive dialog boxes and seems to consider supporting mouse input as a necessary evil rather than an integral part of the UI experience, and which still provides little in the way of true personalisation options (even with the incremental improvements in the anniversary update, we're still a long way off being able to tweak W10 to look exactly how we as individual users might like it to look), then I'll continue to live this split-personality life, on the one hand drooling over the latest hardware offerings from MS whilst on the other hand continuing to be quite negative about the overall Windows 10 experience on the desktop.
twister said:
Watching all the demos of Surface this and Surface that, or even just watching people using W10 on touch-enabled laptops and phones, much of the UI makes perfect sense. And the underlying OS does seem to be a genuine improvement over everything that's gone before. But on a PC where the input devices are keyboard and mouse, and where I've grown accustomed to being able to take advantage of ever increasing screen resolutions to fit more stuff onscreen, being faced with a touch-centric UI that keeps on clogging my screen with massive dialog boxes and seems to consider supporting mouse input as a necessary evil rather than an integral part of the UI experience, and which still provides little in the way of true personalisation options (even with the incremental improvements in the anniversary update, we're still a long way off being able to tweak W10 to look exactly how we as individual users might like it to look), then I'll continue to live this split-personality life, on the one hand drooling over the latest hardware offerings from MS whilst on the other hand continuing to be quite negative about the overall Windows 10 experience on the desktop.
Isn't there supposed to be a new explorer coming next year? The Creator's edition (a clever move, I think) is Redstone 2 (anniversary was Redstone 1), and there's supposed to be two further releases next year...I take your point about one pixel wide borders - they really need to sort that out. MS have promised "two new features" next year. I just wish they are a new explorer and "window manager".
I'm just trying to decide between a refreshed Surface Pro 4 (although there doesn't seem to be any information on what that refresh is - we just know it's coming because JL are out od stock and there are free xboxes everywhere while MS clear out old stock) or wait for Surface Pro 5, rumoured to be in April with USC C and Thunderbolt. That said, the terrible time people had with the Surface Pro 4 at the beginning of its life makes me think that a Pro 5, presumably as one of the first Kaby Lake implementations, may be a very risky proposition...
As an alternative narrative, I came from the opposite direction - being a relatively happy Microsoft user, who post Windows XP with more and more machines in a small business becoming a ball ache to manage, moved to OSX. Gradually others have joined me, and when the iPhone gained traction and more Apple Stores appeared it became more likely that colleagues and family members would go for a Mac. It's still split within our business between OS's and there is no diktat, other than specific software being used by certain people demanding one platform rather than the other.
I still prefer the feel of OSX and the benefit of its roots. But I'm somewhat bewildered by the hardware coming out of Apple over the last few years. I have a gorgeous 5K 27" Retina iMac that is a delight, with a 3 year old MacBook Air next to it. Beside it is a large iPad Pro, being used for development of impending EPOS deployment. The Air has been about as solid a workhorse as I could have hoped for. All it's needed for the last year is a Retina Screen. No changes to ports with a bit of battery tech to keep it going for the same time with the more demanding display. I would replace it happily with that simple spec.
I work out of two offices - in the second one I hook the Air up to an old Cinema Display. It's adequate, but so far removed from what should be possible, it's laughable. So now with the new MacBook Pro, LG and perhaps others will produce screens to attach. That's great - but why aren't Apple leading with this? And by the by, it would probably be cheaper for me to buy a second iMac, rather than a new laptop and external screen combo.
I understand why manufacturers might have a roadmap and will force changes on users, thus avoiding being stuck in the past, but Apple's port strategy doesn't seem to make much sense. Even if one can divine reason behind it, it appears horribly mistimed and poorly marketed.
To be fair to Apple, they are slowly getting the hang of the cloud and their convergence features mean that I can use all three devices pretty seamlessly. But there doesn't feel like there is a coherent map to where they are trying to go. It's all pretty scattergun right now.
I like the way Tim Cook comes across, but perhaps there is some truth that the best leaders are b
ds. The product cycles seen since the death of Jobs are getting more and more out of sync and there appears to be a distinct lack of leadership and direction. I suspect he would have kicked any number of heads together over the past couple of years to produce something that made more sense.
I still prefer the feel of OSX and the benefit of its roots. But I'm somewhat bewildered by the hardware coming out of Apple over the last few years. I have a gorgeous 5K 27" Retina iMac that is a delight, with a 3 year old MacBook Air next to it. Beside it is a large iPad Pro, being used for development of impending EPOS deployment. The Air has been about as solid a workhorse as I could have hoped for. All it's needed for the last year is a Retina Screen. No changes to ports with a bit of battery tech to keep it going for the same time with the more demanding display. I would replace it happily with that simple spec.
I work out of two offices - in the second one I hook the Air up to an old Cinema Display. It's adequate, but so far removed from what should be possible, it's laughable. So now with the new MacBook Pro, LG and perhaps others will produce screens to attach. That's great - but why aren't Apple leading with this? And by the by, it would probably be cheaper for me to buy a second iMac, rather than a new laptop and external screen combo.
I understand why manufacturers might have a roadmap and will force changes on users, thus avoiding being stuck in the past, but Apple's port strategy doesn't seem to make much sense. Even if one can divine reason behind it, it appears horribly mistimed and poorly marketed.
To be fair to Apple, they are slowly getting the hang of the cloud and their convergence features mean that I can use all three devices pretty seamlessly. But there doesn't feel like there is a coherent map to where they are trying to go. It's all pretty scattergun right now.
I like the way Tim Cook comes across, but perhaps there is some truth that the best leaders are b
ds. The product cycles seen since the death of Jobs are getting more and more out of sync and there appears to be a distinct lack of leadership and direction. I suspect he would have kicked any number of heads together over the past couple of years to produce something that made more sense.I'm an apple user, and have been for 10 years, this is the first time I've seen a Microsoft product and been impressed. I especially like how it can be converted to a big drawing surface. It is good to see someone finally taking it to Apple with an all in one desktop. My only concern would be finger prints on the screen. I use a touchscreen monitor on my work PC and am forever cleaning it.
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