This isn't elementary school where everyone gets an "A" for effort. Microsoft has demonstrated with the Surface line an institutional inability to execute. From Surface RT shipping with a buggy beta of Office to continuing major deficiencies in Windows Phone (no forward button in IE until 8.1?) to the schizo nature of Windows 8 that only makes sense if you look from the engineering side and realize that its schizo only because it would be too hard to make everything run in Metro. Yes, there are engineering compromises that have to be made, but they shouldn't result in what the user perceives to be a compromised product.

Sometimes its better to not do something unless you can do it right. E.g. Surface RT shouldn't have shipped without a final version of Office. It featured prominently in every rewview, and almost nobody went back and updated theirs. E.g. Surface Pro shouldn't have shipped without Haswell. E.g. Surface Pro 2 shouldn't have shipped without the major firmware update that improved battery life by 20%. E.g. Apple has wisely avoided shipping a Retina MBA because they can't do it yet without regressing battery life.

Microsoft is playing in Apple's price range, and is late to the game. What it lacks is Apple's ability to take on limited ambitious, but (usually) execute those without major flaws.