It
was not supposed to be this way. With the Surface getting better and
the tablet market in seeming decline, Apple’s oversized iPad Pro was
seen by many as being cannon fodder for the Surface brigade, not least
because of the mixed reviews the former got as compared to the largely
positive response to the Surface range. And yet, when
IDC released figures
for the tablet sales for the last quarter of 2015, the iPad Pro had
pretty much outsold the entire Surface range, in spite of being
introduced later in the quarter and having a generally higher price tag.
Why did this happen?
We are not privy to the thought process of the consumers but we did
discuss the matter with a few of our colleagues and a few retail players
(who would not like to be named) and well, we think these six reasons
might have played a role in the rather surprising turnaround (we would
like to stress the word “think” here – this is not the gospel truth, but
just our opinion, arrived at after discussions):
Radical change works better than marginal updates
After a series of largely similar looking iPads, Apple went and did
something radically different. Perhaps that was the shot in the arm the
tablet segment was looking for, burdened as it was by similarity.
Microsoft’s decision to stick to a largely similar format for the
Surface might have made it look slightly less ‘exciting.’ “
It looked too similar to the Surface Pro 3,”
a retailer complained, saying users were not being able to tell the
difference between the new Surface and its predecessor – Microsoft’s
technological coup in squeezing a larger display into the frame of its
predecessor might have had an unwanted design repercussion.
Greater reach…simple!
Strange though it may seem when you consider that Apple is considered
a ‘niche’ product manufacturer and Microsoft a more mainstream one,
Apple made the iPad available to more people than the Surface was. In
terms of launch strategy, Apple pretty much threw the kitchen sink at
the iPads and iPad Pro, while Microsoft opened a water tap. Even in a
market like India, which gets devices months after their international
launch (if at all – hey, the first Nexus and iPhone NEVER came here
officially), we have had every edition of the iPad reasonably fast. The
Surface, however, made its debut here only this year, after having been
around for a few years. Talk of missing out on massive potential
numbers.
The accessory add-on
This is something almost all the people we talked to commented on.
The Apple Pencil and keyboard cover were seen as add-ons to the device,
while in the case of the Surface, the keyboard was almost a necessity.
Now, neither the iPad Pro nor the Surface devices ship with keyboard
covers out of the box, but whereas the iPad Pro without a keyboard is
just a larger iPad, the Surface devices are like Windows devices without
keyboards. “
You HAVE to buy a keyboard with the Surface,” a friend of ours pointed out. “
And you do not have to do that with the iPad Pro.”
And of course, adding the Type Cover to the Surface drove up its price,
which many felt might have driven away consumers. There was also the
feeling that the Apple Pencil was better designed for work than the
Surface Pen, even though the latter was more fully featured, so bundling
the Pen with the Surface Pro did not have the sort of impact people had
imagined it would. We don’t know the financials involved in the move,
but we think that a trick was missed in not bundling the type keyboard
with the Surface.
The OS/ UI edge
The iPad Pro’s iOS UI had the edge over Windows 10 in case of
touchscreen use. And once again, we go back to the “notebook vs tablet”
issue here – the iPad Pro’s UI was perfect for a tablet, while the
Surface was coping with a UI that was designed also for a desktop. Yes,
it did bring in benefits like USB support and a file explorer system,
but on the flip side, the iPad Pro just seems to work more smoothly and –
we are coming to this again – does not seem to be missing a keyboard. “
We had a tough time telling people how it was different from a normal notebook with a touchscreen,”
a salesperson at a Microsoft retail store in Delhi admitted. Imagine
Apple having launched the iPad Pro with a touch version of Mac OS X, and
you will get the idea.
The appy advantage
This flows from the OS/UI edge – the iPad Pro simply came with more
apps that could work with it than the Surface series did. Yes, the state
of affairs at the Windows Store is improving every day but iOS has the
lead there for the time being, and once again, there is the little
matter of apps working better on the iPad Pro rather than the Surface –
we did mention how the on-screen keyboard would not open in MS Word in
the Surface when in tablet mode in our Surface Pro 4 Diaries. And
well, for many people, the time the Surface takes to switch orientation
from portrait to landscape within many apps is itself an annoyance.
The Surface’s positioning
In the early eighties, the Indian cricket team was very confused
about the role of a player called Ravi Shastri – yes, he was a great
player, but people were not too sure about what his exact role was: was
he batsman who can bowl a bit or a bowler who can bat a bit? We get the
same feeling with the Surface. Yes, it is a great device. But is it a
notebook with touch or a tablet that can type a bit? In our opinion, it
is very much the former, but Microsoft’s insistence on labelling it a
‘tablet’ has actually weakened its cause as the OS and UI are not the
best for a tablet. We actually think that the Surface would be better
off going toe to toe with other notebooks, as it easily one of the best
portable Windows devices we have ever used, rather than being projected
as a tablet with a Type Cover. Apple on the other hand, cleverly
positioned the iPad Pro as a productivity device, differentiating it
from the earlier iPads.
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