Surface Pro Anticipation

I like the resolution just fine. The Surface Pro is definitely a laptop replacement for me. The Asus EP121 was a laptop replacement for me. This would never replace my desktop though. No matter how nice a tablet is, it's no replacement for a multiple monitor, powerful desktop for true productivity and gaming.

This is a surfing, doing work on the go, presentation and entertainment device.
 
Well, it's partly a Microsoft problem as well.

Apple addresses this in a much more simple manner: double it up. They make their devices (PCs) in a way that the DPI can be run at native resolution; no scaling. This means you don't get into problems with text (blurriness, sometimes unreadable), GUIs (any GUI that's complex is going to suffer), and even images. They released the MBPretina at that resolution, not just because it has an insane amount of pixels and everyone loves pixels, but because they can then double up the resolution from their previous products and avoid any of the above issues.

For fractional scaling like MS has, it takes a concerted effort from Microsoft and developers both to tweak and optimize their software (yes, and even websites. You see this in mobile) to the Windows DPI settings. The Windows DPI settings would also have to become even more complicated in order to reach that optimal DPI setting that makes things look the same across a variety of devices. We're already seeing that now with the RT and Pro tablets both having separate DPI scalings at default. That's a big problem, because between only two devices you've now got to have ~4+ settings. Just imagine what that would look like once we get a wide variety of devices at various screen sizes and resolutions.

Getting developers, and Microsoft, to fix that problem is nigh impossible. Microsoft is double screwed because they wouldn't only have to address the problems within the Metro apps and the mobile world, but also x86 legacy and Win32. It ain't gonn' happen. The far more reasonable approach is to set recommended screen sizes and recommended resolutions. For example, Android has 7" tablets and 10.1" tablets. Microsoft can do the same here, and along with that they can set a recommended resolution for each tablet, lowering the amount of work that developers must do with respect to scaling. For the legacy win32 software... well, they might as well just forget about it. Getting developers to change their legacy software is impossible when those same developers have abandoned it years ago, or because their software wouldn't run on a tablet anyway, they would see no point in playing by those rules.
 
Developers don't care about DPI scaling in their applications primarily because there's no marketing effort behind it, the way there's a focused marketing effort behind Apple's Retina. Apple encourages and promotes Retina applications, and promotes hardware with Retina displays, so it's in the best interest for developers to generate Retina-ready assets and to specifically offer that as a feature for their customers. When browsing the App Store, Retina support is usually a headline feature for apps: developers want to sell users apps that support Retina displays because users want those apps. At this point, few major apps in the Mac App Store aren't Retina-ready.

Contrast that with Windows, and I've never seen a Windows application list DPI scaling support as a feature. Developers aren't going to do what doesn't benefit their bottom line, and Microsoft's lack of interest in generating momentum for it in Windows is really entirely to blame for that.
 
It's also significantly easier to support the resolutions in Apple's ecosystem than it is in Windows. Then there's Microsoft's insistence on using a multitude of DPI scaling settings, something that's actually gotten even worse with Win8 and their own tablets.

MS should standardize tablet sizes, set optimal tablet resolutions and see that developers, through Metro and SDKs, are made aware of the settings that they should be gunning for. Having a multitude of different DPI settings only makes developers turn a blind eye and ignore the problem altogether. Microsoft needs to simplify this.

That's the smaller problem. The bigger problem for MS is that they just lack apps in general :p
 
MS should not standardize tablet sizes, companies just need to be forced to support it, and they way they are forced is when customers start complaining / not buying their products. It is a heck of alot easier on the consumers side, for instance chrome suchs, so apple people started switching back to safari, google got the message and fixed it for macs, but still it sucks in windows. All the advertising in the world didnt matter. The problem is people are listing programs like photoshop and autocad which have almost no competition in their respective markets. People are not going to stop years of training in one of those to flip over to psp just because of scaling.

Apps will only come with time, same argument people made against google at the start and even still try to make today. The real critical thing is the killer apps, IE MS office, and obviously PS, Autocad etc. Really all MS has to do is go to a hand full of big players like that and say fix it by this time and I will give you a bundle of cash. On the consumer side of things as long as multiple apps compete in a space it should get resolved pretty quickly.
 
It's a legacy issue really, as more apps move into the metro environment (where it isn't as much a problem) then the problem solves itself.
 
