
Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update - vxNsr
http://penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/06/16/surface-pro-3-update
======
GodEater
It's great to read that Gabe has had such a positive experience with a
Microsoft product team - but it seems pretty obvious to me that it's because
he's a somebody. His posts on penny-arcade reach an enormous audience, and so
of course they're going to do their damn best to make sure he sings the
product's praises.

My experience is very different. I've been working for an enormous
organisation for the last 4 years, and we're a tier 1 client of Microsoft's.
I've had numerous occasions where I've tried to get anyone on the product team
for my specialisation at Microsoft, that my company literally drops millions
of pounds on to pay any attention to our requirements. And every time I've had
that conversation, with the same requirements, it's like this is the first
time they've heard it. They make great promises that they'll go away and think
about it, and then nothing happens. And that's because I'm a nobody. I don't
have a blog with a massive audience, and so they really don't give a sh!t.

~~~
Torgo
They are fixing the problem for every user, not just him, based on his input.
I want a drawing tablet, I have been reading every PA post about the surface
with bated breath waiting for the "it's now perfect" announcement. As far as
I'm concerned, their model is working. Maybe they just need to expand it to
other products too.

~~~
aeturnum
Sure, this problem is fixed for every user. That's great, we're all in favor
of MS fixing problems.

What GodEater is pointing out is that Gabe is getting attention due to his
celebrity. Much more attention than Microsoft gives to companies that pay them
millions of pounds for their products. Gabe gets that attention precisely
because his opinion closely watched by people like you.

Consider what kind of product development this philosophy gives rise to. What
if you don't want what Gabe wants? Do you have any chance of getting it when
MS has the sort of development priorities they're displaying here. What if
they were listening to someone whose opinion you did not respect? How would
that affect your view of the product & the company?

------
krschultz
"You hear a lot about MS being this massive company that doesn’t listen but
that’s really not fair in this case."

Every large company is made up of thousands of individual people, many of
which really care about making a good product and making customers happy. The
whole question in managing a big company is how to get out of the way of that
natural process, while still coordinating all the disparate groups so that the
final product works.

~~~
Tloewald
Actually MS has always listened. The problem has been (a) whom they listened
to (the user has usually not been their customer) and (b) lack of "taste".

MS Office is, for good and ill, exactly what you get when you give users what
they ask for and have no taste.

~~~
balls187
Office 2013, specifically Excel and Word are fantastic.

~~~
rthomas6
Except for my use case, which is when you have a 1,200 page document with
hundreds of tables, lists, and pictures. The thing grinds to a halt and has
all sorts of problems. Yes, I know that MS Word is not the best choice for
documents that big, but it's not up to me.

~~~
taude
That's weird you can't break it down into smaller parts? I worked on a big
book, about that size with several people and the major, mainstream publishing
company wanted it in individual documents mapping to individual chapters.

~~~
rthomas6
We actually did break it up into several parts when making and editing it, but
for the "official release" of the document (It's a big-ass test procedure
document), they wanted it in one file. And of course there's always some
changes you find after you release something.

------
Aissen
> _I could see some of them shaking their heads and looking at each other.
> They were very obviously bothered that they had not seen this before._

To me this looks like engineers that had foreseen the problem but were
promptly ignored by UX people. Or maybe the other way around.

~~~
trobertson
Rather than single out engineer and UX guys, it would be more accurate to say
that some person(s?) foresaw the problem, and their concerns were dismissed by
someone above them.

~~~
BrandonLive
That's all baseless speculation. In fact in Microsoft's culture decisions like
that are almost entirely made by individual contributors working with trios of
front-line managers/leads (dev/test/pm).

------
sergiotapia
>After I was done they told me they were going to take all the notes they had
gathered and go to work on fixing the issues I had shown them.

Later

>To see them come back to me with fixes for my problems was really amazing.
They are putting time and effort into making sure the Surface Pro 3 does what
artists want it to do.

Well played to the MS Surface team, I hope these fixes make it to production
and stay there on the Surface 4/Surface 5.

Where do you recommend I buy a Surface 3? I can buy online but is it better to
get it from a brick and mortar shop?

~~~
rasz_pl
More like well player PR team, they failed to fix every single issue. They
couldnt even let him have the home button fix, something that sounds like a
simple script I could write in AutoHotkey in two minutes tops.

