The iPad has nothing left to prove. It is the sales Monster. The MS Surface Pro tablet is a fine device. The problem I have with this article is you've taken twitter comments and posts totally out of context here. I don't understand why Appleinsider feels the need to bash things not Apple. I love my MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini we have at home along with the several iPhones that my family uses, but enough already. How about more informative and a little more objective reporting.
You don't quote any sources or give any specifics. Do you really blame the Patriots loss on faulty Surface Pros?
"Struggling product"
Who wrote this? Surface products are selling like hotcakes. Your example of how Surface failed was Surface RT. Yes, RT was an objective failure, however the x86 implementations of Surface have been resounding commercial successes. The fact that you use this as an example shows that you are either hideously biased, or don't know what you're writing about. Plus you're going to quote NFL players and coaches on technology issues? What do they know? If it's a network or server issue the same thing would happen with any device. If you're not going to be objective or knowledgeable, don't be a journalist.
It is struggling! You have a product by the company with 90% of the computer market by OS with Windows on it selling a computer that has that OS and is spending nearly a billion dollars a year to promote it. It is positioning it against two Apple products categories which tend to total about 10 billion combined per quarter, but Q3 while being up 44% it only made them 700 million in revenue. Factor in the fact that their sales are at the expense of their Windows partners and the failure becomes more evident. There is a reason they don't report sales numbers in it.
Mmmm yes, it's failing so badly that Apple decided that it needed to make a "Pro" version of the iPad to "compete" with it. I will not argue the sales or revenue numbers. I admit that Apple is the unopposed king as far as raw revenue and margin go. However, the Surface line has done a lot to reinvigorate the Windows OEM landscape. Overall build quality has drastically increased in the high end windows space over the last few years in response to MS actually investing time and effort into showing what an innovative and premium Windows experience can be. My college campus is filled with 2 in 1 touchscreen Windows laptops and tablets. Surface may not move the same numbers as MacBook and iPad, but you're forgetting that there is an entire Windows ecosystem out there to choose from, you aren't limited to the five or 6 offerings that Apple has to offer. MS and Apple have strikingly different business models and to judge the success of any given product line by using the same criteria as the other is absolute lunacy.
And that, dear readers, is how you move the goal posts when badly losing an argument. Troll.
I guess I can’t comment, because mine was a gift, so the work I do with it I guess doesn’t count as being productive.
What kind of work do you do on it? There's no version of Xcode for the iPad Pro (yet ) so it's not much use to be as a work device but I'm interested to hear how other people are using it.
The iPad Pro excels at tasks that would benefit from the Apple Pencil. The iPad Pro does very well at tasks that can be handled with touch, and a mix of touch and the Apple Pencil should work very well. I suspect that creatives will be acquiring iPad Pro's even as "companion" devices to existing workflows, especially for input to Mac's.
Anything that you would need a keyboard routinely/frequently is going to be a compromise, at least until there support for a touchpad on a keyboard as a pointer.
You know what's hilarious about this...just as Microsoft is getting commentators to stop calling these iPads, something malfunctions. Even if it had nothing to do with the Surface itself that's all the people watching are going to remember.
I guess I can’t comment, because mine was a gift, so the work I do with it I guess doesn’t count as being productive.
What kind of work do you do on it? There's no version of Xcode for the iPad Pro (yet ) so it's not much use to be as a work device but I'm interested to hear how other people are using it.
In 1960, it took a roomful of people with mechanical calculators on their desks to do the work that later generations could easily perform with a spreadsheet. But when spreadsheets and other business applications came along, the work they made possible was wholly different from the problem they were initially designed to solve.
This feeds into the notion that iPads, and specifically the iPad Pro, is not designed to do the same work that a PC traditionally did. Those who are suggesting the iPad Pro is a poor replacement for a PC are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The tablet form factor has its own destiny, which will take on many, but not all the tasks of a PC, while enabling new forms of work and productivity that PCs cannot accommodate.
It's not that the PC won't be better at doing certain tasks, it's that work is evolving away from those particular strengths the PC retains.
It is struggling! You have a product by the company with 90% of the computer market by OS with Windows on it selling a computer that has that OS and is spending nearly a billion dollars a year to promote it. It is positioning it against two Apple products categories which tend to total about 10 billion combined per quarter, but Q3 while being up 44% it only made them 700 million in revenue. Factor in the fact that their sales are at the expense of their Windows partners and the failure becomes more evident. There is a reason they don't report sales numbers in it.