Ok more impressions.
I have started my Surface this morning at 8am with 100% battery on battery saver mode and %40 brightness.
I did some excel work and internet browsing for about an hour , my friends played around with it for about half an hour, then I went to class, took hand written notes and audio recording of the class for an hour, when I checked my battery level it was showing %19, I went to lunch and put the thing on a charger. I sometimes have 12 hour days and it looks like I would need to charge this thing twice in one day or leave it connected.
Again when I had the 15 MBPr, i could go all day working on it without recharging at all.
 
Andyk5 said:
Ok more impressions.
I have started my Surface this morning at 8am with 100% battery on battery saver mode and %40 brightness.
I did some excel work and internet browsing for about an hour , my friends played around with it for about half an hour, then I went to class, took hand written notes and audio recording of the class for an hour, when I checked my battery level it was showing %19, I went to lunch and put the thing on a charger. I sometimes have 12 hour days and it looks like I would need to charge this thing twice in one day or leave it connected.
Again when I had the 15 MBPr, i could go all day working on it without recharging at all.
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You simply cannot squeeze more battery life from a certain size battery. Surface Pro has a small physical battery. It doesn't matter how optimized it is, that's going to make it suffer. If you need that much battery life then you should probably go back to a proper ultrabook with a physically larger battery or give one of the clovertrail hybrids a shot. The Thinkpad Tablet 2 is pretty awesome though it's lower resolution and performance of course. Still a great device though.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/11/lenovo-thinkpad-tablet-2-review/
 
If you want battery life then you shouldn't be buying Ultrabooks in the first place.
 
Andyk5 said:
Ok more impressions.
I have started my Surface this morning at 8am with 100% battery on battery saver mode and %40 brightness.
I did some excel work and internet browsing for about an hour , my friends played around with it for about half an hour, then I went to class, took hand written notes and audio recording of the class for an hour, when I checked my battery level it was showing %19, I went to lunch and put the thing on a charger. I sometimes have 12 hour days and it looks like I would need to charge this thing twice in one day or leave it connected.
Again when I had the 15 MBPr, i could go all day working on it without recharging at all.
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How many times have you fully charged and discharged your Surface thus far? It's often necessary to do this two or three times before you get optimum battery life.
 
Andyk5 said:
You do not know what you are talking about.
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Size is directly related to battery capacity. The thicker laptops have more room for bigger batteries, whereas most Ultrabooks are sporting battery capacities of < 50Whr.

Read up on the reviews and you'll see just how many Ultrabooks have piss poor showings when it comes to battery life. The 17W ULV doesn't make a difference since idle power consumption is equal. Given that nearly all computing is done at idle (and it's the screen and WiFi that consume the most power), the power consumption is roughly equivalent despite having 2x the TDP.

At first that doesn't make much sense, but the recent advancements in turbo boost, aggressive clock gating, and deeper sleep states have made power consumption across a huge stretch of TDP much closer than previous years. All the chips are fed voltage, do their work, then promptly hit their lower C-/P-states in just a tiny fraction of a second. The one area where the 35W laptop would consume more power is under prolonged load, like gaming, but it also provides much better performance along with that. For the other 99% of stuff, the turbo clocks up and down so quick that there is no difference in overall power consumption.

Most Ultrabooks have ~48Whr batteries, whereas most regular laptops (in the same price range from the same manufacturer) have the newer 62/66Whr 6-cell Li-ion batteries. Some, like business class laptops, even have the option of bumping you up to 9-cell batteries with nearly 100Whr capacity. A lot of the cheaper laptops might still use 48Whr 6-cell Li-ions, so it does vary depending on the manufacturer and model, but for the $$$ you'll always be able to get a longer lasting standard laptop than you will an Ultrabook. It isn't because they're being cheap with Ultrabooks, but rather they just don't have the space to fit larger batteries.
 
heatlesssun said:
How many times have you fully charged and discharged your Surface thus far? It's often necessary to do this two or three times before you get optimum battery life.
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This is my 4th charge, I am hoping it gets better. Right now I am using it at 10% brightness and airport mode so it does not die on me while taking notes.
 