Surface team looks like a committee full of control freaks. cant give users
control over home button, cant give users control over pressure curves (they
brought two HARDWIRED tablets instead of writing configuration tool?).

~~~
biot
Does your two minutes of effort also include regression testing? Did you
verify that all aspects of the OS and applications which depend on the home
button having a specific behavior continue to function within OS-guaranteed
response times? Have you done user testing to ensure that the delay after
lifting the stylus meets with user expectations and doesn't seem like the OS
is frozen? Have you met with the hardware team and verified that the lift
stylus event is 100% reliable so that temporarily disabling the home button
doesn't run the risk of permanently disabling the button? Are there potential
race conditions such that the stylus up/down events are received out of order?
If in-order reliable events can't be guaranteed 100% of the time, have you
implemented a suitable watchdog-style timer to catch the cases where the event
isn't properly received? Has _that_ been fully tested?

Did you update the specification documentation with your modifications so that
future developers can consult the updated specs in order to understand the
impact your home button changes may have on their area of the OS?

Or I guess you can slap in some two minute script and call it done, but I'm
glad you're not building my operating system.

~~~
rasz_pl
Process you described produced permanent hot corners that couldnt be disabled
(lower right one still cant, even in W8.1) and hardcoded inconsistent
WM_SYSKEY acting differently depending on application you run (ignores
bindings when Task Manager has focus).

Less choice is never a good strategy when it comes to UI.

btw there is a way of killing home button altogether for surface, might be
useful for Gabe [http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/microsoft-surface-faq-
gui...](http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/microsoft-surface-faq-
guides/3284-how-enable-disable-home-button.html)

~~~
kalleboo
> Less choice is never a good strategy when it comes to UI.

Apple has made quite a lot of money disagreeing with you there.

~~~
rasz_pl
Dont you mean despite? Look at gnome, look at W8. Targeting lowest common
denominator is not something I would strive for.

It took apple two years to finally deliver cut&paste on a phone. Were you
really happy about lack of it? Was it a good thing?

------
kyoji
Theres so much vitriol toward Microsoft in this thread regarding them "using"
Krahulik as a PR pawn in their nefarious marketing schemes. He has written
extensively about his experience using the Surface as a tool for professional
illustration work (and for recreation) in the past; his thoughts on the
Surface Pro 3 are not his first rodeo.

As someone who has been looking to buy a Surface for illustration work, it's
so encouraging to see Microsoft even engaging with Krahulik, since it
indicates to me that 'Artist' is a group of people they are actively pursuing,
and willing to cater their device toward. He is an accomplished artist, and
was a good pick to get feedback on this particular use of the device. It is
also great PR and goodwill for Microsoft, but Krahulik's concerns seemed very
genuine, and the fixes to them will benefit everyone like me who are looking
to use their Surface for the same purpose.

------
TwistedWeasel
It's admirable that MS is responding to criticism of their device and working
for a solution.

However, all the issues he experienced seem like they would be quite obvious
to anyone testing the device usage for any kind of drawing application (which,
for a device with a stylus seems like a common enough use case to be testing),
perhaps Microsoft needs to spend more time and effort on their QA process for
the next round of the Surface instead of playing catch up after release.

~~~
phaus
>It's admirable that MS is responding to criticism of their device and working
for a solution.

It is admirable, but their work towards a solution will be fruitless. N-Trig's
pressure sensitive stylus technology is vastly inferior to Wacom. Sure, most
people can't tell the difference, but most artists can. Sure, artists can
still produce professional quality work with an N-Trig stylus, but the
experience of using an N-Trig stylus is substandard.

Microsoft improved nearly every aspect of the Surface Pro 3, but their switch
to N-Trig was extraordinarily stupid. I'd rather have a slightly thicker,
slightly more expensive device than one with a less than perfect stylus. I
hope they continue to improve things by switching back to Wacom in the future.

~~~
cc_
The SP2 Wacom setup was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, in my
experience -- accuracy was terrible in the corners / near the edges, and
parallax was a serious issue, if you did not write/draw with the pen
perpendicular to the surface of the screen, there was a significant offset
from the tip of the pen to where the line was actually drawn. These were bad
enough to turn me (and at least one professional artist that I know) off from
buying one.

The move to N-Trig hypothetically fixes both of these. Early reviews/videos
say that corner accuracy is greatly improved, and the lack of a separate
digitizer layer allows a thinner optical stack, reducing parallax (and
allowing the device overall to be thinner).

Driver support has historically been an issue, but msft seems to be improving
things significantly.

