Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

http://penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/06/16/surface-pro-3-update

by vxNsr • 12 years ago

517 243 12 years ago

After I was done they told me they were going to take all the notes they had gathered and go to work on fixing the issues I had shown them.

Later

To see them come back to me with fixes for my problems was really amazing. They are putting time and effort into making sure the Surface Pro 3 does what artists want it to do.

Well played to the MS Surface team, I hope these fixes make it to production and stay there on the Surface 4/Surface 5.

Where do you recommend I buy a Surface 3? I can buy online but is it better to get it from a brick and mortar shop?

jamesbritt• 12 years ago

I hope these fixes make it to production and stay there on the Surface 4/Surface 5.

The sooner the better. I'm looking at getting a Surface 3 when the beefier CPUs are available, and would love to get one that fixes the issues describe by the previous PA.

rasz_pl10• 12 years ago

More like well player PR team, they failed to fix every single issue. They couldnt even let him have the home button fix, something that sounds like a simple script I could write in AutoHotkey in two minutes tops.

Surface team looks like a committee full of control freaks. cant give users control over home button, cant give users control over pressure curves (they brought two HARDWIRED tablets instead of writing configuration tool?).

nightpool2• 12 years ago

Did you read the article? They're planning on distributing a pressure curve configuration tool.

grrowl• 12 years ago

It may have been specifically coded as a "proof of concept" against a pre-release version of the OS, in which case it would have been very foolish to just chuck it on the machine he depends on for his livelihood.

Try not to be so arrogant in future. For Linux devices you could have developed this yourself (and assumed due responsibility) but under OSX/iOS the dev team wouldn't have been nearly as receptive to his issues.

biot• 12 years ago

Does your two minutes of effort also include regression testing? Did you verify that all aspects of the OS and applications which depend on the home button having a specific behavior continue to function within OS-guaranteed response times? Have you done user testing to ensure that the delay after lifting the stylus meets with user expectations and doesn't seem like the OS is frozen? Have you met with the hardware team and verified that the lift stylus event is 100% reliable so that temporarily disabling the home button doesn't run the risk of permanently disabling the button? Are there potential race conditions such that the stylus up/down events are received out of order? If in-order reliable events can't be guaranteed 100% of the time, have you implemented a suitable watchdog-style timer to catch the cases where the event isn't properly received? Has that been fully tested?

Did you update the specification documentation with your modifications so that future developers can consult the updated specs in order to understand the impact your home button changes may have on their area of the OS?

Or I guess you can slap in some two minute script and call it done, but I'm glad you're not building my operating system.

cosmie• 12 years ago

I bought my original Surface Pro from the Microsoft Store website[1], and have had fantastic service on the few occasions that I've taken advantage of it. No phone trees, no waiting times, and no bullshit (they took me at my word on what I had already troubleshooted and moved on from there).

At least from my single experience, I would say there is little incentive to buy from a retailer rather than direct.

[1] http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-...

jychang• 12 years ago

Great to see Microsoft listening to issues with the Surface and attempting to fix them. Hopefully they can polish it up into a machine that can be competitive in the market.

dublinben2• 12 years ago

It sounds like it's already competitive in the market of nerds who draw cartoons on their computers, and need to be mobile. The Wacom Cintiq is probably much better for serious drawing, though you give up the portability of a self-contained tablet computer.[1] I'm not sure the Surface will succeed in any markets other than that though. It just solve any common problems significantly better than the alternatives.

[1] http://www.wacom.com/en/us/creative/cintiq-13-hd

dman4• 12 years ago

I think it has pretty good potetial in hospitals, education and insurance where ability to take notes is important. Especially the use case where you are expected to stand and jot down things on a tablet sized device.

mcintyre19943• 12 years ago

If I didn't doubt Windows so much for programming stuff I'd really like to get one for university - looks like the perfect machine for lectures and also everything else I need a laptop for. For any students but CS I think it's awesome.

jsmthrowaway• 12 years ago

At the last startup I worked at, Microsoft sent designers and engineers that worked on Windows Server to better understand why we deployed on CentOS. They flew in from Redmond and spent a couple hours with us. We were forthright with them and they seemed to take the feedback to heart (differences in automation being the biggest solid need we could offer, since "running a Windows shop is just different" isn't really tangible feedback).

It impressed me, honestly, and it's good to see them listen to the failings in some of their product lines.

dman4• 12 years ago

They need to increase the fanout of systems engineering knowledge on the windows platform (outside of microsoft). For low level stuff its much easier finding information about linux than it is about any of the other OS'es (in my limited experience).

programminggeek2• 12 years ago

The one thing that nobody seems to appreciate when it comes to pushing forward towards retina displays is just how many more pixels, how much more memory, and how much slower everything is on the same hardware.

Yet, anyone who has ever been a gamer knows that changing your resolution has a huge impact on your FPS.

It is foolish to think that Microsoft can make the screen much higher resolution, have a similar chip, and not have serious performance problems in terms of responsiveness.

I'm sure Microsoft can get a lot of this fixed and they will, but like the smartphone revolution, sometimes you have to wait for hardware to catch up with software or you have to write the software to take full advantage of the hardware.

LordIllidan• 12 years ago

Agreed, and it's not limited to Microsoft. The iPhone 4 and the iPad 3 both had 2x the resolution of their predecessors but barely managed to keep the same level of performance.

TulliusCicero• 12 years ago

Correction: 2x in each dimension, so actually 4x the total resolution.

programminggeek2• 12 years ago

That's one reason Apple kept the iPad 2 around for so long. It still performs really well and for most users that makes a bigger difference than higher resolution.

neltnerb3• 12 years ago

As someone who is not a gamer, I am curious -- why is it not the GPU that is the most critical when talking about the FPS and refresh rate for things like pen input? Is the issue that the CPU is "in the loop"? Is this a matter of the built in graphics on the Haswell chips not being quite good enough for this application, or is it actually the CPU?

I mostly wonder because I've found the improvements to the GPU in the Haswell processors to be game changing. I can use Solidworks reasonably well on my core i5 laptop! The idea of doing that with integrated graphics on any other computer would have been laughable.

