Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Feb 2013 23:05

Mort Walker wrote:Finally, the Surface Pro can not run Windows and OS X.

That's an interesting observation that I never thought of before. I have been trying to think of situations I may know where people felt the need to install OS X on a Windows machine and I can't recall any off the top of my head. However, plenty install Windows on Macs (I did too) - the reason being the much larger ecosystem of apps in Windows in all categories. So highly unlikely that is a deal breaker for anybody.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 07 Feb 2013 00:07

^^^People do install OS X on Windows machines all the time. Its called Hackintosh, but really it is Apple that prohibits it.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 07 Feb 2013 00:12

Yeah but I can't do work on my iPad either. Having used (and still using) the Surface when I travel or go offsite, it does feel like a compromise device - neither a tablet nor a laptop (refer to this dhaaga some pages back. Reviewers could have just read this dhaaga and xerox-khan'ed it to save time ). But that also means I have to carry one device, instead of two. And infinitely easier to handle than a laptop when going thru airport madness.

Then you carry your MBA or Ultrabook instead. In the US, you don't have to take your tablet out when passing thru airport security, so maybe you can get benefit out of the Surface Pro since it is some sort of bridge device.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 07 Feb 2013 00:12

heard samsung guys are opening r&d just next o apple in silly cone valley. the chief said, this is the place where all disruptive forces are!!! mmm.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 07 Feb 2013 00:14

Anujan wrote:When haswell becomes mainstream and M$ integrates it, size and battery life will improve. The tablet is fantastic for a first iteration . I am sure they will improve as time goes on.

Fruitco had the advantage that they introduced a tablet as a new category and nobody asked for compatibility with old applications. M$ is positioning as a converged device. So they have to go for higher specs to ensure legacy compatibility.

As we all know, processors get faster and more battery efficient. M$ can ride it again as they did in the past.

Yes, but so will everyone else. In 5 years the iPad and MBA will merge in to one device when the various multi-core architecture ARM processors become capable. I refuse to use iOS until it has some sort of user manageable file system.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Feb 2013 00:29

Mort Walker wrote:^^^People do install OS X on Windows machines all the time. Its called Hackintosh, but really it is Apple that prohibits it.

It is not a mainstream practice. Bootcamp+Windoze on Mac is. Anyways unless one is a musician or a graphics designer (and nowadays even then), OS X doesn't offer any unique apps over Windoze. And with Mickey's decision to take a stake in Wacom many moons ago, I am sure they will leverage that to the hilt.

Mort Walker wrote: Then you carry your MBA or Ultrabook instead.

In fact I carry the Surface now in lieu of a KB MBA that I had exclusively for travel purposes

Its much more portable, I don't need to take it out in the security line and most importantly, I can work while sitting crunched up in cattle class on the airplane and also put the keyboard flap back to read a book. With the MBA all that is a PITA since despite how thin and light it is, its still has a laptop form factor. 2 problems I have with the Surface are:
(1) Default mode is landscape: Personally I don't like to use tablets in landscape mode (which is why I hated the Motor Oil Xoom). Unfortunately no easy solution for this since either you go 16:9 (or 15:9) landscape (Mickey or Chacha) or you go 4:3 portrait (Fruit Co.). 4:3 works great for tablet and one handed use but sucks for productivity and laptop style use. So by design the Surface is meant more for laptop style use and for casual tablet style use.

(2) Use on the lap: This is a tricky hit and miss since the hinge doesn't have any rigidity on the Surface - the covers are flaps. I have used it on my lap at various airports and one either had to have their knees level with the hips or just flatten the kickstand and let the legs do the propping up. There are solutions for this but there are weight/volume penalties in order to make something which passes durability tests while ensuring the requisite amount of rigidity. For watching movies/YouTube however this is not a problem since turning the cover flap back with the kickstand on, provides a nice stable surface (to the Surface!) which does not feel heavy.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Feb 2013 00:34

Mort Walker wrote:
Anujan wrote:When haswell becomes mainstream and M$ integrates it, size and battery life will improve. The tablet is fantastic for a first iteration . I am sure they will improve as time goes on.

