7 ms·

Ben Kuchera of the Penny Arcade Report has a scathing and spot-on review of Microsoft's advertising strategy for the Surface (as well as for the rest of their p

Ben Kuchera of the Penny Arcade Report has a scathing and spot-on review of Microsoft's advertising strategy for the Surface (as well as for the rest of their product line). It's interesting that PA's Mike "Gabe" Krahulik had a better pitch than MS themselves. http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/microsoft-is-killing-surface-with-breakdancing-and-its-going-to-hurt-xbox-o http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/microsoft-is-killing-...

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
> It's interesting that PA's Mike "Gabe" Krahulik had a better pitch than MS themselves. Surface Pro is quite a different beast from Surface RT. I think Gabe was just in love with the Waccom stylus, which is not really unique to the Pro (other tablets have this also).
Tloewald 13y ago
Their take on it was that it's a great artists' device. My initial take too. But having played with several Surface Pros, i found the device so lackluster I opted to buy a Yiynova display/tablet for half as much money, i don't need to mess with Windows 8 or buy new software. The real problem with Surface is that it's a crappy overall device. The two keyboard options both suck. Microsoft is hopeless at managing screen real estate so the serious applications such as office are weak. Yes, it's a great portable sketchpad, so Gabe is sold.
- DigitalJack 13y ago
  How long have you had the yiynova? Can you give a quick review?
  - Tloewald 13y ago
    About a month. I got it because of Mischief. I posted a blog entry on it: http://loewald.com/blog/?p=5274 http://loewald.com/blog/?p=5274 Nutshell is the tablet is good but the software kind of sucks. I can only use the tablet in mirrored mode because the tablet driver maps the surface to the combined screen, and I need to use a third party app to run the tablet at native resolution. If I were a pro, I'd probably spring for a Cintiq, but for a hobbyist it's wonderful value.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Their take on it was that it's a great artists' device. Well, visual artists at least. No existing audio software runs on it, and it doesn't even support playback of MIDI files. I remain somewhat interested in a Surface Pro, but (like Google, and like MS themselves on Windows for years) the Surface is only useful to musicians for checking email.
  - Tloewald 13y ago
    They're talking about the Pro which presumably runs tons of audio software.
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      Oh, blind spot on my part - I was so fixated on the RT context that I didn't read the article properly. Thanks for pointing that out.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  The main thing I want a tablet for is as a good sketchpad, ideally one that is fine with using a wood stylus so I can easily cut a stick to different nib shapes when I'm working.
- ximeng 13y ago
  "Microsoft is hopeless at managing screen real estate" - not sure where this blanket statement is coming from, but the desktop option on Windows 8 works perfectly well for me on the Pro. Keyboard could be better, but works well enough (type keyboard at least, I didn't like the touch keyboard). Screen is high res and looks nice, stylus works well. For me it's been more happy than crappy overall.
  - Tloewald 13y ago
    Years ago I did a comparison of how Word uses screen real estate compated to Pages (their feature sets are remarkably similar). Pages simply wastes fat less screen real estate that Word does giving you more room to see your actual document, and this is a recurring issue with Microsoft's UI design. The contrast is particularly marked with the iPad, where you get more pixels for your document on the iPad's 10" screen than in Microsoft Word on a 15" laptop screen. Just look at the ribbon, toolbar, status bar, etc. Not only does this waste screen real estate, it wastes vertical space which is at a premium on widescreen displays. On a widescreen monitor, Pages minimizes this cruft or puts it in palettes and sidebars.
    - Gormo 13y ago
      The show-the-content-and-hide-the-chrome trend in UI design isn't as presumptively valid as a lot of people try to make it out to be. When you've got a document loaded up in a word processor, you're not just trying to read static content; you're working on that content, and the application you're using is a tool for editing and manipulating it. Hiding the chrome in order to show more of the document emphasises the document content as it is in the immediate instant, rather than the potential things you can do with that content, and makes it harder to locate the tools and functions for manipulating the document. Minimal chrome might make sense in a web browser or PDF reader (at least to the extent that there's a smaller set of functionality necessary for reading documents, but hiding searching/bookmarking/referencing tools is just as bad) but in a word processor, it's much more necessary to have the application's own functional interface exposed.
      - 13y ago
rayiner 13y ago
