OSNews

This is so typical MS. They are nothing if not consistent.

This is the same playbook from the early 90's: Rip Apple publicly while ripping them off internally.

Then all you have to do is get a clumsy, goofy version of the same thing out a few years later and convince every corporate type that this is now a safe buy.

But much has changed since the debut of Windows 95:

1- Apple's products are now generally lower priced than similar devices - because Apple controls their supply chain for their own cost benefit, with the added bonus of allowing them to lock out other makers from critical parts. Want your apple-quality cases, screens, and touchpads on other products? Big advantage apple here, which did not exist in the 80's.

2- Apple's app & peripheral market is years ahead of MS's. This is not just lifestyle stuff, but includes encryption, GIS, etc. There are vertical market apps on iOS right now that are more advanced - as in modern, not necessarily larger- than current Windows apps. (Many on this site focus on the lack of 'power' in mobile OS's, but they totally miss the advantages of being light, mobile, and aware through your sensor array. All of our 2012 phones can do things that our desktop computer from 2002 could only dream of). This advantage was all MS's in the 80's and it's turned around considerably.

3- This new usage model can be simplified into "Touch" (big UI, big targets, single-focus apps), which is now competing with "Pointer" (small UI, small targets, multi-taking palettes and apps).

Note that the OS in the living room, the cell phone, and the first round of tablets all live in Touch. Laptops and desktops live in Pointer, and Servers run Pointer and the original CL.

4- Apple saw this landscape and went fully into developing touch over 7 years ago. iOS still has the smoothest, most refined, and in most cases most powerful touch interface despite ferocious competition from android. Apple's latest OSX can do about 70% of the touch goodness on it's top of the line trackpad.

Microsoft was so convinced that tablets would use Pointer-style with a stylus that they laughed at the iPad for years and continued to push their Pointer-driven tablets which were huge and ancient looking next to an iPad.

So here we are, Microsoft ripped apart the iPad, made their version of improvements, and are trying to get a product to market (their first real cutting edge hardware) at a reasonable price.

This new Surface idea is attempting to do both Pointer and Touch at the same time. It says you can be mobile and need to sit down at the same time. And it requires this critical plastic piece that hooks into another plastic piece to do it's magic. If this device really made iPad's look old news, it might have chance, but instead it looks like a disaster waiting to happen.

No matter they haven't let anyone anywhere actually use it. When Apple shows something, they let you go right out and use it. Big difference.