Fruitco had the advantage that they introduced a tablet as a new category and nobody asked for compatibility with old applications. M$ is positioning as a converged device. So they have to go for higher specs to ensure legacy compatibility.

As we all know, processors get faster and more battery efficient. M$ can ride it again as they did in the past.

Yes, but so will everyone else. In 5 years the iPad and MBA will merge in to one device when the various multi-core architecture ARM processors become capable. I refuse to use iOS until it has some sort of user manageable file system.

5 years is an eternity. If Fruit Co takes that long to merge, they will be dead. Anyhow the problem of merging iOS and OSX is not a hardware challenge, there are major architecture issues at the system and UI level they need to address apart from the long legacy tail for OS X. In fact if they do a merge, initially they will probably end up with a schizophrenic setup like what Mickey has with Win8. I think Fruit Co's approach and philosophy is fundamentally different.

SaiK wrote:heard samsung guys are opening r&d just next o apple in silly cone valley. the chief said, this is the place where all disruptive forces are!!! mmm.

They have SISA already near SJC. The new labs are coming up around there and they are hiring big time (almost became an employee there myself

). But right now the Sammy offices in Silly-con valley are are downright depressing...looks very sarkari on the inside.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 07 Feb 2013 02:02

OS X doesn't offer any unique apps over Windoze.

Not so much the apps, but OS X tends to run smoother than Win7 or 8, especially photo editing apps. Besides, I get less STDs when looking up lalmullah's sandwich recipes.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 07 Feb 2013 02:09

Surface Pro teams Ask Me Anything at reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1 ... ows_8_pro/

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 07 Feb 2013 03:48

Raja Bose wrote:
Mort Walker wrote:Always predicting gloom and doom, but MSFT survives due to Windows and Office entrenched in the workplace.
Don't all companies survive like that? Each has its entrenched cash cows which enables it to dabble in other ventures.

There is a famous 2x2 grid of product portfolios depending on market share and profit margin. The four quadrants are cash cows, stars, question marks, and stray dogs. Zune was a question mark that has moved to become a stray dog. Is the Surface Pro a star or a question mark? Only MSFT would know at this point. Within a few quarters, this should be apparent to all of us prols.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 07 Feb 2013 04:03

Here is Google's Pixel : http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/6/396059 ... aked-video

They have added touchscreen to chromebook.

Now I am 10000% sure that Apple will do this too, and people-reviewers-analysts will suddenly forget "gorilla-arm" etc.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Feb 2013 04:14

If the Pixel is on the actual roadmap for Chacha, expect radical changes in the ChromeOS UI and some convergence.

Some interesting insights on technology from Steve Batitche on the Surface, touch sensors, Win8 touch latencies and other stuff from that Reddit thread:

Hey, this is StevieB, I manage the Applied Sciences Group that did this research. In some ways some of this technology did make its way into Surface and Windows 8, and in other ways the industry has a ways to go. The demo you are seeing is a research prototype we developed to understand touch and graphics latency. It is meant to ask questions such as what level of latency is perceivable to the user. The research demo does not contain a full engineering solution which is productizable yet.. for example we used a projector that can project at 30Khz.. not really something you can carry around…. However, two things that got tech-transferred into this generation of products.. The first is that we understand the impact of latency on the user experience … the lower the latency of the system, the faster you get your work done.. even 10ms makes a difference. So, one of the things we focused on in Windows 8, was touch latency.. The whole system is tuned to deliver one of the fastest touch to graphical responses… we reduced the latency of all Windows 8 touch controllers to be below 12ms (now we know why OEMs go and HW introduction rate for Win8 is slow) , and Windows 8 optimized the input thread to be the highest priority. The result.. buttery smooth touch input that makes the graphics almost stick to your finger… (just compare Surface side by side to other tablets/phones).. I am super happy on where we have gotten with latency.. Industry leading.. and the beauty is because of research we know how much we should keep going .. Finally the second part which got tech transferred was digitizer tech used in the research demo in that video.. the superfast pressure sensitive digitizer made its way into touchcover, the superfast keys (1khz) on touchcover is how we can do key/tap detection and allow users to home keys without accidentally typing. It is an exciting technology platform here...

