It is clear that Microsoft is getting desperate for missing out on the only 2 consumertechmarkets showing significant growth.
At first, the Surface doesn't have any advantage over the iPad when it comes to keyboards. There are tons of bluetooth keyboards varying from cheap to luxurious that are made with iPad in mind (think of special keys to lock the screen). Looking at the accessories market for keyboard cases and ultraflat, portable keyboards for iPad it is clear that the Surface with an under 5% tablet market share can't handle the iPad.
But not only does this appear in the keyboard: the USB-ports form a fine example too. Even though Microsoft tries to stick out to Apple and Samsung by saying 'Our tablet comes with an USB-port', that would be a reason for me, and I think with me a lot of other people, not to buy Surface. USB-ports might be just too thick to fit a tablet. And yes, they're handy and I wouldn't like to miss one on my iPad, but my camera connection kit does great. It's small, I can take it off when I don't need it and works great when I do. And it doesn't bug me when it comes to the design of my tablet. Talking about design, why the damn stand? It's ugly, makes your tablet thick and doesn't protect your screen like Apple's smartcover.
There sure are bright sides for Surface, like the price. It makes a good price for what hardware you get, except for the USB port and the stupid stand and some more things. I'd even dare to say it does some things better than iPad. But for that price you get a tablet that has very small app-support, even tinier accessoiresmarket, an unfamiliar interface (even to Windows-7 users), awful design that is heavy and not easy to control with one hand and so on. I love to use iPad, I even start to like iOS 7 since I've been using it for a while. I have detachable USB, SD, HDMI, and whatsoever. I have an external keyboard I can choose to connect over Bluetooth or USB. I have access to the biggest App Store for tablets and there are hundreds of accessories manufacturers in all price classes that make great products fitting my needs and keeping a good eye on the design. Thanks to great software solutions and ideas, I am able to work really fast while the software looks great, inviting, simple to understand and polished.
So, back to the ad. Don't you think it's funny Microsoft uses Siri as voice in their ads? Everyone knows Siri, thanks to some good marketing from Apple and the succes of the iPhone and iPad. But these ads sure help Apple a little bit. They make people more familiar (not even in a bad way: go trough the ad, you won't find Siri malfunction) with Apple's Voice Assistant while no one knows theirs. Like they even got a voice assistant?
Thank you very much for reading this, This was my opinion on the Microsoft Ad Campaign. I'd really like to hear yours about this but remember that like I said, it's my opinion.
Ummm...I am trying to remember the last time I really used a jump drive. Microsoft, come on now. I can say this as I used to be an iPad owner but found a Kindle was what I wanted for leisure reading. BUT that does not mean I dislike the iPad. I had a great keyboard for my iPad and it worked better than what Surface tries to pass off, so again, nice try. My wife and I were Windows users for three years, but even with my Windows tech savvy, I got tired of the fight and went back to Mac and now we are once again a proud Mac family. I need something that works and works all the time. Microsoft's updates are ridiculous in 2013, and twice I had to do major work to get my computer to work well AFTER one of their patented updates. As an educator who is open to any GOOD technology, I tried to get interested in the Surface, but there is nothing on the Surface that works for what I do. I played with it a few times and I could not get it to do the heavy lifting that a laptop does (I have to use Adobe Creative Cloud and Office). I tried to get into the Windows 8 look, but the look seems too retro. My order of operation: Mac OS, iOS, Android's Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean, Windows 7, Linux (it is not bad, but I need too many mainstream software products for what I do), and then Windows 8. Microsoft had made advances, but they are too busy trying to recover from the pasting they are getting from Apple and Android/Google.
they don't include or mention the fact that the iPad has a USB accessory that will make it read the USB stick
The Surface port will provide power to the devices to mount them but they do miss out a few key things, which advertising tends to do. Microsoft fails to say in the ad that the 32GB Surface only has 15GB free (according to Microsoft), which is only slightly more than the 16GB iPad's free space. So even with the heavily discounted Surface, the price comparison should be:
32GB Surface $349
16GB Retina iPad $499
but the Surface doesn't have a high res display so even the $399 iPad 2 is comparable.
The biggest failing in Microsoft's campaign that I see is they focus on things that nobody cares that much about. It would be like a car company advertising that they make the best door handles in the market. The way to win consumers is with the experience - Apple even spelled it out in their last ad campaign: 'this is what matters... the experience of a product'. Microsoft has failed in that regard because they hacked a legacy UI into the tablet and so they can never show off the core part of the tablet experience as one of its strengths.
