Another Surface Win

[john.calixte]

I just set up a personal cloud at home (the WD My Cloud NAS drive). My old Surface RT recognized it immediately and I easily mapped the public and private shares for easy access. Works like a charm.

My kids' iPads? Not so easy. The best solution we could find was to PURCHASE an app (FileBrowser) which, after much time and effort, seems to work. Also, only a small portion of the video library on my NAS drive can be played by the iPad (the mp4's). So sad. Yet another reason they should have bought Surface's.

 

[PhilBiker]

I'm using a Buffalo NAS in my house and my experience is similar. At first the Surface didn't recognize it, but I upgraded the firmware on the NAS and there it is - no intervention required at all - it just shows up when I open the "Network" folder. I haven't even looked into what it would take to make it work with my iPad.

Same with a Brother network printer I recently acquired. I installed the printer and it was instantly recognized by my Win8 PC and my Surface RT Tablet. No driver installation, no intervention, it just worked like magic.

The Brother printer app for iPad was free, but I'm confused as to why I need an "App" for something as basic as printing. Apparently I have to "open in" the printer app to print, I don't know how this is going to work. On my Surface I just hit Ctrl+P or chose "Send to" in the charms bar. Don't know how I would scan on the iPad, it's probably built into the printer app? On my Surface, the scan app works great and even creates multipage XPS files using the sheet feeder. Works great. [edited for clarity]

 

[GreyFox7]

. ...
The Brother printer ass for iPad was free, but I'm confused as to why I need an "App" for something as basic as printing. Apparently I have to "send to" the printer app to print, I don't know how this is going to work. On my Surface I just hit Ctrl+P or chose "Send to" in the charms bar. Don't know how I would scan, it's probably built into the app?

Scan app creates multipage XPS files using the sheet feeder. Works great.

Marketing genius... MS was regularly criticized for releasing an OS without every driver for every device ever made so Apple didn't release any and thru clever marketing "There's an App for that" convinced (hornswoggled) people into believing it. In addition... need to add two numbers ... there's an App for that... need to multiple two numbers there's another app for that. iOS actually does very little for everything else you need an App.

To achieve parity with Windows RT it would take a couple years of iOS development. MS did a goo job technically despite some omissions and shortcomings but they have done a horrible job marketing and appears determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with their next inept move.