Hey this is StevieB.. Surface Pro is a unique tablet.. in that it offers 4 modes of input in a compact form factor. It has touch, because of Touch/Typecover you have a mouse and keyboard which is built in to your screen cover, and now you have a digital Pen. So the combination is unique in that you have something the size of a tablet but the power and productivity of a laptop. I see people around here use Surface Pro as their main machine.. switching from reading an ebook in their hands, running Outlook, and flipping it to the desk and running a full version of PhotoShop. I just loaded photoshop the other day.. and boy it loaded fast.. faster than my desktop. I was like ya baby .. so Surface Pro has the power when you need, but throttles down heavily when you don’t need it so that you can carry it around.. pound for pound it is the fastest most portable device out there..

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 07 Feb 2013 04:17

Sales will prove the point. The regular iPad is going to get a major overhaul because it is getting stale and is too expensive. Apple will have one which has a smaller footprint, but with the same screen size this spring. They have to generate excitement or its simply not going to sell. I can't see the rationale for $800-$1000 tablet. The iPad mini is a runaway success.

We should see a revamped Nexus 7 after Google I/O and KLP is announced for the same price points.

If MSFT can sell the Surface Pro for $600, then interest will peak.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Feb 2013 04:18

Mort Walker wrote:
OS X doesn't offer any unique apps over Windoze.
Not so much the apps, but OS X tends to run smoother than Win7 or 8, especially photo editing apps.

hmm....never had that problem becoz I use Photoshop, SketchBook Pro and GIMP on Win8 pretty regularly - they run pretty smoothly.

I don't think Mickey will ever make something like the Surface compete with the tablet market becoz it is not supposed to be a tablet-only device and furthermore, they will always leverage their PC and XBox muscle becoz thats where they dominate when it comes to consumer offerings. Mickey needs to build clarity in its marketing messages in this case rather than the technology - that's where the problem is. For example, only in the Reddit conversation did one of the Surface team members clarify that WinRT is not a separate OS, it is simply a subset of Windows8 (the metro part) - wouldn't it have been beneficial to just put out a simple message to consumers when they launched Surface RT that Surface RT would be a Metro-only device whereas the Surface Pro would support both Metro and Win7-style desktop mode. Instead they kept silent and confused consumers. Major marketing fail.

Anand Shimpi's review of the Microsoft Surface Pro

Sushupti · Post by **Sushupti** » 07 Feb 2013 05:25

http://www.extremetech.com/internet/147 ... ansmission

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 07 Feb 2013 07:46

After much smoke all the budget quad core android phone releases are postponed by atleast one month.

Lack of warm bodies in shenzhen due to chinese lunar new year

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Feb 2013 09:09

^^That's hardly surprising. Typically this "holiday absence" is built into the ODM planning schedule so whoever was doing ODM relations didn't know his/her job.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 07 Feb 2013 10:04

hmm....never had that problem becoz I use Photoshop, SketchBook Pro and GIMP on Win8 pretty regularly - they run pretty smoothly.

Accessing RAW files (*.CR2) is better on OS X in my experience.

I saw Anand Shimpi's review earlier and its quite good considering he thinks highly of Apple's hardware and OS.

Its performance is outstanding for a tablet - it’s truly in a class of its own. If I sit down and use Surface Pro as I would an iPad or Android tablet, it delivers an appreciably quicker user experience. Apple does get fairly close in some cases on far slower hardware, which should concern Microsoft quite a bit should Apple ever choose to go ahead and build a tablet/notebook convergence device of its own.

I think in 5 years the iPad and MBA line will merge. Until that time the iPad will remain as a device to consume information and not produce it. In 12-18 months, IMO, the MBP will be discontinued as the MBA goes up in performance.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Feb 2013 10:30

Anand Shimpi is as unbiased as it gets in hardware review - I have been following him since the 90s and he hasn't changed in the way he evaluates devices. Compared to him Engadget and TheVerge look like rank amateurs. In fact lately since 2011 I notice Engadget trying to cosy up to Fruit Co. against all odds - I guess they want to fill the void left by Gizmodo.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 07 Feb 2013 10:38

why did gizmodo fall out with apple?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Feb 2013 10:46

Becoz of this. They were allegedly banned on the Mahdi's personal decree.

