yasamoka:

As I said, the failure rates on them turned out to be rather high so I don't really trust the devices themselves anymore if I wanted to buy one given what I've seen happen. But hey, I have to be biased to object against claiming they suffer from subpar sales? Keep trying. Not merely tablets - a very specific sort of tablet, the sort that can handle productivity with a fully-fledged OS. Go ahead, compare it to tablets. Tell me about the intended audience of such hybrid devices that combine tablet use, pen use, and quasi-laptop use (with the added Type Cover) and demonstrate how exactly Surface devices suffer from subpar sales. Seriously, they have such subpar sales that about a dozen devices that are almost exact clones of the Surface have shown us from several manufacturers. Miserable sales! Again, enough with the Apples to Oranges comparisons. Just two posts back you were comparing the Surface lineup to MacBooks. Decide. Sales of the Surface never really relied on the Windows App Store being good. Many use cases of the Surface tablets rely on Win32 apps that work well with this form factor - Microsoft Office being one. Microsoft Edge and Drawboard PDF are two UWP apps that do really, really well on the Surface. If they can move over more and more well-designed applications to the Windows Store, I honestly can't see users complaining, particularly if some of those apps are free or come bundled with the device (e.g. Drawboard). Microsoft are trying to push Windows 10 S in order to encourage use of the App Store, but it's literally one toggle away and any perceived failure to penetrate the market with this device in particular will be easily met with just going with an unlocked Windows 10 that can run Win32 apps - aside from the fact that any existing user can choose to unlock their Windows version and use Win32 apps. Nice strawman, mentioning other products that were never the subject to begin with and that lie in entirely different contexts. I never said profit was the only factor that demonstrates strong sales having happened. Expectations of how a product will do also matter, and these products, while having made a profit, turned out not to be sustainable in the long run and would have turned into losses. That's expectations. Finally, I have no idea why you are trying to make it out as if I have a bias towards Microsoft. I don't, and it frankly seems to me like some form of projection of your irrational judgment regarding Microsoft's performance in the Surface division. Those "subpar" sales wouldn't have encouraged Microsoft to diverge into the (now successful) Surface Book (2) as well as the Surface Studio. They clearly have an ecosystem going on. They even purchased the company behind Drawboard PDF and bundled that $10 app for free with the Surface Pro 4 onwards, clearly demonstrating that they believe many Surface users are using the Surface Pen for annotation and related work.

Microsoft also purchased Nokia. The entire point is hilarious that you are the one who thought for some reason you had to try and disprove my observation in my original post which no matter how you try and spin it is still accurate. Now that you have time and time again tried everything in your power to show that it is some huge success simply because it finally turned a profit is irrelevant still. Funny that you refuse to look at ms past and their utter failures of products that’s turned profits. Where’s that surface phone they talked about. Hey look the pet rock made a million bucks too, in the market of other pet rocks it did really well.... I pointed to specific examples of MS failures in literally every device it has ever released which were awesome and I myself owned or currently own, but MS is always too dang late to the table with their changes and strategy and lastly affordability, no one is going to spend that kind of money on something they’ve never heard of. I mean look how long Cortana has been around and 99% of everyone I know had no idea MS even has a voice assistant like Alexa etc. In a nut shell congratulations you proved to yourself ms turned a profit which no one even disputed. The fact of the matter is to stay relevant it has to sell phenomenally or else end up exactly like all of its ms counterparts. Also your responses are tiring I can’t even bother to read them

maikai:

Ah makes sense, you invested a lot of money in to them so you must now have to defend them with everything you got. Also no im comparing it to other portable devices aka tablets which the majority of consumers view these as.

If that's the case then I should be defending Android and iOS tablets, as I've sunk quite a bit of money into them over the years (including accessories). I used to own several mobile tablets - today I own none (once the novelty wore off I stopped using them, and eventually sold them or gave them away to family members). On the other hand, I'm still using my Surface Pro 4, which is the only tablet I have left. It is ridiculous to try to compare Surface tablets to Android/iOS tablets. The former are fully featured computers while the latter are just glorified smartphones (without the phone part). Although Microsoft is trying to make the App Store more viable, they don't actually need it for the Surface to succeed. Having a full browser with the desktop version of Office is always preferable to using the mobile variants, plus Android and iOS app stores are littered with pay-to-win games (I can at least run Steam on my Surface).

maikai:

Microsoft also purchased Nokia. The entire point is hilarious that you are the one who thought for some reason you had to try and disprove my observation in my original post which no matter how you try and spin it is still accurate. Now that you have time and time again tried everything in your power to show that it is some huge success simply because it finally turned a profit is irrelevant still.

