7 ms·

Its always frustrating to watch MS build solid devices with real use cases and then seemingly throw it away trying to market them like apple gadgets. Its like

Its always frustrating to watch MS build solid devices with real use cases and then seemingly throw it away trying to market them like apple gadgets. Its like watching Charlie Brown try to kick the football.

mmcclure 13y ago
If I could upvote this a million times, I would. I don't understand why they think people would rather have an iPad with USB ports than a laptop shaped like a tablet.
lstamour 13y ago
In a similar vein, it'd be perfect if it was 13". That would cement the "for creators" aspect of an "iPad Pro". Instead, the 10" form factor means it's just slightly too small to get work done nicely while slightly too big (or too small, depending on your orientation) to read on comfortably. To be clear: if the Sony Vaio Duo 13 was using Wacom as the original did, I'd have bought it instead of the Retina 13 (and in addition to the first Surface).
rayiner 13y ago
You can't blame Microsoft's marketing here. The use case for Surface Pro 2 is pen computing. It's real, but it's also niche. To justify the expenditures on the product, Surface has to be more than niche, and that's why it's marketed the way it is.
- dman 13y ago
  Pen support should translate into large traction in the education market - any reasons why you think this is not happening?
  - sirkneeland 13y ago
    Apple mindshare dominance? (Apple has a very long history in the education space, and now that is paired up with some truly exceptional products. It's a potent mix, at least in theory. In practice, well, you get the LA school district iPad catastrophe...)
  - TheAnimus 13y ago
    I was at uni in 2003-2006. I had a tablet PC, convertable kind, Toshiba. I was a 'freak' for having such a device, but doing an engineering degree, it was perfect. Equation I scribble down to LATEX yes! One note is still my favourite note taking program, frankly puts evernote to shame. I noticed I was the only one in a class of about 200 with one. 3 years later that had changed to eight, based on people asking me. These things were expensive, I was lucky enough to get some grants for being dyslexic. I honestly think they are great devices, battery life is now adequate, ultimately a Pro would be my go to university machine, enough power for any engineer that didn't require a rack. Great note taking. However the price is objectionable. Most uni students I know would waste money on an iPad. Most people who buy iPads don't want a real computer, and RT offers little in apps they use. Outlook?! Why do they want that for their simple emails, its too complex.
    - tpurves 13y ago
      Same here, I was the only one at my MBA school 2003-2005 with a pure slate tablet PC. Pen computing is awesome not just for note taking but also for business apps like excel and powerpoint. Anything that requires a lot of precise clicking across different areas of the screen works easier with a pen. Due to Microsoft's utter failure at marketing, nobody has any idea about this. Even web browsing is great with a pen. Actually much easier to browse the web and hit small links and buttons with a pen tablet than with fat fingers on an iPad or phone.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Should it? Outside STEM, a traditional laptop works better for taking notes. Inside STEM, well it's a crapshot whether any given professor will be okay with your bringing in a tablet to take notes on. $1,099 is a lot of money for a device that you can't necessarily bring with you to class.
    - dhruvmittal 13y ago
      I hate that I can't use my laptop for notes in most of my STEM classes- not because the professors disallow it, but because there's simply no equation editor that I can use quickly and efficiently enough to take notes with. I tried latex, but it just requires a few too many formatting keystrokes and isn't WSYISYG enough to do on the fly (at least for me). I'd be pretty happy with a digitizer, I think, but I wouldn't be able to stand all of the other little quirks of the surface.
      - ygra 13y ago
        I found Word's equation editor (2007 onwards, not the crippled MathType before) very good for real-time typing of math in class. It's quite close to LaTeX when it comes to symbols, smart enough to use / for fractions or convert ² to a superscript 2, etc. and generally requires far fewer braces because spaces or operators are used to separate tokens, e.g. a^15+4 yields 𝑎¹⁵ + 4 because it makes more sense than 𝑎¹ 5 + 4 (what LaTeX would make of it). It also features WYSIWYG build-up of the equation as you type.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        For typing equations quickly, I found that a quick (not so pretty) ascii-art notation was fastest. I would transcribe them to latex later. I only did that for a year or two before I decided that laptops and note-taking in general were counterproductive and switched to never taking notes at all. I still occasionally took notes on my own time while reading the course material, but I found that paying closer attention instead of trying to write things down ultimately worked better.
