Remember the Coach Session with Steve Jobs

This post should actually be titled: why I am not interested in the Surface. Actually I am not even interested to have a look at it in the first place. From what I can see and what Microsoft showed in Ads and PR events is that this is a strange form of a Laptop and not much of a tablet at all.

Now this brings me back to the title. As John Gruber pointed out in the first iPad event review is that when Steve sat down on the coach to showcase the iPad then it wasn't a marketing gag but an excellent way to illustrate that the iPad isn't a laptop in disguise but a device that is used in a different and new way. The iPad is different like my Mac Air is different from my Mac Pro. The Air I can carry around, sit on the coach and work wherever I sit down. The Pro is at my desk, fast, quiet and with a lot of horse powers but I cannot use it anywhere else. The iPad is not a laptop because I only can work on one App at the time, it doesn't have a physical keyboard and the Ram / CPU is limited. On the other hand I can use it quickly to browse the web, read emails, even write documents and make music if I don't want or can't have a laptop with me. The iPad is not going to replace my laptop or even my XBox but for what I am using my iPad it is the best device.

From what I heard and saw the Surface is a tablet / laptop hybrid and doesn't seem to be good in either category. It is fairly big, heavy, slow and it seems only to work nicely if used like a laptop. It also looks like the some of the components are so hard to select because the target area is too small. At the end the most important reason not to get a Surface is its OS. 7 years ago I switched over to Mac OS X and never looked back. Every time I have to use a Windows computer I try everything to avoid using it or at least limit as much as possible. And so I think the Surface will be the same compared to the iPad or even worse. In addition I don't buy an iPad because of the OS but because of what I can do with it meaning what Apps I can get and there the Surface and Android are lacking good and useful Apps. I use regularly Blogsy, Byword, Omnifocus, Tweet- and Netbot, Wikibot, Webex, PDFPen, Instapaper, PlainText, Safari, Mail and some Games. Therefore just Office wouldn't cut it for me.

FInally I just want to be clear that this isn't a Surface review but my reasons why I don't even give Microsoft a chance to present the Surface. Not only is the nearest Microsoft store an hour away but I really don't need or want the Surface. At the end I don't trust Microsoft that the Surface would be a great product but rather feel that they rushed the release because of market pressure which means that early adopters are punished because of the immature product they buy.

– Andy

Posted with Blogsy