J.D. Power:
Microsoft ranks highest in overall satisfaction in the J.D. Power 2017 U.S. Tablet Satisfaction Study, doing so for the first time since the study’s inception. With an overall satisfaction score among tablet owners of 855 (on a 1,000-point scale), Microsoft’s achievement is largely due to its top rankings in the features and styling & design factors.
In features, Microsoft is the highest performer in three areas: variety of pre-loaded applications; internet connectivity; and availability of manufacturer-supported accessories.
This is actually very good news. It means there’s competition in the tablet space. Competition breeds better tablets for all of us. And, make no mistake, Apple’s iPad still ranks very high in this study.
Interesting. My friends with Surface devices seem to live in a perpetual state of frustration with them.
Also surprising that it rates so highly as a tablet, what with them being significantly heavier and with such poor battery life.
My take: When Apple promotes or advertises iPad, they advertise tablets in general. It’s a generic trademark. So, Microsoft wins. The iPad is not unique enough to stand apart, and this is because of stalled development. The iPad Pro has essentially been frozen since introduction, no new features since its introduction 1.5 years ago and certainly not unique or compelling apps. You really have to wonder what those 100,000s of folks at Apple actually DO all day.
And once again Microsoft is “commercialising” Apple stuff, just like they did 25 years ago. Apple invents it, polishes it, perfects it. Microsoft tweaks it so it’s good enough for mass consumption. It’s like Apple has a weird blindside. Google did it with Android vs iOS too.
Wow I find this unbelievable. My company has a few Surface Pros and every time we try to deploy them, the users send them back because they don’t like them. I would REALLY like to see one of these satisfied users and see how they use the surface to actually do anything except fight with the UI.
I use a 12.9″ iPad Pro on a daily basis and LOVE it! It just destroys a Surface Pro in every way. And it just got even faster with 10.3. Also, Apple employees are working on future stuff, like AR/VR.
So a 0.6% difference in user satisfaction.
Uh, Apple’s strength arguably isn’t in outright inventing stuff, but in polishing things and making them popular to the masses. Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player, smart phone, tablet, or smart watch, but their takes on each of those markets became the de facto device to beat in varying degrees.
I love mine, except the endemic, insoluble sleep problems, so I set it to hibernate instead, which is less ideal.
As for “heavier and battery life”, well, it’s a different category of tablet than an iPad, in any sane world.
The i7 and 8-16 gigs of memory is like that, after all.
(I also have an iPad Mini 2, which I also love.)
When was the last time the Surface Pro 4 was updated?
Oh. Right. About 18 months ago, when it was first released.
What are all those people at MS doing, if not updating one recent high-end product that doesn’t need yearly updates?!?!
(And the iPad doesn’t need to “stand apart” by being “unique”.
It is a really good tablet, in a completely different category than the Surface.
I own and love both.)
Might the problem be how they’re configured/deployed/used in that specific case?
I have a personal one I like just fine – the UI is pure Windows 10, nothing different from a “not tablet”.
(Nobody except maybe artists seems to use them as “tablets” rather than “laptops with a very thin cover”; people trying to use it as a literal tablet, well, probably a bad idea.
Though I can’t imagine what the corporate deployment story for that would be.)
From the conclusions published by JD Power “[…] Microsoft Surface users have the highest incidences of accessory use, which underscores the device’s versatility. […]”
So this means that people “borderline” need accessories to use the device… Funny I interpret this as not being such a good thing in a tablet…
FWIW, I’m about 3-4 apps or iOS upgrades away from making my iPad Pro my mobile computer. I can already do quite a lot of podcasting work on it, actually. It’s so close, I’ve actually put off purchasing a MacBook.
So, I have to argue with that “not compelling” statement, at least in my case. Although, Apple writers/podcasters like Myke Hurley and Jason Snell are almost there as well, so I’m not alone.
i cannot believe that after all these years, Windows machines still struggle so hard with a simple thing like sleep-mode. every work PC notebook I’ve ever used had & has the same issue, leaving a full hibernate shut-down as the only viable option. why. why can Macs sleep so fine, sometimes for weeks on end, wake up in seconds and be good to go….but win machines still can’t?!
Only if you’re being silly. Go take a look at the Apple jobs site to get an idea of what theyre all doing. I just scrolled thru 600+ job descriptions for software programming alone.
But oh, no new features you can see right now — they must be playing Quake all day, right!? smh
Wait what? The iPad Pro was Apple’s response to the Surface. The Surface was a lightweight laptop/tablet chimera and the iPad Pro was Apple’s entry after Microsoft created the market. Like big smartphones, this was a segment Apple ignored and teased their competitors about right before they jumped in.