OldPueblo said:
You simply cannot squeeze more battery life from a certain size battery. Surface Pro has a small physical battery. It doesn't matter how optimized it is, that's going to make it suffer. If you need that much battery life then you should probably go back to a proper ultrabook with a physically larger battery or give one of the clovertrail hybrids a shot. The Thinkpad Tablet 2 is pretty awesome though it's lower resolution and performance of course. Still a great device though.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/11/lenovo-thinkpad-tablet-2-review/
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At this point you just can't great battery life and performance in a sub 2 lbs. x86 device. Hopefully Haswell and Bay Trail Atoms will break that trend, particularly Bay Trail. I've really been happy with my Samsung 500T which is very similar to the ThinkPad Tablet 2. Got the keyboard dock for it a couple of weeks ago and I've been very happy with it and the reason is the battery life. Definitely Clover Trail devices are for running Photoshop but for web browsing, email, Office and a number of not so demanding of desktop apps the thing serves its purpose. It's great for ink note taking in OneNote and the close to 10 hour battery life makes it very practical for that purpose.

Surprised by the review the ThinkPad 2 got by Engadget, it seems like it like all Clover Trail devices have been suffering a number of glitches like WiFi, freezing, etc. I've seen some of these issues on my 500T but the situation has improved a lot as updates have been issued.
 
Andyk5 said:
This is my 4th charge, I am hoping it gets better. Right now I am using it at 10% brightness and airport mode so it does not die on me while taking notes.
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It can take quite a few cycles for some batteries to reach their optimum performance. It does seem you're a bit off on your life, I would have thought that you should be able to hit five hours with the activities and settings you described earlier.
 
heatlesssun said:
It can take quite a few cycles for some batteries to reach their optimum performance. It does seem you're a bit off on your life, I would have thought that you should be able to hit five hours with the activities and settings you described earlier.
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Well I am continuing to do this on a daily basis so I will keep you posted.
 
No matter how many cycles its not going to change the general pattern IMO. The battery was too small to save weight and a ball drop on this device. It will be the type of battery you can use for a trip to another state, through some meetings etc... But not the type of thing you charge at night and forget about for the rest of the day.
 
I have been pleasantly surprised by the "Type Cover" so far. I quite like it. It's fairly comfortable to type on and surprisingly thin and light for a keyboard. It is also designed to work with the surface fairly inteligently. "closing it" causes the surface to sleep which I kind of expected. What I didn't expect was that folding it under the surface disables the trackpad and keyboard so you can leave it on when in full tablet mode without worrying about hitting the keys.
 
I worked last night on my surface from 7:30 - 10:30 in Visio and Word, with some minor web surfing, and still had 48% battery left. For a general office workload I am guessing around 5-6hrs, which is about the same as most decently powered ultrabooks.

pelo said:
Well, it's partly a Microsoft problem as well.

Apple addresses this in a much more simple manner: double it up. They make their devices (PCs) in a way that the DPI can be run at native resolution; no scaling. This means you don't get into problems with text (blurriness, sometimes unreadable), GUIs (any GUI that's complex is going to suffer), and even images. They released the MBPretina at that resolution, not just because it has an insane amount of pixels and everyone loves pixels, but because they can then double up the resolution from their previous products and avoid any of the above issues.
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Not true at all, especially with web images. It makes everything blurry still. I implemented image swap scripts on my sites to prevent the issue (it serves a higher res image to "retina" machines so that when it doubles the res it still looks sharp).

The issue in the case of apple is that they scale everything around the images, but you still have the issue of the images being a fixed resolution. Honestly the MS scaling seems to work just as well in regards to images, and on most text.

If you don't believe me, look at all the apps that were not "retina" optimized on the iPhone/iPad...they are blurry and annoying.

The doubling is helpful because it keeps everything proportioned properly still and in the case of iOS, apps working properly that are all designed for ONE resolution. Something that is not the case with desktop apps. A lot of the big name apps had to make tweaks to work optimally with retina displays on Macbooks too.
 
pelo said:
Those issues are things that don't go away unless there's a concerted effort on behalf of the developers and Microsoft in addressing the inherent craptitude of DPI scaling in Windows. The Helix isn't going to fix any of it unless you run your software at native resolution on a screen large enough such that it makes sense.