Mmmm yes, it's failing so badly that Apple decided that it needed to make a "Pro" version of the iPad to "compete" with it. I will not argue the sales or revenue numbers. I admit that Apple is the unopposed king as far as raw revenue and margin go. However, the Surface line has done a lot to reinvigorate the Windows OEM landscape. Overall build quality has drastically increased in the high end windows space over the last few years in response to MS actually investing time and effort into showing what an innovative and premium Windows experience can be. My college campus is filled with 2 in 1 touchscreen Windows laptops and tablets. Surface may not move the same numbers as MacBook and iPad, but you're forgetting that there is an entire Windows ecosystem out there to choose from, you aren't limited to the five or 6 offerings that Apple has to offer. MS and Apple have strikingly different business models and to judge the success of any given product line by using the same criteria as the other is absolute lunacy.
I'm thinking that Apple waited until they had a processor developed that could give them the performance that they needed to created a larger "Pro" iPad, which had likely been on Apple's roadmap for the last 5 years.. But you should stick with your story.
Sadly, MS fucked up the Surface rollout so badly that they likely lost the mobile tablet market. But hey, look at our hybrids! Sure, we're cannibalizing laptops, but it's not like it's zero sum for us! We're making billions!
You know what's hilarious about this...just as Microsoft is getting commentators to stop calling these iPads, something malfunctions. Even if it had nothing to do with the Surface itself that's all the people watching are going to remember.
Well sales of the Surface overtook sales of iPads, for the first time, in Oct 2015. I suspect the data collection method doesn't account for sales from The Apple Store, but it does refute DED's claim of "Surface has been an embarrassing commercial failure for Microsoft". It's pretty clear the Surface is now selling well.
While I can understand bashing the competition... unfortunately, this issue can't be blamed on the Microsoft Surface (or Microsoft at all). As has been reported on (and confirmed by) the NFL before, the issue has nothing to do with the Surface. Rather, it's the NFL's servers and application that went down (hence why it goes down across multiple teams at the same time). The tablet runs an application that connects to NFL servers and pulls in data including pictures, replay information, etc. It is that system that has been going down recently.
To be honest, while Microsoft has paid a large sum of money for their tablets to be shown and used, the entire process is technically platform agnostic. They can run the application on anything. Unfortunately, it wouldn't matter which tablet they chose in these cases... if their servers are down, then there is nothing that can be done.
Really? What operating system were the servers running? What Operating system were the iPad Pros running?
Microsoft is definitely to blame for this unreliable system.
While I can understand bashing the competition... unfortunately, this issue can't be blamed on the Microsoft Surface (or Microsoft at all). As has been reported on (and confirmed by) the NFL before, the issue has nothing to do with the Surface. Rather, it's the NFL's servers and application that went down (hence why it goes down across multiple teams at the same time). The tablet runs an application that connects to NFL servers and pulls in data including pictures, replay information, etc. It is that system that has been going down recently.
To be honest, while Microsoft has paid a large sum of money for their tablets to be shown and used, the entire process is technically platform agnostic. They can run the application on anything. Unfortunately, it wouldn't matter which tablet they chose in these cases... if their servers are down, then there is nothing that can be done.
Curious to know the Server OS? Undoubtably MS Server. I wonder if it started downloading the daily 43 1/2 security patches without bothering to ask. The Surface is a spectacular piece of hardware, the problem is, and likely always will be, the convoluted, archaic POS operating system. (Oh, and just because I hate it, the useless, real estate stealing Ribbon bar too.)
You know what's hilarious about this...just as Microsoft is getting commentators to stop calling these iPads, something malfunctions. Even if it had nothing to do with the Surface itself that's all the people watching are going to remember.
Well sales of the Surface overtook sales of iPads, for the first time, in Oct 2015. I suspect the data collection method doesn't account for sales from The Apple Store, but it does refute DED's claim of "Surface has been an embarrassing commercial failure for Microsoft". It's pretty clear the Surface is now selling well.
What the heck is 1010data? Sorry your source is laughable. Let Microsoft provide actual sales figures and then we can compare to iPad.