Will a faster CPU really improve this (i7 vs i5)? Or is it a matter of getting a higher end GPU attached to the same CPU (i3 with more powerful integrated GPU)?

rhizome2• 12 years ago

It's really a question of faster motherboards.

happywolf• 12 years ago

I would suspect one or combination of the following issues:

1) The OS doesn't give the pen interrupt high enough priority

2) The bandwidth between the CPU and touch screen digitizer is too small

3) Too many background processes that cause CPU to be overwhelmed (not likely though)

stcredzero8• 12 years ago

why is it not the GPU that is the most critical when talking about the FPS and refresh rate for things like pen input?

GPUs are typically about reducing latency for a large amount of parallel processing. Things like stylus latency are more about reducing the latency for a very tiny amount of serially processed data, where the latency requirements are quite a bit more strenuous. (A kerjillion triangles, versus under 4 bytes total for x,y, and pressure, though there is a bit more than just that for rendering a drawn line with attendant mathematics.)

People who edit sound and do studio recording know from experience that people paying close attention can start noticing lags upwards of 5-10 ms or so. When you're concentrating on drawing, you're definitely paying close attention.

danudey3• 12 years ago

The CPU is required to process the digitizer input, figure out what it's trying to do, communicate it to the application, process it within the application, turn that into pixels on a constantly-updating canvas, and express that canvas as a texture to the GPU.

The GPU is responsible for displaying that texture to the screen.

As a gamer, there's a similar issue in gaming: a lot of modern games are getting bottlenecked on the CPU (just like drawing on the Surface is), because drawing to the GPU requires several layers of software abstraction. This means that a lot of games (mostly MMOs lately) will lag no matter how good your video card is if you don't have a sufficient video card. In fact, up to 40% of the CPU use of some games is not spent by the game, but by the drivers that sit between the game and the GPU.

al2o3cr• 12 years ago

"It is foolish to think that Microsoft can make the screen much higher resolution, have a similar chip, and not have serious performance problems in terms of responsiveness."

Sure. It's not, however, foolish to wonder why they'd RELEASE a laggy device. Hoping that an already small market will shell out $1000+ for a device that might get a future SW update to work as well as the last model is ridiculous.

imaginenore4• 12 years ago

Microsoft demoed 1ms touchscreen lag in 2012.

Most modern touchscreens still have 100ms lag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4

wingerlang• 12 years ago

I was under the impression that that setup was something including a camera or something, and not an actual touchscreen.

i_am_ralpht2• 12 years ago

Yeah, though maybe you could do it with FTIR instead of capacitive, so you wouldn't need external cameras.

rasz_pl10• 12 years ago

This lag is in the software stack (mostly in UI graphics). Not in hardware.

Remember Androids ~>200ms sound lag?

imaginenore4• 12 years ago

Definitely not. Most of mobile software strives to run at 60fps. That's just 16.7ms.

kalleboo2• 12 years ago

What I've read is most of the lag in the more optimized touchscreen stacks (read=iOS) is due to filtering and smoothing, which takes a few samples to do. The worse stacks (early android) had poor drivers and a lot of layers of abstraction, or worse, Java (maybe this is what you mean when you say "UI Graphics", but the raw numbers we're talking about here are on a far lower layer than scrolling in lists).

Graphics rendering lag is at worst 2 frames of video (double-buffering).

jcl• 12 years ago

Nice video! It really shows the perceptual difference well.

However, I'm not sure it's fair to call it a "touchscreen" when it's most likely a touchpad input surface aligned with an overhead projector. It's impossible to say from the video how feasible it would be to achieve the same performance with an actual touchscreen, let alone a high-resolution mobile device. But I'm looking forward to it. :)

footpath• 12 years ago

The creators of the drawing app "Colors!" for 3DS and iOS also tested their app's latency across a wide range of devices, and they achieved a 9ms latency in 2004's Nintendo DS:

http://www.collectingsmiles.com/news/measuring-latency-in-co...

  Nintendo 3DS – 23 ms
  PlayStation Vita – 49 ms
  Surface Pro – 100 ms
  iPhone 5 – 81 ms
  Galaxy Note – 71 ms
  Galaxy S3 – 104 ms & Nexus 10 – 99 ms
  Galaxy Note 2 – 132 ms
  Wii U GamePad – 53 ms
  Nintendo DS – 9 ms

agrias• 12 years ago

No one should be surprised Microsoft is trying to do their best to improve the Surface and converse with customers. They are great at requirements gathering. However all of this is their job and not solely out of good will. As a huge company that makes grand promises, they are expected to deliver a product that works for their customers. Would you expect any less?

As customers we should care about the best products that help us achieve our end goal. If you absolutely have to give your 'loyalty' to a company, your 'loyalty' should be given (in my opinion) to the company that is predictable, consistent, and reliable.

TwistedWeasel5• 12 years ago

It's admirable that MS is responding to criticism of their device and working for a solution.

However, all the issues he experienced seem like they would be quite obvious to anyone testing the device usage for any kind of drawing application (which, for a device with a stylus seems like a common enough use case to be testing), perhaps Microsoft needs to spend more time and effort on their QA process for the next round of the Surface instead of playing catch up after release.

stcredzero8• 12 years ago

all the issues he experienced seem like they would be quite obvious

It's the classic QA paradox. The typical hacker world view doesn't prioritize such feel issues enough. Even in today's UX focused world, stylus specific issues aren't widely understood. Combine the dynamics of the Asch conformity experiment, and it makes perfect sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnT2FcuZaYI

icebraining3• 12 years ago

The typical hacker shouldn't be testing this device, then. I'm sure Microsoft has someone with the skills on their teams.

devindotcom• 12 years ago

Yeah, I'm baffled as to how the button placement made it past any kind of initial hands-on testing. It's hard to imagine a person using the pen on the screen for ten or fifteen minutes not encountering that problem.

Mister_Snuggles2• 12 years ago

From the article, it sounds like the Microsoft folks were kicking themselves for that oversight.

To their credit, I've made similar mistakes in my career.