      - gotrecruit 13y ago
        windows has an app that's surprisingly not publicized a lot called math input panel which allows you to input equations quite easily in other programs like word or onenote.
- Spearchucker 13y ago
  Niche? I have a Pro 2 (in fact it's the 8Gb/256Gb model). I use it to take hand-witten notes in meetings. I draw diagrams on it, read and reply to mail using Outlook, and create documents and presentations. Best of all, I have Visual Studio, SQL Server and everything else I need for my job. Oh, and Video, which is awesome. It's the best non-desktop device I've ever used. So niche it may be, but definitely broader than just pen computing. For the record, I have a MBA too. It hasn't been switched on since the Surface arrived last week.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    For taking notes, reading and replying to email, and creating documents and presentations, Visual Studio, any Ultrabook with a bigger screen or better keyboard is a better tool (say a Vaio 11 with similar thickness/weight). That leaves drawing diagrams as the only think the Surface Pro is a better tool for. I call that niche.
    - jmspring 13y ago
      "any Ultrabook with a bigger screen or better keyboard is a better tool" Actually, the device that gets you creating in the way most comfortable for one's self is the better tool. You also skipped over the "take notes, and draw diagrams" -- pen computing there.
      - ghshephard 13y ago
        He mentioned drawing diagrams. And, for 99% of people, the handwriting recognition is not good enough to beat the effectiveness of just typing or dictating. That might be a great poll - what percentage of HN posts are done with a pen versus dictation (which I do a lot of mine with when I'm on a smart phone) versus keyboard (vast majority) versus pen. Right now the Wacom tablet is the niche that justifies the high-price for the Pro. Bring it down another $200-$300 and it starts to make inroads into the mass market (where it most certainly is not a player right now)
        13y ago
kyro 13y ago
Fully agreed. Microsoft has shown that boring business is big business and it's continued to generate great revenues for them. They should be marketing this towards business professionals, engineers, digital artists, etc. This isn't a device you lay on the couch with to read; it's meant to be something an analyst can take with him on a business trip. Time and time again I'm seeing Surface ads at bus stops that do not make any sense, like "click in", "thinner, faster", all with very artsy images clearly geared towards the young and hip demographic (even then, the ads poorly convey just how hip the product is). They need to be more concrete and directed in their marketing. IMO, they should be running series of ads targeted to very specific professions.
- etler 13y ago
  The ad I've seen for it on Hulu focuses entirely on a variety of industry professionals using it for work, so I think they're starting to get the right idea.
  - tanzam75 13y ago
    Microsoft brought in a new ad agency for the Surface 2. If they did the Hulu ad, then this was a change for the better.
- maxsilver 13y ago
  > Microsoft has shown that boring business is big business. They should be marketing this towards business professionals They are (see video below). They just don't show these much, because boring business is... boring. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N3NYWlahNU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N3NYWlahNU
qq66 13y ago
Keep in mind that the consumer marketing of the Surface Pro is perhaps 10% or less of the total product marketing. The targets for most of Microsoft's products are giant corporations, and the marketing to them is both direct, because each of these companies spends millions of dollars with Microsoft each year, and indirect, by encouraging system integrators like Accenture to deploy multi-hundred-million dollar "solutions" incorporating Surface tablets.
namlem 13y ago
The surface especially. This thing honestly sounds like the ultimate college notebook. I, like countless other students, preferred to write my notes by hand. Using a surface pro means that these notes can be digitized and accessible on any device at your convenience.