There are fewer levels of sensitivity and hovering doesn't work quite as well,
but I am overall reasonably optimistic about the switch.

~~~
wlesieutre
Website is having some stylesheet trouble for me, but Surface Pro Artist says
they have a decent handle on the driver compatibility. The update isn't
generally released yet, but it's a significant fix.

[http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2014/6/9/n-trig-closing-
win...](http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2014/6/9/n-trig-closing-wintab-
compatibility-gap)

------
stcredzero
_It’s very hard to take something like how the device “feels” to draw on and
convert that into something engineers can use. I ended up describing it in
terms of speaking. I said drawing on the Pro 2 was like having a conversation
with someone. With the Surface Pro 3 I feel like I need to either whisper or
yell to have the same conversation. I had to press very lightly or very hard,
and it changes the way I draw. I was also able to show them some of the lag I
was noticing. They could all see me draw a line and watch it pop in a split
second later._

There is a reason why Wacom dominated its niche for so long, even in the face
of inexpensive asian knock-offs. (1) They had this stuff right. (2) Hackers
who are perceptive enough that they _don 't_ underestimate the difficulty of
getting this stuff right are a very small minority.

~~~
steele
In this context, who are the hackers?

"asian knock-offs" seems odd in this context. Wacom is a Japanese company.
Also, some inexpensive competitors like the monoprice-sold UC-Logic tablets
are generally well-received despite having to shove a battery into the pen to
avoid wacom's patented inductive coupling.

~~~
stcredzero
_In this context, who are the hackers?_

Programmers who tell themselves, "A stylus? Implementing that would be a piece
of cake!" (I have to admit I'm guilty of this exact thing myself.)

 _" asian knock-offs" seems odd in this context. Wacom is a Japanese company._

And I'm of Korean extraction. From what I've seen, the majority of the knock-
offs happen to be from asia. Those are the facts as I understand them. Your
"oddness" seems to be supposition.

~~~
steele
Which knock-off tablet and digitizers have you used?

The oddness is that Wacom is itself a Japanese company so even the 'original'
products are Asian from soup-to-nuts. I'm unclear on the relevancy of your
Korean extraction or what you believe I am supposing.

~~~
stcredzero
_The oddness is that Wacom is itself a Japanese company so even the 'original'
products are Asian from soup-to-nuts._

So, why is that odd? Is this some kind of racist pseudo logic that claims
asians can't knock off products of other asians?

 _I 'm unclear on the relevancy of your Korean extraction or what you believe
I am supposing._

I'm kind of unclear on the relevancy of this whole subthread. Currently, China
and other asian countries are doing what the US did in the 19th century:
engaging in rapidly expanding economic activity around manufacturing, much of
which plays fast and loose with IP laws and also disregards or abandons
certain aesthetic, design, and otherwise traditional concerns. "Asian
knockoff" is shorthand for countries playing the above economic role in the
early 21st century. As far as I can tell, you're sniffing around motivated by
the possibility of some kind of racially-based knee-jerk reaction to the term,
in a way that reminds me of certain people who are motivated by racially based
knee-jerks.

~~~
steele
Oh just put it back in the deck.

The relevancy is that the knock-offs aren't bad, considering the patent
situation, and [geographic region] knock-off doesn't make sense to specify
when the original is from that region and the competing products are largely
not made by companies based in Asia (Nokia, Logitech, Livescribe, etc).
Incidentally, the competing digitizers are quite the value if you can get over
the extra battery weight in the pen. Which, again is a result of abiding by
wacom's patent. In this case "Asian knockoff" is shorthand for you having no
idea what you're talking about.

I have used wacom products for over 10 years, my first being a graphire2 and
my most recent is the surface pro 2. The Microsoft default calibration is
better than the halfassed 4 point calibration offered with the wacom feel
drivers. The 273 point calibration to address the significant corner
distortion requires dropping to command line and 15 minutes of tapping in
hopes to get at all the tiny UI elements on the high res screen. Wacom is
imperfect and competent competitors benefit us all. And they are competent.