TwistedWeasel5• 12 years ago

A lot of QA departments these days put their effort behind automated testing, which is very valuable but will never replace actual human usage of a device.

Automation should catch one class of problems but real world usage is necessary to catch a whole different type of issue.

rickyc091• 12 years ago

They probably didn't have an artist use the device prior to release. They were probably testing the app in OneNote where you could just move the page to center it if you needed more room.

prawn4• 12 years ago

There's a comment from another sketcher in here talking about how it might be a peculiar grip not used by all artists.

WalterBright• 12 years ago

I have that problem with every laptop with the touch pad square in front of the keyboard. I am always brushing against it with my palm while typing that produces very unintended input.

I'm not the only one, I've noticed other people having the same problem.

I have no idea how this design became ubiquitous. It does not work for me at all.

phaus2• 12 years ago

It's admirable that MS is responding to criticism of their device and working for a solution.

It is admirable, but their work towards a solution will be fruitless. N-Trig's pressure sensitive stylus technology is vastly inferior to Wacom. Sure, most people can't tell the difference, but most artists can. Sure, artists can still produce professional quality work with an N-Trig stylus, but the experience of using an N-Trig stylus is substandard.

Microsoft improved nearly every aspect of the Surface Pro 3, but their switch to N-Trig was extraordinarily stupid. I'd rather have a slightly thicker, slightly more expensive device than one with a less than perfect stylus. I hope they continue to improve things by switching back to Wacom in the future.

wlesieutre2• 12 years ago

On the other hand, the N-trig stylus works accurately at the edge of the screen. You can't say the same about Wacom's, and the issue is made worse by the fact that most desktop software puts toolbars full of tiny mouse targets around the edge of the screen.

With their Bamboo/Intuos/Cintiq products, Wacom can avoid the accuracy falloff problems by including an enormous margin around the edge of the active area. On a portable device like the Surface Pro 2, they weren't able to do that and it showed.

There are certainly tradeoffs in going to N-trig, but I don't think it's fair to portray it as inferior to Wacom's tech in every area but cost.

cc_• 12 years ago

The SP2 Wacom setup was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, in my experience -- accuracy was terrible in the corners / near the edges, and parallax was a serious issue, if you did not write/draw with the pen perpendicular to the surface of the screen, there was a significant offset from the tip of the pen to where the line was actually drawn. These were bad enough to turn me (and at least one professional artist that I know) off from buying one.

The move to N-Trig hypothetically fixes both of these. Early reviews/videos say that corner accuracy is greatly improved, and the lack of a separate digitizer layer allows a thinner optical stack, reducing parallax (and allowing the device overall to be thinner).

Driver support has historically been an issue, but msft seems to be improving things significantly.

There are fewer levels of sensitivity and hovering doesn't work quite as well, but I am overall reasonably optimistic about the switch.

dman4• 12 years ago

The possibility also remains that Wacom did not want the kind of business that the Surface brings to them. The surface is the first product that does a reasonably good job of cannibalizing cintiq sales. I would expect their margins on Cintiq to be higher than selling a digitizer component to Microsoft. I think Wacom is in a really tough place here - they have to balance between limiting access to their crown jewels while also making sure that ntrig doesnt make too many inroads as a legitimate alternative.

benihana• 12 years ago

It is admirable, but their work towards a solution will be fruitless.

Any Microsoft employees listening: Go ahead and pack it up. Someone on the internet has told you all you need to hear. It's fruitless. Literally nothing you do will work, as this post has clearly pointed out. Look to this non sequitor full of opinion presented as fact for all the info you need: Until you switch to the hardware that OP knows is superior, your work will be for naught. Sorry.

omikun2• 12 years ago

I want to applaud MS but this whole thing stinks of a PR move. Wacom has always had a customizable pressure curve in their software. This should be a bedrock standard but instead this catch-up is spun as MS' dedication to artists. To think they are just getting around to doing this (not even a user adjustable slider scale but just a few presets) speaks volume of how much they actually care about artists -- it wasn't goal they had in mind until they sent out their demo units.

Personally, I think the SP3 is probably the best PC for digital artists, but I'm disappointed in how little they worked on making the stylus user friendly.

steele9• 12 years ago

Would you have preferred they did not address the concerns of Krahulik?

SP2 is likely the best portable computer for digital illustrators. You can still have an SP2, but if you're like me, you're bummed out that SP3 means that the accessory ecosystem is stuck as-is for the SP2.

krschultz2• 12 years ago

Seemingly pedantic point, but this is a UX design problem not a QA problem. QA is largely something that you want to automate, minimize, and reduce the cost of. QA is making sure things work as designed. UX design is something that you want to maximize. That's figuring out what you want to make.

The tools of the UX design trade are very different. I think the best UX is done with mockups that go into customer feedback sessions. The middle ground is lots of static drawings of UX, which leads to a lot of bikeshedding and not a lot of real data. Obviously the worst is no UX design at all.

TwistedWeasel5• 12 years ago

I somewhat disagree, it depends on how QA fits into your organization and how you scope its role. UX needs Quality Assurance too, and sometimes things get past the UX team and into a product - at that point new issues come to light during testing and should be fed back up to the responsible teams.

In general I view QA as the last line of defense before the customer, if your QA doesn't speak up about ANY issues with the product, technical, UX or otherwise then who will?

Of course, my view of the role of QA in product design may be different from others.

bcbrown• 12 years ago

QA is making sure things work as designed.

That is why I don't like describing the Test discipline as QA. It's not QA. When I worked in Test, I viewed my role as making sure things work well for the user, which includes 'testing' the specs to make sure there's no scenarios with glaring pain points. I think there's some parallels with the Obmudsman role in acting as the internal customer advocate.

chillingeffect• 12 years ago

It's admirable that MS is responding to criticism of their device and working for a solution.

It is, but it isn't some trade secret, they could open source this and have 1,000s of people converging toward the solution. Why are they so hung up and being The Ones Who Deliver The Software And The Hardware?

virtue35• 12 years ago

money? "optimal experience"

I'm all for supporting open source. But seriously, it took me about 20-30 hours to get my FreeNAS setup working (the way I wanted) (getting the hardware together, configuring... lots and lots of configuring). And I'm definitely not going to say that that project is "end user friendly".

