Microsoft and Surface Tension

Before I begin, I'll admit something that I consider a deep dark secret.

I LIKE the Surface. I don't love it. I LIKE IT! That alone is an unpopular opinion.

I think the Microsoft's homemade tablet has a lot of potential to smash in to the computing market like a wrecking ball (insert miley cyrus track here), but some bonehead moves are keeping it from realizing it's full potential.

I honestly think that the potential with the Surface tablets lies with the fact that they are effectively tablets for PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GET THINGS DONE. They are tablets for creators, not just consumers. As such, they are a major wrench in the tablet market engine.

Sure you have the potential to create on other tablets (iPad, GalaxyTab, Nexus, etc) but it's often limited by weak third party applications and complicated connectivity issues. They are marketed as tools to help consume content. Apps, Games, Music and Videos are the main purpose. This is no secret.

Microsoft came in with a different tune. They knew that content consumption was a cornered market and breaking in was going to be a challenge. Instead they went a different route. Yeah, you can consume on these surface devices too....but you can ALSO CREATE. Running a full desktop OS allows for a lot of flexibility with application and periphreal support. Photoshop, Pro-Tools, Vegas, etc. All of that would run on this small tablet with a keyboard you can throw in your bag. It was a thin and light laptop with a touch screen. The idea seems great.  I mean the main accessory for this thing is a keyboard. How much more work oriented could you get?

Microsoft then made the huge mistake of ignoring this fact almost immediately and targeting content consumers as their ideal audience. All of the advertising seemed centered around "COOL" dancing and interaction rather than the potential of the device. With the prices the way they sat, nobody was going to buy a surface OR a surface pro when they could get a cool iPad instead.

Another problem came with the RT version of the tablet. RT was an ARM based version of the Surface. It could only use apps from the windows store, and it had a Desktop mode which was effectively worthless because you couldn't run the same windows apps you could on your computer. This was their targeted consumption device. It ran awfully, lacked an ecosystem, and was no competition for iPads or Android equivalents.

Worse yet, Microsoft managed to cannibalize their own sales. Why would anybody buy a Surface RT when they could get a Pro for small premium. The Pro does EVERYTHING, and it does it well. The Surface RT is a monstrosity that should not have ever existed. It's only advantage over the more powerful brother was that it was a bit thinner and lacked a "noisy" fan. As expected, the tablet sold terribly and Microsoft lost millions on the launch. I thought they had learned their lesson then and there.

You can imagine my horror when I heard that the Surface 2 was coming in an RT flavor as well. Microsoft does not even come close to having the required ecosystem to make this work. Sure it's a low priced surface tablet, but it lacks the functionality that makes the surface great. For the same price, I can get a Nexus 10 and enjoy my content with a couple hundred bucks lining my pocket. I could also spend a bit more and get a larger library of content with an iPad.

The Surface Pro, on the other hand remains a great tablet PC for people who want to make things happen. The new ads focus on this, and it seems Microsoft is getting the message now. I have some ideas about their long term plans for the RT platform but regardless, the Surface RT is a mistake. It's their biggest mistake and it is tainting the amazing potential that lies in the Surface brand. I hope Microsoft knows what they're doing and bails out before it's too late. I would love to see the Surface succeed and I'm eagerly awaiting a Nokia made Microsoft branded Surface Phone. Yes Please.

Monkeys, Binary, and Missing Meaning.

As I look for new employment and the adventures that come along with it, I've been spending a lot of late nights on the computer. Going to bed between 3 and 5 am, sleeping till late afternoon, rinse and repeat. Recently my dad woke up to take a pee one night and asked me what I was doing up so late.

"Just messing around. Like usual"

He kind of chuckled and said that I looked like I was really looking hard for something. Trying to figure something out or find something I lost. I didn't really give it much thought until I finally went to bed for the night several hours later.

His words got me thinking. I don't exactly stare at myself in mirrors so I don't know what I look like while "internetting". I'm never searching for anything in particular either, with exceptions to the times I'm actually working on a project. Am I searching for something without even realizing it?

By now we've all heard of the infinite monkey theorem. You know, the one that says if you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room with infinite time and infinite typewriters, the monkeys would eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Taking that and combining it with a technological perspective, binary has a similar possibility. Everything computers do these days, be it playing a song or rendering a full length video game, is all done at the very basic level by binary code. The higher level code is translated to code that tells the processor which of its trillions of transistors to turn on or off. Everything that can be rendered digitally can be expressed using a bunch of zeroes and ones. Taking that further, if you have an infinitely large hard drive, and fill it endlessly with every binary combination possible, you could create a digital representation of anything ever. The best movie ever made, the future version of windows, or a treasured family memory that never existed. Everything can be made possible through the right combination of those two oddly significant numbers.

Recent numbers have shown that approximately 1/3 of the world's population is now active on the internet. Each one contributing their own strings of zeroes and ones to the massive pot we call the world wide web. Assuming 7 billion total people on earth, that means about 2.3 billion people are active on the internet (and increasing rapidly).

Usually humans can communicate ideas face to face, but the digital age has made this infinitely easier. Ideas now transcend time and space and you can access an idea from someone you never met that was created several years in the past. You can also collaborate instantaneously with anybody nearly anywhere through this connection and contribute. The internet is the complete aggregate of all human knowledge, and can be accessed anywhere at any time. Nearly every idea, every fact, every thing ever. If a human has said it, thought it, heard it, recorded it, or crossed paths with it in any way, its probably somewhere on the internet in some form. I realized this fact a while ago and it has never ceased amazing me since.

So keeping that idea in mind, is it so far fetched that some part of my brain is searching for meaning without me even realizing? What makes humanity so significant is our inherent curiosity. We don't want to just sit on earth and fly through space at a million miles an hour. We want to know why things work the way they do. We want to control our surroundings to our liking. Its evolution on steroids. Maybe all of us, up until the wee hours of the morning on the computer, are all subconsciously looking for something. For meaning perhaps? For inspiration? For motivation? Companionship? Justification? Something that we don't quite know how to express? Maybe this is the next stage in our intellectual evolution.

Or maybe the internet is just a place for cat pictures and we're all just cursed with ADD. I'm okay with that too.