Well today I had a bit of time to watch the Microsoft Surface announcement from New York, and I have to say, I was impressed by what I saw. I’ve been hoping that someone would help push Apple on the tablet side. The team did a great job of building excitement during the presentation, and the features were pretty compelling.
Integration with the xBox ecosystem, a keyboard (I need to get my hands on demo of this – I believe a Microsoft store is opening in South Point tomorrow), Microsoft Office, Skype video (with one touch record), multiple apps on screen at the same time, and more all made me think, “Yeah, maybe I do need another tablet”.
The big proof will be when we see how many apps they have, and the quality of those apps. There was a post from TechCrunch – that stated they will have more apps at launch than any other apps store. They do point out, rightfully so, that this is a bit of a misleading statement. How many of these apps are Windows apps that won’t run on a Windows RT device? I am hoping that the Microsoft developers out there get it going and provide a compelling set of applications that sell a whole bunch of these. Why you may ask? Am I not an Apple Fan? – Well yes, but I am also a Developer, and the more potential customers, the better for all of us!
Hopefully we are now seeing the entrance of a valid third platform, and we can all start creating even more cool apps!