My favourite takeaway from this article is: The Surface Pro is a work machine. It is not a tablet for checking your mail and playing angry birds (although it can do that stuff). This is a computer for getting shit done. It’s for creating not consuming. — finally someone gets the Surface. It's not an iPad competitor, it does more than the intentionally limited iPad can do, has options for external storage, external monitors, touch covers, XBOX controllers and more using standard connections like HDMI and USB without requiring a custom propriety cable a la Thunderbolt or the likes.

The Surface 2 is going after a different market than the iPad is. Maybe at the beginning Microsoft tried marketing itself in too many directions, but they're finding their feet. The Surface Pro 2 wants to be the iPad of the business and enterprise market, not a device for checking email and playing Angry Birds. Sure it also appeals to other needs as well, but going after the business sector is smart because ultimately that's where the money is. Heck the Surface isn't even a tablet, it's technically an ultraportable.

I am thinking of getting one of these as a laptop replacement for coding on plane and train trips. You can't code on an iPad, but you could code on a Surface for sure and run all needed IDE's like Sublime Text and an NGINX server with PHP and or Node.JS.