mmcclure 13y ago

If I could upvote this a million times, I would. I don't understand why they think people would rather have an iPad with USB ports than a laptop shaped like a tablet.

lstamour 13y ago

In a similar vein, it'd be perfect if it was 13". That would cement the "for creators" aspect of an "iPad Pro". Instead, the 10" form factor means it's just slightly too small to get work done nicely while slightly too big (or too small, depending on your orientation) to read on comfortably. To be clear: if the Sony Vaio Duo 13 was using Wacom as the original did, I'd have bought it instead of the Retina 13 (and in addition to the first Surface).

rayiner 13y ago

You can't blame Microsoft's marketing here. The use case for Surface Pro 2 is pen computing. It's real, but it's also niche. To justify the expenditures on the product, Surface has to be more than niche, and that's why it's marketed the way it is.

dman 13y ago
Pen support should translate into large traction in the education market - any reasons why you think this is not happening?
- sirkneeland 13y ago
  Apple mindshare dominance? (Apple has a very long history in the education space, and now that is paired up with some truly exceptional products. It's a potent mix, at least in theory. In practice, well, you get the LA school district iPad catastrophe...)
- TheAnimus 13y ago
  I was at uni in 2003-2006. I had a tablet PC, convertable kind, Toshiba. I was a 'freak' for having such a device, but doing an engineering degree, it was perfect. Equation I scribble down to LATEX yes! One note is still my favourite note taking program, frankly puts evernote to shame. I noticed I was the only one in a class of about 200 with one. 3 years later that had changed to eight, based on people asking me. These things were expensive, I was lucky enough to get some grants for being dyslexic. I honestly think they are great devices, battery life is now adequate, ultimately a Pro would be my go to university machine, enough power for any engineer that didn't require a rack. Great note taking. However the price is objectionable. Most uni students I know would waste money on an iPad. Most people who buy iPads don't want a real computer, and RT offers little in apps they use. Outlook?! Why do they want that for their simple emails, its too complex.
  - tpurves 13y ago
    Same here, I was the only one at my MBA school 2003-2005 with a pure slate tablet PC. Pen computing is awesome not just for note taking but also for business apps like excel and powerpoint. Anything that requires a lot of precise clicking across different areas of the screen works easier with a pen. Due to Microsoft's utter failure at marketing, nobody has any idea about this. Even web browsing is great with a pen. Actually much easier to browse the web and hit small links and buttons with a pen tablet than with fat fingers on an iPad or phone.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Should it? Outside STEM, a traditional laptop works better for taking notes. Inside STEM, well it's a crapshot whether any given professor will be okay with your bringing in a tablet to take notes on. $1,099 is a lot of money for a device that you can't necessarily bring with you to class.
  - dhruvmittal 13y ago
    I hate that I can't use my laptop for notes in most of my STEM classes- not because the professors disallow it, but because there's simply no equation editor that I can use quickly and efficiently enough to take notes with. I tried latex, but it just requires a few too many formatting keystrokes and isn't WSYISYG enough to do on the fly (at least for me). I'd be pretty happy with a digitizer, I think, but I wouldn't be able to stand all of the other little quirks of the surface.
    - ygra 13y ago
      I found Word's equation editor (2007 onwards, not the crippled MathType before) very good for real-time typing of math in class. It's quite close to LaTeX when it comes to symbols, smart enough to use / for fractions or convert ² to a superscript 2, etc. and generally requires far fewer braces because spaces or operators are used to separate tokens, e.g. a^15+4 yields 𝑎¹⁵ + 4 because it makes more sense than 𝑎¹ 5 + 4 (what LaTeX would make of it). It also features WYSIWYG build-up of the equation as you type.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      For typing equations quickly, I found that a quick (not so pretty) ascii-art notation was fastest. I would transcribe them to latex later. I only did that for a year or two before I decided that laptops and note-taking in general were counterproductive and switched to never taking notes at all. I still occasionally took notes on my own time while reading the course material, but I found that paying closer attention instead of trying to write things down ultimately worked better.
    - gotrecruit 13y ago
      windows has an app that's surprisingly not publicized a lot called math input panel which allows you to input equations quite easily in other programs like word or onenote.
Spearchucker 13y ago
Niche? I have a Pro 2 (in fact it's the 8Gb/256Gb model). I use it to take hand-witten notes in meetings. I draw diagrams on it, read and reply to mail using Outlook, and create documents and presentations. Best of all, I have Visual Studio, SQL Server and everything else I need for my job. Oh, and Video, which is awesome. It's the best non-desktop device I've ever used. So niche it may be, but definitely broader than just pen computing. For the record, I have a MBA too. It hasn't been switched on since the Surface arrived last week.
- rayiner 13y ago
  For taking notes, reading and replying to email, and creating documents and presentations, Visual Studio, any Ultrabook with a bigger screen or better keyboard is a better tool (say a Vaio 11 with similar thickness/weight). That leaves drawing diagrams as the only think the Surface Pro is a better tool for. I call that niche.
  - jmspring 13y ago
    "any Ultrabook with a bigger screen or better keyboard is a better tool" Actually, the device that gets you creating in the way most comfortable for one's self is the better tool. You also skipped over the "take notes, and draw diagrams" -- pen computing there.
    - ghshephard 13y ago
      He mentioned drawing diagrams. And, for 99% of people, the handwriting recognition is not good enough to beat the effectiveness of just typing or dictating. That might be a great poll - what percentage of HN posts are done with a pen versus dictation (which I do a lot of mine with when I'm on a smart phone) versus keyboard (vast majority) versus pen. Right now the Wacom tablet is the niche that justifies the high-price for the Pro. Bring it down another $200-$300 and it starts to make inroads into the mass market (where it most certainly is not a player right now)
      - 13y ago

kyro 13y ago

Fully agreed. Microsoft has shown that boring business is big business and it's continued to generate great revenues for them. They should be marketing this towards business professionals, engineers, digital artists, etc. This isn't a device you lay on the couch with to read; it's meant to be something an analyst can take with him on a business trip. Time and time again I'm seeing Surface ads at bus stops that do not make any sense, like "click in", "thinner, faster", all with very artsy images clearly geared towards the young and hip demographic (even then, the ads poorly convey just how hip the product is). They need to be more concrete and directed in their marketing. IMO, they should be running series of ads targeted to very specific professions.

etler 13y ago
The ad I've seen for it on Hulu focuses entirely on a variety of industry professionals using it for work, so I think they're starting to get the right idea.
- tanzam75 13y ago
  Microsoft brought in a new ad agency for the Surface 2. If they did the Hulu ad, then this was a change for the better.
maxsilver 13y ago
> Microsoft has shown that boring business is big business. They should be marketing this towards business professionals They are (see video below). They just don't show these much, because boring business is... boring. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N3NYWlahNU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N3NYWlahNU

qq66 13y ago

Keep in mind that the consumer marketing of the Surface Pro is perhaps 10% or less of the total product marketing. The targets for most of Microsoft's products are giant corporations, and the marketing to them is both direct, because each of these companies spends millions of dollars with Microsoft each year, and indirect, by encouraging system integrators like Accenture to deploy multi-hundred-million dollar "solutions" incorporating Surface tablets.

namlem 13y ago

The surface especially. This thing honestly sounds like the ultimate college notebook. I, like countless other students, preferred to write my notes by hand. Using a surface pro means that these notes can be digitized and accessible on any device at your convenience.