Looks interesting but I've gone over to Apple and ain't coming back. Microsoft has been a humongous ship without a rudder for far too long.

Typed on my iPhone 4S running iOS 6 and Tapatalk. :)

Thanks for the update!

I am really interested in how they are, for business. I am waiting on the full Win8 surface next year, but in playing with Win 8 on a pc i find it a pain in the rear, jumping around from Metro to desktop several times just to do simple stuff.

Keep updating this thread Todd as I'm sure a few people here will want to know longer term how the Surface is to deal with.

Wold you give up a ipad for it? :)

In a word - no. Not even close. My iPad3 is totally ingrained into my music life at this point. All of my charts are there, iRealB has not only the charts but a player app for practice. I can record directly to the iPad, have soft sythns, etc. Plus I can get email, calendar (iCal, exchange, google, etc), web, etc. Right now on the Surface I can't do most of that. It may get better, but by then where will the iPad/iOS be? The response and display on my iPad3 are better than the Surface, and I'm not even on the latest iPad.

I gave it to my wife to mess with. She does not use an iPad, and only recently got an iPhone. I showed her the basic way to use the Surface and she did not find it intuitive.

It will be interesting to watch this. I think RT is pretty bad right now compared to the competition. They will need to get more apps available and fix the OS and user experience (the bouncing back between Metro and desktop is fail). But this isn't 15 years ago when Apple was a minor player and they had the luxury of time. They are chasing now, and I don't know how agile Microsoft is as a company.

I'll have the iPad Mini here on Fri to mess with. We'll have a 3D viewer mocked up soon afterwards and be running some of our apps. We can't do that on RT because Unity isn't on Win8 yet (and may never be on RT).

lol, I had to add an application to get my start button back! Metro needs to die a horrible death. When you RDP to a Windows 8 machine you have to map a special key on "non-Microsoft" keyboards to enable you to flip between metro and the desktop. *grrrrr*

Thanks article about sums up what I thought it would be like...

Just looking at win8 looks like it was geared for a two year old. I guess they can not think up new things for us to waste our time on so it`s time to target our young ones.

Apple has shown how deep the market is for Playschool type touch GUI.

Microsoft is following.

Sounds like innovation to me! :rolleyes:

So I gotta ask....what do you say is an adult UI for touch screen?

Just read an article on SurfCast suing MS over the "tiles" interface, Surfcast claims they invented it in 2000 and got the patent in 2004. Reading the patent they nailed it and MS totally stole it.

What I don't understand is it is so clearly the same thing how MS was granted a patent on their UI?

MS is going to be paying up...

Microsoft has had that for nearly a decade. --Pen based tablets.

Pen based tablets allow:
-- precision of selection (you know those tiny little page number field on this site? - a pen based UI selects those w/ ease)

-- Pressure sensitivity (like writing on paper, great for artists and graphic designers.)

-- Palm rejection (users can rest their palm on the screen w/o confusing the multi-touch system.)

Microsoft pushed expensive precision tablet tech. What Apple did is push cheap playschoolish tablet tech. Both exist, but Microsoft wants a piece of the cheapo market. (it's wide)

Back then Amazon, IIRC tried (did?) patent "one touch purchase" . . .as if patents should apply to such obvious outcomes. :-/

Would you say that the clock on your phone also stole their idea? ...you know, a dynamic info field ("tile" if you will) which when touched, takes the user into more information and/or settings.

So many of these tech patents are just cyber-squatting on what is inevitable extrapolation of code.

You decide:

http://www.surfcast.com/images/pdfs/US6724403.pdf

Summary:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1351794079.jpg

And US courts have held up the "rectangle with rounded corners" IP for Apple. So don't count your chickens just yet.

uhoh . .. the labels on my product are rectangular w/ rounded corners. --iScrewed?

Seriously tho' design patents are different. And, there are plenty examples of absurd patent awards . .. doesn't mean that absurd is the new norm. ...even if it is. ;)

Wouldn't this website be in violation of that?

Uh, you do have to read the whole thing, I just put a clip in to make my point. MS should never have been able to get their patent as this is exactly what tiles/metro/newname is.

I get your point, but think that you are not getting mine.

Design patents are one thing . . and very narrowly defined.

Utility patents on trivial appearances are not in keeping with the idea of utility patent protection.

Who cares how absurd they are? If the courts uphold them you're SOL. The fact that the courts are stupid enough to uphold a design patent that was previously seen in a 1987 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation shows how broken our patent (design & otherwise) system is.

No I hear you, I'm sick of all the patent crap.
That being said I also think there is a lot of big companies with big bankrolls ready to take on any developer because they think they won't fight back.