Actually, Ive was quite clear in his New Yorker article — they had been building large phones since the 4, but found them too clunky until they could get the shell nice and thin.
The only reason the iPhone knockoffs went big is because they couldn’t get adequate battery life with their crappy processors w/o going w/ big batteries.
I’d argue that for those reasons alone, an i7 and 8-16 GB RAM are features that make a good laptop, but certainly not a good tablet.
That’s revisionist history. Jobs said multiple times no one wants a big phone and then 4 inches was perfect because of one handed use.
https://9to5mac.com/2014/09/09/the-iphone-5-ad-that-apple-wants-you-to-forget/
I always figured Apple was disappointed when the market chose big phones.
Nobody had a chance of catching up to Apple when phones were small and getting smaller. Their expertise was miles ahead in creating a balance of miniaturization, battery life and performance.
Any old schmuck can make a fast phone with decent battery life if they make it big. (See all the Huaweis and Xiaomis etc.)
I think that’s the reason why Apple keeps pressing the thinness race today.
Which I find awfully suspect. The Surface may be a good laptop, but it’s an aggravating tablet.
This is like finding an article about laptop satisfaction and the iPad Pro getting top marks.
I find it very suspect as well. To say the criteria were skewed would be an understatement.
Perhaps Jobs was referring to Trump. A 4″ phone is perfect fit for his small hands. 😉
I still think 4″ is absolutely the right size for a phone.
And for it’s worth, I think all indications are pointing to 9.7″ as indeed the right size for iPad too.
I’ve considered getting one, but I’ve read about people having problems with sleep (Sigivald here seems to be having that problem). It’s astonishing that such a problem cropped up at all — and even moreso that it hasn’t been fixed. There would be insurrection (and lawsuits with more zeroes than I could write without getting a cramp) if that was happening with Macs or iPads.
Yet a Surface is no more compute demanding than my MBP, and I get 10 hours easily out of my battery. Why do people have lower standards just because it’s a Windows machine. The sleep issue and the battery life are the main things that prevent me from trying one of these things.
But on the bright side there was iOS 10 which added… uh… never mind.
I have a 12.9″ iPad Pro too and love it. But it’s foolish to say it “destroys the Surface Pro in every way.” Most ways, maybe. The ways that matter to you, surely. But the Surface Pro can run apps like Photoshop, Maya, Modo, and ZBrush. The middle two maybe it doesn’t run ideally because they like a good GPU, but ZBrush runs off the CPU, not the GPU, so a Surface Pro might very well be an acceptable platform. The iPad is great, but there aren’t any equivalent apps and probably won’t ever be, with the way the App Store works.
Well, to be fair, the iPad Pro was Apple’s response to the problem artists were having with using styli — which predated the Surface Pro. And I think you’re getting a bit over the top in your second sentence. Microsoft bungled the tablet market, having tried very hard for years and years and years to get people interested in tablets. The iPad came out and the market was electrified. Even though Microsoft may have imagined that market and desired that market, they didn’t create it. Apple did, by releasing the iPad. (And if you want to say MS deserves credit for being first, I lived through that era and remember Palm and Go and a little thing called Newton. MS came after all those others and simply persisted after they were gone. And people with no memory gave them credit for being first). Back on track: the Surface was MS’s attempt to copy the iPad with what they had — a desktop OS. They were caught flat-footed. They made it and then they said they’d make a tablet OS, found they couldn’t, and then modified Windows. Now, I applaud them for what they’ve done, but please don’t try to revise history too much. Some of us were there.
So, of the Windows enthusiasts who chose a Surface because they’d sooner be caught dead than seen using an iPad, they’re really happy with Surface. Got it.
Well, really that’s not a surprise, is it? How many people own a Surface Pro without one of those keyboard covers. So I guess SP has a 100% use. I wonder if the trick is that JD Powers counts keyboard covers but not regular covers as and accessories. (Yes, I was too lazy to check)
That part’s not particularly surprising. What’s surprising is that apparently they are really happy with the Surface as a tablet.
What a masochistic bunch!
Lower standards. You may be onto something there.
Palm and the Newton were PDAs rather than full tablets like the EO Communicator. Though Windows for Pen Computing came out before the Newton, but after PenPoint.
My point was not that MS was first, but that MS saw the recent market niche for the hybrid tablet/PC that Apple went after with their iPad Pro. To say that Apple is just targeting artists with their iPad Pro and not looking for more enterprise hybrid PC uses is ignoring Apple’s entire current iPad marketing campaign. iPad Pro’s current push is a shot across the Surface’s bow.
