6 ms·

It reminds me how the first Surface Pro looked like. It was incomplete and useless device so it didn't go well. However, Microsoft didn't give up. After three

It reminds me how the first Surface Pro looked like. It was incomplete and useless device so it didn't go well. However, Microsoft didn't give up. After three iterations Microsoft finally made Surface Pro 3, which was the first useful Windows tablet with a cleverly designed keyboard and a great 3:2 ratio screen. The surface line finally took off and third-parties began to make "surface-like" products since then. Microsoft is not like Apple. They don't make perfect products at the beginning, but they eventually nailed it after some iterations (I know they still have software issues though.) So I will wait and see what Microsoft will make in the next generations.

Analemma_ 7y ago
There is a potential difference though: with the Surface, Microsoft only needed to iterate on the hardware, which it could do by itself. My concern with Windows 10X is that it requires buy-in from developers to reach its full potential, and that has been lacking. To be blunt, UWP attracted basically no developer attention (which is a shame, it was a pretty good development environment). Unless they figure out how to turn that situation around, the Surface Duo might be a fantastic Office machine but nothing else.
- neogodless 7y ago
  Minor correction: The Duo is the Android phone. The Windows X tablet is called the Neo.
- tasogare 7y ago
  > UWP attracted basically no developer attention (which is a shame, it was a pretty good development environment). This is not a shame, this is the logical consequence of all to lies told to the Windows Phone community, which could have bootstrapped UWP but was totally demotivated when UWP was released. But the main reason is the stupid decision to make UWP available only on Windows 10, at a time where Win7 had the highest marketshare. Microsoft should focus on making WPF multi-platform if it wants developer to be excited again to develop native software on Windows.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    There is hardly any energy behind consumer PC development at all outside of games.
    - whywhywhywhy 7y ago
      > at all outside of games And you know, all the software stacks across multiple disciplines required to actually make games and movies and TV shows and music.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        That’s a profitable niche, but not a huge niche. Would you really go and talk to investors about your great startup that makes desktop software in 2019? It’s a great market for Microsoft, Adobe, Avid, etc but not for any new entrants.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Yes, it made no sense to adopt UWP when Windows 7 was still so prevalent. I'm still supporting it at least until next year, possibly beyond then. You also have to wonder at their commitment, WPF wasn't that old when they started dicking about with Metro. WPF didn't even feel finished. Why invest huge amounts of time and effort in a platform you don't think they have a long term commitment to.
- 7952 7y ago
  A lot of users spend their entire life in Office and various MS online apps. This would be worth having just for PowerPoint alone. It would let you keep slides open while presenting and have other apps open privately.
pcurve 7y ago
"After three iterations Microsoft finally made Surface Pro 3" I think Microsoft does this a lot. They persist and usually succeeds. Most of the time.
djsumdog 7y ago
Actually, it reminds me of that pre-iPad Microsoft project that they killed off to focus on Windows 8. It was almost production ready too; had dual screens and there was a neat video of how the stylus interacted with it. I can't remember what it was called though and can't seem to find it searching DDG/Google.
- kyoji 7y ago
  The Microsoft Courier! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier
  - Corrado 7y ago
    Video of it in action - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmIgNfp-MdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmIgNfp-MdI
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  Cancelled Microsoft Courier might be what you have in mind. See: https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+courrier+tablet https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+courrier+tablet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmIgNfp-MdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmIgNfp-MdI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier
JadeNB 7y ago
> Microsoft is not like Apple. They don't make perfect products at the beginning For example, perfect butterfly keyboards.
- 0xFFFE 7y ago
  3 months in and the touch bar stopped working, it just doesn't light up. It's a work laptop so it is going for a replacement, backing up my data as I type this. Also, some keys double type :( Perfect my ass. PS: I know you are being sarcastic
- Kye 7y ago
  They perfectly emulate the fragility of real butterflies.
- llampx 7y ago
  The amount of bellyaching about the MacBook keyboard is the exception that proves the rule.
  - jbigelow76 7y ago
    The current AppleTV remote is garbage too, Apple Watch Series 0, how many rule proving exceptions do they get? Shall we segue into iOS 13...
  - driverdan 7y ago
    The first version of nearly every Apple product has had major issues. With Apple you're always better off waiting for v2.
- com2kid 7y ago
  Hockey Puck mouse. Heck my Mac-mini overheats and throttles itself not by reducing the CPU clock but apparently by having a system process just take ownership of the CPU and NO-OP things until the system cools down, bringing everything including the UI down to a crawl. An absolutely horrible user experience. The famous display snow that happened for years when plugging external monitors into Macbooks.
lou1306 7y ago
> They don't make perfect products at the beginning, but they eventually nailed it after some iterations This is not limited to hardware: early versions of SQL Server were far from perfect, but they kept improving on it. Makes some kind of sense if you have deep pockets and your product targets a very lucrative market.
klohto 7y ago
> Microsoft is not like Apple. They don't make perfect products at the beginning Oh man, try to remember how the first iPhone was. It was the most useless thing in the world. It didn’t have app store! The lesson is to iterate, iterate and iterate
- mrep 7y ago
  Is that sarcasm, because I had the first iphone and being able to use a browser anywhere was the killer feature, and it was amazing.
  - ascii_only 7y ago
    Is that sarcasm, because I had cheap Symbian 40 phone with Opera mobile way before iPhone was announced. Browser that i used everywhere. And this Symbian phones were majority of the market. Also Windows mobile phones that only geeks were using at the time also had browser and also way before iPhone.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      The Opera browser at the time for mobile weren’t full browsers. They rendered on a server and had limitations.
      - robin_reala 7y ago
        No, that was Opera Mini. Opera Mobile was a full browser using Presto, and ran on a bunch of platforms including Symbian, Windows Mobile and Maemo.
      - kccqzy 7y ago
        The web at that time didn't need full browsers to be enjoyable. Most websites were like what Hacker News is right now: just simple HTML, little to no JavaScript, and easy on bandwidth.
        7y ago
scarface74 7y ago
Apple doesn’t make perfect products in the beginning either. iPhone - no 3g, no GPS, no third party apps, couldn’t shoot video, and no flash for cameras. My feature phone had all of this at the time. Between 2G and AT&Ts network it was a hard pass for me. Not to mention the 4GB of memory. I did end up getting two iPod Touches before the iPhone 4. iPad - it wasn’t apparent until the next year, but the original iPad was sorely crippled by having only 256MB of RAM compared to the iPhone 4 that came out three months later with 512MB of RAM. The iPhone ran iOS 4-7. The iPad could only run iOS 5. Apple Watch - slow, no GPS and apps were terrible with the first version of WatchOS. They were only a little better with watchOS 2. The third generation were the first good ones.
- ProfessorLayton 7y ago
  Not sure I agree with the first two, as those products were so revolutionary, it's hard to ding them for some features they missed (Especially since they eventually got many of those features via software updates). Not saying they were perfect by any means, but it was a damn fine first attempt. First gen Watch was trash and I completely regret that purchase, furthermore, I can't believe Apple even released it in that state. It was literally unusable for me, with some taps taking multiple seconds (!!!) to respond. It was unbearable.
  - jotm 7y ago
    Windows Mobile phones had everything bar capacitive screens years before the iPhone, and tablets were a thing for years, as well. So please, stop with the "revolutionary" nonsense.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Everything about Windows Phones (CE Based) were horrible, including the browser and the interface. Tablets before the iPad were bulky and the interface wasn’t exactly touch friendly.
      - jotm 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
JBiserkov 7y ago
This! They also iterated quite fast: Surface Pro 1 - February 2013 Surface Pro 2 - October 2013 (that's not a typo) Surface Pro 3 - June 2014

