This is why projects like Cyanogen or Replicant or Paranoid Android are important, and why I always buy Android devices with unlocked bootloaders. Preferrably Qualcom ones, since freedreno is pretty much the only good Android reverse engineered GPU driver.
You simply do not control your Surface / iOS hardware. You have no power over it. You cannot run what you want on it, and you are stuck with the operating system given you, with any changes they make. You are completely at their mercy.
It is probably a nightmare world for Richard Stallman to know people eagerly line up to buy these things.
Well I bought the iPad back when there weren't really any good android tablets out, and now I can't really justify the purchase of a new tablet. I watch movies and game on my tv or pc, read on my kindle, and work on my laptop. The only thing I use the iPad for is to Facetime with my wife when I'm traveling for work, and only because it seems to work marginally better than skype on crappy hotel wifi.
You simply do not control your Surface / iOS hardware. You have no power over it. You cannot run what you want on it, and you are stuck with the operating system given you, with any changes they make. You are completely at their mercy.
It is probably a nightmare world for Richard Stallman to know people eagerly line up to buy these things.