Surface Pro review

So earlier this year, I did a Surface RT review, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of Microsoft's tablet offering, in my biased opinion.  I do work for Microsoft and am thus predisposed to liking Microsoft products so take my reviews with whatever amount of salt you deem appropriate.

The Surface Pro is the best device I've ever owned.  The form factor and usability surpasses basically anything I've ever bought, in my opinion, it's that good.  I wanted a note-taking/sketching tablet that had an active digitizer.  I got that, plus a decent, if not fantastic laptop.  The tech blogs I read criticized the device for not fitting into any category.  It's noticeably heavier than an iPad, to the point of being slightly uncomfortable to use in certain situations where the iPad isn't uncomfortable, though I would argue those situations are few and far between.  Generally I find the iPad is too heavy for most long-term tablet holding tasks anyway.  The Surface Pro also has a smaller screen than any laptop I've ever used, and unlike the iPad criticism, it's hard to argue that the Surface Pro's screen isn't too small to be effective as a laptop.  But it has an active digitizer and runs metro apps!  

This means I don't really need to use it as a laptop.  I turn it sideways and use the dreaded portrait mode to take notes during meetings and doodle off to the side in One Note. I can use it to paint or draw as needed with several fantastic apps available for Windows 8, including Art Rage, Sketchbook Pro, and the free Fresh Paint which is actually an app that runs in Windows RT.

The other really nice thing about the Surface Pro is that you're not limited to Windows RT apps and all your legacy windows 7 apps not only run, but run pretty well.  And if the Surface Pro is a heavy iPad, it's an amazingly thin and light laptop, even with the type cover.  

I've found the battery life to be basically perfect for my needs.  I'll be out of juice by the end of the day, but I don't need to charge during the day with my workload.  Bear in mind that most of the work I do is done on a full Desktop PC, so generally the Surface Pro is relegated to taking notes. I probably get about 5 hours out of it before a charge.  I recently took it on a flight to Los Angeles, and used it to stream music over Wi Fi via X Box music, and paint some pictures, and I still had half a charge when I landed. That's about 90 minutes of heavy use, which I think is highly acceptable.

The device does get extremely hot for a tablet, but not uncomfortably so.  I have yet to hear the fan, though I've felt it blowing air out, so it is very quiet.   I'd rather not need a fan or have the device get hot, but it suits my needs pretty well.  

Overall if the battery life were closer to 10 hours, I think this device would be even better, though I find it incredibly good right now.  Highly recommended for anyone that sees the utility of the active digitizer.  

It's kind of late so apologies for the quick/dirtiness of this, but I wanted to get it out there because I am super happy to have a Surface Pro and if a new one comes out with a Haswell chip, I think you'd have to be a fool not to consider it.

Next Gen Digital Rights

So anything I say here is utterly and completely personal opinion and has nothing whatsoever to do with the company I work for.  I am obviously biased because I do work for one of the console manufacturers and I will admit that that bias plays into my overall thinking, but nothing I say here is in any way official or reflects any kind of official Microsoft statement.

So what I have to say is that I'm really surprised that gamers are so willing to embrace the notion of disc-switching in a digital era.  This is something that gamers bitterly fought on PC for nearly a decade until Steam, with the least objectionable DRM in the industry, ended up ending disc switching on PC once and for all.  Do people not remember how annoying it was to dig through discs and put each disc in the PC when they wanted to play another game?

I'm not going to try to argue that Microsoft has the best DRM situation possible, I haven't really analyzed it, but I will say it's not that objectionable to me, personally.  I understand that I'm not every consumer and others have various problems with it, but overall, it meshes well with how I tend to play and buy games.  I hope Microsoft can get its lending story sorted out soon, but otherwise I don't have a huge problem with any of it.  I'm not saying that someone who does is in the wrong, everyone's situation is different. 

What I will say is that people acting like Sony doesn't have any DRM are fooling themselves.  Sony absolutely does a DRM check on your game, it just happens to check local media instead of the internet.  And for me, that's considerably worse than a manufacturer asking to have my console online.  I am many times more likely to play different games if I don't have to go hunting around for discs.  This is a major reason I switched to PC.  And being able to fast swap in and out of games looks absolutely amazing to me.  On the PS4 there will either be some kind of check to ensure you have the rights to the game you're playing via the Internet, or via local media, or else, in the least likely case, there will be incredibly rampant piracy that will destroy the platform (this is basically impossible). 