Analemma_ 7y ago

There is a potential difference though: with the Surface, Microsoft only needed to iterate on the hardware, which it could do by itself. My concern with Windows 10X is that it requires buy-in from developers to reach its full potential, and that has been lacking. To be blunt, UWP attracted basically no developer attention (which is a shame, it was a pretty good development environment). Unless they figure out how to turn that situation around, the Surface Duo might be a fantastic Office machine but nothing else.

neogodless 7y ago
Minor correction: The Duo is the Android phone. The Windows X tablet is called the Neo.
tasogare 7y ago
> UWP attracted basically no developer attention (which is a shame, it was a pretty good development environment). This is not a shame, this is the logical consequence of all to lies told to the Windows Phone community, which could have bootstrapped UWP but was totally demotivated when UWP was released. But the main reason is the stupid decision to make UWP available only on Windows 10, at a time where Win7 had the highest marketshare. Microsoft should focus on making WPF multi-platform if it wants developer to be excited again to develop native software on Windows.
- scarface74 7y ago
  There is hardly any energy behind consumer PC development at all outside of games.
  - whywhywhywhy 7y ago
    > at all outside of games And you know, all the software stacks across multiple disciplines required to actually make games and movies and TV shows and music.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      That’s a profitable niche, but not a huge niche. Would you really go and talk to investors about your great startup that makes desktop software in 2019? It’s a great market for Microsoft, Adobe, Avid, etc but not for any new entrants.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  Yes, it made no sense to adopt UWP when Windows 7 was still so prevalent. I'm still supporting it at least until next year, possibly beyond then. You also have to wonder at their commitment, WPF wasn't that old when they started dicking about with Metro. WPF didn't even feel finished. Why invest huge amounts of time and effort in a platform you don't think they have a long term commitment to.
7952 7y ago
A lot of users spend their entire life in Office and various MS online apps. This would be worth having just for PowerPoint alone. It would let you keep slides open while presenting and have other apps open privately.

pcurve 7y ago

"After three iterations Microsoft finally made Surface Pro 3" I think Microsoft does this a lot. They persist and usually succeeds. Most of the time.