I really really love open source projects but I'm willing to put down that they don't always meet the end user in an appreciable way without a serious and committed company behind the product making it end user applicable (android, et all). Otherwise the open source project will fit the needs of the people that work on it (engineers) and that's about it.

mpyne• 12 years ago

Why are they so hung up and being The Ones Who Deliver The Software And The Hardware?

For the same reason that Ubuntu and Firefox are?

ajessup2• 12 years ago

OP, surprised that MS (as with any large company) didn't require you to sign an NDA to not discuss unannounced features during development. Bold (and encouraging) move on their part if they didn't.

itafroma2• 12 years ago

OP, surprised that MS (as with any large company) didn't require you to sign an NDA to not discuss unannounced features during development

Mike Krahulik has been a fan of Surface Pro from the beginning,[1] has been very vocal about what he likes and dislikes, and has a very large audience.[2] It seems likely they were counting on him blogging his experiences as soon as possible after his last Surface Pro post,[3] which had some fairly negative points that made using the new Surface Pro difficult (if not impossible) for him.

[1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/02/22/the-ms-surf...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Arcade

[3] http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/05/23/surface-pro...

Einstalbert• 12 years ago

Microsoft keeping Gabe happy with the surface line is probably one of their top 5 PR priorities for the devices. I am not surprised by this post in the least, but I am glad that Gabe is going to get something he can use for his work.

headwayoldest• 12 years ago

Gabe is just the character that initially represented Mike Krahulik, the artist of PA and the person writing those posts.

morsch• 12 years ago

They'd have to be insane. You can't pay for advertisements like these. Despite the mixed feelings Gabe has had with Surface 3. Just look at this HN thread; every post Gabe made about the Surface caused similar comments.

vacri3• 12 years ago

In his case, he'd already generated bad press, so letting him comment to the positive on changes they're working on benefits them.

ajessup2• 12 years ago

Gabe's posts have had strong impact on a relatively small audience. It's hard to realistically imagine it's had a significant impact on Surface sales one way or the other.

On the other hand when he blogs about the future direction that they are taking then this is all data that competitors will gobble up, and in many cases can bring to market ahead of MS.

Quite possibly the PR gain here is offset by the future opportunity cost by giving competitors a heads up on future strategy.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

They're using him as a PR sheep. Of course they didn't require an NDA.

GodEater• 12 years ago

It's great to read that Gabe has had such a positive experience with a Microsoft product team - but it seems pretty obvious to me that it's because he's a somebody. His posts on penny-arcade reach an enormous audience, and so of course they're going to do their damn best to make sure he sings the product's praises.

My experience is very different. I've been working for an enormous organisation for the last 4 years, and we're a tier 1 client of Microsoft's. I've had numerous occasions where I've tried to get anyone on the product team for my specialisation at Microsoft, that my company literally drops millions of pounds on to pay any attention to our requirements. And every time I've had that conversation, with the same requirements, it's like this is the first time they've heard it. They make great promises that they'll go away and think about it, and then nothing happens. And that's because I'm a nobody. I don't have a blog with a massive audience, and so they really don't give a sh!t.

sz4kerto• 12 years ago

Interesting. In the enterprise I worked back then we had a problem that was not MS's fault rather the result of a specific implementation detail related to how we managed software on Windows-based PCs -- Microsoft basically extended the .Net framework because we needed it. (Extended means adding a few methods and events here and there, but they definitely listened -- this was many years ago, by the way.)

_random_• 12 years ago

I've heard that one company screwed up the basic fundamental component of their mobile phone once - the antenna. It was basically short-circuiting when you were holding it during the call. Their answer to consumers? "You are holding it wrong".

smacktoward2• 12 years ago

While I don't disagree, it's also potentially due to Microsoft being a gigantic corporation with dozens of internal fiefdoms, which can each have wildly varying cultures. It's possible that the people working on consumer tech (or specifically on Surface) are open to user feedback where the people working on enterprise products just aren't.

(Not that I'd say that's acceptable if it's the case, just saying it wouldn't surprise me -- especially given how terrible at these things enterprise-focused people at big companies are in general. Listening to end users and then rapidly responding to their needs is just not part of their culture.)

Torgo• 12 years ago

They are fixing the problem for every user, not just him, based on his input. I want a drawing tablet, I have been reading every PA post about the surface with bated breath waiting for the "it's now perfect" announcement. As far as I'm concerned, their model is working. Maybe they just need to expand it to other products too.

aeturnum• 12 years ago

Sure, this problem is fixed for every user. That's great, we're all in favor of MS fixing problems.

What GodEater is pointing out is that Gabe is getting attention due to his celebrity. Much more attention than Microsoft gives to companies that pay them millions of pounds for their products. Gabe gets that attention precisely because his opinion closely watched by people like you.

Consider what kind of product development this philosophy gives rise to. What if you don't want what Gabe wants? Do you have any chance of getting it when MS has the sort of development priorities they're displaying here. What if they were listening to someone whose opinion you did not respect? How would that affect your view of the product & the company?

rasz_pl10• 12 years ago

They make great promises that they'll go away and think about it, and then nothing happens.

but this is EXACTLY how they treated Gabe. They didnt fix ANYTHING, they just showed up some prototypes and talked about fixing some stuff.

virtue35• 12 years ago

It really really depends on which product team you deal with at MS. I had experience with the silverlight/winphone teams and they were pretty on the ball. We had major carrier backing at my last job though... so they usually listened to us and we usually had early access hardware.

Sorry your experience with them wasn't as spot on. They've really been trying to be more responsive to feedback (at least with windows phone).

vacri3• 12 years ago

While I assume you've probably done this, you can try going up the chain, telling the higher-level managers just what a shitty experience you've had, and that you're considering looking elsewhere to fill (some of) your needs as a result. You don't have to say you're considering moving everything, just that you're going to start experimenting with other providers where appropriate, and start breaking the MS stranglehold on your business.

