Surface Line Abandoned by Microsoft?

[Deryl McCarty]

I suspect that DigiTimes got it right, but failed to differentiate twixt Surface types, which resulted in a really negative reaction to MS. It was a real disservice and really poor journalism. E.g., what they said, The Surface will be won't be made anymore - woe is us. Exactly right, since the Surface is an RT/ARM based machine and I can certainly see MS choosing to move away from ARM because of limited capability compared to Intel's Atom or Haswell so we can get a machine that is FULLY capable with - finally - reasonable battery life, say really 12 hours. But since they did not differentiate between the Surface and the Surface Pro lines we reacted - at least I did - really badly. But when the big boys and girls of the technical journalism world got involved then the story became clearer.

 

[grumpy]

I believe it is just the ARM processor units of the Surface line.

Agreed. I think that there is some confusion between the WinRT/ARM Surface line and the Surface Pro line.

I think it is a given that we will see a Broadwell based SP4 since it will require little R&D to bring to market. Of course, moving forward, I can see that MS may not want to remain in the PC hardware space. The Surface Pro line was meant to showcase Windows as a viable tablet platform and with more hardware manufactures producing Windows based tablets it may not make much sense for MS to continue to manufacture competing hardware. Not to mention, support has been a nightmare.

 

[ctitanic]

The only thing that I can say is that I feel bad when you read what is published in some site in order to get traffic.

 

[GreyFox7]

The only thing that I can say is that I feel bad when you read what is published in some site in order to get traffic.

Probably a story planted by Apple ahead of their iPad release

 

[ctitanic]

Probably a story planted by Apple ahead of their iPad release

Or by Google... who knows...

 

[olimjj]

Unfortunately Microsoft does not differentiate clearly enough in their marketing and advertising to sufficiently distinguish the two product lines. The general public see Surface as one device, heck , the Logo on the back of the Surface Pro says “Surface”. With the dropping of the RT moniker, this set the stage for this perception, and these anti Microsoft publications are taking advantage of it

 

[leeshor]

I seriously doubt surface is going anywhere but the future.

Are you sure you don't want to rephrase that.

 

[ctitanic]

Unfortunately Microsoft does not differentiate clearly enough in their marketing and advertising to sufficiently distinguish the two product lines. The general public see Surface as one device, heck , the Logo on the back of the Surface Pro says “Surface”. With the dropping of the RT moniker, this set the stage for this perception, and these anti Microsoft publications are taking advantage of it

Could you point me to anywhere where MS is officially saying that they are discontinuing the Surface on ARM line? Keep in mind that Windows RT will disappear with the join of all Windows something that should happen with Windows 10. This does not means that we will never see any other Surface with ARM processor.

 

[olimjj]

Could you point me to anywhere where MS is officially saying that they are discontinuing the Surface on ARM line? Keep in mind that Windows RT will disappear with the join of all Windows something that should happen with Windows 10. This does not means that we will never see any other Surface with ARM processor.

Did you clearly read my post??? I made no such assertions.

 

[ctitanic]

Did you clearly read my post??? I made no such assertions.

Sorry. I got confused.

 

[olimjj]

Sorry. I got confused.

No problem. I am guilty of having done that on more than a few occasions.

 

[tuchas]

Digitimes is NOTORIOUS for getting things wrong - most every time. Another comment in the article claimed that MS did not even sell a million SP3s, which has got to be absurd considering how many in the enterprise are adopting the device.

Probably the REAL scenario is that MS is getting ready for the introduction of the SP4 in the coming months. Same form factor, same accessories, but more power and improved specs along with bundling keyboards and such.

I find it astonishing how many tech journalists fail to get their stories right. Maybe some of it is being planted by competitors, but I doubt it. It's like IT tabloid journalism - big news that a product is failing gets a lot of attention but in all likelihood is bullish*t.