Preview: The Microsoft Surface Tablet
IBM once built the world’s best portable keyboard. Its official name was “TrackWrite,” but everybody called it “the butterfly” because of the way it spread its wings when you opened the computer. John Karidis designed it for the ThinkPad 701 back in 1995, and watch this baby in action.
It’s so well engineered, that there are still butterflies in perfect working condition, even though the last one was produced in 1996. That’s right: although the 701 was IBM’s best-selling laptop, the butterfly keyboard was abandoned after only one year. TrackWrite was a wonderful indulgence for a laptop with a 10-inch screen, but the very next year after it was introduced, 12-inch screens became the new norm — and bigger screens allowed for a full-sized keyboard without any fancy engineering.
Just like a real butterfly, the TrackWrite was beautiful but short-lived.
That’s the first thing I thought of when I watched Microsoft introduce its new Surface tablet computers last night: A gorgeous keyboard without a market. Microsoft has designed what is undoubtedly the best portable keyboard ever… for a touch tablet. In fact, if you go to Microsoft’s promo page, this is the very first image you’re presented with.
That’s how MS wants to introduce you to their new tablet — a tiny little screen with a great big keyboard. Scroll down the page a bit, and Microsoft reminds you that “some activities call for a keyboard.” The description continues:
Surface comes with an integrated Kickstand and a revolutionary, 3mm thin, pressure sensitive cover that doubles as a fully functioning keyboard and trackpad. Your Touch Cover connects to your Surface with a single magnetic click. Now you can chat with friends and respond to emails comfortably.
It’s really a very nifty piece of kit, and it’s included for free. Apple charges you a less-than-nifty $69 for their wireless keyboard, and it doesn’t attach to anything at all, not even with magnets. But you have to wonder if Apple doesn’t still have the right approach.
Microsoft absolutely had to jump into the tablet space, but Steve Ballmer & Co. don’t seem to understand what that space is. Before I explain, you should know that the Surface is a beautifully-engineered and manufactured gadget. While I haven’t had a hands-on with it yet, I know good engineering when I see it, and reports from the event last night were almost universal in their praise for the construction quality. But that aside, the Surface is one odd duck.
Scroll back up and look at how Microsoft has introduced its tablet: With a keyboard. They aren’t saying, “We’ve built a great tablet,” they’re saying, “We’ve built a tablet with a great keyboard.” It’s tablet that’s trying really hard to be a laptop when it grows up.
Let’s look at the very next feature Microsoft wants to make you aware of.
Look! It’s a tablet with a keyboard and a kickstand, so you can use it just like a laptop! The next shot down (at right) shows the kickstand in action yet again. Alongside, the caption reads “Hands off entertainment.” Despite the lack of a hyphen, I’m sure Microsoft doesn’t mean the kickstand will cut off your hands, entertainingly. What they’re saying is: This is the tablet you don’t touch. That’s no exaggeration, either. The marketing says: It comes with a cover, that cover is a keyboard, and the kickstand keeps it out of your hands.
And they mean it. The case of the Surface is made of a “a precision crafted VaporMg,” which is a lovely bit of precision-milled magnesium. But the edges are at odd angles, in perfect contrast to the iPad’s seamless curves. Those angles say “corners,” and corners do not say “touch me.” There are even screws visible on the back. No consumer is ever going to open this up to make repairs or install upgrades — because they can’t. And yet, there they are: Screws. Those aren’t just any screws, either. You’re looking at those weird, star-shaped screws that civilians like you and me can’t undo. Unscrewable screws are yet another way of signaling: Don’t touch.
But a tablet is all about touch.
You hold a tablet in your hands, you work your fingers across the screen. Everything about a tablet should invite you to touch it, because that’s how you operate it. Making and marketing a tablet in ways that say “Hands off!” is like trying to sell steak by showing how it can be used to treat black eyes. Sure, that’s useful on rare occasion, but it’s not why people drool at the marbled ribeyes in the cooler at Whole Foods.
Dig beneath the surface, and things get weirder still. The no-touch tablet even comes in two form factors, for two different markets. There’s the little one, about the same thickness as an iPad, with a low-power ARM processor inside. Then there’s a significantly thicker version, with a full-fledged (and power-hungry and hot) Intel i5 CPU. So you have one model designed for people who want a tablet that thinks it’s a laptop, and another model for people who want a tablet that might as well be a laptop.
Then there are the things missing from Microsoft’s sales pitch. I’ll list them:
When you can buy one.
How much it will cost.
How long the battery will last.
The screen resolution.
Those are some pretty big holes, so let’s try to fill them.
The absence of an availability date, I suppose, is to give IT managers pause before buying any iPads for their companies. “But there’s a Microsoft tablet just around the corner, and nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft!”
Microsoft claims the prices will be “in line” with ARM-based tablets for the junior version and with Ultrabook (MacBook Air clones running Windows) prices for the daddy size. But they won’t say exactly how much.
The battery life should really concern potential buyers. Apple compromised and made the new iPad slightly thicker than the old model, to preserve the advertised — and delivered — ten-hour battery life. If MS had matched that, you can bet they’d be crowing about it. And that monster version, with the Intel CPU? It likely has twice the battery, and less than half the battery life.