Make someone important start genuinely worrying about your account. Get them to assign a permanent engineering contact point, since it's clear your account manager isn't doing it for you. If you're not a manager-level staffer, get managerial support in doing this, so you have their backing and they don't undermine you later (even accidentally). And while you don't have a blog of your own, if you get stonewalled again, you could reach out to a tech blog with a decent amount of penetration and have an interview with them - either about the shitty experience, or the thought of moving vendors and implying that MS is no longer the only game in town for your -foo-. It doesn't have to be perfectly true, it just has to generate visible bad press - it's an underhanded tactic, but if you're consistently being treated poorly, I think it's an option to consider.

Or, even better, move off MS where possible, and spend that money on staff to massage the changeover :)

blazespin• 12 years ago

They're not listening to him because he's a somebody, they're listening to him because they realize he's describing what every drawer needs.

dingdingdang• 12 years ago

Why don't you try contacting Gabe directly and get a few contact emails off him, might well be worthwhile!

microtherion• 12 years ago

It's great to read that Gabe has had such a positive experience with a Microsoft product team - but it seems pretty obvious to me that it's because he's a somebody.

Yes, the article had a bit of a Chaos Manor feel to it.

stcredzero8• 12 years ago

It’s very hard to take something like how the device “feels” to draw on and convert that into something engineers can use. I ended up describing it in terms of speaking. I said drawing on the Pro 2 was like having a conversation with someone. With the Surface Pro 3 I feel like I need to either whisper or yell to have the same conversation. I had to press very lightly or very hard, and it changes the way I draw. I was also able to show them some of the lag I was noticing. They could all see me draw a line and watch it pop in a split second later.

There is a reason why Wacom dominated its niche for so long, even in the face of inexpensive asian knock-offs. (1) They had this stuff right. (2) Hackers who are perceptive enough that they don't underestimate the difficulty of getting this stuff right are a very small minority.

colechristensen• 12 years ago

It seems like Microsoft could really benefit from having conversations (or hiring) experts in the (ahem) "UI" design of aircraft. The ergonomics, feedback and force required for action on controls, button placement.... all the sorts of things a pilot has to do to interact with the machine are very well studied and, more importantly, quantified by excellent engineers. That engineering expertise could surely be translated to the physical interface of a tablet in a way that is much less possible or relevant for a keyboard and mouse interface.

steele9• 12 years ago

In this context, who are the hackers?

"asian knock-offs" seems odd in this context. Wacom is a Japanese company. Also, some inexpensive competitors like the monoprice-sold UC-Logic tablets are generally well-received despite having to shove a battery into the pen to avoid wacom's patented inductive coupling.

stcredzero8• 12 years ago

In this context, who are the hackers?

Programmers who tell themselves, "A stylus? Implementing that would be a piece of cake!" (I have to admit I'm guilty of this exact thing myself.)

"asian knock-offs" seems odd in this context. Wacom is a Japanese company.

And I'm of Korean extraction. From what I've seen, the majority of the knock-offs happen to be from asia. Those are the facts as I understand them. Your "oddness" seems to be supposition.

tanzam75• 12 years ago

Wacom released the SD tablet in 1987. Their patent on inductively-powered styluses should have expired by now.

(Back then, US patents were valid for 17 years from issue date, but the backlog was also much shorter.)

I know that N-trig used to make an inductively-powered stylus about 5 years ago, but for whatever reason, they switched to batteries.

CamperBob23• 12 years ago

(3) Our patent system grants Wacom monopoly rights measured in decades in return for, well, no societal benefits that are readily apparent.

rayiner2• 12 years ago

The benefit to the consumer is that some other company didn't just copy their technology down to the silk screening on the PCB, eliminating their ability to get any return on their R&D. Wacom is a terrible example for an anti-patent rant. Digitizing pen input is really hard to get right. N-trig has been working to come up with their own independent technology for years now. This is exactly the sort of R&D-heavy product development that's most endangered by copying. Without patents we'd be stuck at Wacom 1.0, and N-trig wouldn't have any incentive to come up with independent technology with different characteristics.

huhtenberg2• 12 years ago

Gotta really give it to Microsoft. The transformation of the company under Nadella's leadership is really impressive. They really stepped up their game. They finally got someone on the PR team that actually knows what they are doing.

danudey3• 12 years ago

It's starting to feel as though the philosophy in Microsoft is less about 'Windows everywhere', but more about relevance. Product teams are created for various niches (e.g. Surface, Azure, etc.) but those teams now have a large degree of autonomy in pursuing their goals.

As an example, the Office team's goals aren't to prop up Windows as a platform by providing a sufficient but substandard product on other platforms, but rather to make a great product; as a result, Office 365 for iPad. The Surface team isn't about making a platform to foist Windows 8 onto people or pressure tablet makers, it's about making a great personal tablet/laptop frankenstein.

Likewise, Azure is (reportedly) a great backend for apps on all kinds of platforms, especially on iOS, rather than a 'competitive advantage' to make sure that Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 work great with each other and only with each other.

I really feel as though this is the right direction for them, and that it's producing some really great results so far.

smacktoward2• 12 years ago

It's like they finally got around to reading Dave Winer's post from 13 years ago (!) on the idea of the "strategy tax" (http://scripting.com/davenet/2001/04/30/strategyTax.html):

Sometimes products developed inside a company such as Microsoft have to accept constraints that go against competitiveness, or might displease users, in order to further the cause of another product. I recognized the concept but had never heard the term.

An example. Consider a company that develops both a Web browser and a word processor. The product team for the browser might get lots of input from users saying "We'd like a better editor in the browser." It would be natural to give the users what they want. So they put the feature in their project plan, but when it comes up for review, the CEO shoots them down. "They should use the word processor," he says.

nether• 12 years ago

Gabe was raving about the Surface even with Ballmer at MS. I guess now it's time to credit anything good happening to Nadella's chairmanship.

virtue35• 12 years ago

I was about to chime in on this. Yes, the surface got thrown at Gabe since the getgo. He's been raving about it for a long time.

