Microsoft Surface Reportedly Wi-Fi-Only, Will Start at $599 Really? $599 for the ARM version, that doesn’t sound like itwill do very well.
Skeptical Reflection on Microsoft’s Surface
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I was intrigued by Microsoft Surface, their family of Windows 8 Tablets, but as I’ve thought about it more, it seems the only thing it is likely to succeed at is buying Microsoft some time by discouraging corporate iPad purchases. It’s an old strategy called FUD, for fear, uncertainty and doubt. Microsoft didn’t invent it, but it has long used it to good effect.
Microsoft Surface Just Made the MacBook Air and the iPad Look Obsolete
On Gizmodo, Jesus Diaz claims that Microsoft Surface Just Made the MacBook Air and the iPad Look Obsolete. An odd assertion. I don’t even think Surface has made Windows laptops look obsolete. Surface has to contend with the legacy of earlier versions of Windows, and from what I can tell, that is going to be awkward.
I Don’t Think I get Microsoft Surface, Yet
I’ve been reading about the Microsoft Surface Tablets running Windows 8, which Microsoft unveiled yesterday afternoon. I don’t think I get it yet.
I’m not going to bother trying to give a balanced picture of this product. If you want that, there is plenty of other coverage, including the two articles I linked to above. I’m also not going to try and craft a unified argument, because frankly, I’m still gathering and processing information. Instead I’m just going to dive in an run down the things that puzzle me.
What’s with the “widescreen” display on a tablet? I know that the form factor has taken hold amongst makers of Android tablets who are trying to find a way to distinguish their offerings from the Apple iPad, but its strikes me as something that’s only really useful for watching movies, at the expense of other uses. Of course, watching movies hardly requires a full-blown version of Windows, which is supposed to be one of Surface’s advantages over an iPad.
Microsoft thinks that Surface and Windows 8 will appeal to people because they can run existing Windows applications, but a tablet isn’t really ideal for those legacy applications, and its not great for Microsoft’s cash cow, Microsoft Office, which is why the Surface is available with a screen cover that doubles as a keyboard and a trackpad. Actually, they have two versions of the cover, one that tries to feel like a traditional keyboard, and another that is more of a touch-sensitive multitouch surface. Here is the thing, the trackpad looks tiny and cramped, quite the opposite of the only trackpads I’ve used that don’t suck, the big ones on Apple’s MacBooks. Further more, the whole arrangement looks completely unsuitable for use on, well, a lap.
Actually, its not quite true that people can run legacy Windows applications on the Surface Tablet, because there are two versions of the Surface, one with an ARM CPU, running Windows RT, and the other with an Intel CPU, only the Intel version can run legacy Windows apps.
Microsoft has given no information about the run-times of these devices, but it is reasonable to guess that the ARM version will have longer battery life than the Intel version. I’m sure they are shooting for something close to the 10 hour battery life of the iPad, but their silence on the subject makes me think that they are having trouble getting there. As for the Intel tablet, it has a larger battery, but also a higher resolution display. My guess is that it will be, at best, 66% of the battery life of the ARM tablets.
If I step back, it looks to me like the ARM version of Windows RT is the “purest” product. It should have the the best battery life, and it will only run applications that are consistent with Windows 8’s Metro User interface, but it has that widescreen display that is awkward for most uses beyond watching movies and, perhaps, using a spreadsheet. On the other hand, the ARM version apparently won’t support any of the features that companies use for large-scale management of Windows computers.
And then there is the Intel version, which seems like a computing frankenstein. It can run legacy Windows applications, but they will look and feel out of place on a small tablet. There will be a keyboard and trackpad, but you’ll have to use it on a hard surface, and the trackpad is probably going to suck. Companies will be able to manage them centrally, but they’ll have to pay more for machines with worse battery life.
Perhaps I’ll see things differently when I have a chance to use one, but that’s another problem. As best as anyone knows, it is going to be 3-4 months before these things actually start shipping. By that time, Apple will have shipped a bunch more iPads and iOS 6, and a new round of iPads will only be a few months away.
One last comment: This seems to be a mortal blow to transitional PC makers. In the short run, Microsoft still needs them, but they need Microsoft more, so they have little alternative than to dutifully ship Windows 8 PCs and laptops. In the long run though, Microsoft has shown that it doesn’t think it needs them, which is really no surprise, since they’ve pretty much been squeezed dry between Microsoft and Intel.