It's easy to blame marketing for Surface's failure, but I don't think that's the whole or even the most of it. If you read the reviews, nearly all mentioned or hinted at one thing: you should probably wait for the next iteration. And that's absolutely a product management failure, not a marketing failure. In tech, it is always the case that the next version of a product will be better, but it's a product design failure if the limitations of the device leave the user hankering for the upgrade from Day 1. Re: Surface RT, Microsoft launched at the same price point as the iPad 4, but substantially later, with a last-generation CPU/GPU, non-Retina screen, and a buggy, slow, pre-release version of Office RT. That last point was inexcusable, a product management fuck up of Apple Maps proportions. The whole point of Surface RT was Office, and every review of the device said "Office RT is slow and buggy." The overwhelming feeling with Surface RT is that "I'm really going to be kicking myself in 6 months when they release the next version with flagship specs to match the flagship price." Re: Surface Pro, Microsoft launched at a Macbook Air 11" price point, without the Air's great keyboard and with substantially weaker battery life (in Engadget's test, half the battery life of the comparably-sized Acer W700). The overwhelming feeling with Surface Pro was "I'm really going to be kicking myself when they release the next iteration with Haswell and usable battery life." On top of all that, the segmentation was arbitrary and capricious. What's the difference between Surface RT and Surface Pro? It's an explanation that probably makes sense to a marketing guy somewhere trying to differentiate SKUs, but not one that I think resonated with consumers. Nexus 7 versus Nexus 10, iPad versus iPad Mini. That's how to do product differentiation--in a way that's immediately obvious to the consumer. There was also some weird design choices. Why the extreme wide-format screen? Did anybody even try reading a Word document in portrait mode on the thing? I can understand the format for consumer-oriented tablets, but Surface was supposed to be a "real work" office machine! Why are there two ways to manage settings, one set in Metro and another set in the Desktop? Why do so many things require going into the Desktop anyway? Who thought it was even a good idea to expose the user to two completely different UI's in the same device?
- barista 13y ago
  regarding comparison with iPad, the CPU GPU combination does not matter because Surface was/is still plenty fast with the hardware it has. Agree on the screen and Office though. Although office was updated a month or two after the release and fixed the performance issues in time. I wouldn't necessarily attribute the problems to that. Marketing seems to have come around and have started chaning the message and attacking the iPad more directly in adverts like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JMcy5OqZA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JMcy5OqZA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE7AQY5Xk9w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE7AQY5Xk9w plus the reduced price should help make it attractive. It's one very functional device though. Just today I read an article of how it was perfect for a student. Will update with a link if I find it.
danielweber 13y ago
Microsoft should be Microsoft and stop trying to be Apple. Microsoft isn't cool, and that's okay. Microsoft is the boring boyfriend you know is always there and will always load Office documents easily (see 'rayiner below). It's not sexy but it doesn't have to be.
- melling 13y ago
  Microsoft sucks, plain and simple. They really always have. I've been following the PC industry for 30 years. Microsoft won because of Office (Excel, Word, Powerpoint) at a relatively cheap combo price, cheap clone PC's, and the fact that they forced clone makers to pay for DOS no matter which OS they shipped. PC makers had to basically ship DOS/Windows, killing off any hope that BeOS, OS/2, etc would gain any foothold. Apple was never really any competition because they were overpriced. Once the need for Office goes any, then any operating system will work for many people. Linux has finally won in the consumer space in the form of Android. Hopefully, we'll see a huge flood of "desktop/notebook" Android/Chromebook devices. Get "Office" in the cloud and the 90% desktop monopoly that Microsoft has had for two decades finally goes away. Don't get me wrong... This isn't Microsoft being the wrong company to have a monopoly, it's just silly that any company has a 90% market share. We don't buy 90% of our cars from General Motors. Let's get a little more innovation in the consumer space. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and maybe even... Ubuntu dividing up the market will be better for everyone.
  - jmduke 13y ago
    Office is incredible, incredible software. We're nowhere near replacing it with iWork/Google Docs/Open/Libre.
    - kyllo 13y ago
      I'll believe that when I stop randomly seeing "Microsoft Word/Excel/Outlook/etc. has encountered a problem and needs to close." Office is completely bug-ridden and unstable, and always has been.
    - btilly 13y ago

seanmcdirmid 13y ago

> It's interesting that PA's Mike "Gabe" Krahulik had a better pitch than MS themselves. Surface Pro is quite a different beast from Surface RT. I think Gabe was just in love with the Waccom stylus, which is not really unique to the Pro (other tablets have this also).