Prasad · Post by **Prasad** » 07 Feb 2013 10:47

The iphone prototype that Brian Lam didnt return to Apple even after Jobswa personally emailed him and asked him for it. Jobs never forgave him for that.

edit: Lam, after Jobs' death, wrote a post regretting all that happened and said that he did it because he just couldn't let such an opportunity go. Big bucks > decency and friendship.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 07 Feb 2013 10:50

Big bucks > decency and friendship

normally yes. but dealing with a unprincipled guy like the mahdi, I wouldnt blame him...its not worth it.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 07 Feb 2013 10:57

http://isittheyearofthelinuxdesktop.com/

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 07 Feb 2013 11:17

Agree that Anandtech is as unbiased as reviews get.

But he has his failings too. He doesnt take into account the "new shiny" factor of devices. He rightly warned lack of 3G in the original iPhunwa (which the Mahdi claimed was unnecessary because iPhunwa's 2G was faster than 3G

) He did rightly praise the UI but panned the battery and processor speed and hinted that kashtmars should wait for the next release.....except everyone ran out and bought the phone.

He has said eminently sensible things about the Surface Pro too. If you think of it as a tablet, you are in for a disappointment. It is heavy, large and has a shitty battery life. If you think of it as a laptop, you are in for a bit of a disappointment (not lots, a bit). Screen cannot be tilted and the touchpad whatever is not as good as fruitco keyboards.

OTOH if you are looking for something smaller than a macbook air and want to use it as a tablet occasionally and which can run your legacy windows programs, this is the machine to buy. Ofcourse, the machine itself will improve as processors improve.

anmol wrote: It is supposed to do following things:

1) Raise average selling price of PCs.
2) Make money
3) Force PC makers to sell signature PCs. (means no bloatware)

It is supposed to do (2) only. The others are feel good smoke M$ blows up people's musharraf.

How can someone raise the price of PCs when the hardware is commoditized and all of them offer the same software? OEMs will start dropping price like a rock to get a sliver for marketshare and it will be a race to the bottom. FruitCo can have huge margins, because if you want the fruitco experience, fruitco is the only place you can go to get their machines. OTOH let us assume you want a windows machine. HP will sell you one for 25$ less because it has HDD instead of SSD. Acer will sell 50$ lesser than HP because they made the screen resolution a bit lower. Gateway will sell 100$ lower than that because they left out a couple of USB ports and a display port. Dell will sell 50$ lower than gateway because on top of all that, they put in lesser RAM and a slower processor.

The confused Kashtmar will buy dell because he got a flyer and coupon at home. Then how the F is average prices of PCs going to increase? Maybe for six moths? A year? Then it will start dropping like a rock again. Think of the tablet space. You can get a perfectly good tablet for 200$ from Chacha. Rumor has it that Asus is making a 150$ tablet. In a year you will get today's N7 for 100$. Which is perfectly usable for youtube, netflix, email and book reading. The prices dropping like a rock is such a big deal that even fruitco had to downhill ski and make a ~300$ iPad mini. This is what happens to hardware margins when the software is identical. How long before the bottom gives away under windows hardware?

"Force PC makers to sell signature PCs. (means no bloatware)" Another bit of nandi dropping. Chacha sells pure android experience. All other OEMs have bloatware tacked on top. Anyone bothered about that?

