LukasMathis

I did at one point plug a Logitech keyboard into the Surface, but I definitely did not intentionally install any Logitech drivers. It's something Windows put there by itself, only for it to become a problem later.

Yes, if you can pull that off, it's a huge win.

I've love to read your opinion on Linux.

That's funny. Did you miss the part of the article where I write that Windows is "technically terrible" and that its "UX is erratic"? If Microsoft pays people to say things like these, they're doing something wrong.

I have a thought, though: if your world view only works if everybody who says anything positive about Microsoft is a shill, then perhaps it's not the "Microsoft shills" who are the problem.

Yep, availability of current games probably plays a role. Though the Mac App Store does show a pretty good selection of games.

I've used a Cintiq for years, and it has the exact same issue with tracking the pen near the edges. If anything, it's worse than the Surface. So it never occurred to me that there might be a solution. Thank you for the link!

The same mistake twice in a row. Another good one. Fixed, thank you!

Interesting. I'll try that.

I'm sorry my article wasn't useful to you.

Another option would be to set the text caret inside the text box, but allow people to write anywhere, while the focus is on a text field. This is probably something where you'd have to do a ton of different prototypes, and see which one feels best.

Dunno, they're extremely popular in Switzerland, where I live. I think among consumers, Mac market share is quite high. It's different in businesses, but businesses don't buy that many games :-)

It's important to keep in mind that the Metro apps work better on smaller screens than normal desktop apps. They hide a lot of the UI when you don't need it, so there's much more room for actual content. I wouldn't want to run, say, IntelliJ Idea on a Surface, but for many other apps, the screen size is not much of an issue. Also, you can dock the Surface when you're on a desktop, and use a larger screen.

You're right, it only took me half a blog post to explain all of the new concepts Microsoft introduced in their completely novel approach to operating system user interfaces. I don't think that's evidence against its ease-of-use :-)

As for games completely ruling the top 100 list of highest-grossing apps on any popular consumer platform: this is definitely not the case in the Mac App Store.

I'm thinking the natural progression of the split-screen mode would be a system-level tiling window manager. An advanced, easy-to-use version of what most IDEs implement to show their various panes.

Same here. Even just the faster processor, and the responsiveness while drawing that comes with that, makes a big difference.

This is pretty cool!

I think it's fair to note that you might not be completely representative of the average Windows user. Glad to hear that you're happy with how the disk manager looks, though :-)

I just tried, but it didn't find anything. Not sure if my handwriting is so terrible, or if there's something else going wrong here.

[Update: maybe the Metro version of OneNote doesn't support all of the features of the desktop version?]

Not as good as pen on paper, but the closest I've ever seen. You should probably go to a store and play with one to see if it suits you. I bought my Surface after I did that.

Why?

I thought the article already covered a wide range of topics, so I wanted to focus on comparing the iPad and the Surface. You're right, though, Android solves many of these problems, too.

You're right that Surfaces themselves are uncommon. However, people who use their devices for productivity are probably a lot more common among Surface owners than among iPad owners.

Wow, probably the quickest I ever went from start of essay to first spelling mistake. Thanks for catching it!

Dunno, it's never been an issue for me. I'm used to edge-activated features from OS X, and slamming the mouse into the corner to call up the menu always seemed like a simple, efficient user interface to me.

It's a bit weird when you use a computer via VNC, though, because you have to move the mouse more precisely.

You sound like you're unfamiliar with public transport?

The way trains usually work nowadays is that you open a website, enter from where to where you want to go, and when you want to arrive, push the "pay" button, and print out the resulting page (which contains your schedule, sometimes a backup schedule, and a QR code that works as your ticket). Then, you just follow the schedule.

There's absolutely no need to know any map or lingo or network.

The main point I'm making is that, for most people, computers are appliances. I use my stove, but I'm not a cook. I'm not a "stove technician", either. I just know that I need to heat stuff at a certain level for a certain amount of time, and I only have to turn a simple knob to achieve that.

Similarly, most computer users aren't programmers or techs. They just want to write a letter. They should be able to do that without knowing about viruses and SSDs and RAM and OS upgrades and file format incompatibilities.

No. The point is that they don't have these things, so they probably need more than 128 GB of storage on their laptop.

Not everybody wants to be "educated" in the intricacies of modern PC hardware and OS design. And, in fact, not everybody should need to be. I don't know exactly how trains work; I just sit in one, and it gets me to where I want to go.

And that's good.

It's not my job to fix the train to get it to run properly; neither should it be the user's job to fix their crappy computer. Instead, her job should be to do a heart transplant, or write a court ruling, or fix the clutch in a car. That doesn't make her uneducated; it makes her somebody who views her computer as a tool, not as a hobby.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that I needed some kind of official entitlement to be allowed to write about this subject. Since you seem to know more, can you point me in the proper direction? Where do I get the entitlement that I require?

By the way, I also have two netbooks (a Asus running Ubuntu, and a hackintoshed Dell). That's kind of my point: netbooks aren't shitty — for people like us. We know what they are, and we can work around their limitations. Most "regular" people don't, and can't.

Because (some) tablets actually are good computers. They achieve extremely high quality (speed, good UX) at the tasks they do by simply not doing most of the tasks a desktop PC does. If you only want to do email and some web browsing, a tablet is actually a higher-quality, faster, easier-to-use machine than a PC.

Nope, don't have one of these, sorry.