You probably hear this frequently, but your ethnicity has nothing to do with
this. If you actively declare your ethnicity while throwing around accusations
of race-baiting whenever someone highlights your baseless brand affinity, I'd
wager that you go through agonizing retail experiences.

~~~
stcredzero
_Oh just put it back in the deck._

Someone reading this who has a brain can easily figure out that you got it out
in the first place. I was only talking about geographic and economic
circumstances.

 _If you actively declare your ethnicity while throwing around accusations of
race-baiting whenever someone highlights your baseless brand affinity,_

Whatever. I was giving you a chance to "put the card back" but you blundered
ahead anyhow. Anyone reading this thread can see you open up with the race-
baiting question. Now you are upset because you were called out for it, and
it's there to read.

Exercise: Where do you try to use set-like precision where it's not
appropriate and wind up with racist pseudo logic, and what should one learn
from that?

Also, if this is really about "brand loyalty" from the beginning, why does it
take you so long in the thread to come out with brand-related evidence? Come
on now.

~~~
steele
Since you're interested in "anyone reading this thread" and you're doggedly
attached to leaving the race card at play, logout and take a gander at the
color of your replies. If anything, it's clear that "asian knock-off" is 6
additional keypresses to "knock-off", so the only shorthand opportunities I
see is to indicate that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Set-precision is unnecessary when the core issue is with reading comprehension
and ghost-chasing. You completely missed my point that knock-offs, Asian and
otherwise aren't bad; this was in the original reply and subsequent replies.
By brand related evidence do you mean my anecdotes about having used wacoms? I
figured additional context would help since I had previous addressed the
quality of competing products, which you decided to ignore in favor of
declaring your ethnicity and assorted other warblgarbl.

I don't believe "anyone reading this thread" would find race-baiting in my
questions: "who are the hackers?" and "which knock-off tablet and digitizers
have you used?"

Do you really consider announcing your ethnicity as an argument of authority
to legitimize your blanket use of "asian knock-off" as calling me out for a
race-baiting question? ha.

What you're interpreting as being upset is responding to your nonsense with
due diligence to clarify my points (a) the inexpensive knock-offs aren't bad
(b) the knock-offs aren't all Asian (c) however, wacom products are indeed
Asian.

And let's all just forget your bizarro use of the word hackers for wacom or
Microsoft employees. Guess that's what's cool these days; inform recruiting!

------
programminggeek
The one thing that nobody seems to appreciate when it comes to pushing forward
towards retina displays is just how many more pixels, how much more memory,
and how much slower everything is on the same hardware.

Yet, anyone who has ever been a gamer knows that changing your resolution has
a huge impact on your FPS.

It is foolish to think that Microsoft can make the screen much higher
resolution, have a similar chip, and not have serious performance problems in
terms of responsiveness.

I'm sure Microsoft can get a lot of this fixed and they will, but like the
smartphone revolution, sometimes you have to wait for hardware to catch up
with software or you have to write the software to take full advantage of the
hardware.

~~~
neltnerb
As someone who is not a gamer, I am curious -- why is it not the GPU that is
the most critical when talking about the FPS and refresh rate for things like
pen input? Is the issue that the CPU is "in the loop"? Is this a matter of the
built in graphics on the Haswell chips not being quite good enough for this
application, or is it actually the CPU?

I mostly wonder because I've found the improvements to the GPU in the Haswell
processors to be game changing. I can use Solidworks reasonably well on my
core i5 laptop! The idea of doing that with integrated graphics on any other
computer would have been laughable.

Will a faster CPU really improve this (i7 vs i5)? Or is it a matter of getting
a higher end GPU attached to the same CPU (i3 with more powerful integrated
GPU)?

~~~
rhizome
It's really a question of faster _motherboards_.

~~~
neltnerb
Wait, really? What is the bottleneck on the motherboard?

~~~
skyebook
The problem was traditionally the link between the northbridge (which connects
connects the CPU and RAM) and the southbridge (handles peripheral connections
like SATA, PCI, PCI-E, etc) components of the motherboard. Intel has now
changed their architecture in the last 4 or 5 years to be a single Platform
Controller Hub where the CPU provides the functionality previously found in
the northbridge chip.

In this particular case, a "faster motherboard" might have helped with pushing
updates to the GPU faster, though my guess is that graphics memory becomes the
concern with double the resolution (which in turn needs to have updates pushed
by the CPU, so it could help anyway)

~~~
danudey
In modern Intel processors (especially in portable devices), the GPU is
integrated on the CPU die, so pushing updates doesn't count (unless you count
pulling data from main memory to provide to the GPU).

------
imaginenore
Microsoft demoed 1ms touchscreen lag in 2012.

Most modern touchscreens still have 100ms lag.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4)

~~~
rasz_pl
This lag is in the software stack (mostly in UI graphics). Not in hardware.

