I remember how proud I felt to work at Microsoft when that video was unveiled. The company had made something so beautiful, and then done an amazing job showing it to the world.
An amazing marketing video in every way that counts, except apparently in regards to sales!
I bought one! It was a breathtaking piece of hardware that I wanted so badly to be useful. Unfortunately my work can't be done in Windows and it wasn't powerful enough to virtualize everything (the slow HDD was the worst) and I ended up selling it. But wow, what a form factor and gorgeous screen.
That surface was unrelated to the tablets and computers that reused the name afterwards. Still, that was an awesome tech at the time, multi touch and multi user, I made some great demos for it.
Unfortunate that Microsoft never did much with this, because it’s a cool concept.
That said, one could probably produce something to a pretty similar effect with an external pen display (like Xencelabs 24"), VESA arm, and an M4 Mac mini, and it’d be more powerful, upgradable, flexible, and maybe even cheaper to boot.
Haha, remember some time ago many people were like
> Are you crazy, don't buy an iPod, just get an iRiver and use your imagination!
> Use Gnome instead of OSX, it's *exactly* the same experience
> "Mom, can we buy an iPad?" - We have an iPad at home (iPad at home is a Toshiba Handybook running Windows 98)
> That said, one could probably produce something to a pretty similar effect with an external pen display (like Xencelabs 24"), VESA arm, and an M4 Mac mini, and it’d be more powerful, upgradable, flexible, and maybe even cheaper to boot.
You mean the price? Minimum spec Mini and a Xencelabs Pen Display 24” (which comes with a VESA mounted pivot stand) gets you reasonably close and would cost $2500, where the Surface Studio 2 (as per the article) started at $3k. Screen size is a little less (24” vs 28”), but digitizer quality is better (on par with Wacom) as is pixel density. Setting it up is just plugging the display into the Mini with USB-C.
Microsoft's problem has never been their hardware. You can argue their Surface and Surface pro line up is far far a better feat of engineering (stuffing a full blown desktop grade processor into a mobile tablet) than any iPad Pro. However, their achilles heel has always been their software. Though Windows has improved a lot over the years, its shitty data collection and privacy practices and changing around of UI elements randomly, unpredictable updates that may kill entire industries and bring the world to a halt [1] are actually what is stopping people from adopting their hardware in my experience.
With W11, they seem to really gung-ho about creating that achilles heel. As for myself I am tired from having an unstable OS on my devices which may or may not bork without any intervention from me.
Thanks to this (and Steam Deck for a great deal) I jumped to Mac and not regretting it. The system boots in seconds, has great eyecandy and just works for me. My work pc uses Windows and its taskbar behaves weirdly, right now, and its quarter shows the desktop image. Update breaks the soundcard and I will need to install it again. Oh and I see another update queued in - which may or may not be a false alarm.
I am not sure which was the most stable one, Windows 7 or 10. But 11 is a mess and nobody dares to admit it because sunk-cost fallacy and with the invention of recall it will act as a data collection agency for AI - as far as I followed the discussion.
That desktop grade processor is probably basically a pup compared to a modern Apple silicon processor. M4 / similar vs some poor Intel chip throttling at 2GHz?
> You can argue their Surface and Surface pro line up is far far a better feat of engineering (stuffing a full blown desktop grade processor into a mobile tablet) than any iPad Pro.
Can you clarify this point? iPad Pro has an M4 processor, just like Mac desktops do.
imo ipad is held back by it's OS. Until they make significant changes it's a one app at a time box to keep you kid busy w/ movies or roblox. The multi app features they have added feel like a straight jacket.
I'd like an option for a real pro ipad running macos instead of ios.
I am glad many on HN starting to show and appreciate Surface the Hardware. It was perhaps the most important thing in the PC industry where M$ push the envelop on Hardware design and parts where other OEMs get to benefits some of those R&D.
And yet they are let down by their own software which should have been their bread and butter. Considering they no longer rely on Windows as a major source of revenue but more as a market moat. They should have simply asked how do you make Windows the best operating system.
Now what will every near future executive, analyst, detective, spy, or content creator in "cool" TV series (that isn't using a Macbook) use on their desk?
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An amazing marketing video in every way that counts, except apparently in regards to sales!
I have no idea why they keep doing this shit with hardware over and over.
https://youtu.be/Zxk_WywMTzc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4
That said, one could probably produce something to a pretty similar effect with an external pen display (like Xencelabs 24"), VESA arm, and an M4 Mac mini, and it’d be more powerful, upgradable, flexible, and maybe even cheaper to boot.
Sure! What's the number to get this working?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_CrowdStrike-related_IT_ou...
Thanks to this (and Steam Deck for a great deal) I jumped to Mac and not regretting it. The system boots in seconds, has great eyecandy and just works for me. My work pc uses Windows and its taskbar behaves weirdly, right now, and its quarter shows the desktop image. Update breaks the soundcard and I will need to install it again. Oh and I see another update queued in - which may or may not be a false alarm.
I am not sure which was the most stable one, Windows 7 or 10. But 11 is a mess and nobody dares to admit it because sunk-cost fallacy and with the invention of recall it will act as a data collection agency for AI - as far as I followed the discussion.
Can you clarify this point? iPad Pro has an M4 processor, just like Mac desktops do.
I'd like an option for a real pro ipad running macos instead of ios.
The Xbox 360 says hi.
And yet they are let down by their own software which should have been their bread and butter. Considering they no longer rely on Windows as a major source of revenue but more as a market moat. They should have simply asked how do you make Windows the best operating system.
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Now what will every near future executive, analyst, detective, spy, or content creator in "cool" TV series (that isn't using a Macbook) use on their desk?
// And let's not even touch on (ahem) tablets:
https://9to5mac.com/2014/11/05/microsoft-surface-cnn/
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