It is struggling! You have a product by the company with 90% of the computer market by OS with Windows on it selling a computer that has that OS and is spending nearly a billion dollars a year to promote it. It is positioning it against two Apple products categories which tend to total about 10 billion combined per quarter, but Q3 while being up 44% it only made them 700 million in revenue. Factor in the fact that their sales are at the expense of their Windows partners and the failure becomes more evident. There is a reason they don't report sales numbers in it.
Mmmm yes, it's failing so badly that Apple decided that it needed to make a "Pro" version of the iPad to "compete" with it. I will not argue the sales or revenue numbers. I admit that Apple is the unopposed king as far as raw revenue and margin go. However, the Surface line has done a lot to reinvigorate the Windows OEM landscape. Overall build quality has drastically increased in the high end windows space over the last few years in response to MS actually investing time and effort into showing what an innovative and premium Windows experience can be. My college campus is filled with 2 in 1 touchscreen Windows laptops and tablets. Surface may not move the same numbers as MacBook and iPad, but you're forgetting that there is an entire Windows ecosystem out there to choose from, you aren't limited to the five or 6 offerings that Apple has to offer. MS and Apple have strikingly different business models and to judge the success of any given product line by using the same criteria as the other is absolute lunacy.
Well "Pro" has meant "bigger and more powerful" in apple's product lineup for the last ten years. Example: MacBook PRO and Mac PRO
Neither a MacBook PRO or a Mac PRO actually do much that a regular MacBook or Mac can't do in terms of software or functionality. Of course there are differences, but the iPad Pro has functionality that the regular iPad doesn't.
The iPad Pro is nothing more than a natural progression for the platform. If you look at the patent filings that Apple made in the years before the surface was even announced, you'd see that Apple had been planning to make the iPad Pro for a very long time and the surface had nothing to do with it because Apple was coming up with these ideas before the surface was even announced.
Mmmm yes, it's failing so badly that Apple decided that it needed to make a "Pro" version of the iPad to "compete" with it. I will not argue the sales or revenue numbers. I admit that Apple is the unopposed king as far as raw revenue and margin go. However, the Surface line has done a lot to reinvigorate the Windows OEM landscape. Overall build quality has drastically increased in the high end windows space over the last few years in response to MS actually investing time and effort into showing what an innovative and premium Windows experience can be. My college campus is filled with 2 in 1 touchscreen Windows laptops and tablets. Surface may not move the same numbers as MacBook and iPad, but you're forgetting that there is an entire Windows ecosystem out there to choose from, you aren't limited to the five or 6 offerings that Apple has to offer. MS and Apple have strikingly different business models and to judge the success of any given product line by using the same criteria as the other is absolute lunacy.
I'm thinking that Apple waited until they had a processor developed that could give them the performance that they needed to created a larger "Pro" iPad, which had likely been on Apple's roadmap for the last 5 years.. But you should stick with your story.
Sadly, MS fucked up the Surface rollout so badly that they likely lost the mobile tablet market. But hey, look at our hybrids! Sure, we're cannibalizing laptops, but it's not like it's zero sum for us! We're making billions!
Check out the forums on windowscentral.com. Both Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book are mired with issues. And it's basically silence from Microsoft. Part of me wonders if it isn't a bit of arrogance on Microsoft's part. I remember last year when Surface Book came out and all the tech sites drooled over it because of its sleek industrial design (personally I think that fulcrum hinge is fugly) and Steve Ballmer said only Microsoft could challenge Apple in the hardware space. A couple tech sites did puff pieces with Panos Panay who basically admitted he wakes up every day with Apple on the brain, trying to figure out how to beat Apple. Maybe they're finding out what Apple does isn't as easy as it looks and it isn't just throwing off the shelf parts in a pretty box and calling it a day. I said from day one that the Surface Book was an over engineered, indulgent product and I stand by that. It was designed to impress the tech press more than anything else but other than the so-called sleek design it's not making a great impression.
While I can understand bashing the competition... unfortunately, this issue can't be blamed on the Microsoft Surface (or Microsoft at all). As has been reported on (and confirmed by) the NFL before, the issue has nothing to do with the Surface. Rather, it's the NFL's servers and application that went down (hence why it goes down across multiple teams at the same time). The tablet runs an application that connects to NFL servers and pulls in data including pictures, replay information, etc. It is that system that has been going down recently.
To be honest, while Microsoft has paid a large sum of money for their tablets to be shown and used, the entire process is technically platform agnostic. They can run the application on anything. Unfortunately, it wouldn't matter which tablet they chose in these cases... if their servers are down, then there is nothing that can be done.