I love my iPad mini’s size.
The iPad Pro isn’t a hybrid. It’s just a better tablet.
I have a question. The Surface has a high satisfaction rate. But where are the apps for the tablet side? What is the selection of apps for the Surface on the tablet side? I get that it’s a PC… Please enlighten me.
Also each store has a serious number of employees. So the vast number of employees are involved on the sales / in store tech support side and very good they are at that job too.
Uh, no, not convinced JD Power knows anything about anything. What I do get from this is that JDP is willing to sell this award to the highest buyer.
Sometimes I wish Apple would play the lobby game a bit better, but they’d have to compromise their integrity in doing so, and I like where they are with their integrity.
The only way Apple will accept defeat by this competitor is to acknowledge that these differences are truly superior to their approach and philosophy. No, Apple’s much smarter than that.
Perhaps, Apple should sponsor The Loop to hold their own annual award competition.
I have problems with sleep not because sleep doesn’t work, but because the power button is too easy to press and thus the computer comes out of sleep in a bag.
Maybe people who buy it knows that it’s not a good tablet and thus buys it just to use desktop apps on it in a tablety form factor? This self selects people who don’t care about tablet apps.
Here’s the thing. This is a tablet survey. Also everyone who rates it claims it’s better than Apple’s gear because it’s a 2 in 1. If one side of that equation is a tablet that has no apps then how is that a 2 in 1 and what are the advantages?
Alternatively it’s just a laptop. Not entirely sure what the advantages are in that case.
The Surface is lighter than an iPad and a MacBook. Remember that Apple’s Surface-type solution is both an iPad and a MacBook.
The appeal of Surface is it is an “iPad Pro that runs Mac apps.” That is very appealing, so it is no surprise that Surface is doing well in customer satisfaction. The same grin that Tim Cook had for iPhone+iPad and nothing else is what creative people get with iPhone+Surface and nothing else. It is the same idea that when you have to go bigger than a phone, you go to a device that has everything you need to work all day long. That is a very natural 2017 idea, 10 years after iPhone. Apple doesn’t have a device like that because iPad can’t run Apple’s PC apps, it can only run Apple’s phone apps.
The highlight of Adobe’s touch apps used to be mini versions of Photoshop and Illustrator for iPads. Now, touch features are appearing in the full-size Creative Suite apps. It’s 10 years after iPhone. Very natural to see that. But if Apple is behind Adobe in some new PC feature, that is really abysmal.
Apple just announced that they are doing an all-new Mac Pro to replace the trash can, and that the new system will include an Apple display. I hope they will not just rectify the GPU mistake and trash can mistake but also the touch mistake. I hope that the new Mac Pro display is a 5K touch screen that sits at any angle so it can replace a drafting table, an audio mixer, video editing controller, and musical instruments without having to plug-in a ton of external devices or use tiny iPad screens for touch. We can hook up 3 or 4 external non-touch vertical displays these days if necessary and as required. That is cheap. That is nothing. What is really needed out-of-the-box with a Mac Pro for 2018 is to get all 10 fingers involved in our 8–12 hours per day of work and enable our creative software to grow and adapt for the 2020’s (less than 1 Mac lifetime away now.) The mechanical keyboard, the mouse, and the trackpad should all be optional extras you can only buy individually at the stores if you happen to be someone who needs them for some reason. The desktop systems should come with just a big touchscreen out-of-the-box. That is the part that everyone needs. The keyboard is for maybe 50% of users. The mouse/trackpad is for 10% of users. The important thing is the touchscreen for Mac Pro in 2018. Same as the important thing was the touchscreen for iPhone in 2007 and iPad in 2010.
I heard one of the Apple people saying how most of their pro users are software developers, which might lead you to think they need a keyboard/mouse Mac Pro since developers type so much. But notice that Mac/iOS software developers are Mac/iOS software developers because they want to build apps for creative people and the most cutting-edge technologies. So if Apple builds a pro Mac that is has a 5K touch screen and is made for video editing, audio editing, music, graphics, all out-of-the-box with no additional hardware because of the touchscreen, then Mac/iOS software developers will fall all over themselves to buy that system and make software for it. And they will be able to use touch to make Swift animations and better user interfaces or explore new coding paradigms where you multitouch-drag blocks of code together in an improvisational way like a DJ. All the things that made iPhone and iPad great for business people and casual users are waiting in the ether to be applied to creative users and to workstation computing.
The one way that you are wrong is iPad Pro does not run Adobe Creative Suite. Other than that, I agree with you. My brother is just as happy with his iPad Pro as you are.