Obtuse narcissist alert.

Funny that you refuse to look at ms past and their utter failures of products that’s turned profits.

Keep strawmanning and insisting I equated profit with good sales, this is getting funnier.

Where’s that surface phone they talked about. Hey look the pet rock made a million bucks too, in the market of other pet rocks it did really well.... I pointed to specific examples of MS failures in literally every device it has ever released which were awesome and I myself owned or currently own, but MS is always too dang late to the table with their changes and strategy and lastly affordability, no one is going to spend that kind of money on something they’ve never heard of. I mean look how long Cortana has been around and 99% of everyone I know had no idea MS even has a voice assistant like Alexa etc.

You are going waaaay off-topic so stop right there. I am not going to be dragged into a conversation about failed Microsoft products since I don't even intend to analyse, defend, and / or attack their business decisions. Not the topic here.

In a nut shell congratulations you proved to yourself ms turned a profit which no one even disputed.

You keep bringing us back to the same thing I never said.

The fact of the matter is to stay relevant it has to sell phenomenally or else end up exactly like all of its ms counterparts. Also your responses are tiring I can’t even bother to read them

And you haven't yet established what exactly is subpar about their sales figures. It's clear you have a reading / comprehension issue and insist of facets of an argument that were never articulated to begin with. Also, the irony is that your grammar and run-on sentence structures are straight-out sewer material, so refrain from complaining about a couple of paragraphs - I have to insert punctuation into every reply of yours to get a legible response. Until you answer some very basic requests I have asked in my last post, this will likely be my last reply to you concerning this topic, since this is going nowhere.

maikai:

Microsoft also purchased Nokia. The entire point is hilarious that you are the one who thought for some reason you had to try and disprove my observation in my original post which no matter how you try and spin it is still accurate. Now that you have time and time again tried everything in your power to show that it is some huge success simply because it finally turned a profit is irrelevant still. Funny that you refuse to look at ms past and their utter failures of products that’s turned profits. Where’s that surface phone they talked about. Hey look the pet rock made a million bucks too, in the market of other pet rocks it did really well.... I pointed to specific examples of MS failures in literally every device it has ever released which were awesome and I myself owned or currently own, but MS is always too dang late to the table with their changes and strategy and lastly affordability, no one is going to spend that kind of money on something they’ve never heard of. I mean look how long Cortana has been around and 99% of everyone I know had no idea MS even has a voice assistant like Alexa etc. In a nut shell congratulations you proved to yourself ms turned a profit which no one even disputed. The fact of the matter is to stay relevant it has to sell phenomenally or else end up exactly like all of its ms counterparts. Also your responses are tiring I can’t even bother to read them

then 99% of people you know never installed Windows 10, as part of installation is Cortana and her settings. Anyway, device may be commercial success. But I think it sux. This costs a lot and it is atom based thing with 4GB of ram 64GB eMMC storage. IF the price tag was for higher model, I would be inclined to say it is Well priced. But 4 GB ram on Atom. One can as well go and buy dual boot Atom device from Asia with Android + Windows 10. There you can at least enjoy well running Android. I can't imagine anyone using it for work. Opening large, complex excel document on 4GB version... One could as well use cloud based sheet processor, that's for sure more pleasant to work with.

Tempted by one of these. If for the portability and versatility when travelling if nothing else.

maikai:

The fact of the matter is to stay relevant it has to sell phenomenally or else end up exactly like all of its ms counterparts. Also your responses are tiring I can’t even bother to read them

I don't think the purpose of the Surface laptops were to sell phenomenally, I think they are similar to what google intended with the Pixel phones - they are designed to create reference devices in order to set a "base" level of quality at a specific pricepoint. Microsoft had this issue worse than google did but the PC market in general was in a massive race to the bottom in the late 2000 early 2010's. Every device had terrible quality screens, large bezels, plastic everywhere, poor QC, uninteresting designs, etc. Now, thanks to devices like the surface, you can find laptops and stuff at $1000 price points with aluminum unibodies, calibrated screens, convertibles designs, reliable touch/writing input, etc. They basically said "Hey windows devices can feel premium too" in a time where only Apple was really shipping anything similar in terms of design.