[mckoss]

I think it's wrong that this level of product integration is what everyone wants; i.e. functioning as a tablet and as a laptop. One of Microsoft's most powerful profit generators was software integration (both in Office and Windows).

But integrated products (ones that do BOTH X and Y) are necessarily inferior at being the best X or the best Y. A designer must make trade offs in order to make the integration work. In the realm of software, the trade offs can be quite small, and so the integrated whole is quite good. But in a hardware device, integration imposes critical constraints that make integration across functions quite painful; limited screen size, battery life, memory and storage, etc. Perhaps the most insidious is overall UI complexity. Making a device for keyboard and mouse is quite different than making a device with a great touch experience. Having both (and even adding legacy Windows UI) is very challenging.

Microsoft should not have released a "turd" if they could not achieve a great experience within the design constraints. I think most people believe this first attempt has serious flaws and compromises.

Because Apple has shown the world what a great experience a tablet can provide, I think users are unwilling to compromise just so they can occasionally connect a keyboard and mouse to it, or run legacy applications. I'd rather carry two devices than use one (inferior) product.

[whatprojectnext]

I agree that the Surface is not the final realization of the ideal home computing device but it is a decent step towards it. Eventually the device will be a phone with the computing power of a laptop that you can dock and have a full environment ready for you. Clearly we are not there yet but this is a towards that reality.