There are many great iPad apps, but if you are a Creative Cloud user, you want any device bigger than an iPad mini to just login to Creative Cloud and run your Photoshop and Illustrator or your After Effects and Premiere or whatever. Especially if that device has a pen, because the above 4 apps are all pen apps since their earliest incarnations and it is a huge drag to rig a Mac for pen use. It forces you to sit at a desk, for one thing.
When you see Microsoft advertising their Surface devices to “creatives” they are basically advertising them to people who have Adobe Creative Cloud accounts. Which is a ton of people. And they are having success because Apple’s approach to graphic arts is stuck in 2006. Today, we expect a graphics tablet to have a built-in PC and login to Creative Cloud over the Internet, and work by itself on a plane. In 2006, we expected a graphics tablet to sit on a desk and plug-in to a MacBook Pro or Mac Pro or iMac. That is what you still have to do today if you are a Mac user and you rely everyday on pen apps.
So it is not that I prefer a Surface Pro over iPad Pro. It is just that iPad Pro is literally incompatible with my daily work.
Surface Pro tablet apps are all the classic pen tablet apps from Mac/PC history:
Apple did not invent the tablet — they invented the mobile tablet. The non-mobile tablet is like 50 years old or something. I haven’t used a mouse with my Mac for at least 20 years now. I use a pen all the time for everything because it is literally 10x faster.
So iPad Pro is a mobile pen tablet and Surface Pro 4 is a non-mobile pen tablet. If you go back into the evolutionary history of Surface Pro, it does not devolve into an iPad or iPhone — it devolves into a Wacom graphics tablet sitting on a desk, plugged into a Mac or Windows PC with an optical disc drive that can run Adobe installer discs. The Surface Pro 4 puts the PC inside the graphics tablet, swaps the optical disc installers for Adobe Creative Cloud (or AutoDesk equivalent, and so on) and somehow still shrinks down to the size and weight of iPad Pro.
That is what is making things confusing: the iPad Pro is supposed to be the miniature mobile version of full-size PC Surface Pro, but Surface Pro is as small and light as iPad Pro.
You fundamentally don’t understand what Surface Pro is. That is the confusion.
Surface Pro is not just a laptop — it is fundamentally a graphics tablet first and foremost. The PC just happens to be built-in for convenience and because PC guts have shrunk so small. The main attraction with Surface Pro is the pen and touchscreen. Earlier iterations of Surface Pro -class devices needed to be plugged into a Mac or PC, and earlier iterations still did not have a built-in screen. These devices go back over 25 years. Surface Pro does not descend from iPads — it descend from the Macs of the desktop publishing era.
The Surface Pro does not have “no apps.” It has all the pen tablet apps from the Mac and Windows. It runs Adobe Creative Cloud, which features some of the most sophisticated and oldest pen tablet apps like Photoshop and Illustrator (I have been running both of those apps daily for over 20 years on a Mac using a pen, not a mouse.) Many people buy Surface Pro as though it was named “Adobe Creative Cloud Tablet.” They buy it, they login to Creative Cloud, they run Photoshop and Illustrator with the pen on a plane. That is the primary use of Surface Pro. Surface Pro is a Mac graphics workstation that has been shrunken down over 25 years until it is as small and lightweight as an iPad Pro. On the other hand, iPad Pro is an iPhone that has grown up into an awesome consumer PC that features some of the most amazing apps in the world like GarageBand for iOS. So these are very different devices. That is why the lack of built-in pen and touch in today’s Mac lineup is so disappointing. It is like if Apple had not put Wi-Fi into their notebooks by 2010 and was telling you if you want Wi-Fi get an iPhone. It’s a sad joke.
They really should be separate categories, but Apple caused the confusion by making a 12-inch device with “Pro” in its name and a digital pen but which can’t run 99% of the world’s pen apps. And iPad Pro is so big, it is as big as the Surface Pro, which the iPad is supposed to be the mobile version of. And almost as expensive.
I think 10 years from now, we will look back at Apple introducing a 12-inch pen tablet that can’t run Adobe Creative Suite as a gigantic act of incompetence and the 2012–2017 Macs will be laughed at for their absurd fetishizing of the mouse/trackpad.
If you can make it work with just an iPhone and iPad, that is a huge win because you lose a lot of needless complexity and you can put your energy into learning and using accessories like audio mixing gear that are focused on your core work.
The thing is, though: it is crazy to think that everybody can do that. You are in a luxurious position.