As for the screen, all Microsoft will say is that it “has a 10.6″, 16:9 widescreen HD Display.” The little one is less HD, the bigger one is more HD. They probably mean 720p and 1080p, respectively. What that means is, the Surface that’s priced to compete with the new iPad, has a worse display than the old iPad. If you’re willing to pony up Ultrabook prices, you’ll get a screen that’s slightly less worse than the old iPad.
Before we finish, even the name is questionable. What’s the plural? Surfaces? Surfi? MS already makes those massive Surface coffee-table computers nobody buys — and that’s the branding they want to share with their new tablet?
Going further, “surface” is synonymous with “superficial” and “cosmetic” and “skin deep.” I’m the first to admit, people make plenty of fun with “iPad.” “Is it a feminine hygiene product?” But at least Apple didn’t tell you “keep your hands to yourself,” like the high school cheerleading captain used to do. And the name might even remind you of all the depth of the high school cheerleading captain.
The Surface is a confusing product from a company which seems confused by what a tablet is supposed to do, and why people want them. The very last image MS leaves you with is a sales pitch for all the pretty colors the keyboard comes in. We’ve been scrolling for hours, and they’re still talking keyboards.
Assuming it doesn’t turn out to be vaporware, you’ll see bargain bins full of unsold Surface tablets before Christmas is over.
Surface? Given this vapor product may well be buried like the Courier, perhaps subSurface is a better moniker. They could have just called it the zPad (for ZunePad), but its failed predecessor was officially buried just weeks ago and the memory is probably still painful. Microsoft has struggled with the idea of a tablet for over a decade and still doesn’t have a clue.
What is the biggest thing PC lovers hold over Mac Fanboys?
The fact that I can open up my PC, tear out the guts and upgrade the hell out of it, while you need to plop down a bunch of $$ for a whole new Mac.
Given that, why are the “unscrewable” screws there? Maybe to give the impression that you can tear into it and upgrade it.
I won’t let this devolve into a PC vs Mac flamewar, so I’ll say just this: a tablet isn’t a PC, which is a lesson MS has yet to learn.
As much as I love my iPad, I regularly pine for a few things which would make it perfect: USB connectivity, Flash compatibility, broad file support … is Microsoft can make a unit even closely nearing the iPad’s design specs, on which I could actually download content and copy it to my phone or other MP3 player, or save a day’s work to a flash drive, or see all of the content on Flash-enabled websites … that’d be worth quite a lot.
I really think that this is indeed what many of us are waiting for; one tablet, capable of, as well as practical, being used for all the odd stuff we do with a PC. Why carry two machines when one will do?
Perhaps, although MS has had zero luck marketing more computer-like tablets for more than a decade already.
But even they do have the concept right this time, the execution is second rate in some important respects, and the marketing is nothing short of strange.
Well, we’ll see. They are probably waiting for the third generation Intel portable chip to be finished, to judge both power and battery life.
1280 pixels would be sufficient for width, or maybe the slightly odd 1440, 1920 would be excessive, and the Apple Retina is a waste of pixels and a pointless load on the graphics engine (read: battery).
The kickstand is a major turn-off. The magnet-connected keyboard is probably a mistake. I might prefer the keyboard on my lap and the screen on the other side of my latte. Maybe they should sell small teddybears to hold the screen vertical on a tabletop.
A tablet should have nice kinesthetics, nice round edges, if anything *thicker* edges for easier handling, and they would coincidentally hold larger batteries and better antenna, even better speakers.
I’m not very fond of the Apple minimal design guides, but they are probably superior to this not even amateur quality effort. Still, if it turns out well and offers the new Intel chip six months ahead of Apple, it could succeed.
Apple doesn’t use Intel chipsets in their iOS devices, and neither does any other tablet maker — except for MS’s Fat Boy Surface, which hasn’t even arrived on market yet. So I don’t understand your last paragraph.
How unobtrusive Microsoft makes the keyboard when you don’t want to use it will likely be the key to whether or not this will work. Writing on deadline using the iPad’s virtual keypad is not quite the Seventh Circle of Hell, but close, while porting around the attachable keyboard defeats the whole purpose of the tablet in the first place. A keypad that also doubles as a screen cover –, but isn’t so heavy as to make it an annoying screen cover — isn’t that crazy an idea, since virtually no one who has an iPad doesn’t also purchase some sort of covering to shield the glass from scratches or other damage.
iPad is the wrong device for that application, IMHO. Try a Macbook Air.
I think the MS tablet will be a lot more successful than people are giving it credit for – especially Mac fans who sound like panicked Dems bashing Romney. IMO, Win 8 will be a game-changer. It reimagines the tablet/cell phone OS in a way that actually makes sense, while Apple and Google use clunky old-style interfaces that don’t even work as well as their PC counterparts.
But arguing won’t change anything. Only time will tell.
Torx. Those screws have Torx heads. You can get drivers for them at Home Depot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torx
My first computer was a Mac with 512 K of memory. So you know my bias. But I think that Mr. Green is correct here: a pad is meant to be touched. If I wanted what a Microsoft Surface could do, I would get a MacBook Air, which gives me a true built-in keyboard. For those few times that I really need a keyboard on my iPad (2012), I have my Bluetooth keyboard. For quick text input I have dictation and by this fall will have Siri.
Steve Jobs understood that less is more. By trying to be both a pad and an ultralight, Surface may end up being neither.
I apologize in the last post for making “pad” = “tablet”— like making “Xerox” = “copier”. The last sentence should read: “By trying to be both a tablet and an ultralight laptop, Surface may end up being neither.”