The ads are always about people clicking the stand, dancing around the tablet and connecting things to it. The rare times they show it being used, it doesn't have many impressive things about it. The file manager seems to use the Windows UI to access it, which would be very difficult to work with touch. Multi-tasking is useful but apps don't scale well side-by-side and can't easily rotate.
All they needed to do for multi-tasking is have picture-in-picture and crop part of an app as well as a look-through mode. So one app would run behind the other and to reference and copy, just do some bezel gesture or whatever to fade the front app and display the app behind and this would allow quick interaction with the app behind. The picture-in-picture view could have different forms like have a faded separator between the app behind and app in front. Cramming two apps in just doesn't work and the legacy UI doesn't work.
Whether the average iPad consume would benefit from a real USB port or not is questionable. I own a Surface Pro (SP) and after having lost the stylus right before a show I was doing, let me tell you how being able to plug in a mouse really saved my butt. Wouldn't work on an iPad (doesn't support a mouse), but on the SP it was a lifesaver.
3) The stylus is a disaster. I replaced an HP Touchsmart laptop/tablet with the SP. The HP had a hole you could stick the stylus in and the stylus was tethered to the tablet with a string. Never lost the stylus. On the SP the stylus attaches to the outside of the tablet with a magnet; no tethering. When I first saw this, I said to myself "I ought to take up a poll for how many days till the stylus is lost." It took three outings. At $29.95 each, that's expensive. Very poor design.
Balmer the caveman "Me poke shiny tablet with stick" while launching into a monkey boy dance.
Yeah, first there was the 30-pin that they only used for 11 years, and now they've gone and changed it calling it technology for the next decade so it'll probably only be 9 or 10 years before they change it AGAIN! It's impossible to keep up.
/s
You call $20 "cheap?" I don't. Even Monoprice's typically excellent pricing is triple what a conventional Mini-USB costs.
Mini-USB doesn't provide the same charging capabilities of a lightning connector and is therefore inferior. If the iPhone had gone to Mini-USB then you'd be able to have a decent accessory market to ride on. Just shut up and accept it. Apple whipped theirs out and guess what it was bigger!!!!
The average consumer could benefit from a USB port because it would make for a cheaper cord for charging and connecting to other devices as opposed to proprietary connectors which cost much more and get changed every few years. Funny how the ad doesn't touch that though and instead opts for the additional storage argument (which is significantly weaker).
Using a thumb drive to add additional storage to a mobile device signals to me that the mobile device itself is lacking in storage space. My phone has tons of storage space and can act like a thumb drive when I need one. The approach that MS takes in this ad just further proves how clueless they are when it comes to mobile computing.
The ironic thing here is that lightning is probably here to stay for the next decade at least, while it is only a matter of time before the industry moves on to the next iteration of USB which may not may not stay backwards compatible with existing USB ports.
This is what I have always found amusing. Apple gets flak for using their own 30-pin port despite it having stayed the same for 10 years, yet other companies get away with using 18 different cables during the same period of time, simply because they are industrial standards?
As for the thumb drive, I don't so much see it as a means of adding storage, but a quick way to transfer data from one device to another. Most obvious being movies. Current, for IOS devices, you use either itunes, email or dropbox.
It is clear that Microsoft is getting desperate for missing out on the only 2 consumertechmarkets showing significant growth...
Greetings from the Netherlands!
Welcome to AI.
Today's Microsoft doesn't play catch-up at all well. (Did a better job in the earliest days, under Bill Gates.). I suspect that restructuring wasn't what MS required but revolution, while it is wealthy enough to survive the consequences.
Micro USB is grossly inferior to Apple's connector. That is why Apple, after endorsing the Micro USB format, went their own way. The problem with Micro USB 3.0 is its speed. Moving data that quickly doesn't allow the user to savor the transfer. In comparison, the Apple connector, operating at USB 2.0 speeds, is for connoisseurs who appreciate the moment, and recognize that there is no better way to remember life's milestones than the appreciation of a well-designed cable. I mean, you can plug it in right-side-up or up-side-down. Who can ever forget their first time with something like that?
So a USB thumb drive is worth 5 second of eyeball time in the surface ad... Absolutely clueless Microsoft!!
So if I get it correctly, on the one hand Ms advertise the cloud as the best thing since sliced bread - and on the other hand, it’s all the rave to have USB thumb drives to move stuff around. If that’s Ms’s idea of how to use a tablet to connect with things and to move stuff around (I mean as opposed to connecting wirelessly via bluetooth/wifi/cellular) than they just don’t get it and deserve the punishment the market is handing to them.
This is what I have always found amusing. Apple gets flak for using their own 30-pin port despite it having stayed the same for 10 years, yet other companies get away with using 18 different cables during the same period of time, simply because they are industrial standards?
