So an Apple Keyboard is £15 is it? The only one similar from the Apple website is £90. Is iOS the same as OS X is it? Is Droid the same as the Chromebook? no wait, no one bought that one did they. Surface RT comes with it's own MS Office 2013 and the MS Store is adding many more "quality" apps every day. It will synch effortlessly with my phone and desktop, so what's the problem? Can't see what you are all moaning about when it's fine for Apple to do this but not Microsoft. Some are forgetting that this is not an Ultrabook which Surface Pro will be.
@Snips: The issue is that Windows RT is a new platform which wants to gain foothold/market share. You cannot do that with pricing very similar to an established opponent. There will be an issue of value too when MS releases Surface Pro - it would have to be priced 1000€+, otherwise the pricing of Surface at 500€ would not make any sense for buyers.
I totally see your point - I wouldn't say I'm complaining, I'm just worried that Microsoft is taking the same approach to playing the game as Apple, although it is entirely understandable. I just feel like they should be trying something different. Of course we are forgetting that there will be Atom powered tablets running fullfat Windows 8 produced by other OEM's which could be near the price of an iPad. There is a good chance they'll be a bit **** though (just as cheap Android tabs are) What I'm not too sure about, and I think Goodbytes is probably the man with the answer, is if the apps for WP8, W8 RT and W8 are all cross compatible, I don't think they are, and I think RT needs it's own apps where as the WP8 and W8 ones work across both platforms? (Which is odd as RT and WP8 work on Arm.....I must be wrong with my previous statement?)
the W8 RT and the W8P are compatible. The W8P also has support for x86 apps. I am not sure whether WP8 will support the W8RT and W8P apps though.
To gain market share most expected cheaper prices. ( with the Nokia lum also very expensive ( 200 euro more than an SG3)) And you don't need an apple Bluetooth keyboard you can use any. Can you use any Bluetooth keyboard with this anybody know? It's fine pricing same as apple but they did this to Sony with ps2 the orginal Xbox sales were rather poor till a price drop gained them momentum and market share. We shall see soon enough I and others personally just think another content consumption device priced at IPad levels is doomed to failure. Wonder if they will match MacBook Air pricing for the pro as it would be one cheap x86 tablet.
The Lumia price doesn't mater. At least not in North America. If you buy a 100$ smart phone the contract plan is the same price, and same length as you picked a 800$ phone. The only difference, is if you cancel your contract, how much you will pay to pay back the phone (plus cancellation fees). The exception is the iPhone where it has special plans (read: more expensive, no additional features, because its an iPhone, and people desperately wants it). Cheaper price helps increase sales. BUT too low price hurt sales, as the device looks cheap in the consumer eyes. Also quality cost money. Consumer are getting tired of plastic cheap product. Even though you can make more amazing things with plastic, as demonstrated by Lenovo business line laptop, where they are tanks within a tank. The consumer doesn't know this, as they bought what was available at retail store: super thin, super flexible, cheap feel, glossy plastic, as OEMs cuts everything for low price. They are a lot of consumers, like me, which are sick and tired of this crap and want quality product, and ready to pay a premium for. THAT is why, I believe, Apple is doing so well. I was looking at laptop recently, as my laptop is getting old, 99% of laptops, INCLUDING business class, are now in plastic, or have super low specs (monitor and feature included). Anyway, I am off into a tangent here, sorry. But too low price, is not good either. The Surface RT and Pro, will not reach iPad sales, that's for sure. It's ONLY available at Microsoft online store, and MAYBE Microsoft stores which are currently few and far between in the U.S. So most consumers won't know it. And I don't think Microsoft cares to sale a huge amount. They don't want to touch much of the OEM turf, at least, not for now. But Microsoft wants to raise the bar, and set anew level of standard for OEM to reach. Official accessories with official accessories. Also, the same applies with the Surface RT and Pro. Both have Bluetooth. I made a chart here comparing the iPad 3, Surface RT and Pro: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=245678. So you can use any Bluetooth keyboard on it. As it has a desktop (or Office and file management), Surface RT should also have mouse support. But we will need to wait and see. The XBox 360 sold rather well, actually. Did it get Wii sales? No of course not, but it was not a failure. XBox 360 sales were low, mainly due to all the extra stuff that needed to be purchased to get started: wireless card which was to the roof in therm of price and was nothing more than a basic wireless G, nothing fancy, you need an XBox Gold subscription to get the most of the console, let alone full multi-player support, plus the accessories like a second controller was expensive. AND games were 10$ more expensive than the Wii. The PS3 was a monstrosity. People saw it as this power hungry, oven, that offered nothing over the XBox 360, and cost almost the price of the XBox 360 + Wii together. It only sold somewhat, because of the Blu-ray support, as it was much cheaper than buying a Blu-ray player, else I don't think it would have done better than the Dreamcast.. not at the beginning at least. Also you had the same problem as the GameCube was released: no games. You have a console, yet you have no games. It had no value to the consumer. But the Surface, you do. You have a lot of value associated to it. I expect 1200-1300$ with no accessories. Ultrabook + touchscreen + high-resolution screen (1080p) on small display (10inch) + digitize pen support (that means proper pen support with high precision). Won't be cheap. I won't be surprised if it 1500$ to be honest.