M$ has rightly realized that we are hitting a stage where making money from software alone is under threat. They (almost) missed the bus on Mobile, Cloud and Social. Ceding leadership to FruitCo, Chacha, Amzn, FaceKitab etc. For heck's sake, a book seller has more customers for its cloud services and delivers more digital content than the leading software company of yesteryears! They need to do all those *and* devices to get into a healthy growth trajectory.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 07 Feb 2013 11:18

What is a few hundred bucks to maintain the domain for Ballmer?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Feb 2013 12:07

That 'failing' of Anand mian is why I like him - he will always give a no-shitter

In any device offering where vertical integration doesn't account for majority of the sales, you cannot raise ASP in the long term. What Mickey is doing here is going it both ways.....commoditizing Win8 thru OEMs to ensure they can keep their market dominance by maximizing reach across all consumer, geographical, economic segments, but at the same time doing a vertical play to protect their mush against OEMs running for other pastures and ensuring they can offer integrated experiences across device categories like Fruit Co does - the latter is purely an ecosystem play but on a much larger scale than a single device category and with much more market penetration than what Fruit co can target.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 07 Feb 2013 20:26

the howls of anguish from the quad-core groupies in facebook waiting for the new crop off microtek is a sight to behold.
you'd think a cheap vaccine for all forms of cancer or diebetes is delayed and all the world was going to be saved by it.
most dont have a clue what a quad-core implies or why it will improve their lives but they want it!

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 07 Feb 2013 21:45

Raja Bose wrote:That 'failing' of Anand mian is why I like him - he will always give a no-shitter

I actually email corresponded with him in 1997 when building a high-end Win95 box and was also reading Tom's Hardware as well.
Overall a very good review site. The problem now is that there is too much hardware to review since his site does smart phones and tablets as well. On some smart phones I question the bench mark testing he's done, but the rest of the review has always been good.

I remember watching a video about him in the late 90s after Anand finished high school in North Carolina and bought his first car, a BMW Z3, and he was hooking up with his gori chori.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 07 Feb 2013 21:47

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 07 Feb 2013 22:04

Pretty much every reviewer out there seems to have panned the Surface Pro's battery life. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it is not something that is in their hands to fix for the next version. Using a full spec Intel Core-i5 guarantees higher battery consumption. So unless Intel's processors magically become considerably less battery hungry, that drawback is going to remain.

The other major drawback, losing 40+ GB of space to the OS installation is also not something that will go away anytime soon.

Smaller problems like the lack of Facekitab and teetar apps will be fixed eventually.

As of now aam abduls who want a tablet to use for tablety things like FB, TW, mail, watching movies while lying down in bed, playing games, etc. are better served by iPad, Nexus 10 etc. I guess the Surface will face more competition from the touchscreen enabled ultrabooks and hybrid PCs from Sony, ASUS, etc. that are flooding the market.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 07 Feb 2013 22:05

Google mail has improved a lot since and you can block ads. No big deal. In some cases, I like it because it links to an ad about obscure topic I am conversing about.
Here's the deal. If you aren't using your own email server and rely on another party be it Hotmail/Outlook, Google, or Apple your email can be read, so privacy isn't guaranteed. Of these 3 companies, I would trust Apple the most for privacy.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 07 Feb 2013 22:33

nachiket wrote:Pretty much every reviewer out there seems to have panned the Surface Pro's battery life. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it is not something that is in their hands to fix for the next version. Using a full spec Intel Core-i5 guarantees higher battery consumption. So unless Intel's processors magically become considerably less battery hungry, that drawback is going to remain.

Haswell and Baytrail are supposed to do just that. I think Surface with those chips would be available in q4. Also they have given hints in Reddit AMA that they will launch new touc/type-pads with battery, so that too will fix this issue.

nachiket wrote:The other major drawback, losing 40+ GB of space to the OS installation is also not something that will go away anytime soon.

OS is not using 40 gb space, mostly 30 gigs are used of which os takes 10 GBs. I would stick my neck out and say that Windows is NOT bloated at all, that is how much space any platform would take.. especially x86_64 ones. On Windows 64bit, WOW takes lot of space, on 64 bit linux that space is taken by multilibs because idea is same. Sure one can save lot os space by not having Wow or multilibs and keeping system pure 64 bit.. but that way one would lose backward compatibility.

Rest is Office, Recovery image, paging file and hibernation file. Paging file(swap), hibernation file, apps would take space on any platform, so this is not Window's fault.

When it comes to the decision to include recovery image, it is a bad idea from marketing pov. But otherwise it is a good decision as users can chose on their own whether to keep it or move it to usb. They have included a simple tool that makes it very easy to move it to usb.