Tloewald 13y ago

Their take on it was that it's a great artists' device. My initial take too. But having played with several Surface Pros, i found the device so lackluster I opted to buy a Yiynova display/tablet for half as much money, i don't need to mess with Windows 8 or buy new software. The real problem with Surface is that it's a crappy overall device. The two keyboard options both suck. Microsoft is hopeless at managing screen real estate so the serious applications such as office are weak. Yes, it's a great portable sketchpad, so Gabe is sold.

DigitalJack 13y ago
How long have you had the yiynova? Can you give a quick review?
- Tloewald 13y ago
  About a month. I got it because of Mischief. I posted a blog entry on it: http://loewald.com/blog/?p=5274 http://loewald.com/blog/?p=5274 Nutshell is the tablet is good but the software kind of sucks. I can only use the tablet in mirrored mode because the tablet driver maps the surface to the combined screen, and I need to use a third party app to run the tablet at native resolution. If I were a pro, I'd probably spring for a Cintiq, but for a hobbyist it's wonderful value.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Their take on it was that it's a great artists' device. Well, visual artists at least. No existing audio software runs on it, and it doesn't even support playback of MIDI files. I remain somewhat interested in a Surface Pro, but (like Google, and like MS themselves on Windows for years) the Surface is only useful to musicians for checking email.
- Tloewald 13y ago
  They're talking about the Pro which presumably runs tons of audio software.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    Oh, blind spot on my part - I was so fixated on the RT context that I didn't read the article properly. Thanks for pointing that out.
moocowduckquack 13y ago
The main thing I want a tablet for is as a good sketchpad, ideally one that is fine with using a wood stylus so I can easily cut a stick to different nib shapes when I'm working.
ximeng 13y ago
"Microsoft is hopeless at managing screen real estate" - not sure where this blanket statement is coming from, but the desktop option on Windows 8 works perfectly well for me on the Pro. Keyboard could be better, but works well enough (type keyboard at least, I didn't like the touch keyboard). Screen is high res and looks nice, stylus works well. For me it's been more happy than crappy overall.
- Tloewald 13y ago
  Years ago I did a comparison of how Word uses screen real estate compated to Pages (their feature sets are remarkably similar). Pages simply wastes fat less screen real estate that Word does giving you more room to see your actual document, and this is a recurring issue with Microsoft's UI design. The contrast is particularly marked with the iPad, where you get more pixels for your document on the iPad's 10" screen than in Microsoft Word on a 15" laptop screen. Just look at the ribbon, toolbar, status bar, etc. Not only does this waste screen real estate, it wastes vertical space which is at a premium on widescreen displays. On a widescreen monitor, Pages minimizes this cruft or puts it in palettes and sidebars.
  - Gormo 13y ago
    The show-the-content-and-hide-the-chrome trend in UI design isn't as presumptively valid as a lot of people try to make it out to be. When you've got a document loaded up in a word processor, you're not just trying to read static content; you're working on that content, and the application you're using is a tool for editing and manipulating it. Hiding the chrome in order to show more of the document emphasises the document content as it is in the immediate instant, rather than the potential things you can do with that content, and makes it harder to locate the tools and functions for manipulating the document. Minimal chrome might make sense in a web browser or PDF reader (at least to the extent that there's a smaller set of functionality necessary for reading documents, but hiding searching/bookmarking/referencing tools is just as bad) but in a word processor, it's much more necessary to have the application's own functional interface exposed.
    - 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

