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Comment by enscr | Hacker News Reader

At $899, Surface Pro 2 is an amazing device. Microsoft needs to do a much better job at educating people about its capabilities. It's not just a combo of Macbook Air & iPad, it is your good old Windows with all the legacy apps. Obviously it's not for everyone due to its screen size.

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The challenge is on pricing - bring it to 128 GB and add a keyboard, and it comes to $1128. For $999 you can get a Macbook Air with 128 GB storage, keyboard, 4 GB Ram.

I agree the Surface product looks great - I just don't know who really needs the functionality of a highly portable laptop that wouldn't just get an Air instead. Possible exceptions would be people who can use the stylus or want the Microsoft applications/games.

It has a dock which is where it wins for me. Oh and as you say, applications. OSX sucks for productivity apps.

This is what must have Microsoft scratching their heads. Google has done just about nothing with QuickOffice. The Google Drive Document app for Android sucks, as does Blogger. There is no good offline editing in productivity apps for Android other than QuickOffice, which edits microsoft document formats, so it doesn't integrate cleanly with Web-based editing in Drive. It's a mess!

And yet, it seems like nobody cares. Google gets away with completely crap productivity apps.

Maybe nobody is seriously trying to displace enterprise PCs with tablets yet. But this has to start biting them in the ass someday soon.

This is where Microsoft leverages the Office suite, I imagine.

There is MS office for mac. Apple's own office solutions are pretty damn good too.

They're both pretty awful if you've used office on windows for a number of years which is the market they're trying to break into.

iWork is absolutely terrible from experience as well. It's not possible to effectively work with others, the UI is horrid and unproductive and it's completely unmaintained.

Speaking as one who had to use it for six months, Microsoft Office 2008 for OS X was a disaster, particularly Excel.

Microsoft Office 2011 for is pretty much close to perfect, and is certainly as capable as Microsoft Office 2010 that I run on Windows 7.

I run them side-by-side all day (PC Desktop with a big honking Monitor, Mac Laptop, 13" screen) - and I don't see any significant functional/usability issues with the Macintosh version.

Ironically, Microsoft Office is not a reason to use the Microsoft Surface instead of the MacBook Air. In fact, I'm willing to wager it runs better on the MBAir than it does on the surface. (Keyboard on MBAir laptop is probably better than one on Surface)

You also get a 1080p screen on the Surface but no Thunderbolt. Depends on which is more important to you i guess.

Air doesn't have a touch screen or Wacom. Those things cost money. Also you can use Surface while standing (check maps, watch videos in public transport etc.).

Right - I understand the use case for both the Stylus, and PC Games (aka the "Penny Arcade" use case). I'm dubious about the reading while standing element - even the iPad is a bit cumbersome for that - you need something like the Kindle Fire/Samsung Phablets/iPad Mini for mobility it turns out.

I'm thinking about what your average knowledge worker who wants to just have an email/excel/terminal/browser tool would want on a business trip - I think if we took an unbiased sample of people, 75%+ would rather go with the Air for that particular use case than they would surface pro.

There is the catch - excluding the gaming/stylus scenario - people still need a laptop - Few "knowledge workers" go on a serious business trip with just an iPad except as an experiment (that usually works out poorly), and they aren't going to carry both a laptop and a surface pro to meetings with them - therefore - just a laptop.

The iPad (and better yet, the Mini/Kindle Fire) - are great for just kicking on the couch, the Subway, reading in bed when you don't want to lug a laptop (and power cable) around with you.

It remains to be seen - but I don't think the Surface is going to get overwhelming traction. Yes, it's a better laptop than the iPad - but the iPad / Mini /Kindle Fire is a better media-consumption tablet than the Surface.

Can you add on a digitizer built into the screen on the Air?

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