TechRepublic’s Half Assed Surface RT to iPad Comparison

Half Assed

Image Source: writerdood.wordpress.com

TechRepublic has a post up this week from Patrick Gray that is billed as a hands-on comparison of the Microsoft Surface RT and the iPad. It’s a half-assed piece that’s full of apples to watermelons style comparisons.

For starters, when discussing the quality of the displays, Gray compares the Surface RT to the iPad 2. So that’s a tablet released very near the end of 2012 being pitted against the iPad released near the beginning of 2011 – and iPad that is now two generations behind the latest model. Lame.

Then Gray trots out a bit of tired, way overused, and misinformed nonsense about the iPad being a ‘just for consumption’ device (emphasis is mine in the excerpt below):

The aim of Microsoft’s tablet was to be easy to use and finger friendly, plus incorporate the best elements of a traditional computer, like running full-fledged productivity applications, which the iPad has never done well.

Bullshit. What are full-fledged productivity applications then? Over 90{813a954d5e225a1509f22204ece89c855080ce25555f20805f61bed63cbfde3b} of the Fortune 500 are deploying or piloting the iPad. That’s the heart of the enterprise arena there – so what,. they’re all using the iPad to watch movies and do some fun web browsing?

Local, state, and national governments are using the iPad. Healthcare professionals are using the iPad for everything from patient records to diagnostic usage. NFL teams are replacing their playbooks with iPads and have coaches and players using them heavily. The US Air Force and many commercial airlines are using iPads as electronic flightbags. Authors are writing entire novels on iPads, musicians are creating and producing entire albums on iPads.

The iPad has the iWork productivity suite, a number of apps that offer MS Office editing compatibility, cloud-based apps that offer access to Windows and the Office suite, and a huge array of great productivity apps from 3rd part developers.

Which tablet is the one that lacks for even half-decent app choices? The one that needs to pay developers to encourage them to develop for the disjointed half mobile / half desktop Surface RT? Hell, Office itself doesn’t even run on the ‘RT’ side of the Microsoft tablet.

Overall, Gray’s piece is a half-assed look at the Surface RT vs. the iPad, and a regurgitation of a delusional theory that Microsoft’s new tablet is somehow better for ‘real work’ than the iPad. Most reviews of it I’ve seen have left the reviewers not even wanting to carry on using the Surface RT after a day or two, nevermind getting any work done on it.