It's easy to blame marketing for Surface's failure, but I don't think that's the whole or even the most of it. If you read the reviews, nearly all mentioned or hinted at one thing: you should probably wait for the next iteration. And that's absolutely a product management failure, not a marketing failure. In tech, it is always the case that the next version of a product will be better, but it's a product design failure if the limitations of the device leave the user hankering for the upgrade from Day 1. Re: Surface RT, Microsoft launched at the same price point as the iPad 4, but substantially later, with a last-generation CPU/GPU, non-Retina screen, and a buggy, slow, pre-release version of Office RT. That last point was inexcusable, a product management fuck up of Apple Maps proportions. The whole point of Surface RT was Office, and every review of the device said "Office RT is slow and buggy." The overwhelming feeling with Surface RT is that "I'm really going to be kicking myself in 6 months when they release the next version with flagship specs to match the flagship price." Re: Surface Pro, Microsoft launched at a Macbook Air 11" price point, without the Air's great keyboard and with substantially weaker battery life (in Engadget's test, half the battery life of the comparably-sized Acer W700). The overwhelming feeling with Surface Pro was "I'm really going to be kicking myself when they release the next iteration with Haswell and usable battery life." On top of all that, the segmentation was arbitrary and capricious. What's the difference between Surface RT and Surface Pro? It's an explanation that probably makes sense to a marketing guy somewhere trying to differentiate SKUs, but not one that I think resonated with consumers. Nexus 7 versus Nexus 10, iPad versus iPad Mini. That's how to do product differentiation--in a way that's immediately obvious to the consumer. There was also some weird design choices. Why the extreme wide-format screen? Did anybody even try reading a Word document in portrait mode on the thing? I can understand the format for consumer-oriented tablets, but Surface was supposed to be a "real work" office machine! Why are there two ways to manage settings, one set in Metro and another set in the Desktop? Why do so many things require going into the Desktop anyway? Who thought it was even a good idea to expose the user to two completely different UI's in the same device?

barista 13y ago
regarding comparison with iPad, the CPU GPU combination does not matter because Surface was/is still plenty fast with the hardware it has. Agree on the screen and Office though. Although office was updated a month or two after the release and fixed the performance issues in time. I wouldn't necessarily attribute the problems to that. Marketing seems to have come around and have started chaning the message and attacking the iPad more directly in adverts like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JMcy5OqZA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JMcy5OqZA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE7AQY5Xk9w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE7AQY5Xk9w plus the reduced price should help make it attractive. It's one very functional device though. Just today I read an article of how it was perfect for a student. Will update with a link if I find it.

danielweber 13y ago

Microsoft should be Microsoft and stop trying to be Apple. Microsoft isn't cool, and that's okay. Microsoft is the boring boyfriend you know is always there and will always load Office documents easily (see 'rayiner below). It's not sexy but it doesn't have to be.

melling 13y ago
Microsoft sucks, plain and simple. They really always have. I've been following the PC industry for 30 years. Microsoft won because of Office (Excel, Word, Powerpoint) at a relatively cheap combo price, cheap clone PC's, and the fact that they forced clone makers to pay for DOS no matter which OS they shipped. PC makers had to basically ship DOS/Windows, killing off any hope that BeOS, OS/2, etc would gain any foothold. Apple was never really any competition because they were overpriced. Once the need for Office goes any, then any operating system will work for many people. Linux has finally won in the consumer space in the form of Android. Hopefully, we'll see a huge flood of "desktop/notebook" Android/Chromebook devices. Get "Office" in the cloud and the 90% desktop monopoly that Microsoft has had for two decades finally goes away. Don't get me wrong... This isn't Microsoft being the wrong company to have a monopoly, it's just silly that any company has a 90% market share. We don't buy 90% of our cars from General Motors. Let's get a little more innovation in the consumer space. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and maybe even... Ubuntu dividing up the market will be better for everyone.
- jmduke 13y ago
  Office is incredible, incredible software. We're nowhere near replacing it with iWork/Google Docs/Open/Libre.
  - kyllo 13y ago
    I'll believe that when I stop randomly seeing "Microsoft Word/Excel/Outlook/etc. has encountered a problem and needs to close." Office is completely bug-ridden and unstable, and always has been.
  - btilly 13y ago