9 ms·
This is a good example of how Microsoft often does marketing poorly. The text reads like a script for an in-person product launch. On the page it doesn't even m
by skywhopper 9y ago
This is a good example of how Microsoft often does marketing poorly. The text reads like a script for an in-person product launch. On the page it doesn't even make sense "When you think about Microsoft and you hear our mission – to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more – it’s powerful." What?
And then after all of that, you click through to the store and there's no pricing information whatsoever and no pre-order date on the store page (there is a date buried in all the text in the announcement), just an unfriendly "Not available" broken button... no price, no date, and I don't even remember what was supposed to be interesting about the thing. Something about having more pixels than a Mac. Whatever interest I had in the product evaporated a long time ago, but the lack of concrete info on price makes me forget about it entirely.
Edited to add:
Oh cool, I just went back to the page and noticed the "Microsoft Band", a product that was officially discontinued over a year ago, is prominently featured in the navigation bar across the top of the page. Good work, team!
- masklinn 9y agoYeah it's really frustrating. * this page is an ad copy with very little of interest * the store page (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/surface-book-2/8MCPZJJCC98C/2LCR?icid=HP_Hero1_SurfaceBook2_101717_en-us https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/surface-book-2/8MCPZ...) has no date, no price and only hints at specs (you can pick a model but have no idea that e.g. the 13.5" i5 is iGP and the i7 is dGPU) * https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book-2/tech-specs https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book... has the actual stuff you want, with a detailed specs breakdown and the price of every configuration although even there are incoherences (Tech Specs states the 15" has 16GB RAM, but "Configure" lists an 8GB 15" configuration)
- skywhopper 9y agoOh, cool, thanks for pointing me to the actual prices.
- Sujan 9y agoNow I wish I hadn't found the prices...
- masklinn 9y agoThey're not exactly surprising, it's a successor to the SB1 and competitor with the rMBP.
- binarycrusader 9y agoIndeed, with a 3:2 aspect ratio touch screen and WACOM-level stylus input (via ntrig).
- masklinn 9y agoAnd a superior GPU, but a significantly lower-class CPU (15W v 45).
- alphonsegaston 9y agoMost creative professionals would disagree that ntrig is anywhere near parity. I work in the field and everyone uses Wacoms of some sort. There was initial excitement when the 1st generation launched with actual Wacom technology, as a lot of us do work in Windows, but it quickly fizzled when Microsoft cheaped out and went with less performant ntrig digitizers.
- wlesieutre 9y agoIt's a tradeoff. The old SP1s and SP2s with Wacom digitizers get funky at the edges because of how Wacom's technology works. IIRC it's a big array of sensors behind the screen, and they have to extend past the edges of the sensing area to keep accuracy workable across the surface. If you're out at the edge of the grid it can't measure the pen's position accurately. With Wacom's Intuos tablets you've probably noticed they have a really big bezel. Maybe 2-3 inches around every side. It's not just a physical design decision, they need that in order to work. MS couldn't accommodate that on the surface, so the accuracy at the edges dropped off. And this being Windows with a lot of software not designed for touchscreens, that meant you were trying to poke at tiny toolbar buttons in the least accurate region of the digitizer. Ntrig solves that, it's let them at least be consistent across the whole surface, even as bezels got smaller and smaller. But like you said, the peak accuracy of Wacom in the middle of the screen probably beats it. I sold my SP3 to buy a 9.7" iPad Pro when those came out, mainly because I got annoyed with the digitizer. If you draw a line slowly you can see it get visibly pulled back and forth along the digitizer grid. To get smooth lines you have to do fast sweeping strokes, which I really didn't like. For reference, lines drawn on a SP3 in OneNote: http://i.imgur.com/bxpnPSv.png http://i.imgur.com/bxpnPSv.png In an AMA on reddit the Surface team attributed some of the pen performance issues to "capacitive coupling" making the pen not detected as accurately if you let the tip touch a ruler, so those are drawn freehand. Even so, you can clearly see the lines get pulled into the pattern of the ntrig grid.
- PKop 9y agoEven as ad copy it’s bad though
- rplnt 9y agoNeither of those product pages has a photo of the keyboard. I know they are trying to sell it as a surface device with other great input methods, but come one, people still want to type on their notebooks.
- masklinn 9y agoThere's a photo of the keyboard on the "innovation" page linked from the Tech Specs one: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book-2/innovation https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...
- lambda_lover 9y agoThis page not only shows a perpetual loading icon and an un-dismissable cookie notification on my phone, it also traps me on the page and requires not one, not two, but three presses of the back button (quickly, before it notices!) for me to escape the page on both mobile and desktop. This does not exactly inspire faith in the product.
- khedoros1 9y agohttps://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSImages/Surface_Z_Innovation_5_FeatureImagePriority_Right_V1.jpg?version=769ba0e2-00fe-efce-a3c1-9ef63507ebb4 https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSImages/Surface_Z_Innovati... Does that link work for you? It's the best image of the keyboard on that page.