Remember Androids ~>200ms sound lag?

~~~
imaginenore
Definitely not. Most of mobile software strives to run at 60fps. That's just
16.7ms.

~~~
rasz_pl
display animation at 60fps and react to a hardware input through layers and
layers of software abstraction are two different things.

Run of the mill 3M controller has 5ms latency

[http://datasheet.octopart.com/87-5961-211-3M-datasheet-21189...](http://datasheet.octopart.com/87-5961-211-3M-datasheet-21189709.pdf)

5 year old Fujitsu FMA1127 had 10ms.

[http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/MICRO/fme/tsc/FMA1127_Data_...](http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/MICRO/fme/tsc/FMA1127_Data_Sheet_FINAL_021209.pdf)

Interrupt latency is measured in nano seconds.

~~~
imaginenore
If you had read the PDF, 5ms is the "minimum touch time", which is not
latency, but a minimum touch time it can register.

The same software has no problem rendering complex games and doing all kinds
of game logic, all in 16.7ms. What makes you think asking for a touch input
will take 15 times longer?

~~~
rasz_pl
Actually its response time.

I already gave you an example of software stack impact on latency - Android
sound lag went down from >250ms to respectable 10ms for some Nexus devices.
Blame buffers.

~~~
imaginenore
> Actually its response time.

Actually, no, it isn't.

~~~
rasz_pl
"This controller is well known for its < 5.4 milliseconds response time"

------
throwawaykf05
Some people are wondering (here and on the previous post) how this problem
could have escaped usability testing. My guess is, Gabe seems to have a
somewhat unusual grip, so it's more than plausible nobody anticipated this
problem. I am not a professional artist, but I've been drawing for more than
two decades now. I also have an original Surface Pro because I really wanted
to get my hands on a Wacom that could do more than just draw. I've churned out
tons of sketches on it using Sketchbook Express.

When his first review of the Pro 3 came out, I could not understand why he had
problems with the home button. When I draw, my palm tends to rest on the lower
right corner of the screen. This is also how I've seen most other sketchers
draw. I could not position myself such that I'd hit where the home button on
the Pro 3 is.

However, I've also seen enough people write with really (to me) weird grips. I
imagine that it extends to drawing as well.

------
huhtenberg
Gotta really give it to Microsoft. The transformation of the company under
Nadella's leadership is really impressive. They really stepped up their game.
They finally got someone on the PR team that actually knows what they are
doing.

~~~
nether
Gabe was raving about the Surface even with Ballmer at MS. I guess now it's
time to credit anything good happening to Nadella's chairmanship.

~~~
virtue3
I was about to chime in on this. Yes, the surface got thrown at Gabe since the
getgo. He's been raving about it for a long time.

Which is surprising as he was using it as part of his major workflow for a
while over his cintiq.

------
pistle
So when Apple lets people test out a new language, and the author notes
important, but not universally demanded features, the tone is "It's amazing
how awesome Apple is. Can't wait to see how it works out."

When MS does something not wholly different, there's a bunch of "HarrrrUMPH!
They should have got this fixed already. It's such an obviously easy thing. If
they were half the company or any open source community was, they would try to
create something like a programming language!!"

Those contentious bones.

~~~
shinratdr
Those situations are so different from each other I'm honestly amazed you
wrote it, looked at it, and still thought it was a smart move to play that
card.

------
josefresco
Seems like a small niche to be focusing on. I understand the PR angle (it's a
home run for the PR team) but I don't think catering to artists who draw
digitally is going to make or break the tablet.

Where's the feel good story about the coder, the gamer, or the office junkie?
Each of which makes up a considerably larger slice of the premium
laptop/tablet marketplace.

~~~
adrianhoward
I dunno.

Not make or break maybe. Be a potentially big market - hella yeah.

The majority of design-ish people I know, including myself, would _kill_ for a
decent tablet drawing environment. Folk are already laying out for specialist
devices like [http://www.wacom.com/en/gb/creative/cintiq-24-hd-
touch](http://www.wacom.com/en/gb/creative/cintiq-24-hd-touch).

My iPad is cute and useful for many things. I do very rough sketch stuff on
it. For professional deign work it's pretty much useless. As somebody who's
been buying Apple kit since before Jobs return the surface is the first time
I've ever been tempted by Windows hardware.