Design Tradeoffs in the Retina MacBook Pro
Earlier this week, Apple announced the much-anticipated release of the first Mac with a super-high-resolution “Retina” display. While some people hoped/expected it would be a 15″ version of the MacBook Air, what they released was positioned as the future of the MacBook Pro family. However, it was a much thinner and lighter MacBook Pro than previous models, delivering what many of the people hope for a 15″ MacBook Air hoped for.
Of course, Apple wouldn’t be Apple, and the Internet wouldn’t be the Internet, if there weren’t plenty of people complaining about what Apple ended up releasing. Since its release, any post-sale upgradability of the MacBook Air has been an afterthought. The RAM is soldered to the motherboard, and most recent models use a non-standard form-factor for the solid-state storage. The MacPro, on the other hand, has typically supported upgrades to both RAM and the hard disk. In fact, the Pros have tended to be more expandable than promised. Many models have supported more RAM than Apple specified, and many people have removed the optical drive in order to fit more internal storage.
The Retina MacBook Pro though, is like the Air. The RAM is soldered to the logic board and it uses of yet another non-standard SSD form-factor. I’ll be honest, these things stick in my throat a bit too, but when it comes down to it, I wanted:
- A MacBook with a 15″ Retina display that is…
- Significantly thinner and, most importantly, lighter, than the current 15″ MBP while still having…
- Decent battery life.
Taken together, something has to give, because clearly the retina display must suck a lot of power. The machine has a more power-efficient CPU, and a significantly larger battery than earlier models, but still delivers “just” a “7hr” runtime with the Retina display.
We can start with the optical drive. Good riddance. That saves some weight and bulk. Eliminating some of the legacy ports, like Ethernet (now available as a dongle off a Thunderbird port” also allows the case to be thinner, saving some more weight, but potentially compromising rigidity.
Which brings us to the glued in battery. Gluing it in would seem to eliminate the need for a subframe to hold the cells. Gluing in the battery may also allow it to contribute to the rigidity of the assembled computer, reducing the need for some metal in the case, and saving more weight. I’m not too worried about the practicality of a user replacing the battery because Apple has been pretty good about replacing out of warranty batteries for free, and for those that don’t qualify for the free replacement, the charge has been a not-unreasonable $100.
Clearly that wasn’t enough for Apple, which brings us to the RAM. Clearly, they’ve eliminated a little weight and bulk by forgoing socketed RAM, but I don’t think that was the most important part. I notice that they’ve soldered the RAM to both sides of the logic board. I think the biggest benefit of eliminating socketed RAM is design flexibility. They didn’t just eliminate the SIMM slots and the SIMM boards, they eliminated the need to route all those traces to an easily accessible location.
Which brings us to the SSD. I’m ruling out the 2.5″ form-factor as requiring too many compromises to the rest of the system. As for mSATA, it appears that all the mSATA SSDs on the market are short little boards, and clearly don’t have room for 768 GB of flash chips Apple offers as an option. Which still leaves the question of why they didn’t use the SSD form factor used in the old Airs. I can’t answer that. Maybe they changed it just to be dicks, but I think there is some underlying reason, like performance and reliability. By doing so, they may have made things harder for the one or two 3rd parties who had products that fit Apple’s old proprietary form-factor, but it wasn’t exactly a big, commodified market that offered end-users significant savings over Apple’s prices.
And now, one final point. Taken together, this all means that Apple gets all the $ from all the people who want to upgrade from the base model. This may offend you, but consider that it might allow Apple to hit their financial targets while offering a lower base price. Lets face it, the base model, with 8GB of RAM and a speedy 256GB SSD is a solid, capable machine that will serve a long time. It may not hold all your media, but it will hold a lot of it.
So, that’s the way I see it. I plan to buy one soon. I’m not sure if I’ll spring for the $200 upgrade to 16GB of RAM. I’m sure it will add to the usable life of the machine, but its also 10% of the cost of my next upgrade. One thing is clear to me, there aren’t going to be many PC vendors who can make a credible competitor to this machine any time soon. For one thing, I suspect that Apple has locked up supplies of the displays for a while. For another, I’m not sure there are any PC vendors who are willing to go as far as Apple in optimizing the design of the device.