Which is surprising as he was using it as part of his major workflow for a while over his cintiq.

huhtenberg2• 12 years ago

Except Microsoft didn't respond to his raves while Ballmer was in place.

tomelders• 12 years ago

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Microsoft has arrived at a place where simply being as good or a bit better than it's competition is not enough. Over the past 10 years, they've alienated, infuriated, exploited, cheated and abused so many of their users and people who support their users that the bar they have to jump over is higher than the bar any other company has to jump over.

That's a good thing for everyone else. It means better products and stiffer competition, but only if Microsoft recognises the true scale of the challenge facing them. There is so little good will towards Microsoft who are still seen by many as the lumbering, malevolent spoilt child of tech that (as I've already said) being good or a bit better falls far short of the leaps and bounds they need to be making.

I for one have been enjoying Microsoft's slow motion fall from grace and I'll continue to do so because I'm still angry at they way they've behaved on the web and abused their position with Internet Explorer. People may well disagree with my view point, but disagreeing with me (and the score like me) makes no difference. It's the way we feel, the way we will continue to feel and Microsoft will need nothing short of a miracle to change our minds.

zerohm• 12 years ago

Microsoft knows the days of strong arm tactics and PC dominance are gone. They know they aren't the king of the hill anymore. You can see it in the way they are handling Surface and Azure, or mishandling in the way of Xbox.

ebbv2• 12 years ago

So if you're a famous millionaire the Surface Pro 3 is the device for you, and Microsoft will make sure to fix all your problems with it.

Hooray?

steele9• 12 years ago

It is probably a stretch to call Mike Krahulik a famous millionaire. Microsoft used his art in their recent ad campaigns, which itself was a response to a prior unsolicited positive writeup on their product. So it is perfectly reasonable that they get his feedback (albeit far too late). Not all the problems were fixed, and I suspect some of the problems can't really be fixed given the hardware that is being shipped. To some degree this is damage control on the part of Microsoft, because on his initial impressions with SP3, Krahulik was clear that he could not recommend this to illustrators with a similar workflow -- most of which are not famous millionaires.

ebbv2• 12 years ago

How is it a stretch? He's a millionaire, there's no denying that.

Sure mainstream people might not know who he is but in tech circles literally everyone does. So how is he not famous?

I'd challenge you to find a more high profile person using Surface 3 and giving their public thoughts on it.

So, my comment stands; if you are a famous millionaire then it's the product for you apparently, because Microsoft will actually fix your complaints. Otherwise, good luck.

richardlblair2• 12 years ago

When MS is cornered (when they are losing in one area or another), and they are determined to win the competition should be scared. They are very good at committing to a project, and being in it for the long haul.

mikestew• 12 years ago

They are very good at committing to a project, and being in it for the long haul.

How so? I can think of several projects (especially hardware) that they abandoned after the first version. Granted, they gave the Zune a fair shake (though I don't think the iPod had much to be scared of). SPOT, too, considering that smart phones were starting to get useful about a year after SPOT's release.

But as a counter example, I know of one unreleased hardware product they're working on right now that stands little chance of going beyond V1 due to (without inappropriately saying too much) a lack of commitment on MSFT's part. Could be that in this case they're not "determined to win", but I'm not in a position to know how determined they are.

baggachipz• 12 years ago

Xbox comes to mind....

rlu• 12 years ago

There are plenty of examples of Microsoft releasing a product which initially had little uptake but that eventually, after several releases, did well. Even big ones like Windows, Office, and SQL Server are examples of this.

As for unreleased products: I think that is an orthogonal discussion.

richardlblair2• 12 years ago

Excel immediately comes to mind.

PhantomGremlin• 12 years ago

They are very good at committing to a project, and being in it for the long haul.

Nobody has yet mentioned Microsoft PlaysForSure. Those clowns really screwed the pooch on that one. They got their "partners" to commit to a form of DRM that the Zune (brown bar of turd) didn't support and that Microsoft then abandoned.

How's the "long haul" working out for that particular fiasco?

Sorry if this sounds like a rant (which it is). But I don't understand how Microsoft's numerous mistakes keep getting erased into the mists of time. This wasn't something that happened eons ago. PlaysForSure was introduced a mere ten years ago.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PlaysForSure

milhous• 12 years ago

What Microsoft should do is bring more artistic people into the Surface team, perhaps engineers with artistic abilities, and by doing exactly what they did for Gabe: study how artists work. The end result is a much better product without the need for a post-mortem scramble.

josefresco• 12 years ago

Seems like a small niche to be focusing on. I understand the PR angle (it's a home run for the PR team) but I don't think catering to artists who draw digitally is going to make or break the tablet.

Where's the feel good story about the coder, the gamer, or the office junkie? Each of which makes up a considerably larger slice of the premium laptop/tablet marketplace.

bgilroy26• 12 years ago

The coder, the gamer, and the office junkie are the traditional Microsoft audience from the 90s + 2000s (maybe in reverse order). Apple had the artist audience even back in the 2000s, macintoshes were really niche-y then

Seeing Apple's huge success in the late 2000s, Microsoft's grand marketing strategy since has been to try and re approach a young hip, artistic audience while not losing their traditional base.

It's a huge shift and it won't be easy, since managers who buy for their offices want a low-rent, predictable product and their feathers are easily ruffled.

adrianhoward• 12 years ago

I dunno.

Not make or break maybe. Be a potentially big market - hella yeah.

The majority of design-ish people I know, including myself, would kill for a decent tablet drawing environment. Folk are already laying out for specialist devices like http://www.wacom.com/en/gb/creative/cintiq-24-hd-touch.

My iPad is cute and useful for many things. I do very rough sketch stuff on it. For professional deign work it's pretty much useless. As somebody who's been buying Apple kit since before Jobs return the surface is the first time I've ever been tempted by Windows hardware.

I know many folk who walk around with a Macbook + iPad + wacom tablet. I can see a lot of those folk switching if the Surface 3 worked well. I know lots of long-term Apple folk who were really tempted by the Surface 2.

The office junkies, coders and games have alternatives. Currently there is almost nothing that does what the Surface 2/3 do, on the design side, in a single device.