I know many folk who walk around with a Macbook + iPad + wacom tablet. I can
see a lot of those folk switching if the Surface 3 worked well. I know lots of
long-term Apple folk who were _really_ tempted by the Surface 2.

The office junkies, coders and games have alternatives. Currently there is
almost nothing that does what the Surface 2/3 do, on the design side, in a
single device.

(I also imagine that the issues of stylus sensitivity & lag will apply to
other interaction models to. Getting those things to feel "natural" is non-
trivial. Pleasing the design folk will probably make it better for other peeps
too.)

~~~
prawn
Was a Windows user but have a MBP now. I follow the Surface reports with
interest entirely because of the apparent quality of stylus input. Getting a
Wacom is my likely path at this point though.

------
ajessup
OP, surprised that MS (as with any large company) didn't require you to sign
an NDA to not discuss unannounced features during development. Bold (and
encouraging) move on their part if they didn't.

~~~
itafroma
> OP, surprised that MS (as with any large company) didn't require you to sign
> an NDA to not discuss unannounced features during development

Mike Krahulik has been a fan of Surface Pro from the beginning,[1] has been
very vocal about what he likes and dislikes, and has a very large audience.[2]
It seems likely they were counting on him blogging his experiences as soon as
possible after his last Surface Pro post,[3] which had some fairly negative
points that made using the new Surface Pro difficult (if not impossible) for
him.

[1]: [http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/02/22/the-ms-
surf...](http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/02/22/the-ms-surface-pro)

[2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Arcade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Arcade)

[3]: [http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/05/23/surface-
pro...](http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/05/23/surface-pro-3)

~~~
Einstalbert
Microsoft keeping Gabe happy with the surface line is probably one of their
top 5 PR priorities for the devices. I am not surprised by this post in the
least, but I am glad that Gabe is going to get something he can use for his
work.

~~~
mahyarm
Gabe being in Seattle also makes it pretty easy to interact with him.

------
steele
Surface Pro is very interesting from a product management perspective. Surface
Pro 1 satisfied this niche, and Surface Pro 2 improved upon the first model
significantly. Surface Pro 3 addresses many of the form factor concessions of
the previous model (aspect ratio, thickness) which would make it theoretically
more palatable to the mainstream use cases -- however, the N-Trig digitizer
and button placement hardware decisions makes this less appealing to that
aforementioned niche.

BUT, you don't have to update. People that found great use in SP1+2, have very
little incentive to upgrade for several reasons. Short cycles and price aside,
the dilemma is now whether this niche can even commit to buying or recommend a
SP2 or Surface Pro accessories even prices drop because SP3 is a clear signal
of a significant form factor change. The frankly necessary blade accessories
are now fragmented between form factors and the older form will not likely be
supported going forward.

------
jychang
Great to see Microsoft listening to issues with the Surface and attempting to
fix them. Hopefully they can polish it up into a machine that can be
competitive in the market.

~~~
dublinben
It sounds like it's already competitive in the market of nerds who draw
cartoons on their computers, and need to be mobile. The Wacom Cintiq is
probably much better for serious drawing, though you give up the portability
of a self-contained tablet computer.[1] I'm not sure the Surface will succeed
in any markets other than that though. It just solve any common problems
significantly better than the alternatives.

[1]
[http://www.wacom.com/en/us/creative/cintiq-13-hd](http://www.wacom.com/en/us/creative/cintiq-13-hd)

~~~
dman
I think it has pretty good potetial in hospitals, education and insurance
where ability to take notes is important. Especially the use case where you
are expected to stand and jot down things on a tablet sized device.

~~~
dublinben
Those enterprises have already been well satisfied by the convertible tablets
from Lenovo, Fujitsu, Panasonic, etc. for years. I don't think the Surface
will make much headway into those fields, beyond the few people who are
literally working in the field and not in offices.

~~~
dman
I think the surface form factor is much slimmer than the bulky things I see in
the hospital. This might be to the convertible tablets what Ipad was to the
tablets before it.

------
richardlblair
When MS is cornered (when they are losing in one area or another), and they
are determined to win the competition should be scared. They are very good at
committing to a project, and being in it for the long haul.

~~~
mikestew
> They are very good at committing to a project, and being in it for the long
> haul.

How so? I can think of several projects ( _especially_ hardware) that they
abandoned after the first version. Granted, they gave the Zune a fair shake
(though I don't think the iPod had much to be scared of). SPOT, too,
considering that smart phones were starting to get useful about a year after
SPOT's release.

But as a counter example, I know of one unreleased hardware product they're
working on right now that stands little chance of going beyond V1 due to
(without inappropriately saying too much) a lack of commitment on MSFT's part.
Could be that in this case they're not "determined to win", but I'm not in a
position to know how determined they are.