Samsung and Sony also use proprietary charging ports for their tablets. It's not just an Apple thing.
I was actually one of the weirdos who liked the first ad... Thought it had some humorous moments. But this one feels like an attack. Microsoft's not going to benefit from a bully complex, especially when they end up having to discontinue the project and the Surface joins the Zune in memoriam.
When you have a product that won't sell you resort to ads like this, and the people who end up buying one will not be happy in the end. So who really wins here?
Comments
At first, the Surface doesn't have any advantage over the iPad when it comes to keyboards. There are tons of bluetooth keyboards varying from cheap to luxurious that are made with iPad in mind (think of special keys to lock the screen). Looking at the accessories market for keyboard cases and ultraflat, portable keyboards for iPad it is clear that the Surface with an under 5% tablet market share can't handle the iPad.
But not only does this appear in the keyboard: the USB-ports form a fine example too. Even though Microsoft tries to stick out to Apple and Samsung by saying 'Our tablet comes with an USB-port', that would be a reason for me, and I think with me a lot of other people, not to buy Surface. USB-ports might be just too thick to fit a tablet. And yes, they're handy and I wouldn't like to miss one on my iPad, but my camera connection kit does great. It's small, I can take it off when I don't need it and works great when I do. And it doesn't bug me when it comes to the design of my tablet. Talking about design, why the damn stand? It's ugly, makes your tablet thick and doesn't protect your screen like Apple's smartcover.
There sure are bright sides for Surface, like the price. It makes a good price for what hardware you get, except for the USB port and the stupid stand and some more things. I'd even dare to say it does some things better than iPad. But for that price you get a tablet that has very small app-support, even tinier accessoiresmarket, an unfamiliar interface (even to Windows-7 users), awful design that is heavy and not easy to control with one hand and so on. I love to use iPad, I even start to like iOS 7 since I've been using it for a while. I have detachable USB, SD, HDMI, and whatsoever. I have an external keyboard I can choose to connect over Bluetooth or USB. I have access to the biggest App Store for tablets and there are hundreds of accessories manufacturers in all price classes that make great products fitting my needs and keeping a good eye on the design. Thanks to great software solutions and ideas, I am able to work really fast while the software looks great, inviting, simple to understand and polished.
So, back to the ad. Don't you think it's funny Microsoft uses Siri as voice in their ads? Everyone knows Siri, thanks to some good marketing from Apple and the succes of the iPhone and iPad. But these ads sure help Apple a little bit. They make people more familiar (not even in a bad way: go trough the ad, you won't find Siri malfunction) with Apple's Voice Assistant while no one knows theirs. Like they even got a voice assistant?
Thank you very much for reading this,
This was my opinion on the Microsoft Ad Campaign.
I'd really like to hear yours about this but remember that like I said, it's my opinion.
Greetings from the Netherlands!
I can say this as I used to be an iPad owner but found a Kindle was what I wanted for leisure reading. BUT that does not mean I dislike the iPad. I had a great keyboard for my iPad and it worked better than what Surface tries to pass off, so again, nice try.
My wife and I were Windows users for three years, but even with my Windows tech savvy, I got tired of the fight and went back to Mac and now we are once again a proud Mac family. I need something that works and works all the time. Microsoft's updates are ridiculous in 2013, and twice I had to do major work to get my computer to work well AFTER one of their patented updates.
As an educator who is open to any GOOD technology, I tried to get interested in the Surface, but there is nothing on the Surface that works for what I do. I played with it a few times and I could not get it to do the heavy lifting that a laptop does (I have to use Adobe Creative Cloud and Office). I tried to get into the Windows 8 look, but the look seems too retro.
My order of operation: Mac OS, iOS, Android's Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean, Windows 7, Linux (it is not bad, but I need too many mainstream software products for what I do), and then Windows 8.
Microsoft had made advances, but they are too busy trying to recover from the pasting they are getting from Apple and Android/Google.
Nope, a very common Latin phrase loaned to English. Only the most ignorant or perverse would find this usage in anyway sexual
Edit: what I mean is that it's not a double entendre
The Surface port will provide power to the devices to mount them but they do miss out a few key things, which advertising tends to do. Microsoft fails to say in the ad that the 32GB Surface only has 15GB free (according to Microsoft), which is only slightly more than the 16GB iPad's free space. So even with the heavily discounted Surface, the price comparison should be:
32GB Surface $349
16GB Retina iPad $499
but the Surface doesn't have a high res display so even the $399 iPad 2 is comparable.
