Microsoft Surface

[tillyoshea]

To be fair to Microsoft I think the Surface is aimed at a more professional market than the iPad, so those people will continue to get iPads and iPad minis and those who want Windows on a tablet will presumably get the Surface.

Except, mindbogglingly, the Office licence on the RT version doesn't allow for business use.

[dosxuk]

Very disappointed with the pricing to be honest. They really needed to pitch it below the ipad.

The UK pricing is now available, with the entry 32GB model at £399.99, same as the 16GB iPad 3, so they have pitched it below, but then excluded the bottom model (which could have sold very well as you can supplement the storage with SD cards).

You get more with the Surface, but whether it's enough to get people to realise and if the extras are important enough is another matter.

[Dr Lobster*]

I do appreciate that you get more for your money with the surface, but most people look at the baseline price and with the keyboard cover, it just seems too expensive for what it is.

[Critique]

The thing is, with the Surface, a keyboard seems more important than it does on an iPad. You can have a keyboard on an iPad, certainly, but seeing as the Surface looks to be more work and less play, I'd find the keyboard an important element, and it looks like getting a keyboard with it will increase the price further (I'm aware Apple do the same thing, but they only charge $69 for a keyboard).

[dosxuk]

BlackBerry made the same foolish, idiotic mistake. People will pay £399 for an iPad because it's an iPad. Consumers will not pay £399 for a Windows Surface for the same reason that people will not pay £1099 for a Dell laptop that looks a bit like a Macbook when you can get a Macbook for the same price (or less!)

But they do. In sufficiently large numbers that Dell quite happily makes the product.

It is blistering arrogance to price what people will perceive as an inferior product in line with the runaway market leader.

Why is the product inferior? If it's only perception that it's inferior, then that's what Marketing are there for. Compared to the base models of iPad 3 and Surface, which are the same price, if you go with a Surface you get twice as much memory, USB ports, an SD card slot and Office. With the iPad you get twice as many pixels and a lot more apps in the app store*.

[* Which once Windows 8 gets going is unlikely to be much of an advantage for long, with the apps working on tablets, phones and desktop without needing altering. And that's almost certainly going to be much bigger market than the iOS platform in a matter of months, driving development.]

While MS could have got clever with thier pricing and subsidised the product, to do so would have seriously annoyed their manufacturing 'partners', who almost certainly would then have declined to make any products featuring WinRT (since they can't compete). And after all, MS is a software company, trying to sell licences for Windows and Office, not a hardware company.

[WillPS]

no Netflix, no iPlayer, no Instagram, no Hipstamatic, no ITV Player, no 4OD, no Lovefilm, no Grindr - all massive apps that people expect to find in an app store.

You're chatting shit.

iPlayer, 4OD, ITV Player (STV Player, UTV Player, Channel Television ITV Player) all work natively in the PlayBook's browser thanks to Flash support. An iPlayer 'app' comes preinstalled - it's actually just a link to the iPlayer website since it works perfectly. Incidentally, TV Ark (and other websites that run flash video) works beautifully - I know HTML5 will eventually make this problem go away for other platforms, but it's nice that it actually works here and now too.

There's an app called Flix which brings Netflix to the Playbook.

I don't know anybody in the real world who actually uses Instagram, those I knew who used Grindr have long since got bored of it. Never heard of that "Hipsta" one.

Skype is a notable gap, I understand that "RIMM" are bound by some crazy agreement which only lets them release Skype apps for devices on certain carriers, and that prevents a PlayBook release. It's bloody annoying and I hope they sort it soon. In the meantime, the Android app can be ported over fairly easily.

LoveFilm and Sky Go are also notable gaps - but with the future of the Silverlight platform in doubt, I think these might end up working in the browser too. Actually porting the Android app for either over would be simple for the developer to do too.

[WillPS]

I haven't found the flash support buggy particularly - all that springs to mind is when viewing YouTube in browser, the "skip ads" button seems to take an extra 2 seconds to appear. No biggie.

With regards to Demand5 - I think there's an issue with Demand5 in general; exactly the issue you describe intermittently affects desktop browsers.

The problem is that these big developers aren't working on the platform and whilst Instagram may only be a short term fad (it's obviously very popular as Facebook bought it for $1billion) these popular apps are not appearing on that platform. Your friends may have quit Grindr but globally it's growing. PlayBook users are consistently left out in the cold - and there's no stand out apps available for the PlayBook that aren't available on the other platforms. It doesn't have any exclusives. There's no innovation.

BlackBerry Bridge.

[martindtanderson]

I have pre-ordered one without a Keyboard. Once they add more colours I will consider picking up a touch cover.

I am anti-apple so this will be the Tablet I want for all those times when I want to tweet and watch TV etc. But as I am developing apps for Windows Phone 7, 8, and Windows 8/RT - I will need a touch device for testing.

The build quality looks like someone actually cared, unlike the other Tablet options out there.

[WillPS]

BlackBerry Bridge.

I wouldn't count the ability to read your phone's emails on the tablet as long as you're within 3 metres of the phone a great innovation - especially when it came initially at the expense of native email on the tablet. I'm no Apple fanboy but iMessage and iCloud, for comparison, means your photos, emails, iMessages and documents are all synced seamlessly between devices - by all accounts a more elegant solution?

try sending a text message that way.