>"Finally, and perhaps a contributor to my decision to return the Surface Pro, the recent browser usage statistics from New Relic show that IE is down to a paltry 14.8% share across more than 2 million application instances. If that’s not a signal that Microsoft's role as THE predominant client is beyond repair I don't know what is."
I don't see how IE's browser share is relevant to the Surface Pro or Windows as a client OS. Windows Vista, the disowned stepchild, even has a higher market share than OS X[1].
For the record, I have a Surface Pro as my daily workhorse. I do everything from classes to work, programming to statistical modeling to Photoshop. It has issues, but overall I enjoy it. The only thing it completely fails at is Adobe CS, as they refuse to fix issues with high DPI Windows screens and their custom interfaces. This article doesn't even touch on the merits of the device itself, or using it for anything.
I also had a fantastic experience with the Microsoft Store, as I accidentally broke my Pen within a few hours of getting it (my fault), and it only took a 10 minute call to get a new one sent out Next Day shipping for free. Most of that was confirming the issue was the pen, and not the computer (to know which needed a replacement).
Since I believe the browser and apps are the future of most clients browser share was a small contributor in deciding whether to keep or return a device design that wasn't working for the "way I compute.
The device design not working for you is understandable. It does have some unexpected/unusual quirks owing to it's form.
But I still don't see the correlation between a single browser share and the fate of the client OS. With things such as the Browser Choice window for EU installs[1], it's understandable that the decoupling of IE from Windows would result in a market share decline for the browser. Even while declining, IE still has twice the browser share of Safari[2]. And although I can't find free aggregated stats that let you dice browser percentages by OS, my own analytics accounts show Chrome being roughly twice as popular on Macs than Safari. That doesn't mean OS X is doomed and everyone should move to Chromebooks...
I don't see how IE's browser share is relevant to the Surface Pro or Windows as a client OS. Windows Vista, the disowned stepchild, even has a higher market share than OS X[1].
For the record, I have a Surface Pro as my daily workhorse. I do everything from classes to work, programming to statistical modeling to Photoshop. It has issues, but overall I enjoy it. The only thing it completely fails at is Adobe CS, as they refuse to fix issues with high DPI Windows screens and their custom interfaces. This article doesn't even touch on the merits of the device itself, or using it for anything.
I also had a fantastic experience with the Microsoft Store, as I accidentally broke my Pen within a few hours of getting it (my fault), and it only took a 10 minute call to get a new one sent out Next Day shipping for free. Most of that was confirming the issue was the pen, and not the computer (to know which needed a replacement).
[1] http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share....