- bluedino 9y ago"Experience 4 times more power than before and up to 17 hours of battery life. Blazing graphics now come in two sizes: " Who wrote that line, a Rackspace support bot?
- olyjohn 9y agoI feel like the surface book marketing has been horrible like this for a while. I recently had someone ask me if they could get a Surface Book, so I tried researching it. There was no way to tell that there were multiple models, just one labelled "Surface Book with Performance Base." What the fuck is a performance base? Is this the second revision of the Surface Book? They never mentioned that the first revision was discontinued either. I had to call the Microsoft store to figure all this crap out. Why would I be surprised though, their entire website is a giant clusterfuck and always has been.
- sundvor 9y agoThanks! Was going wtf at the lack of technical specs in the release. No 32GB model is a bit of a shame, however it's great to see Coffee Lake now giving quad core power to ultrabooks. I'm hanging for the X1 Carbon with this line of CPU myself; currently on the 1st gen X1C with i7 cpu, and the main issue I have is probably the battery life aside from the 8gb memory. That was the top spec back in 2011, glad I didn't penny pinch. The ultrabook still looks new; love the Lenovo keyboard and trackpoint.
- dpen2016 9y agoInteresting that spec says "Windows 10 Pro Creators Update 64-bit" considering Fall Creators Update was released today.
- PascLeRasc 9y agoYeah, that guy who does the Surface keynotes is too good for them. His jokes are hilarious and but the audience never gets it, and his more ad-lib salesman-type pitches are very strong. But when he has to read the scripts and work in Microsoft's phrases it feels awkward. I hope he finds more fulfilling work.
- markcmyers 9y agoAs a former advertising executive, I can tell you what the problem is here. The writer and his boss who approved the copy aren't addressing the customer, they're addressing the boss's boss. In a dysfunctional organization like Microsoft, communicating up rather than out is how you get promoted. It's a rare Microsoft employee who moves up the ladder by thinking about the customer.
- brudgers 9y ago[gone]
- traek 9y ago“addressing the boss's boss” isn’t referring to writing for high-level decision makers at other organizations, it means writing for people within Microsoft.
- landr0id 9y agoWell in fairness, the link points to the Windows blog. The actual marketing page should probably be the link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book-2/overview https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...
- santoshalper 9y agoIt's a "blog" entry from a corporate VP. What did you expect? That is not the marketing site for the SB2.
- greedo 9y agoAnd that's the problem. Messaging is something that's always been an issue with MS. Why would you leak/release details about a new product on a blog entry?
- manigandham 9y agoThere is an marketing site available for the product, nothing was "leaked" - the blog is for those who are interested in company news separately.
- ksk 9y agoYeah, the whole text feels bizarre. It seems like they're trying to drum up excitement before the release, but a wall of text is definitely un-inviting from a purely marketing standpoint. IMHO, they could have done well with a simple teaser product shot with a few sentences highlighting something other than "intel made a new CPU". But then again, what do I know, I've never sold anything :)
- always_good 9y agoI really can't get over the opening sentence. "When you think about Microsoft and you hear our mission, it’s powerful."
- tnolet 9y ago...and trying to visit the page on an Iphone 5 is almost impossible. Half the page is blocked by a cookie banner of which the "I agree" button does not function.
- bharath28 9y agoJust the quality of the writing is poor overall. It's not exactly grammatically incorrect, just seems like it was done because someone asked them to do it and not because they were really excited about the product. At one point, the blog entry says: "In product making, we believe every detail matters. ". Those of the type of things Steve Jobs would never let Apple push out as PR.
- Nition 9y agoRight from the title! What sort of a tagline is this "Surface Book 2, the most powerful Surface Book ever."? No-one needs to be told that the Surface Book 2 is going to be faster than the Surface Book 1.
- rhizome 9y ago"When you think about Surface Book and you hear there is a new one, it’s more powerful."
- blt 9y agoApple often uses this line for iPhones...
- Nition 9y agoIt's dumb when Apple does it too but it's less dumb because: - There's more than one previous iPhone - It's a broader statement. There are multiple variants so the new one isn't guaranteed to be more powerful (e.g. iPhone 5C is the same power as iPhone 5)
- tw04 9y agoYou should probably shoot the messenger (OP) - for linking a blog post instead of the official launch page. This is the actual launch page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book-2/overview https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...
- manigandham 9y agoThis HN post is linked to a blog post, that's also why you see topics like the Band. Perhaps try the actual Surface marketing site which includes pricing and pre-ordering (which starts on nov/9): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book-2/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...
- tarheeljason 9y ago> "When you think about Microsoft and you hear our mission – to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more – it’s powerful." What? They're 'starting with why' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4 TL;DW: a marketing consultant suggested replacing "We make computers to empower people" with "We empower people; we just happen to make computers"
- abrookewood 9y agoAll valid points, but I think the embedded video does a good job of marketing the product.