Is Microsoft's Price Model For the Surface Justifiable? 417
colinneagle writes "A blog post contending that Microsoft's decision to match Apple's iPad pricing on its Surface tablet will hurt its chances in the market has brought out some negative comments from readers who seem to like the Surface tablet. I was kind of surprised by this, as I and other bloggers seem to agree that making the fully keyboard-equipped Surface tablet roughly $120 more expensive than the iPad kind of negates the purpose — to build steam by appealing to those in the market for a cheaper tablet. Also, I've yet to see an argument that justifies pricing the Surface competitively with the iPad, so I figured I would bring the question to Slashdot: Is Microsoft's pricing for the Surface tablet justified?"
1366x768, end of discussion (Score:3, Interesting)
Nuff said
Can I use Win programs that I'm required for work? (Score:5, Interesting)
Advantage Surface (Score:2, Interesting)
iPad 16GB no keyboard -- $499
Surface 32GB no keyboard -- $499
Advantage Surface
iPad 32GB no keyboard -- $599
Surface 32GB with touch keyboard -- $599
Advantage Surface
iPad 64GB no keyboard -- $699
Surface 64GB with touch keyboard -- $699
And the released Surface includes Office 2013RT.
Advantage Surface
MS is not even in the game... yet (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft is acting like they number one in the mobile market, but the fact is they're not even in the game yet or even a player in the sub-mobile markets and they're making some huge mistakes. I've been a .NET developer for 16 years and I'm seriously pulling for them, but the last 6 months have been full of Microsoft making ridiculous decisions. I almost think that Google and Apple paid top executives at Microsoft to screw up this Windows Phone 8 launch as badly as humanly possible.
Microsoft refuses to release the beta or alpha of the Windows Phone 8 SDK to developers unless they pay a $99 fee and even then the SDK is released on a lottery basis. Come on, seriously? MS needs people to write software for for WP8 NOW, not later. So at the very least if they're going to act like they're relevant and charge developers $99 for the privilege to write software for their currently-non-existant device with 0% market share they should at least give those developers the SDK... which leads to my next complaint:
$99 to develop for a device with 0% market share? Microsoft, are you joking? You should be begging developers to write software for WP8 and maybe een giving them a full copy of VS 2012, bot charging them $99. Big mistake.
The Nokia Lumia 900 is a heavy brick. Cool specs and everything, but it's a brick.
And lastly...
Nokia gave AT&T exclusive rights to provide cellular service to the Lumia 900. Is this a joke? Every other mobile maker is going away from exclusivity. Maybe MS could get away with this is WP8 and the Lumia 900 were some world-changing revolutionary device, but come on. WP8 is cool, it's got some great stuff, but it's not anywhere near the same as when Apple released the iPHone in 1997 and gave AT&T exclusivity.
Microsoft has some great stuff going for it: an awesome Visual Studio IDE that blows away XCode and Eclipse and they have a huge foothold in the business market. Tons of businesses have invested heavily is MS infrastructure and developer talent and would be much more likely to do mobile dev projects if Microsoft could get their mobile strategy even 1/2 right.
But as a developer with a passion for mobile dev I'm obviously pretty discouraged about their mobile strategy in the immediate future right now.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's say you're hired somewhere that buys a new laptop for every new hire. Your choices are any off-the-shelf (not custom) laptop from Apple, Dell, HP, or Lenovo. Which would you choose?
Under these exact conditions with people from a mix of STEM disciplines, more than half will choose the MacBook. Over 90% of the software engineers choose Apple. The fact none of their software is specifically Windows-based probably helps, but it is an interesting situation and result. If I were in that situation (dream job - I'm a bit jealous of my friend that works there), I'd pick the Apple, too.
Re:Not in my opinion. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's higher res than the previous iPads, which plenty of people use as e-readers. I doubt that's going to be a problem. It also has an extremely low-reflectivity screen, which results in better contrast and a clearer image when viewed with ambient light than you get from the iPad.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
Dragging the dog into the burning fireplace never gets old.
Oh... please relate the experience. I never had the opportunity to use Bob. Does the dog simply disappear or is there some obvious pain on the pooches' face?
Re:Yes. (Score:0, Interesting)
But you can't run the latest version of ie on directX on XP any more, friend. Visual Studio support on that platform has its days counted.
Re:-1 Flamebait (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you actually describing Surface, though? Or did you run the OS on some other device?