I know I have friends who work at Sony and I am not going to say the PS4 is terrible or even in any way bad, I'm actually pretty excited for it.  That said, I plan on never buying a single retail disc for PS4.  Since all games will be digitally available day and date and since games can play while they're downloading, I'll happily buy all my PS4 games digitally rather than have to constantly change discs.  If I'm being honest I'll have to say the same for X Box One.  I probably won't buy any retail discs for X Box One either (though I might get a few free from work here and there). 

In a few years I doubt people will even be buying video game media in stores at all, but for now, if I'm buying media, I love the idea of installing it on my console and forgetting about it, just like PC games have done for the past 5 years.

Suggestions for Christopher Nolan's next film

Mori Memento.
Basically just play Memento forwards.  Maybe recast the whole thing. or else continue the story back in time!

Ception, alternatively Outception.
What happens next in Inception?  The world wants to know.  Plus you get a chance to explain that confusing ending!

Dark Knights and Baney Days
Bring back Bane and have him team up with Batman to take on Gotham City's underworld.  Also have Bane narrate the entire film.

Microsoft Surface RT

Every Microsoft employee got a Surface RT right before the holidays this year.  And my wife and I were no exceptions.  We've been using them for a few weeks now, and I figured I'd post a few of my thoughts.  Obviously I got the Surface RT for free and I am a Microsoft employee so my opinion is biased in some ways, though possibly not as much as one might think.

My wife and I were going to take our 2 year old son on a trip to Hawaii in October, but we greatly feared what would happen when we did.  Our son's attention span rarely lasts very long with anything, and we were talking about a 5 hour flight.  In order to alleviate the boredom, my wife got me an iPad 3 for Father's day, with an eye towards using it to occupy our son on the flight. 

It was and is a beautiful device with a fantastic screen and a very responsive, usable, OS.  There are of course a lot of apps and games for the iPad, but most of them weren't that useful, with the exception of a bunch of kids apps and some videos on iTunes.  Virtually the only game I played on the iPad was Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers which felt really good with touch controls.  It ended up working fairly well at distracting my son during the flight. 

Unexpectedly I ended up continuing on to New York by myself for work and rather than drag a laptop all over the country, I decided to just bring my iPad.  It was a reasonable device for my needs but I found it frustrating to use the keyboard for restaurant searches and the like. I also missed having a real IM with a keyboard.  Overall it was workable, and I really enjoyed the iPad for a while.

All of this is to present the context of my Surface experience.  I had used what was basically the best device in the tablet space and enjoyed it.  The Surface had something to live up to for sure.  I also happened to own an older Tablet PC that I installed windows 8 on, so it did have a touchscreen, but didn't support all the windows 8 multitasking functionality because the screen resolution was too low.

The week before I got my surface I was taking some time off from work and I was bumming around Seattle coffee shops with my tablet PC.  The tablet PC was a full core 2 duo machine and it weighs about 3 or 4 lbs.  Possibly more. It's not exactly huge but it lacks the svelte profile of a modern tablet. I had already found myself wishing for a surface.  I brought my iPad along on these jaunts, but the kind of thing I was doing.  Chatting on IM, posting on Facebook, replying to emails, and writing my Windows Phone 8 thoughts, were all better on my PC than the Surface. 

Enter the Surface.  I finally got my Surface RT and I was able to take it around an do all the stuff I'd wanted to do with my iPad but ended up needing a laptop for. 

At first, I was a little disappointed.  There were a bunch of obvious bugs and very odd behavior.  Then I was able to update the OS and apps and the experience improved considerably.  I felt I had a real sense for what the developers of Surface and Windows RT were gong for.

Let me say that, unfortunately, everything feels very version 1.0.  There are niggling little bugs, and missing features all over the place.  Some of the touch controls are startlingly worse than similar controls on Windows Phone which is pretty disappointing.  Let me say this, though, I think it feels a lot more like an Apple version 1.0 than a Microsoft version 1.0.  Microsoft is generally quite a bit worse at version 1.0s than anyone else and the Surface still feels like a good product.

In fact, it has virtually replaced the iPad in our house, with a few exceptions.  The only thing it really lacks at this point is apps. And there are a plethora of apps for kids for iPad, which is why my son is now the main user of the iPad in our house.

How has it replaced the iPad otherwise?

The web browser is fast, fluid, and fantastic.  It loads pages with ease and even displays flash on some pages. I don't think Safari is is a bad browser by any means, but IE 10 on surface blows it away in my estimation.  The browser is so good I can even use it for Facebook and some of the other "missing" apps.