Consider that there are like a billion iOS devices, and they all can do some very sophisticated image editing that used to require Adobe Photoshop. Logically, you might think that the number of Photoshop users would go down, but instead it has gone up. There are more Adobe Photoshop users now than ever before. Not talking about the baby iOS version, but the full Photoshop that requires a Mac or PC and a digital pen. More popular than ever.
That is because for some of us, the equivalent to your iPhone+iPad setup would be iPhone+iPad+MacPad. There are whole industries that run on apps that only run on Mac/PC and show zero sign of coming to iPad or iPhone. So we need the Mac to start evolving again. It’s not acceptable for Apple to use stories like yours as an excuse for leaving millions and millions of Mac users on hardware that is essentially unchanged since iPhone 3G. Unibody is literally the last change to the Mac that was future-looking and it is almost 10 years ago. Everything else that has been done to the Mac since is copied from iOS or has since been renounced by Apple (trash can with dual GPU’s and no touch screen.)
Every phone since iPhone is a copy of iPhone, no matter what the screen size. There is literally nothing innovative, creative, or interesting about changing the screen size on a device. That is the same as saying your CPU is twice as fast 2 years later. It is expected. From the day the first iPhone was introduced, we could easily postulate that 10 years later, there would be a range of screen sizes. What is surprising is how few screen sizes have worked, not that there is more than one screen size of touch computer.
Surface Pro is a graphics tablet with a computer in it. This is the 2010’s trend in graphics tablets. The 2000’s trend was getting built-in screens, and this decade they are getting the rest of the computer. What goes along with this is Adobe switching from CD/DVD to Creative Cloud, so you can buy a Surface Pro and within minutes you have Photoshop installed and are doing magazine-style retouching with the digital pen. So Microsoft did not invent or innovate in any way in the overall concept of Surface Pro. It is just a 2010’s graphics tablet. The only reason it seems exotic at all is that Apple has artificially stranded the Mac in 2008. So you look at Surface Pro as a descendant of iPad but it is a descendant of the Mac. It comes out of desktop publishing on the Mac, with Wacom pens and Adobe software.
If iPad Pro is Apple’s response to Surface Pro, then sell your Apple stock. Because if they don’t understand that 99% of the reason that Surface Pro exists is to run Adobe Creative Cloud, then they are even more out-of-touch than the current Mac product line suggests. If they don’t understand that Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, Final Cut, and Motion are all pen apps then I don’t know what good Apple will do for pro computing users in the near future.
Jobs was very famous for saying “nobody wants [product we are not shipping yet]” until Apple shipped that product.
You are conflating the two kinds of digital pens: digital art pen and PDA stylus. Each one has a totally different heritage and history and use case and user base and software and hardware compatibility. The only similarity is they are both held like traditional pens. Art pens are like a musical instrument that you learn. They have a bunch of sensors in them so that the computer can essentially record you making art with your hands. PDA stylus is just a piece of metal or plastic that you poke at a screen like a skinny finger.
The PDA stylus starts with the Newton in like 1993 and comes down through the years into the phone market and ends abruptly with iPhone. In the early 1990’s, Microsoft got into pens to copy the Newton and unsuccessfully tried to sell the PDA stylus to business users as a PC accessory.
The digital art pen is much older, but the modern version starts with the Mac in the desktop publishing era. Photoshop and Illustrator are pen tablet apps from the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. I’ve been running both of those apps daily for over 20 years and never used a mouse. Many other Adobe Creative Cloud apps are also pen apps. So is Apple Motion and Apple Aperture was also a pen app. In the late 1990’s, Microsoft got into art pens and unsuccessfully tried to sell those to business users also.
What you have in Surface Pro is just a very traditional art pen tablet, same as the ones I have been using for over 20 years now. In the 2000’s, the screens moved into the tablets. In the 2010’s, the PC guts moved into the tablets. Very natural evolution, especially when CD/DVD switched to cloud. The only thing that makes Surface Pro seem exotic is that Apple abandoned this market. There should be a traditional art pen tablet with a Mac built-in, continuing the decades-old legacy of Mac pen computing and desktop publishing and digital artwork, and the fact that there is not is a scandal because it left millions and millions of graphic artists stuck in the 2000’s era of graphics tablets, after decades of loyalty to Apple.
What you have in iPad Pro is a device that descends from Newton but eschews the PDA stylus for an actual digital art pen with sensors and pressure-sensitivity. But 99% of the world’s art pen apps are on the Mac, including all of the ones that you get paid to use. So the Apple Pencil is like a fuck you to graphic artists after pissing on us for 10 years straight. You can see all the pieces of a modern graphic arts setup at Apple Store, but they don’t all work together, which is pretty much the opposite of what Apple Store is supposed to be about.