(I also imagine that the issues of stylus sensitivity & lag will apply to other interaction models to. Getting those things to feel "natural" is non-trivial. Pleasing the design folk will probably make it better for other peeps too.)

chris_mahan• 12 years ago

I've been looking a the cintiq too, and may still do that, because wacom caters to illustrators directly.

prawn4• 12 years ago

Was a Windows user but have a MBP now. I follow the Surface reports with interest entirely because of the apparent quality of stylus input. Getting a Wacom is my likely path at this point though.

Pxtl• 12 years ago

Apple has had a stranglehold on the graphic design industry for years despite not actually making a good stylus-driven product for that market.

I don't know if there's a legitimate marketing reason for this, but it's a tremendously symbolic conflict. Microsoft attacking Apple in their stronghold.

eropple• 12 years ago

I'm not even a serious artist--I'm a programmer who makes games--and the only reason I bought an SP2 was Photoshop.

I took it back because the SP3 news dropped that week.

Kind of regretting that now.

prawn4• 12 years ago

This feels like Altavista and then Google appealing to the tech types in the earlier days of search engines. If you wanted to convince the masses that the sketching and note-taking was high quality, why wouldn't you get it right for the artists as a priority?

I assume anyone from Penny Arcade has a gaming background too.

tfinniga• 12 years ago

the gamer

If they get Gabe happy with it, then they will get a ton of free PR in front of a lot of gamers. For example, see this post of his (especially the second half) about the original surface pro: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/02/22/the-ms-surf...

krschultz2• 12 years ago

"You hear a lot about MS being this massive company that doesn’t listen but that’s really not fair in this case."

Every large company is made up of thousands of individual people, many of which really care about making a good product and making customers happy. The whole question in managing a big company is how to get out of the way of that natural process, while still coordinating all the disparate groups so that the final product works.

seanewest• 12 years ago

What natural process?

Tloewald2• 12 years ago

Actually MS has always listened. The problem has been (a) whom they listened to (the user has usually not been their customer) and (b) lack of "taste".

MS Office is, for good and ill, exactly what you get when you give users what they ask for and have no taste.

balls1873• 12 years ago

Office 2013, specifically Excel and Word are fantastic.

quink2• 12 years ago

Whatever are you complaining about? Little as I am a fan of the WYSIWYG philosophy, Office is a genuinely spectacular product.

reallysure• 12 years ago

"Actually MS has always listened." Really? http://www.jax184.com/projects/filenames/filenames.html

Marazan• 12 years ago

"You hear a lot about MS being this massive company that doesn’t listen but that’s really not fair in this case."

Yeah it's easy to get listened to by Microsoft, just go create the most popular web-comic in the world and they'll get in touch. Anyone can do it.

Aissen• 12 years ago

I could see some of them shaking their heads and looking at each other. They were very obviously bothered that they had not seen this before.

To me this looks like engineers that had foreseen the problem but were promptly ignored by UX people. Or maybe the other way around.

saidajigumi• 12 years ago

IMO, this is a great example of why show me don't tell me is vital in product creation. Here, the folks empowered to make the change saw the problem with their own eyes. They may indeed have heard or speculated about this issue previously. But there's a fundamental difference between someone saying something, filtered through language, organizational priorities, etc. and making that realization on your own.

Related, this is a part of why good data viz is so powerful: it allows others to quickly and independently reach the same associations and conclusions. A real-world example: a data viz of game beta test user data shows player deaths in an area with no enemies. Curious. Linking over to video from an affected player just before the death reveals a level design error: a tunnel wall wasn't made solid. This allowed players to "fall out" of the level, causing the game to kill them. The development team relayed that before they had these tools, there would often be a back-and-forth with the level designers ("no, that can't be right!"). But now they'd just call them over, show them, and the level designer would get a bit pale and run back to their desk ("brb, gotta fix that NOW!").

drmarianus• 12 years ago

While I completely agree with your point that there are things that are better shown then described, it doesn't seem that difficult to say, "The home button is positioned such that it is too easy to accidentally hit it."

trobertson• 12 years ago

Rather than single out engineer and UX guys, it would be more accurate to say that some person(s?) foresaw the problem, and their concerns were dismissed by someone above them.

rasz_pl10• 12 years ago

yes, famous corporate 'mistakes were made, but not by me'

BrandonLive5• 12 years ago

That's all baseless speculation. In fact in Microsoft's culture decisions like that are almost entirely made by individual contributors working with trios of front-line managers/leads (dev/test/pm).

steele9• 12 years ago

Surface Pro is very interesting from a product management perspective. Surface Pro 1 satisfied this niche, and Surface Pro 2 improved upon the first model significantly. Surface Pro 3 addresses many of the form factor concessions of the previous model (aspect ratio, thickness) which would make it theoretically more palatable to the mainstream use cases -- however, the N-Trig digitizer and button placement hardware decisions makes this less appealing to that aforementioned niche.

BUT, you don't have to update. People that found great use in SP1+2, have very little incentive to upgrade for several reasons. Short cycles and price aside, the dilemma is now whether this niche can even commit to buying or recommend a SP2 or Surface Pro accessories even prices drop because SP3 is a clear signal of a significant form factor change. The frankly necessary blade accessories are now fragmented between form factors and the older form will not likely be supported going forward.

i_am_ralpht2• 12 years ago

Interesting that the Surface Pro 2 did so much better in terms of "feel" and "lag". I wonder if the switch to the nTrig panel is behind the regression (I have an old HP TX2 with an nTrig panel; it was always terrible, but maybe they've improved since then...).

listic• 12 years ago

And I was going to use a Surface Pro tablet with Ubuntu Linux.

If even Microsoft cannot make the device work right the first time around, even while apparently trying hard, I wonder how bad will the situation be on Linux. Still going to try; maybe later, when touch support on Ubuntu will be more ready and Surface Pro's will drop in price on eBay (I'm thinking of going with 256MB+ Surface Pro 2, unless they will make a newer generation of smaller tablets)

wfunction• 12 years ago

I hope he's getting paid for his time. MS should really be hiring him.

nacs• 12 years ago

He probably gets paid in the form of free Surface tablets and accessories.

pistle• 12 years ago

So when Apple lets people test out a new language, and the author notes important, but not universally demanded features, the tone is "It's amazing how awesome Apple is. Can't wait to see how it works out."