~~~
rlu
There are plenty of examples of Microsoft releasing a product which initially
had little uptake but that eventually, after several releases, did well. Even
big ones like Windows, Office, and SQL Server are examples of this.

As for unreleased products: I think that is an orthogonal discussion.

------
BigChiefSmokem
Why don't they just take off the Windows button? Can't you just swipe in from
the right side of the screen to see the on-screen version? There's a Windows
button in the task bar as well.

~~~
kevingadd
It's more or less like the home button on an iPhone or iPad. Gestures are
good, but there are scenarios where you can't easily use them or a novice user
won't know about them. The Start button doesn't always show up in Desktop
scenarios.

Also, I think you can use it to wake a device from sleep?

------
jtuente
TBH, as soon as I saw the change from a Wacom digitizer to N-Trig's I cringed.
I don't know what differences there are between the technologies they each
use, but Wacom's is definitely more responsive on the whole. I like that they
aren't using a 16:9 aspect ratio for the screen, but the switch away from
Wacom kept me from making the Surface an automatic purchase.

~~~
jodrellblank
Did you see [http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2014/5/27/microsoft-
address...](http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2014/5/27/microsoft-addresses-n-
trig-concerns-in-reddit-response) ?

------
i_am_ralpht
Interesting that the Surface Pro 2 did so much better in terms of "feel" and
"lag". I wonder if the switch to the nTrig panel is behind the regression (I
have an old HP TX2 with an nTrig panel; it was always terrible, but maybe
they've improved since then...).

------
mukundmr
Why would people want to use a Surface Pro3 as a drawing tablet? What is the
target consumer for this device? The last time I played with the device, it
was running regular Windows apps on a small screen and it was a nightmare
getting the menus and buttons right. If applications have to be tailored for
the Surface, how will they work on the desktop?

~~~
freehunter
The Surface Pro 3 has a 12 inch screen compared to the Surface Pro 2's 10 inch
screen and the Macbook Air's 11 inch screen, so the real estate is improved by
quite a bit. It gets expensive to find a larger screen with a digitizer, and
the guys from PA are on the road quite a bit so I'd imagine portability
counts.

------
hyp0
Microsoft bringing protoypes to the PA offices seems about as expected as this
Dave Barry line:

    
    
      giant talking broccoli stalks will come around and mow your lawn, for free
    

Touchscreen latency is difficult, especially with increasing resolution. But
if they managed it acceptably for the SP 2, it must be possible, I guess.

------
milhous
What Microsoft should do is bring more artistic people into the Surface team,
perhaps engineers with artistic abilities, and by doing exactly what they did
for Gabe: study how artists work. The end result is a much better product
without the need for a post-mortem scramble.

------
zerny
It's good to see tech companies like Microsoft and Apple trying to make the
artists happy, not forgetting every human being has their own artistic side.
The last sentence is very inspiring, though.

------
wfunction
I hope he's getting paid for his time. MS should really be hiring him.

~~~
nacs
He probably gets paid in the form of free Surface tablets and accessories.

------
agrias
No one should be surprised Microsoft is trying to do their best to improve the
Surface and converse with customers. They are great at requirements gathering.
However all of this is their job and not solely out of good will. As a huge
company that makes grand promises, they are expected to deliver a product that
works for their customers. Would you expect any less?

As customers we should care about the best products that help us achieve our
end goal. If you absolutely have to give your 'loyalty' to a company, your
'loyalty' should be given (in my opinion) to the company that is predictable,
consistent, and reliable.

------
thisjepisje
Sounds to me like they just hadn´t thought about this use case deep enough.
Good to see they´re doing something about it, and with some nice publicity at
that.

------
dharma1
I'm kind of surprised they didn't run these type of tests BEFORE releasing
surfae 3 pro

------
megablast
This is going to be great SP4 is going to work great for Gabe.

But surely these changes were made for a reason?

------
golergka
> I could see some of them shaking their heads and looking at each other. They
> were very obviously bothered that they had not seen this before.

Why I can't imagine Apple being in such a situation?

------
laichzeit0
It looks ugly as hell. I would never want to be seen using something like
that.