No, Surface Pro is not a hybrid. It is just a regular old graphics tablet that has evolved to where the screen and PC is now inside. Same technology from the 1990’s. Same kind of pen. Same pen apps from the 1990’s.
If iPhone and iPad had never shipped, Surface Pro would still exist, and likely there would be a MacPad Pro that competes with it, based on the same decades-old art pen technology and apps such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Millions and millions of people have used this technology day-in and day-out over the past 25 years, mostly on Macs, to make a lot of the artwork and graphics that you have seen during that time.
The influence from iPad that you see in Surface Pro is not the pen or touch, it is how small Surface Pro is. It has been really, really made small to get down to the 700g area where iPad lives. That is why there is confusion: iPad Pro (about 700g) is the mobile version of Surface Pro (about 700g).
Really, it is sad that these products are being painted as competitors because they are not. If you are a business person or consumer you should buy an iPad. If you are an artist who uses Adobe Creative Cloud all day everyday you should buy a Surface Pro. If you want to touch the screen mostly with your fingers, get an iPad. It is a finger tablet. If you want to run Photoshop CC with a pen, get a Surface Pro because it runs Photoshop CC with a pen and nothing else that mobile does that.
It is mostly the antique Mac lineup that has caused this confusion. The 2017 Mac lineup should be MacBook, MacPad, iMac, Mac Pro and that is it. Nobody would be talking about Surface Pro because we would all be happily running MacPads along with our iPads.
iPad Pro is definitely a hybrid. It’s part iPad and part Mac.
All of the iPad Pro hardware descends from Newton except the screen size, laptop form factor, mechanical keyboard, and art pen are all from the Mac. The screen size and art pen are tentpole features at the launch. So were the iWork apps which are also from the Mac.
Newtons and their descendants (which includes all smartphones including iPhone) had PDA styluses which are just sticks you poke the screen with, and iPhone famously gave that up for a hi-resolution sensitivity touch screen. The Mac’s art pens have sensors for pressure and tilt and such, which enable a drawing app to basically see the artist’s hand at work and respond accordingly. They are completely different devices even though they are both pens, same as a typewriter keyboard and piano keyboard are both keyboards but are completely different devices.
A big problem with Apple Pencil is it only works with iPad, but most of the world’s pen apps are on the Mac, which does not work with Apple Pencil. So maybe we are seeing an in-between step where later there is a 16-core iPad that runs Creative Cloud with Apple Pencil and it all makes sense.
If you are still not seeing the hybrid, just notice that all you have to do to build a MacPad in your mind is imagine an Apple software engineer installing macOS onto an iPad Pro. Done.
Are you deploying them to graphic artists? If not, then it is not surprising they would send them back.
Surface Pro is a graphic art pen tablet with built-in PC. It is not a notebook PC. It is not an iPad. It is not a consumer device. If you don’t have an existing Adobe Creative Cloud account that you use everyday all day, then a Surface Pro is almost certainly not for you.
It takes about 3 days to get used to the art pen. If you are not an artist, you simply will not do that.
Didn’t you hear that Microsoft tried to sell art pens to business people already in like 2000? They did not like. Business people like to compute with fingers. Get them iPads. Surface Pro is an art pen computer.
In the same way that you cannot imagine someone using a Surface productively, I cannot imagine someone other than a digital artist using a Surface Pro at all. Makes no sense. It is literally a professional art tool with a computer built-in for the convenience of the artist.
Yes, they buy them like they are an iPad replacement, when they are not.
Everyone that I know who has a Surface (I am almost certainly going to buy the 5) is a digital artist. To us, the Surface Pro makes sense in the same way that a MacBook makes sense to a novelist. You can put one device in your lap for 4–8 hours at a time and do a full day’s work and you sacrifice nothing for that mobility. The MacBook has a great keyboard and screen and any software you want from a text editor to InDesign, and the Surface Pro has a great pen and screen and Creative Cloud. It’s the same work you would do at a desk, but not at a desk.
I would definitely say to anyone who is considering a Surface: do not buy it unless you are already using a pen system with pro apps like Creative Cloud. You should only buy a Surface if you absolutely need the pen that comes with it all day every day.
If you want to touch with fingers, definitely get an iPad.
Similarly, if you have a Creative Cloud account, you should be wary of iPads that can’t run Creative Cloud and Macs that have to be retrofitted with pens. It might be better to get an iPad mini and a Surface Pro rather than an iPad Pro.