When MS does something not wholly different, there's a bunch of "HarrrrUMPH! They should have got this fixed already. It's such an obviously easy thing. If they were half the company or any open source community was, they would try to create something like a programming language!!"

Those contentious bones.

shinratdr• 12 years ago

Those situations are so different from each other I'm honestly amazed you wrote it, looked at it, and still thought it was a smart move to play that card.

AdmiralAsshat• 12 years ago

If memory serves, he was sent a Surface Pro 2 by Microsoft. And a Surface Pro 3. I don't recall if he was given the original Pro or if he bought that one himself.

Either way, I would view his endorsement and any other interaction with Microsoft with a shaker of salt; this is not at all dissimilar from the multitude of celebrities whom Samsung sends the latest Galaxy phone in a swag bag in order to get a "I wasn't paid off, I just really like it!" endorsement. His celebrity status commands him a certain amount of influence for whatever judgment he proclaims on the Surface (note, for instance, how every post he makes about it ends up on the front page of HN). I can guarantee if the same points were raised by a normal person who paid for the thing on their tumblr blog, there would not be a team of Microsoft engineers rushing to fix them.

kyoji• 12 years ago

Theres so much vitriol toward Microsoft in this thread regarding them "using" Krahulik as a PR pawn in their nefarious marketing schemes. He has written extensively about his experience using the Surface as a tool for professional illustration work (and for recreation) in the past; his thoughts on the Surface Pro 3 are not his first rodeo.

As someone who has been looking to buy a Surface for illustration work, it's so encouraging to see Microsoft even engaging with Krahulik, since it indicates to me that 'Artist' is a group of people they are actively pursuing, and willing to cater their device toward. He is an accomplished artist, and was a good pick to get feedback on this particular use of the device. It is also great PR and goodwill for Microsoft, but Krahulik's concerns seemed very genuine, and the fixes to them will benefit everyone like me who are looking to use their Surface for the same purpose.

BigChiefSmokem• 12 years ago

Why don't they just take off the Windows button? Can't you just swipe in from the right side of the screen to see the on-screen version? There's a Windows button in the task bar as well.

kevingadd• 12 years ago

It's more or less like the home button on an iPhone or iPad. Gestures are good, but there are scenarios where you can't easily use them or a novice user won't know about them. The Start button doesn't always show up in Desktop scenarios.

Also, I think you can use it to wake a device from sleep?

hyp0• 12 years ago

Microsoft bringing protoypes to the PA offices seems about as expected as this Dave Barry line:

  giant talking broccoli stalks will come around and mow your lawn, for free

Touchscreen latency is difficult, especially with increasing resolution. But if they managed it acceptably for the SP 2, it must be possible, I guess.

jtuente• 12 years ago

TBH, as soon as I saw the change from a Wacom digitizer to N-Trig's I cringed. I don't know what differences there are between the technologies they each use, but Wacom's is definitely more responsive on the whole. I like that they aren't using a 16:9 aspect ratio for the screen, but the switch away from Wacom kept me from making the Surface an automatic purchase.

jodrellblank2• 12 years ago

Did you see http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2014/5/27/microsoft-address... ?

throwawaykf05• 12 years ago

Some people are wondering (here and on the previous post) how this problem could have escaped usability testing. My guess is, Gabe seems to have a somewhat unusual grip, so it's more than plausible nobody anticipated this problem. I am not a professional artist, but I've been drawing for more than two decades now. I also have an original Surface Pro because I really wanted to get my hands on a Wacom that could do more than just draw. I've churned out tons of sketches on it using Sketchbook Express.

When his first review of the Pro 3 came out, I could not understand why he had problems with the home button. When I draw, my palm tends to rest on the lower right corner of the screen. This is also how I've seen most other sketchers draw. I could not position myself such that I'd hit where the home button on the Pro 3 is.

However, I've also seen enough people write with really (to me) weird grips. I imagine that it extends to drawing as well.

megablast• 12 years ago

This is going to be great SP4 is going to work great for Gabe.

But surely these changes were made for a reason?

gcb0• 12 years ago

if anything, this is a testament to why closed source software is dead.

Spend $1000+ on a device. it doesn't do what you want? get world famous and complain. have a team of engineers fix it for you. ...right.

Almost everything i hated on my first android phone i fixed it myself or lazily waited for someone else to fix it... yeah, it took a year or so to have it how i liked. My new phone, if i install any custom ROM i will lose some of the new hardware functionality, so i can't. i have to wait for the company to fix the annoyances i have, which i am pretty sure will be never. sadly i don't have the time to make the new hardware work because that is a retarded huge amount of time you need to waste.

zerny• 12 years ago

It's good to see tech companies like Microsoft and Apple trying to make the artists happy, not forgetting every human being has their own artistic side. The last sentence is very inspiring, though.

dharma1• 12 years ago

I'm kind of surprised they didn't run these type of tests BEFORE releasing surfae 3 pro

mukundmr• 12 years ago

Why would people want to use a Surface Pro3 as a drawing tablet? What is the target consumer for this device? The last time I played with the device, it was running regular Windows apps on a small screen and it was a nightmare getting the menus and buttons right. If applications have to be tailored for the Surface, how will they work on the desktop?

freehunter• 12 years ago

The Surface Pro 3 has a 12 inch screen compared to the Surface Pro 2's 10 inch screen and the Macbook Air's 11 inch screen, so the real estate is improved by quite a bit. It gets expensive to find a larger screen with a digitizer, and the guys from PA are on the road quite a bit so I'd imagine portability counts.

golergka• 12 years ago

I could see some of them shaking their heads and looking at each other. They were very obviously bothered that they had not seen this before.

Why I can't imagine Apple being in such a situation?

thisjepisje• 12 years ago

Sounds to me like they just hadn´t thought about this use case deep enough. Good to see they´re doing something about it, and with some nice publicity at that.

laichzeit0• 12 years ago

It looks ugly as hell. I would never want to be seen using something like that.

Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

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