Compare that to Apples approach where one would otherwise have to download a completed image when one needs it. Imagine needing to restore ones pc and being forced to download that from web... 10 GB image file...

The fact that they are being criticized for this... is really sad.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 07 Feb 2013 22:40

Mort Walker wrote:I actually email corresponded with him in 1997 when building a high-end Win95 box and was also reading Tom's Hardware as well.
Overall a very good review site. The problem now is that there is too much hardware to review since his site does smart phones and tablets as well. On some smart phones I question the bench mark testing he's done, but the rest of the review has always been good.

A lot of those reviews appear to be farmed off to others in the team who maintain reviews of various subdomains, so that Anand really focuses primarily on the most high profile items to review. There are noticeable differences in the level rigor between various reviews on the site depending on who did the review. I don't mind his bling blindness - his reviews are FAR better to read than something on tuaw or engadget, where they are better of just writing 'OMFG! It's an Aapil product! This thing rocks! Buy it if you want to be cool!'

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 07 Feb 2013 22:42

Apple provides the OS on a USB stick for its machines that don't have an optical drive. Also Windows 8 finally got file history backup like Time Machine for OS X, but its control panel and UI is a PoS.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Feb 2013 22:55

Problem with USB stick is people lose it and then go ohmegawd!!!!!!!! Save me!!! That's where Fruit co scores....if they had the recovery on disk Mahdi would go to town with it as a break thru.....other companies have so much to learn from the mahdi.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 07 Feb 2013 23:02

^^^You can lose an OS disc as well. If you use Time Machine, you have a full back up of the file system including the OS. So you already have a recovery disk, but that is on an external HDD. Making a backup using Time Machine is incredibly easy. Time Machine was introduced back in 2007 and it works well and is easy and intuitive to use. Until recently, there was nothing native in Windows and making a full and then incremental back up means you buy additional software. Mahdi got it right!

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 07 Feb 2013 23:05

anmol wrote: OS is not using 40 gb space, mostly 30 gigs are used of which os takes 10 GBs. I would stick my neck out and say that Windows is NOT bloated at all, that is how much space any platform would take.. especially x86_64 ones. On Windows 64bit, WOW takes lot of space, on 64 bit linux that space is taken by multilibs because idea is same. Sure one can save lot os space by not having Wow or multilibs and keeping system pure 64 bit.. but that way one would lose backward compatibility.

Rest is Office, Recovery image, paging file and hibernation file. Paging file(swap), hibernation file, apps would take space on any platform, so this is not Window's fault.

When it comes to the decision to include recovery image, it is a bad idea from marketing pov. But otherwise it is a good decision as users can chose on their own whether to keep it or move it to usb. They have included a simple tool that makes it very easy to move it to usb.

Compare that to Apples approach where one would otherwise have to download a completed image when one needs it. Imagine needing to restore ones pc and being forced to download that from web... 10 GB image file...

The fact that they are being criticized for this... is really sad.

The problem is you can't really give this explanation to the consumers. When they go to buy a 64GB tablet only to be told that they can use only 23GB of it and will have to rely on USB drives, SD cards, SkyDrive etc., it is a turn-off. And this will hurt sales, no matter what anyone says, especially since the Surface Pro is already quite expensive.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 07 Feb 2013 23:07

nachiket wrote:The problem is you can't really give this explanation to the consumers. When they go to buy a 64GB tablet only to be told that they can use only 23GB of it and will have to rely on USB drives, SD cards, SkyDrive etc., it is a turn-off. And this will hurt sales, no matter what anyone says, especially since the Surface Pro is already quite expensive.

Exactly, that is why it is a bad marketing decision.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Feb 2013 23:14

Mort Walker wrote:^^^You can lose an OS disc as well.

What disc?

Its on a separate partition on the internal SSD. Yes, Time machine does work pretty well though it was developed in Amelio's time rather than the Mahdi's - so no credit for Mahdi!

anmol wrote: Exactly, that is why it is a bad marketing decision.

Marketing is what mostly keeps or kills a consumer device, rather than technology. Mahdi knew that from the womb, other companies still don't get it.