------
gcb0
if anything, this is a testament to why closed source software is dead.

Spend $1000+ on a device. it doesn't do what you want? get world famous and
complain. have a team of engineers fix it for you. ...right.

Almost everything i hated on my first android phone i fixed it myself or
lazily waited for someone else to fix it... yeah, it took a year or so to have
it how i liked. My new phone, if i install any custom ROM i will lose some of
the new hardware functionality, so i can't. i have to wait for the company to
fix the annoyances i have, which i am pretty sure will be never. sadly i don't
have the time to make the new hardware work because that is a retarded huge
amount of time you need to waste.

------
listic
And I was going to use a Surface Pro tablet with Ubuntu Linux.

If even Microsoft cannot make the device work right the first time around,
even while apparently trying hard, I wonder how bad will the situation be on
Linux. Still going to try; maybe later, when touch support on Ubuntu will be
more ready and Surface Pro's will drop in price on eBay (I'm thinking of going
with 256MB+ Surface Pro 2, unless they will make a newer generation of smaller
tablets)

------
ebbv
So if you're a famous millionaire the Surface Pro 3 is the device for you, and
Microsoft will make sure to fix all your problems with it.

Hooray?

~~~
steele
It is probably a stretch to call Mike Krahulik a famous millionaire. Microsoft
used his art in their recent ad campaigns, which itself was a response to a
prior unsolicited positive writeup on their product. So it is perfectly
reasonable that they get his feedback (albeit far too late). Not all the
problems were fixed, and I suspect some of the problems can't really be fixed
given the hardware that is being shipped. To some degree this is damage
control on the part of Microsoft, because on his initial impressions with SP3,
Krahulik was clear that he could not recommend this to illustrators with a
similar workflow -- most of which are not famous millionaires.

~~~
ebbv
How is it a stretch? He's a millionaire, there's no denying that.

Sure mainstream people might not know who he is but in tech circles literally
everyone does. So how is he not famous?

I'd challenge you to find a more high profile person using Surface 3 and
giving their public thoughts on it.

So, my comment stands; if you are a famous millionaire then it's the product
for you apparently, because Microsoft will actually fix your complaints.
Otherwise, good luck.

~~~
steele
He is well-known in gaming circles moreso than tech circles (there is some
overlap of course), and I can't confirm or deny he is a millionaire; frankly I
have no idea. Famous has an imprecise definition; but as you conceded,
"mainstream people" might not know who he is. This is why I consider it a
stretch to call him a famous millionaire; I'd hesitate to use the same label
used for Cliff Bleszinski or Paul Graham. Krahulk is influential in specific
areas, but famous millionaire as the frame seems like a personal issue you're
projecting.

And regarding your challenge to find a more high profile person using the SP3
-- it is not released yet. The only people giving public thoughts on it are
tech reviewers and Microsoft employees. In that regard, Microsoft used
Krahulik's works on their website, so he may very well have augmented his
millionaire's gold coin swimming pool with Microsoft money. Despite this,
Krahulik still plainly voiced criticisms of the SP3 product, and Microsoft's
surface team addressed this feedback in positive way. Of course, they want to
leverage his influence. The impacted users would all theoretically benefit. I
doubt that the result will be that he alone is getting a Krahulik hotpatch for
personal use.

As a developer working with vendor software, I too get prerelease access and
are offered an avenue to submit problems I find to the vendor. The primary
differences here are that I am strongly discouraged by the vendor to share my
experiences with prerelease software.

Lastly, Microsoft showed him that they can address somethings, but he was
clear that issues remain. By contrast, the product team didn't respond with a
suggestion to "just avoid holding it in that way".

------
AdmiralAsshat
If memory serves, he was sent a Surface Pro 2 by Microsoft. And a Surface Pro
3. I don't recall if he was given the original Pro or if he bought that one
himself.

Either way, I would view his endorsement and any other interaction with
Microsoft with a shaker of salt; this is not at all dissimilar from the
multitude of celebrities whom Samsung sends the latest Galaxy phone in a swag
bag in order to get a "I wasn't paid off, I just really like it!" endorsement.
His celebrity status commands him a certain amount of influence for whatever
judgment he proclaims on the Surface (note, for instance, how every post he
makes about it ends up on the front page of HN). I can guarantee if the same
points were raised by a normal person who paid for the thing on their tumblr
blog, there would not be a team of Microsoft engineers rushing to fix them.