But that's also because of the Touch cover.  The Touch Cover is a huge upgrade in my eyes.  I know there are Bluetooth keyboards for iPad, but The touch cover also has a track pad and this makes all the difference in the world to me.  I can use it for desktop apps and having the cursor is vey helpful for some websites.  Plus it takes up basically the same amount of space as my "smart cover" on my iPad and is considerably more functional.   The typing is a bit weird, but you get used to it.  I still type faster on a normal keyboard, but I'm typing up these thoughts on my surface with my Touch Cover and it's actually not going too badly, though using shift keys can make things sketchy.  The spacebar has also taken a bit of getting used to.  This basically completes the device and turns it into a functioning PC (for me) with a form factor basically the same as the iPad.  I used it for Christmas shopping and reading and watching videos and it's great for all of that.  One reason for that is the kickstand.

The kickstand is also, to me, a huge upgrade to the iPad design.  I've used it when using the surface like a laptop, I've used it just while reading or watching videos.   It even helps when using the camera for some things.  The Smart Cover just doesn't work well enough at standing up the iPad, the kickstand is a huge improvement.  Just having it in the kitchen with my One Note with my pancake recipe up was very nice when making Christmas breakfast.

For me the Surface RT is not quite a full PC replacement, but it's damn close.   I need a compiler and a stylus for any device I'd want, and coding on a Touch Cover seems like an exercise in frustration.  But if I just wanted to use Office, email, surf the web, and do social networking, the Surface would be a pretty complete solution in my opinion.

It is a touch slow at some things, and sometimes in surprising ways.  I'd still like more apps, and more particularly games, but since this stuff runs on windows 8 also, I have a feeling that stuff is coming, particularly with 35,000 apps in only  3 months.  It's also improved considerably in the short time I've owned it, which I find to be pretty hopeful. I realize it's a little pricey, but it feels like a high end device. Highly recommended to anyone who needs a device for light pc work.

The Nokia Lumia 920 and Windows Phone 8

I've been working at Microsoft for about two and a half years now, and for about two of those years, I've been using Windows Phone as my mobile OS of choice.  Originally I switched partly out of company loyalty and partly out of an intense hatred for what iOS 4 did to my iPhone 3G, basically causing it to be nearly unusable.  Eventually the problems were ironed out, but it left a bad taste in my mouth for iPhone products.  At the time, Android wasn't a very polished or consumer friendly OS and I didn't want to worry about multitasking or crashes, so Windows Phone seemed like the best alternative.

I ended up with a Samsung Focus and used it for two years, basically until my contract was up.  Initially I liked the phone, and really enjoyed the overall design of the OS.  I liked the speed and fluidness, and I also enjoyed how the applications all worked together to form a cohesive whole.  Well, the applications that were there anyway.  I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that many applications available on competing platforms haven't really shown up on Windows Phone yet.  Honestly though I'm not missing much.  I don't use Twitter, which seems to be a particular sore spot for Windows Phone, and otherwise my needs are pretty much covered.  It would be nice if my bank (Wells Fargo) had a decent Windows Phone app, but then, it'd be nice if they had an iPad app also (rather than just a blown up iPhone app).  Until the device started basically falling apart at the end of the contract with strange battery and speaker issues, I didn't really have a problem with it.  I didn't love it the way I loved my first iPhone, but I found it incredibly usable.

Earlier this year, Windows Phone 8 became available on a range of hardware devices.  After looking them all over, for me, the clear choice was the Lumia 920.  With it's incredible high resolution screen, striking design, and PureView camera, I knew I had finally found a premium phone in my ecosystem of choice.  However much I liked my Samsung Focus, I knew it wasn't really a premium device.  It was light on specs for when it came out, and it had a low resolution screen.  It also felt extremely cheap and plasticky, and fell apart when dropped.  That said, until the very end, it generally worked properly. 

The Lumia 920 is a completely different story.  Even though, ironically, it's made of plastic, the method they use to mold the phone makes it feel like an extremely premium product.  The phone is rather large and hefty in hand, but while many people have knocked the phone for this, it's one of my favorite things about the phone.  It feels solid in ways other phones I've used just don't.  And it's certainly not like it's unusably heavy.  Design aside when I turned it on, the screen was a feast for the eyes with bright colors and deep blacks as well as extreme viewing angles.  I think it's the best screen on a smartphone today.  To be fair I haven't seen an HTC One X or Droid DNA in person, so those might be better, but I can't imagine how.  With 60 fps refresh and the deepest blacks I've seen on an LCD, I really love the screen on the 920. 