Is the pen an “accessory?” Because the art pen plus Creative Cloud compatibility is the entire reason to buy a Surface Pro. There is no other reason that I can think of. I can’t imagine why you would use a Surface without a pen.
My MacBook Pro also has an art pen, but it requires a desktop tablet that basically makes the Mac into a desktop system. I interpret that as not being such a good thing in a computer platform that has had pens and pen apps for almost its entire existence.
iPad Pro has a great pen but can only run maybe 1% of the world’s pen apps, and zero of the important ones, so that is not very versatile.
The root problem here is that Surface Pro and iPad Pro are totally different devices. A typewriter keyboard and piano keyboard are both keyboards but there is almost no sense in comparing them. Surface Pro replaces a Mac in a person’s setup, not an iPad. And Surface Pro does not replace a business PC either. Anymore than a pastel kit is the right thing to use for writing a memo. But iPad Pro is an awesome business PC replacement.
The thing that makes Surface Pro make sense is if you have an Adobe Creative Cloud account. You take the Surface Pro out of the box, you go to adobe.com and you login to Creative Cloud. Then you see a list of apps you can install with one-click. Apps like Photoshop and Illustrator that require the digital art pen that came with Surface and is mobile rather than being a $1000 add-on that sits next to the Surface on a desk.
So iPad Pro is a bigger iOS experience, while Surface Pro is a smaller Creative Cloud experience. The fact that they both ended up in the 700 gram range and both have art pens is all they have in common. I really feel sorry for people who are flipping a coin between these devices. That means you are totally ignorant about at least one of the devices.
I generally agree with your point, but I feel that it also has to be said that the current Mac lineup sucks so bad that Apple deserves any mistaken comparisons between Windows and iPad. If there was a modern Mac lineup, JD Power would have compared Surface Pro to MacPad Pro and MacPad Pro would have won easily. Apple is the one who chose to deliver Unibody on the Mac in 2008 and then nothing else of any practical significance for almost 10 years after. These last 10 years of Mac are like Windows XP: a lost decade. So Apple deserves what they get when iPad Pro falls short against Mac-class systems. Surface Pro is in every way a descendant of the classic Mac graphics workstations of the 1990’s, with Wacom pen tablet and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Apple has no excuse for abandoning this market in favor of offering business people 14 choices of 1992 form factor notebooks.
No, Surface Pros are not for Windows enthusiasts. They are for Adobe Creative Cloud users. You are getting it totally wrong.
Almost everyone who buys a Surface Pro holds their nose about the Windows. They don’t want it. They just want the 750 gram device that has a built-in art pen and runs Creative Cloud. They would rather have the Mac version but it does not exist. All of your venom should be aimed at Apple for abandoning the Mac in 2008 or so in every way that matters.
If I go to Apple Store and tell them I am a Creative Cloud user who uses the Creative Cloud apps everyday all day for my work, and I need the smallest, most mobile system that is possible because I also travel all the time, they will show me a MacBook Pro that is very small but which has no pen. The pen is a $1000 accessory tablet that sits next to the MacBook Pro on a desk! That is why I have to go across to the Microsoft Store and look at Surface Pro. Because I need a f’ing art computer that fits into my lap but runs my actual professional art tools.
The reason I have to buy a Surface Pro is not because I don’t want an iPad. I already have 2 iPads. I already have a Mac. Those devices don’t do what a Surface Pro does. Well, the Mac runs the pen software and the iPad has the pen. But they don’t work together because they are both from Apple and they are doing self-indulgent design expositions rather than making tools that people need.
The pen that comes with Surface Pro is a Mac pen. The software in Creative Cloud is Mac software. The reason you don’t know this is because Apple seems to have forgotten.
You have to understand, there are literally 2 meanings of tablet. There are 2 family trees. You can be satisfied with one for one reason and I can be satisfied with another for another reason. Many people own and love both.
There is one tablet tree (“PDA tablets”) that goes Newton->Palm->other-PDA->smartphone->iPhone->iPad and that is the one you are probably familiar with. We might call these consumer tablets or mobile tablets. It is all about the fingers and the selection of awesome pop apps.
There is another tablet tree (“graphics tablet” or “pen tablet” or “art tablet”) that is totally independent and goes Mac->Windows->Surface and that is the one that I have to use all day every day in my work. These are the tablets that are used to run Photoshop and Illustrator for like the past 25 years now. As far as I know, Surface Pro is the smallest art tablet with built-in screen and PC that you can get and also the cheapest. The accessory art tablet that you add to a Mac and sit at a desk and use (because both devices cannot fit in your lap at once) costs more than a Surface Pro. So a Surface Pro gives you more mobility at a lower cost.