Out of curiosity, if all you say is true about the NFL set up, and I don't doubt you, isn't Microsoft's advertising disingenuous then? They certainly make it seem the Microsoft Surface is the be all and end all of the process with no mention it is actually irrelevant since "the entire process is technically platform agnostic."
Aww gee golly gosh! I wonder what operating system is running those backend servers?
Unix and Linux, actually. The NFL uses Rackspace for much of their infrastructure. And, further, the NFL just reported that the issue was actually caused by the Patriot's network going down.
I wonder if that set up would work better with a Unix based tablet instead of a Microsoft POS
Well sales of the Surface overtook sales of iPads, for the first time, in Oct 2015. I suspect the data collection method doesn't account for sales from The Apple Store, but it does refute DED's claim of "Surface has been an embarrassing commercial failure for Microsoft". It's pretty clear the Surface is now selling well.
What the heck is 1010data? Sorry your source is laughable. Let Microsoft provide actual sales figures and then we can compare to iPad.
A company that Dun & Bradstreet saw fit to partner with.
" Dun & Bradstreet(DNB)
and 1010data today announced a strategic partnership that aims to
provide a solution to hedge funds and asset managers seeking insights
and analytics that go beyond traditional analysis of financial
statements and key financial ratios. Through the strategic partnership,
Dun & Bradstreet's content, including key business performance data,
will be made available through the 1010data platform, providing an
enhanced solution to customers."
Obviously they are highly disreputable. I believe their goal is to eventually work their way down to DEDs level.
Just as embarrassing as the meltdown and ensuing scandal that was the big iPads in every classroom push with LA Unified, except those were children and this was a bunch of millionaires running into each other. Funny how things work out sometimes, huh?
It is especially funny considering that Apple didn't pay LA Unified to use their product. Even If Surface wasn't the reason for the failure during the game, MS and the NFL were unprepared for a data link failure, and both should suffer the consequences, just as Apple has with major failures during past Keynotes. One would think that there would at least be a fallback plan to a local server as an equalizer for both teams, but that didn't happen evidently. Egg meet face.
I don't know if you were watching the game, but they say the went to "hardwire" to keep going, so they had a plan B that worked.
As for Surface and the iPad Pro, I'm all for letting the numbers describe the success of each. iPad sales for the previous quarter will be known Tuesday after the stock markets close.
Since OS X is miles behind Windows, does that means that it's a failure?
Personally, I consider Surface a competitor to Apples notebook/laptop line, but MS want's to portray the Surface as a mobile device as well, which it is poorly suited in comparison to the iPad; bulk, limited battery life, lack of mobile (Universal) apps, and heavy reliance on unoptimized desktop applications are serious cons.
From what I know, the Surface is a mobile device. I haven't seen MS denying that. The iPad has better characteristics for some things, but it fails in others where the Surface shines. The same can be said if we compare it to the Macbook.
Unix and Linux, actually. The NFL uses Rackspace for much of their infrastructure. And, further, the NFL just reported that the issue was actually caused by the Patriot's network going down.
I wonder if that set up would work better with a Unix based tablet instead of a Microsoft POS
I suspect no POS is going to work if the network it is using goes down. Of course we all know that had they been using iPads and the network went down, they wouldn't have had a problem.
As has been reported on (and confirmed by) the NFL before, the issue has nothing to do with the Surface. Rather, it's the NFL's servers and application that went down (hence why it goes down across multiple teams at the same time). The tablet runs an application that connects to NFL servers and pulls in data including pictures, replay information, etc. It is that system that has been going down recently.
Except for the fact that Denvers was working fine you'd be right.
Just as embarrassing as the meltdown and ensuing scandal that was the big iPads in every classroom push with LA Unified, except those were children and this was a bunch of millionaires running into each other. Funny how things work out sometimes, huh?
Did Apple pay for that? No.
If MS hadn't pay, will it make a difference? The thing is that the network went down, and this is has nothing to to with the device it self.
The embarrassment was for the people who made the decision in the LA schools district; not Apple. They sold more than a 100 million tablets after than happen? IT will take 10 years for MS to sell that many laptops, maybe more now...
Based in your criteria, the embarrassment went for both, the company designing the implementation and Apple. And, yes they still selling a lot of iPads, same as PC vendors sell a lot. But sales down in every quarter is never a good thing.