djsumdog 7y ago

Actually, it reminds me of that pre-iPad Microsoft project that they killed off to focus on Windows 8. It was almost production ready too; had dual screens and there was a neat video of how the stylus interacted with it. I can't remember what it was called though and can't seem to find it searching DDG/Google.

kyoji 7y ago
The Microsoft Courier! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier
- Corrado 7y ago
  Video of it in action - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmIgNfp-MdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmIgNfp-MdI
johnchristopher 7y ago
Cancelled Microsoft Courier might be what you have in mind. See: https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+courrier+tablet https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+courrier+tablet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmIgNfp-MdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmIgNfp-MdI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier

JadeNB 7y ago

> Microsoft is not like Apple. They don't make perfect products at the beginning For example, perfect butterfly keyboards.

0xFFFE 7y ago
3 months in and the touch bar stopped working, it just doesn't light up. It's a work laptop so it is going for a replacement, backing up my data as I type this. Also, some keys double type :( Perfect my ass. PS: I know you are being sarcastic
Kye 7y ago
They perfectly emulate the fragility of real butterflies.
llampx 7y ago
The amount of bellyaching about the MacBook keyboard is the exception that proves the rule.
- jbigelow76 7y ago
  The current AppleTV remote is garbage too, Apple Watch Series 0, how many rule proving exceptions do they get? Shall we segue into iOS 13...
- driverdan 7y ago
  The first version of nearly every Apple product has had major issues. With Apple you're always better off waiting for v2.
com2kid 7y ago
Hockey Puck mouse. Heck my Mac-mini overheats and throttles itself not by reducing the CPU clock but apparently by having a system process just take ownership of the CPU and NO-OP things until the system cools down, bringing everything including the UI down to a crawl. An absolutely horrible user experience. The famous display snow that happened for years when plugging external monitors into Macbooks.

lou1306 7y ago

> They don't make perfect products at the beginning, but they eventually nailed it after some iterations This is not limited to hardware: early versions of SQL Server were far from perfect, but they kept improving on it. Makes some kind of sense if you have deep pockets and your product targets a very lucrative market.

klohto 7y ago

> Microsoft is not like Apple. They don't make perfect products at the beginning Oh man, try to remember how the first iPhone was. It was the most useless thing in the world. It didn’t have app store! The lesson is to iterate, iterate and iterate

mrep 7y ago
Is that sarcasm, because I had the first iphone and being able to use a browser anywhere was the killer feature, and it was amazing.
- ascii_only 7y ago
  Is that sarcasm, because I had cheap Symbian 40 phone with Opera mobile way before iPhone was announced. Browser that i used everywhere. And this Symbian phones were majority of the market. Also Windows mobile phones that only geeks were using at the time also had browser and also way before iPhone.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    The Opera browser at the time for mobile weren’t full browsers. They rendered on a server and had limitations.
    - robin_reala 7y ago
      No, that was Opera Mini. Opera Mobile was a full browser using Presto, and ran on a bunch of platforms including Symbian, Windows Mobile and Maemo.
    - kccqzy 7y ago
      The web at that time didn't need full browsers to be enjoyable. Most websites were like what Hacker News is right now: just simple HTML, little to no JavaScript, and easy on bandwidth.
      - 7y ago

scarface74 7y ago

Apple doesn’t make perfect products in the beginning either. iPhone - no 3g, no GPS, no third party apps, couldn’t shoot video, and no flash for cameras. My feature phone had all of this at the time. Between 2G and AT&Ts network it was a hard pass for me. Not to mention the 4GB of memory. I did end up getting two iPod Touches before the iPhone 4. iPad - it wasn’t apparent until the next year, but the original iPad was sorely crippled by having only 256MB of RAM compared to the iPhone 4 that came out three months later with 512MB of RAM. The iPhone ran iOS 4-7. The iPad could only run iOS 5. Apple Watch - slow, no GPS and apps were terrible with the first version of WatchOS. They were only a little better with watchOS 2. The third generation were the first good ones.

ProfessorLayton 7y ago
Not sure I agree with the first two, as those products were so revolutionary, it's hard to ding them for some features they missed (Especially since they eventually got many of those features via software updates). Not saying they were perfect by any means, but it was a damn fine first attempt. First gen Watch was trash and I completely regret that purchase, furthermore, I can't believe Apple even released it in that state. It was literally unusable for me, with some taps taking multiple seconds (!!!) to respond. It was unbearable.
- jotm 7y ago
  Windows Mobile phones had everything bar capacitive screens years before the iPhone, and tablets were a thing for years, as well. So please, stop with the "revolutionary" nonsense.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Everything about Windows Phones (CE Based) were horrible, including the browser and the interface. Tablets before the iPad were bulky and the interface wasn’t exactly touch friendly.
    - jotm 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

JBiserkov 7y ago

This! They also iterated quite fast: Surface Pro 1 - February 2013 Surface Pro 2 - October 2013 (that's not a typo) Surface Pro 3 - June 2014