The other striking thing when using the phone at first is just how FAST it feels. Windows Phone 7 didn't exactly feel slow to me, but Windows Phone 8 on a higher end CPU just screams.  Opening applications is much faster; as is resuming tombstoned applications, and just swiping around the OS.  The web browser clearly blows away any mobile browser I've seen yet (let me caveat this by saying I've never used Browser or Chrome on Android), and even running Windows Phone 7 apps is noticeably faster.  The app story is still pretty thin, though there is a decent new facebook app, though it's not totally solid yet, hopefully some updates are forthcoming.  There are a few cool new features that I haven't used a ton yet like the wallet functionality or the Kid's Corner.  Allowing applications to take over the lock screen is a welcome change as is the ability to have notifications on the lock screen. 

The other huge differentiator with Nokia devices in particular is the Nokia suite of apps that are available only for Nokia windows phones, including Nokia Music, Nokia Maps, and Nokia Drive.  I haven't used Nokia Music since I have an X Box Music pass, but Nokia drive is fantastic... when it works.  I did have some trouble with the phone seemingly losing a GPS connection lately but otherwise it's been incredibly solid.  Overall the Nokia apps are a huge value-add helping to justify my purchase. 

The other "big name" feature of the phone is wireless charging, which I initially pooh poohed, but I have found it to be very nice when going to bed to just kind of lay the phone down on it's charging tile without having to plug anything in.  Early reviews mentioned having to carefully align the phone, but I haven't found this to be the case, I can lay it down fairly haphazardly and it will still be fully charged by the next day.

The battery life of the phone is probably the only sore point so far.  The first day of use found it actually sorely lacking, but after turning off NFC (since I never use it anyway), I've found it to be much better, if not fantastic.  Probably the only drawback compared to my previous phone.

The main reason I bought the phone was the PureView Camera, which is called PureView due to it's Optical Image Stabilization feature, rather than some kind of digital stabilization, this camera actually floats in the middle of the phone on a flud, and is attached with springs, so when your hand shakes, the camera still manages to take still images.  This has two key advantages, one, normal picture taking is no longer a "careful tap" affair, to avoid motion blur, and secondly, the optical image stabilization allows the camera to keep the shutter open quite a bit longer for low-light images.  This makes for amazing dark and night photos.  There have been complaints of poor daytime performance, but it's such an upgrade from my previous camera, I haven't noticed.  Potentially this could be due to the software not automatically "touching up" photos for end users, and will apparently be addressed in a patch.  So far I'm very very happy with the camera.

In conclusion, I'm am extremely happy with this phone. It's the first phone I've owned since the original iPhone that feels like a truly premium and top of the line device.  Even the iPhone 3G felt like kind of a step backwards in design from the original iPhone (to me).  This phone feels like the logical end of the polycarbonate body that Nokia has been using since the N9 and it just feels and looks fantastic.  The OS also runs extremely well and is fun to use.

Living up to the Promise of Guitar Hero

When I first played Guitar Hero, I remember wondering what all the fuss was about. By the end of the song, when I realized how much better I was than at the beginning, and when I realized how awesome it felt to “play” guitar, I couldn’t stop recommending it.

It was the first game I can recall where almost all of the fun of the game just comes from becoming more skilled at the game, and actually, learning.  Obviously it’s not an educational game, and all it teaches you (honestly) is how to play Guitar Hero, but in that game I sensed the kernel of something bigger.  I’m certainly not the only or even a particularly early person to realize that educational games have huge potential, but I had forgotten how fun it is just to learn something.  Obviously it helps to learn something you want to learn, but it’s interesting (to me) that what you learn doesn’t even have to be useful.  At this point I’m thinking “holy crap, games could teach you X, Y, Z… even… even how to actually play guitar!”

At this point I sort of realized I was getting carried away, because playing guitar is FREAKING HARD (believe me, I tried to teach myself), it’s actually PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to change from one chord to another as fast as songs require ( or so I was pretty sure at the time), and guitar players are just mutants.  There’s no way you could make a fun game teaching someone how to actually play guitar.  AT this point I thought you might be able to do something with someone wanting to learn piano, or drums (both of which rock band eventually addressed), but guitar?  No way.

Fast forward several years and Harmonix , the best rhythm game studio in the world and makers of Guitar Hero, announces a HUGE upgrade to Rock Band.  PRO MODE, you ACTUALLY PLAY THE INSTRUMENT YOU’RE “PLAYING”.  INCLUDING GUITAR!  Though, with guitar, it’s one of two extremely expensive peripherals, either the 104 button “pro mode” plastic video game guitar, or the $180 six string Fender Squire Stratocaster that has MIDI output that Rock Band can use. 

