Microsoft finally surfaced the Surface (new tablet)

Well, Monday June 18th, 2012 has come and gone and Microsoft's secret keynote event http://on.mash.to/MsbEJj did happen. It would seem that Microsoft has put some thought into their new tablet "Surface" they announced Monday, but it remains to be seen how well it might compete with the other tablets on the market running iOS and Android.

Here's a really well done video on YouTube of the Microsoft Surface reveal ad:
http://bit.ly/MDcOWf

Tablets 101

Tablets are not new, nor did they start with Apple's iPad. In fact, there have been Microsoft Windows-based tablets for well over a decade! But those old-school tablets were not purpose built for a touch interface or stripped down to the necessities to run better on slower battery sipping CPUs. They used regular notebook hard drives with spinning media that also sucked battery life. They required special (expensive) pens for the input method (that were easily lost if one was careless). Battery life was abysmal as was performance and user experience. They were, after all, using regular old Windows with some tablet features slapped on top of the standard UI to make it even possible to use. I still have a Motion tablet running Windows 7 (it originally came with XP). The battery life on it was maybe an hour if you were doing anything that remotely taxed the CPU and Hard Drive… you were lucky if you could squeeze 2 hours out of it. And I haven't even mentioned how HOT those tablets got!! It made it so it was hard to hold the thing.

The Apple iPad

I was a nay-sayer when Apple introduced the iPad originally, but then I started to think about why tablets sucked up to that point. It was mostly down to horrible UI and VERY slow performance. What I saw from the original iPad was very snappy performance, and holy cr@p on that 10 hours of battery life! It was something that was unheard of.
Once they were released and I got to play with one I changed my tune and purchased one. It is NOT a laptop replacement for anyone that does heavy lifting with computers, although my wife almost never turns on her computer since she got her iPad (she pretty much only uses the web & email, and of course native iOS apps for everything else). Pages and Numbers on the iPad are actually very well done and pretty powerful considering what it is running on. I have even written long'ish documents on the iPad using an external Bluetooth keyboard (simply for the speed of input, though I am pretty darn fast with the onscreen touch keyboard).

This isn't about Apple

I don't want to turn this post into a fanboi gushing over the iPad… seriously. I just am highlighting these things to point out that Apple, making sacrifices on the full-functionality of their tablet OS (instead of using the full-blown OS X of their notebooks and desktops) and gearing it to a touch-based interface (instead of a mouse-based pointer), finally got the tablet formula right!! Google soon followed with Android tablets (through 3rd parties, which I feel is part of their downfall for adoption). Microsoft is entering the game very late considering that Apple is on their 3rd generation of the iPad and Android tablets have been coming out steadily from 3rd parties.

Will the Surface succeed?

From the very little I have seen, it appears that Microsoft is making efforts to gear the interface to be more "touch-friendly", but the usability overall still remains to be seen. It also seems that the "RT" version, which has an ARM based CPU, will not run legacy x86 apps that were not designed for a touch UI. That is a very GOOD thing for a tablet! However, the "Pro" version seems to be x86 based and will therefore run pretty much all legacy apps that are not designed for a touch-based UI. This will let users down on the usability front I imagine. While it is more flexible, the experience will not be very good in this form factor and small screen with (presumably) higher than normal resolution for such a small screen. I equate this to running my VMware View desktop on my 4.5" Android phone that has a resolution of 1280x800. Everything is so TINY! It's pretty much impossible to work on except for those critical moments I don't have another option.

Conclusion

I do hope that the Surface surprises me like the original iPad did. I want Apple to have more competition out there and have everyone continue to push the envelope on capabilities and usability. In that case, everybody wins! Especially us, the users.