Well do the math. There isn't much choice. It's a quality tablet that is aimed at a niche market. I don't mind spending that much. I paid 1600$ my 14inch laptop 4 years ago (Dell Latitude E6400 with Nvidia GPU). The tablet will be more powerful than my tablet in every way. Downside is battery life, I have 11h, I doubt the Surface Pro will have anything close to 5h-6h.
It will as long as it is Metro/Modern. It is a fallacy to compare the Surface keyboard cover with just a cheap-ass Bluetooth keyboard. It is also a protective cover. How much does the iPad smartcover cost? £35,--. For just a cover. All of a sudden £99,-- for a cover with integrated keyboard and touchpad does not sound so bad.
i wish i had all the features of microsoft surface in a small device, oh wait. iphone, ipad infact any mac product. Snap
Quality ultrabooks don't break $1200 even with options and the sales on said ultrabooks are pretty poor according to intel anyway. ( latest q3 financials paint a product that has failed to acquire a market) Just don't see how $1500 would be any different. Windows phone 8 apps are different to there tablet store companions its 2 different stores currently, 1 is called windows store ( for tablets and desktops) 1 is called windows phone store ( for smartphones ) Also Microsoft music is a store They may 1 day contain the same applications for the time been both stores are rather sparse in nature, this should improve as uptake of the platforms improve. Metro Apps will have cross platform support but the developer has to take the responsibility to code this. ( and the support that goes with) apps can cost from 0.69 cent to $999 dollars, no over 18 content is allowed in the store. ( same as apple and google) One thing you won't be able to do is run your arm tablet applications on your x86 desktop for those that wondered. There is no support for running arm code in an x86 world unless your using an AMD CPU they have recently unlocked the andriod apps, I have major douts you will see surface apps like this though.
Yes you can. They're already selling out. I'd argue you can't gain market share if your product's quality doesn't match its price and if there isn't a large target audience. Windows RT has both of these statements in abundance. The iPad sells at over £400 a unit because it's a high quality product which is aimed at anyone and everyone. Just like the Surface. niche market? I don't know about that. You genuinely think the Surface Pro is worth at least 2 Surface RTs? Yeah, the hard ware is better, as is the OS and screen resolution. It's going to be priced competitively with ultrabooks. I don't see how £1000~ is competitive when you can get a decent ultrabook for much less than that. Edit:- This is £539 (-£150 if you trade in your own laptop) but has similar hardware to the Pro (albeit win7) and yeah, it's an ultrabook. I don't see how MS can justify the Surface Pro being twice the price of this just because it doubles up as a tablet.
I said 1000€, not £1000. And you shouldn't forget, that we are talking about 1920x1080 display. And guess what ? All >1366x768 ultrabooks are in 1000€+ region. Majority of a ultrabook or tablet price is the display. And the "They're already selling out." line - "sold out" without a number means nothing. It could be they sold out their stock of 1k, 100k or 1M units. If it is <10k, then it is a failure. If it is 100k units, then it is a moderate success. If it is 1M units, then it is a success. But without number, it can be anything from these, and probably one of the lower numbers..
I didn't realise there was such a difference between the euro and the pound, my bad. I think it's a shame that the display makes such an impact on the cost. That is true, we won't know for another week or two how well it's actually doing.
I'd imagine due to lack of advertisement rather poorly, selling to tech people who read these sites, most people don't even know Microsoft makes a tablet and leaving it as an online store product only in the uk is a massive mistake. This thing needs to compete with apple on advertisement in the USA and UK there have been 0 tv adds and no banners advertising the products, the general consumer who they are targeting does not even know the product exists. Apple may be many things one thing it's very good at is building product hype due to massive advertisement across the major country's it sells in, apple is on tv and on boards around the country's it hopes to sell in. Reminds me of orginal Xbox launch till it got some advertisement and a price drop it was a product loosing a lot of cash. Big question I'd ask do Nokia and Microsoft the 2 main pushers of windows 8 products want this to succeed, if they do they need to pull there fingers out and do some actual product advertisement.
I believe they're doing this to avoid upsetting the OEMs who will also be producing Windows 8 tablet devices. Microsoft don't expect hordes of people to be buying the Surface, however they do expect hordes of people to be buying Windows 8 tablet devices though. There's a big difference between the two.
Anyone who has seen a retina MacBook in the flesh knows the difference between a quality display panel and something cheap. It's still one area where laptops / ultrabooks struggle to make good a good display for me is the difference between a buy or not buy, I'm certain many tech people would feel the same way.
Most PC consumers want to pay the lowest price possible. So you get TN panel low resolution crap on laptops, poor built quality, and junk on the system which are ads to reduce the price of the system. However if you dig, you can find ultrabooks and laptop with non-glossy IPS panel, of descent resolution.. not super high like on the new MacBook Pro, but decent. Personally, I don't want a retina display (I mean, for its resolution, not image quality). I prefer battery life over slightly smoother text, or desktop space, and have all my programs interface break as no one tested their software with high DPI settings under Windows. Normal DPI settings on a 13, 14inch screen make the text too hard to read. My laptop needs to have at least 8h of battery life. My current Dell 14inch laptop powered by an Nvidia Quadro GPU, has 11h, and can attach a second battery to push it to almost 21h.
