3 ms·

Seems like a small niche to be focusing on. I understand the PR angle (it's a home run for the PR team) but I don't think catering to artists who draw digitall

Seems like a small niche to be focusing on. I understand the PR angle (it's a home run for the PR team) but I don't think catering to artists who draw digitally is going to make or break the tablet. Where's the feel good story about the coder, the gamer, or the office junkie? Each of which makes up a considerably larger slice of the premium laptop/tablet marketplace.

bgilroy26 12y ago
The coder, the gamer, and the office junkie are the traditional Microsoft audience from the 90s + 2000s (maybe in reverse order). Apple had the artist audience even back in the 2000s, macintoshes were really niche-y then Seeing Apple's huge success in the late 2000s, Microsoft's grand marketing strategy since has been to try and re approach a young hip, artistic audience while not losing their traditional base. It's a huge shift and it won't be easy, since managers who buy for their offices want a low-rent, predictable product and their feathers are easily ruffled.
adrianhoward 12y ago
I dunno. Not make or break maybe. Be a potentially big market - hella yeah. The majority of design-ish people I know, including myself, would kill for a decent tablet drawing environment. Folk are already laying out for specialist devices like http://www.wacom.com/en/gb/creative/cintiq-24-hd-touch http://www.wacom.com/en/gb/creative/cintiq-24-hd-touch. My iPad is cute and useful for many things. I do very rough sketch stuff on it. For professional deign work it's pretty much useless. As somebody who's been buying Apple kit since before Jobs return the surface is the first time I've ever been tempted by Windows hardware. I know many folk who walk around with a Macbook + iPad + wacom tablet. I can see a lot of those folk switching if the Surface 3 worked well. I know lots of long-term Apple folk who were really tempted by the Surface 2. The office junkies, coders and games have alternatives. Currently there is almost nothing that does what the Surface 2/3 do, on the design side, in a single device. (I also imagine that the issues of stylus sensitivity & lag will apply to other interaction models to. Getting those things to feel "natural" is non-trivial. Pleasing the design folk will probably make it better for other peeps too.)
- chris_mahan 12y ago
  I've been looking a the cintiq too, and may still do that, because wacom caters to illustrators directly.
- prawn 12y ago
  Was a Windows user but have a MBP now. I follow the Surface reports with interest entirely because of the apparent quality of stylus input. Getting a Wacom is my likely path at this point though.
Pxtl 12y ago
Apple has had a stranglehold on the graphic design industry for years despite not actually making a good stylus-driven product for that market. I don't know if there's a legitimate marketing reason for this, but it's a tremendously symbolic conflict. Microsoft attacking Apple in their stronghold.
- paulrov 12y ago
  Graphic design isn't about styluses. That would be illustration… Styluses are actually worse for graphic design due to their lack of accuracy, all designers I've ever worked with who use styluses always end up moving objects by a few pixels when selecting them.
eropple 12y ago
I'm not even a serious artist--I'm a programmer who makes games--and the only reason I bought an SP2 was Photoshop. I took it back because the SP3 news dropped that week. Kind of regretting that now.
prawn 12y ago
This feels like Altavista and then Google appealing to the tech types in the earlier days of search engines. If you wanted to convince the masses that the sketching and note-taking was high quality, why wouldn't you get it right for the artists as a priority? I assume anyone from Penny Arcade has a gaming background too.
tfinniga 12y ago
> the gamer If they get Gabe happy with it, then they will get a ton of free PR in front of a lot of gamers. For example, see this post of his (especially the second half) about the original surface pro: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/02/22/the-ms-surface-pro http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/02/22/the-ms-surf...

bgilroy26 12y ago

The coder, the gamer, and the office junkie are the traditional Microsoft audience from the 90s + 2000s (maybe in reverse order). Apple had the artist audience even back in the 2000s, macintoshes were really niche-y then Seeing Apple's huge success in the late 2000s, Microsoft's grand marketing strategy since has been to try and re approach a young hip, artistic audience while not losing their traditional base. It's a huge shift and it won't be easy, since managers who buy for their offices want a low-rent, predictable product and their feathers are easily ruffled.

adrianhoward 12y ago

I dunno. Not make or break maybe. Be a potentially big market - hella yeah. The majority of design-ish people I know, including myself, would kill for a decent tablet drawing environment. Folk are already laying out for specialist devices like http://www.wacom.com/en/gb/creative/cintiq-24-hd-touch http://www.wacom.com/en/gb/creative/cintiq-24-hd-touch. My iPad is cute and useful for many things. I do very rough sketch stuff on it. For professional deign work it's pretty much useless. As somebody who's been buying Apple kit since before Jobs return the surface is the first time I've ever been tempted by Windows hardware. I know many folk who walk around with a Macbook + iPad + wacom tablet. I can see a lot of those folk switching if the Surface 3 worked well. I know lots of long-term Apple folk who were really tempted by the Surface 2. The office junkies, coders and games have alternatives. Currently there is almost nothing that does what the Surface 2/3 do, on the design side, in a single device. (I also imagine that the issues of stylus sensitivity & lag will apply to other interaction models to. Getting those things to feel "natural" is non-trivial. Pleasing the design folk will probably make it better for other peeps too.)

chris_mahan 12y ago
I've been looking a the cintiq too, and may still do that, because wacom caters to illustrators directly.
prawn 12y ago
Was a Windows user but have a MBP now. I follow the Surface reports with interest entirely because of the apparent quality of stylus input. Getting a Wacom is my likely path at this point though.

Pxtl 12y ago

Apple has had a stranglehold on the graphic design industry for years despite not actually making a good stylus-driven product for that market. I don't know if there's a legitimate marketing reason for this, but it's a tremendously symbolic conflict. Microsoft attacking Apple in their stronghold.

paulrov 12y ago
Graphic design isn't about styluses. That would be illustration… Styluses are actually worse for graphic design due to their lack of accuracy, all designers I've ever worked with who use styluses always end up moving objects by a few pixels when selecting them.

eropple 12y ago

I'm not even a serious artist--I'm a programmer who makes games--and the only reason I bought an SP2 was Photoshop. I took it back because the SP3 news dropped that week. Kind of regretting that now.

prawn 12y ago

This feels like Altavista and then Google appealing to the tech types in the earlier days of search engines. If you wanted to convince the masses that the sketching and note-taking was high quality, why wouldn't you get it right for the artists as a priority? I assume anyone from Penny Arcade has a gaming background too.

tfinniga 12y ago

> the gamer If they get Gabe happy with it, then they will get a ton of free PR in front of a lot of gamers. For example, see this post of his (especially the second half) about the original surface pro: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/02/22/the-ms-surface-pro http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/02/22/the-ms-surf...