I work with AutoCAD a lot, and I've found that 1080p on anything lower than a 15.6" laptop is a huge PITA. 14" is alright with 1600x900, but any higher and you're screwed. Anything smaller than 14" and you need 1366x768, otherwise you're bumping up against the same problems. I have an X220 and the 1366x768 resolution is at the higher end of the spectrum; any higher and you'd get the same issues. On a ~10" tablet screen the resolution would have to be below 1366x768 to be usable, but then you're giving up so much screen real estate that it makes no sense to run the program in the first place.
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Agreed but I was looking at this as a field device for most needs in the field it works well but for quick editing or revisions on working drawings its a no go. Which is a shame. Would be nice if autodesk had a metro app for editing even if was just a layer overlay. I will say using one note to sketch out ideas with clients and contractors is fantastic.
 
no_control said:
Agreed but I was looking at this as a field device for most needs in the field it works well but for quick editing or revisions on working drawings its a no go. Which is a shame. Would be nice if autodesk had a metro app for editing even if was just a layer overlay. I will say using one note to sketch out ideas with clients and contractors is fantastic.
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AutoCad WS? I haven't tried it myself yet, but perhaps it'd be suitable for light editing stuff.
 
wonderfield said:
I don't believe iOS does any interpolation for its upscaling.
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It does/used to for iPhone/iPod apps without retina assets displayed on iPad. iPhone apps without Retina assets looked like complete garbage on the iPad 1. All major apps have Retina assets now though, and the iPad 3 and 4 use Retina assets when scaling up iPhone sized apps. It's no longer a relevant issue, but it was a problem with some major apps for several months a few years ago.
 
I am looking forward to hearing peoples thoughts after a couple of weeks. The idea of having those kind of specs in a 10in tablet even with the size/weight and battery concerns just seems really amazing. I am very curious to see how people feel after those first few days where your just excited to have a new device.
 
Andyk5 said:
Here is my biased gaming review. Things with pen and touch input get messed up towards the middle and ruin my video :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnzVIBoxTTs
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So all you need to do be productive is to teach your self how to be proficient with another input type. I couldn't imagine this being very productive at all.

So you need a pen and keyboard.. Why not but a convertible ultrabook like the x220?
 
Wrench00 said:
So all you need to do be productive is to teach your self how to be proficient with another input type. I couldn't imagine this being very productive at all.

So you need a pen and keyboard.. Why not but a convertible ultrabook like the x220?
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x220t/230t series are good but older technology. They get 5 hours of battery life on average which is not much better than the Surface Pro, but also bulkier and heavier. They do have better cpu's and upgradbility though which is nice.
I am returning my Surface 128gig pro back to the store today actually. I think I am going to go with the Thinkpad tablet 2 because of the battery life. So I am trading battery life + couple hundred dollars for an Atom Cpu instead of an I5, not sure if it is the right choice but we will see.
 
Andyk5 said:
x220t/230t series are good but older technology. They get 5 hours of battery life on average which is not much better than the Surface Pro, but also bulkier and heavier. They do have better cpu's and upgradbility though which is nice.
I am returning my Surface 128gig pro back to the store today actually. I think I am going to go with the Thinkpad tablet 2 because of the battery life. So I am trading battery life + couple hundred dollars for an Atom Cpu instead of an I5, not sure if it is the right choice but we will see.
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With only 2GB of RAM you will also multitask less, however having used an older tablet with only 2GB of RAM I can say Win8 does a pretty good job still with regular office type stuff. Honestly, clovertrail right now is the sweet spot in terms of battery life, performance, and size. The Acer W510 and Thinkpad Tablet 2 are amazing for their size.
 
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Wrench00 said:
So all you need to do be productive is to teach your self how to be proficient with another input type. I couldn't imagine this being very productive at all.

So you need a pen and keyboard.. Why not but a convertible ultrabook like the x220?
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When did the x220t get to be an ultra book?
 
Andyk5 said:
x220t/230t series are good but older technology. They get 5 hours of battery life on average which is not much better than the Surface Pro, but also bulkier and heavier. They do have better cpu's and upgradbility though which is nice.
I am returning my Surface 128gig pro back to the store today actually. I think I am going to go with the Thinkpad tablet 2 because of the battery life. So I am trading battery life + couple hundred dollars for an Atom Cpu instead of an I5, not sure if it is the right choice but we will see.
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I have an x220t convertible tablet and it's a nice device but it simply isn't the same as using a pure tablet, as you said, too big and bulky. My favorite form factor is the folding clamshell hybrid. You pretty much get all of the benefits of both an ultrabook/laptop and a tablet.

The battery life and weight of Clover Trail devices are what makes them interesting. Engadget gave the Tablet 2 a pretty nice review, I don't like the keyboard implementation though, wish it were like the Helix. I really love my Samsung 500T, just a great device for note taking with OneNote, fast enough for that purpose and lots of battery. You're not going to be doing a lot of desktop gaming or Photoshop with the Tablet 2 however,
 
heatlesssun said:
The x200 series are close to ultrabook weight though much thicker.
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It is nearly twice the weight and thickness of most other similarly sized and specced ultrabooks.