At the time, I’m excited enough about the idea to pick up all the peripherals and I end up with both the 104 button plastic guitar, and the six string.  I play with the plastic one for a while, but I’m not getting sucked in. It’s fun, sort of, but it’s SUPER FREAKING HARD, and I can’t really tell what I’m doing wrong because the only feedback is a fakey guitar twang when I make a mistake.  The interface is also pretty difficult to understand.  The “real guitar” isn’t slated to come out for several months so I sort of practice with the plastic one, waiting for the real one to come.  The fateful day finally comes when  I can play rock band with a real guitar, and it’s….. disappointing.

It doesn’t function great, there is some bizarre Microsoft requirement reason that I can’t use the buttons on the guitar to control the game, and worst of all?  It doesn’t function well!  It can’t hear some of my plucks!  I am eventually able to adjust it to where it works pretty well, but the experience  isn’t that much better, and worst of all?  When the MIDI mode for rock band is enabled, the strings on the guitar are muted so I still can’t hear my mistakes.

Life intervenes and my child demands a large amount of my attention so my guitars (real and fake) get put away for about a year. 

Then this little game Rocksmith finally comes out.  Initially I’m skeptical, given that Rock band 3, and the apparently abysmal Power Gig didn’t really live up to the hype, I can’t believe some obscure Ubisoft studio could manage to put out something that bests the indomitable Harmonix Music Systems. Reviews are pretty good, however, and apparently for newbies the learning curve is amazing.  Not taking it too seriously, I throw the X box 360 version of the game on my Amazon.com wish list, thinking that maybe someone could get it for me and I could try it out.  Particularly since my birthday and Christmas were coming up.

I ended up trying to cancel the wish list wish and switch it with the PC version because I’ve heard about problems with the delay inherent in modern home theatre equipment and the game, and how it can sound really terrible and be hard to play.  Unfortunately (or actually, forunately) I update my wish list too late and the gift is already on the way.  I receive it, and take it up to my office where I have a second X box 360.  It still takes me quite some time to get around to trying it.  I don’t’ have my xbox live profile upstairs…  I don’t want to mess around with memory cards… Skyrim is out…   Finally Microsoft implements Cloud Saves into X box 360, and it’s easy to have a profile on multiple X boxes.  One night I randomly decide to fire up Rocksmith instead of Battlefield 3.

3 weeks and 4 calloused fingers later, I’m not looking back. This game completely delivers on the promise of Guitar Hero.  The track list is fantastic, the interface is extremely good (one can quibble but it’s by far the clearest interface I’ve seen of its kind).  There are tons of small little nits to pick and it’s clearly not a big budget title, but it nails what it needs to nail and more importantly, the more I play, the better I get at guitar!  The first couple of days my fingertips are on fire from pressing steel strings down, but once the callouses are in, I can’t pull myself away from the game at night, I’m mastering “High and Dry”, I’m learning the main riff from “Satisfaction”.  I’m struggling to play the main riff from “Don’t Fear The Reaper”, I’m LEARNING FREAKING GUITAR.

The game has a brilliant automatic difficulty selector, wherein, the more you play the part, the harder and more like the actual song it gets.  Normally this means chords start out as notes, then two string chords, then possibly the full chord.  Solos pick out the highlights and then slowly fill the gaps.  It almost always is recognizably the song you’re playing, but usually simpler sounding.  I play this way over and over, playing through the surprisingly competent career mode, where the game selects songs to practice and then “perform” in front of a virtual crowd, earning you rankings and points.  There are a few great practice modes where you can practice part of a song to increase the difficult, or play it slowed down and then have it gradually ramp up the speed as you learn it.  Basically a fully featured rhythm game, possibly the best one I’ve ever played.

I really hope Rocksmith succeeds financially, it’s already succeeded from a creative perspective. I REALLY want more downloadable content, I want there to be a sequel that fixes all the little problems. But if not, I’m going to squeeze all the practice I can out of this one.  It’s truly an amazing game experience, and an incredibly important symbol of what video games can be.

The Verge

There is a new tech site in town.  It’s called The Verge. It’s ostensibly similar to Engadget and Gizmodo, in that it reports tech news with some editorializing.  It is actually, in practice, quite different.  I’ll say that Engadget and Gizmodo might post more stories in a day, but The Verge posts stories that are almost like magazine articles.  They’re laid out extremely well with top notch writing and if the article isn’t an editorial, an overall lack of bias in the content, something that’s pretty rare these days in tech reporting.  I tend to think the majority of the staff are apple fans, but I don’t think that comes through too badly in the news reporting.  Unlike Gawker sites, there’s also a distinct lack of sensationalism and click-baiting which I find incredibly refreshing.

Anyway I thought some people might be interested in this great new tech site, The Verge.