The biggest failing in Microsoft's campaign that I see is they focus on things that nobody cares that much about. It would be like a car company advertising that they make the best door handles in the market. The way to win consumers is with the experience - Apple even spelled it out in their last ad campaign: 'this is what matters... the experience of a product'. Microsoft has failed in that regard because they hacked a legacy UI into the tablet and so they can never show off the core part of the tablet experience as one of its strengths.
The ads are always about people clicking the stand, dancing around the tablet and connecting things to it. The rare times they show it being used, it doesn't have many impressive things about it. The file manager seems to use the Windows UI to access it, which would be very difficult to work with touch. Multi-tasking is useful but apps don't scale well side-by-side and can't easily rotate.
All they needed to do for multi-tasking is have picture-in-picture and crop part of an app as well as a look-through mode. So one app would run behind the other and to reference and copy, just do some bezel gesture or whatever to fade the front app and display the app behind and this would allow quick interaction with the app behind. The picture-in-picture view could have different forms like have a faded separator between the app behind and app in front. Cramming two apps in just doesn't work and the legacy UI doesn't work.
Makes you think the Surface is dumb doesn't it? (ha ha)
ROFL
Balmer the caveman "Me poke shiny tablet with stick" while launching into a monkey boy dance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hill60
Balmer the caveman "Me poke shiny tablet with stick" while launching into a monkey boy dance.
LOLOLOLOL. Awesome.
Idea for new Microsoft campaign: We have Steve Ballmer and you don't. And Ballmer is the balm.
Mini-USB doesn't provide the same charging capabilities of a lightning connector and is therefore inferior. If the iPhone had gone to Mini-USB then you'd be able to have a decent accessory market to ride on. Just shut up and accept it. Apple whipped theirs out and guess what it was bigger!!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by DroidFTW
The average consumer could benefit from a USB port because it would make for a cheaper cord for charging and connecting to other devices as opposed to proprietary connectors which cost much more and get changed every few years. Funny how the ad doesn't touch that though and instead opts for the additional storage argument (which is significantly weaker).
Using a thumb drive to add additional storage to a mobile device signals to me that the mobile device itself is lacking in storage space. My phone has tons of storage space and can act like a thumb drive when I need one. The approach that MS takes in this ad just further proves how clueless they are when it comes to mobile computing.
The ironic thing here is that lightning is probably here to stay for the next decade at least, while it is only a matter of time before the industry moves on to the next iteration of USB which may not may not stay backwards compatible with existing USB ports.
This is what I have always found amusing. Apple gets flak for using their own 30-pin port despite it having stayed the same for 10 years, yet other companies get away with using 18 different cables during the same period of time, simply because they are industrial standards?
As for the thumb drive, I don't so much see it as a means of adding storage, but a quick way to transfer data from one device to another. Most obvious being movies. Current, for IOS devices, you use either itunes, email or dropbox.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dutchman
It is clear that Microsoft is getting desperate for missing out on the only 2 consumertechmarkets showing significant growth...
Greetings from the Netherlands!
Welcome to AI.
Today's Microsoft doesn't play catch-up at all well. (Did a better job in the earliest days, under Bill Gates.). I suspect that restructuring wasn't what MS required but revolution, while it is wealthy enough to survive the consequences.
All the best.
Micro USB is grossly inferior to Apple's connector. That is why Apple, after endorsing the Micro USB format, went their own way. The problem with Micro USB 3.0 is its speed. Moving data that quickly doesn't allow the user to savor the transfer. In comparison, the Apple connector, operating at USB 2.0 speeds, is for connoisseurs who appreciate the moment, and recognize that there is no better way to remember life's milestones than the appreciation of a well-designed cable. I mean, you can plug it in right-side-up or up-side-down. Who can ever forget their first time with something like that?
So a USB thumb drive is worth 5 second of eyeball time in the surface ad... Absolutely clueless Microsoft!!
So if I get it correctly, on the one hand Ms advertise the cloud as the best thing since sliced bread - and on the other hand, it’s all the rave to have USB thumb drives to move stuff around. If that’s Ms’s idea of how to use a tablet to connect with things and to move stuff around (I mean as opposed to connecting wirelessly via bluetooth/wifi/cellular) than they just don’t get it and deserve the punishment the market is handing to them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by abazigal
This is what I have always found amusing. Apple gets flak for using their own 30-pin port despite it having stayed the same for 10 years, yet other companies get away with using 18 different cables during the same period of time, simply because they are industrial standards?Samsung and Sony also use proprietary charging ports for their tablets. It's not just an Apple thing.
For a $100 I can add a wireless Apple keyboard and a SmartCover. So there's you keyboard and kickstand.
Misleading advertising.