Series 9 13", 0.53" thick and 2.7 lbs

x220t 12.5", 1.1" thick and 4 lbs

Hell the 15" Series 9 weighs less and is thinner. Shoot, the x220t hardly keeps up with my 5 year old Dell in terms of weight and thickness. Sorry, try again.

EDIT: And why are people recommending the x220t instead of the Thinkpad Twist anyways?
 
Erasmus354 said:
It is nearly twice the weight and thickness of most other similarly sized and specced ultrabooks.


Series 9 13", 0.53" thick and 2.7 lbs

x220t 12.5", 1.1" thick and 4 lbs

Hell the 15" Series 9 weighs less and is thinner. Shoot, the x220t hardly keeps up with my 5 year old Dell in terms of weight and thickness. Sorry, try again.

EDIT: And why are people recommending the x220t instead of the Thinkpad Twist anyways?
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I think that the x230t can weigh as little as 3.7 lbs. with the 3 cell battery which isn't that much more than a number ultrabooks. x200s use full power mobile Core CPUs, not the ULVs so they are a good bit faster than most ultrabooks. The Twist lacks a pen digitizer but has a higher res screen than the x200s.
 
Plus having a laptop which is fully serviceable is great. I love my x220t. Wouldn't trade it for the world. Plus its a thinkpad. I can bludgen some one to death with and it will still continue to function.
 
heatlesssun said:
I think that the x230t can weigh as little as 3.7 lbs. with the 3 cell battery which isn't that much more than a number ultrabooks. x200s use full power mobile Core CPUs, not the ULVs so they are a good bit faster than most ultrabooks. The Twist lacks a pen digitizer but has a higher res screen than the x200s.
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Twist also has more ram, newer/faster processor, thinner, lighter. Basically better all around except for the lack of the digitizer.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Twist also has more ram, newer/faster processor, thinner, lighter. Basically better all around except for the lack of the digitizer.
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The device that you'd compare the Twist to is the newer x230t, not the almost two year old x220t. The x230t beats the Twist on top line specs, the displays are actually the same size and resolution 12.5" 1366x768 IPS, same as the x220t. The x230t uses full voltage Cores and goes up to 16 GB, twice that of the Twist.
 
I went to the microsoft store earlier this evening pretty much set on getting a Surface Pro. However, I took around the store, and started to use the Samsung Ativ 500t. I'm starting to think that maybe that tablet would be better for my specific needs since it has greater battery life and it still maintains the pen input. I ended up leaving with nothing because now I'm not sure what I want.
 
heatlesssun said:
The device that you'd compare the Twist to is the newer x230t, not the almost two year old x220t. The x230t beats the Twist on top line specs, the displays are actually the same size and resolution 12.5" 1366x768 IPS, same as the x220t. The x230t uses full voltage Cores and goes up to 16 GB, twice that of the Twist.
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Which is why I was so confused when Wrench was recommending the 220 lol, thanks for clearing that up. I still say none of the x2xx line should be compared with ultrabooks.
 
LTR said:
I am looking forward to hearing peoples thoughts after a couple of weeks. The idea of having those kind of specs in a 10in tablet even with the size/weight and battery concerns just seems really amazing. I am very curious to see how people feel after those first few days where your just excited to have a new device.
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I tend to be very critical of Microsoft products, and it's been my experience in past few days that it's...interesting. As a tablet, the Pro is actually reasonably good. It's not iPad good, but it's capable in that environment. Contrary to what some reviewers have said, it's neither too thick nor too heavy to hold with one hand, either in landscape or in portrait, so there's no reason to fear using it like that. As a desk-situated laptop, it's also good. It's an Ultrabook at its core, and it's very reasonable in that capacity. I haven't experimented with it as a 'laptop', but I know already that I don't want to use it like that: the trackpad is too awful. Generally speaking, the issues I've had aren't dealbreakers. There's occasional awkwardness in the desktop, like glitchy window drawing on resizes, and there's an annoyance with not being able to disable adaptive brightness without losing manual control over brightness. These aren't huge.