Microsoft shrank a full graphics workstation with art pen and Creative Cloud into the size and weight of an iPad. It’s a solid win. Even if they do benefit greatly from the fact that Apple is literally not even competing with them.
I would bet you that a survey of Surface Pro users would find that the majority of them have either an iPad or a Mac or both in addition to the Surface Pro. Apple simply doesn’t have a Surface Pro -type device in its lineup. The people who need a Surface Pro are right in the Mac and iPad and iPhone demographic.
Apple has done nothing for pro graphics people for so long we are all desperately grateful to Microsoft these days. For the past 7 years, Apple keeps trying to sell me a MacBook Pro with exactly the same RAM and SSD in there as the one I have. And every time, it is $500 more and has removed another port I will still really, really need for the entire lifespan of that device. And still no pen sensors in the screen, which is literally the only feature I am waiting for.
So Microsoft deserves this win. iPad Pro is supposed to be the mobile version of Surface Pro, but they are the same weight. The Mac is supposed to be the creative workstation, but Surface Pro shows the entire Mac lineup to be antiques for creative users.
No, the reason I don’t know this is because I don’t travel all the time, but I do use Adobe products on two Macs, and have little if any need for art-pen work.
On the rare occasion that need arises, I plug in my 12-year-old Wacom tablet, get the work done, and then put it away again. Because I need an effing art computer with a large screen.
I guess I’ll have to take your word that the specific use-case you’re describing applies to a much larger number of potential customers than the one I described.
The current equivalent Wacom tablet that would theoretically replace the one I own retails for $400. The large variety is $550.
FWIW, I agree with you that having Adobe CC on an Apple iPad would be helpful for a lot of people; I just don’t happen to be one of them.
How do you envision a pro Mac with a 5k touchscreen being used by an artist running Adobe CC? Must it be only for laptops, or would you give the new Mac Pro a Cintiq-like device with a kickstand? That seems to me something Apple would consider too niche to want to build.
Apple didn’t invent the tablet but it did show everyone how to do it properly.
Microsoft had a vision. But it was the wrong vision that nobody wanted. The Surface “vision” is the same thing. Just the underlying technology has almost sort have caught up.
Microsoft are merely peddling the same vision. Nothing really interesting to see here.
No, I’m not seeing a hybrid in any way. I’m seeing a better tablet, software and hardware. A keyboard does not make it a Mac, and isn’t included in any case. The pencil certainly doesn’t make it a hybrid.
Well, I never claimed it was for everyone; I simply referenced myself and a couple of professionals who are almost there. I was speaking to the “not compelling” argument, because that’s subjective and sthere are certainly those of us out here who are compelled.
I also don’t think Apple is using stories like mine since it isn’t quite there yet. They definitely think the future is moving more and more away from “big iron.” Their stats that the Mac Pro makes up a single digit percent of a small percentage of pro sales back that up.
Cribbing from iOS is fine by me. I hope there are fewer naysayers than their are people with ideas for it, because I really could give a flip about function keys I never can remember functions for unless I Google for them. (And in the 80s and 90s I was flipping through manuals looking for the damn functions.) Your mileage apparently varies.
I think you’re exaggerating on the 3g Phone bit, but what’s a bit of hyperbole when you’re trying to make a point, eh? And, honestly, I do get the point. Again, I was arguing that the possibilities of iOS are compelling — not how many millions (actually several hundred thousand, particularly when talking Mac Pro) should be stuck with what I want or not.
http://astropad.com/
And done. And more uses than simply a Wacom or Cintiq.
“I bet it’s slow!” or “Not better than a wired connection!” etc. etc. — but it will be. May already be. I don’t know. But it exists and can only improve, from that company or Apple or whoever.
Is there a workaround for this? That seems like a fairly significant problem. The sleep issue I was talking about was the one that’s been frequently reported: an inability to wake from sleep. I will admit that my iPad’s Smart Cover caused me problems too for a time. Rolling back the Smart Cover wakes the iPad, but I found that whenever the smart cover got pushed around in my backpack, it kept waking and going back to sleep, and that was causing problems with battery life. I disabled the ability for the Smart Cover to wake the iPad and things were fine after that. In the age of the fingerprint sensor, waking is so fast I hardly notice the difference.
Personally, I tend to carry my iPad and MBP at different times. Also, when it’s in a satchel, the extra weight isn’t noticeable. Lightness is noticed mainly when you carry a thing in your hands. (I speak as someone who travels from USA to Europe a couple of times a year, and my comments do still apply to duration or circumstances of the carrying).