You do know also that this happen on live TV before tens of millions of spectators? That's a big higher profile don't you think.
Those ten of millions of spectators (which I was one of them) hear that the problem was a network issue, and they solved it going hardwire.
While I'm all for constructive criticism of a product, it would appear this has little to do with the surface itself and more to do with networking issues, which the article clearly states. If that really was the issue during the game, Microsoft has nothing to do with it, nor does the surface itself.
The network issues would either be due to the NFL's/Stadium's WiFi and/or the network drivers on the surface (of which Microsoft has nothing to do with at all, as drivers are written by the component manufacturer [Broadcom, Intel, Qualcomm, etc.])
Comments
Anything that you would need a keyboard routinely/frequently is going to be a compromise, at least until there support for a touchpad on a keyboard as a pointer.
As far as Surfaces selling like hotcakes...since Microsoft has never provided sales figures how would we know? And I have a feeling there are quite a few returns considering all the issues the devices are having. https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/microsoft-surface/64095/welcome-to-surfacegate
This feeds into the notion that iPads, and specifically the iPad Pro, is not designed to do the same work that a PC traditionally did. Those who are suggesting the iPad Pro is a poor replacement for a PC are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The tablet form factor has its own destiny, which will take on many, but not all the tasks of a PC, while enabling new forms of work and productivity that PCs cannot accommodate.
It's not that the PC won't be better at doing certain tasks, it's that work is evolving away from those particular strengths the PC retains.
Sadly, MS fucked up the Surface rollout so badly that they likely lost the mobile tablet market. But hey, look at our hybrids! Sure, we're cannibalizing laptops, but it's not like it's zero sum for us! We're making billions!
What operating system were the servers running?
What Operating system were the iPad Pros running?
Microsoft is definitely to blame for this unreliable system.
Neither a MacBook PRO or a Mac PRO actually do much that a regular MacBook or Mac can't do in terms of software or functionality. Of course there are differences, but the iPad Pro has functionality that the regular iPad doesn't.
The iPad Pro is nothing more than a natural progression for the platform. If you look at the patent filings that Apple made in the years before the surface was even announced, you'd see that Apple had been planning to make the iPad Pro for a very long time and the surface had nothing to do with it because Apple was coming up with these ideas before the surface was even announced.
Check out the forums on windowscentral.com. Both Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book are mired with issues. And it's basically silence from Microsoft. Part of me wonders if it isn't a bit of arrogance on Microsoft's part. I remember last year when Surface Book came out and all the tech sites drooled over it because of its sleek industrial design (personally I think that fulcrum hinge is fugly) and Steve Ballmer said only Microsoft could challenge Apple in the hardware space. A couple tech sites did puff pieces with Panos Panay who basically admitted he wakes up every day with Apple on the brain, trying to figure out how to beat Apple. Maybe they're finding out what Apple does isn't as easy as it looks and it isn't just throwing off the shelf parts in a pretty box and calling it a day. I said from day one that the Surface Book was an over engineered, indulgent product and I stand by that. It was designed to impress the tech press more than anything else but other than the so-called sleek design it's not making a great impression.
I wonder if that set up would work better with a Unix based tablet instead of a Microsoft POS
" Dun & Bradstreet (DNB) and 1010data today announced a strategic partnership that aims to provide a solution to hedge funds and asset managers seeking insights and analytics that go beyond traditional analysis of financial statements and key financial ratios. Through the strategic partnership, Dun & Bradstreet's content, including key business performance data, will be made available through the 1010data platform, providing an enhanced solution to customers."
Obviously they are highly disreputable. I believe their goal is to eventually work their way down to DEDs level.
Since OS X is miles behind Windows, does that means that it's a failure?
From what I know, the Surface is a mobile device. I haven't seen MS denying that. The iPad has better characteristics for some things, but it fails in others where the Surface shines. The same can be said if we compare it to the Macbook.
If MS hadn't pay, will it make a difference? The thing is that the network went down, and this is has nothing to to with the device it self.
Based in your criteria, the embarrassment went for both, the company designing the implementation and Apple. And, yes they still selling a lot of iPads, same as PC vendors sell a lot. But sales down in every quarter is never a good thing.
Those ten of millions of spectators (which I was one of them) hear that the problem was a network issue, and they solved it going hardwire.