When you cross the 'border' is when things get really scary. Even with the pen, spending any time at all in the desktop without traditional input devices available is deeply unpleasant. You can fumble through things on it like that, but it's not what you want. Every time I want to do work on it when using it as a tablet, I desperately want a keyboard and mouse. I'm waiting to see more productivity-related Metro apps appearing, but I don't have high hopes for that given the massive drop in app submissions in the past weeks. Unless Microsoft can really turn things around on that front, the absence of good apps is going to end up killing the Surface: this only really works if you don't skip a beat when you need to switch from one usage context to another. App availability needs to enable that.

At this time I have to say that this type of device is strictly for people who can get value out of the aspect of device convergence. If you don't want both a tablet and a laptop, you can be relatively comfortable with something like this. If you want the best tablet experience available, get something else. Metro is a good environment for touch, but the iPad does nearly everything better. The same goes if you want the best laptop experience: get something else.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Which is why I was so confused when Wrench was recommending the 220 lol, thanks for clearing that up. I still say none of the x2xx line should be compared with ultrabooks.
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No problem.

The x230t I think is quite comparable to a touchscreen ultrabook though much thicker.
 
wonderfield said:
There's occasional awkwardness in the desktop, like glitchy window drawing on resizes, and there's an annoyance with not being able to disable adaptive brightness without losing manual control over brightness. These aren't huge.
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Sounds like straight forward driver issues. The adaptive brightness issue I saw on my old Samsung Series 7 Slate and was a problem with the Intel video drivers.

wonderfield said:
When you cross the 'border' is when things get really scary. Even with the pen, spending any time at all in the desktop without traditional input devices available is deeply unpleasant. You can fumble through things on it like that, but it's not what you want. Every time I want to do work on it when using it as a tablet, I desperately want a keyboard and mouse. I'm waiting to see more productivity-related Metro apps appearing, but I don't have high hopes for that given the massive drop in app submissions in the past weeks. Unless Microsoft can really turn things around on that front, the absence of good apps is going to end up killing the Surface: this only really works if you don't skip a beat when you need to switch from one usage context to another. App availability needs to enable that.
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Of course there is the classic problem of using the Windows desktop on a touchscreen and 100% scaling of the desktop makes that pretty impossible as it's hard to see even desktop elements at 100% scaling on a 10.6" 1080P screen. Paul Thurrott suggested the idea that the Surface Pro should have had the option of a 1366x768 screen to mitigate this problem. He doesn't think the higher resolution screen makes much difference visually. At 11.6" 1366x768 driving the Windows desktop shell isn't difficult at all even at 100% scaling and a good number of desktop apps work well, I use quite a few like VLC touch only all of the time, not as nice a pure touch app but not difficult either and often more capable than touch apps on any platform.

When it comes to productivity on a tablet with touch, I must admit I don't really know what exactly anyone is doing on a touch only tablet that's particularly productive. It can be very convenient to do quick things but who wouldn't won't a keyboard and mouse when working on large documents, inputting lots of text, etc. I've only played a bit with Pages and Numbers on the iPad and the last time I did that was around a year ago. Nice presentation and UI but nothing that can't be done almost as easily with Word or Excel 2013 with touch, and there's just so much Office does that has no equivalent anywhere else. When it comes to note taking, OneNote 2013 on Windows 8 especially with a pen, is there anything better overall?

As for the apps, technically app publication numbers are down it looks significantly from their peak but I don't think that's all necessarily due to app submissions being down significantly as well. Even Microsoft's own promised apps aren't appearing quickly. I think at least part of it just getting quality work done and things slowing down as things are taking more time than expected. A lot of apps coming out of the gate at launch had a lot of bugs, Microsoft was just trying to hit some artificial targets. The app situation does need to improve a lot but as the number of Windows 8 machines grows I don't see how apps are going to be a long term problem. Throwing a 1000 apps a day in the store when they aren't ready or just plain junk isn't going to help Windows 8 long term regardless.

wonderfield said:
At this time I have to say that this type of device is strictly for people who can get value out of the aspect of device convergence. If you don't want both a tablet and a laptop, you can be relatively comfortable with something like this. If you want the best tablet experience available, get something else. Metro is a good environment for touch, but the iPad does nearly everything better. The same goes if you want the best laptop experience: get something else.
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I'd like to see an iPad do something like this without needing a dedicated app or jailbreak:

Screenshot%20(28).png


Yes, the iPad is much more polished with many more apps but I think Windows 8 has some definite advantages in flexibility but it at the cost of more complexity. Overall Metro is very powerful and capable and beyond iOS in many ways but it does need refinement and there need to be many more Metro apps.
 
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