Why I'm getting an iPad Pro but it could have been prevented

[SEANT]

Unfortunately for MS they created 2 OS that worked pretty well on Mobile but Intel struggled with the Power Management and Drivers....

Which OSs are you referring to? I'm not sure I could come up with any OS that was hampered solely by Intel power management/driver issue.

. . . .

Legacy always holds you back - i.e. The marketplace wont let you move on from the old, yet only embraces the new from someone or something else.

Aptly put. Definitely a quirk of human nature.

I'd guess it's a matter of efficiency. The need to crank out work overrides the willingness to try new things; leisure time notwithstanding. And, I'm going to guess, leisure time is best spent as far away from work related tasks as digitally possible (if the leisure activity has digital component at all).

That's why I think Microsoft’s mobile effort should have been laser focused on enterprise assistance. They were never going to appeal to the SnapChat crowd anyway. Put the effort into making every professional Windows computer user regret not having the ‘value added’ features a Windows phone or tablet could bring to their workday.

Sure, that may not appeal to numerous billions of people*, but Window pros are in the hundred million. Certainly enough to get the legacy application software manufactures interested in leveraging the 'enterprise assistance' bent. And if those millions could be retained, the new wave of App houses would see that as a viable area of expansion.

*those numerous billions may reconsider when its time to get a job.

 

[GreyFox7]

The best I can tell Intel has axed the X7 Cherry Trail successor which would have most likely been the chip used in a Surface 4. Apollo Lake is aimed at higher TDP low end PCs like HP Stream. AFAIK No one has ever built a tablet with these chips. In essence it's the same or higher TDP as Core m with 50% less performance so while it might be cheaper than using Core m and somebody might decide to go there it's suboptimal at best.

IMO MS has two options to continue to compete in the under 12" tablet space (i.e. 10.1 to 11.6 inches), use Core m or ARM. Under 10.1 the only choice is ARM until Intel can lower the TDP/SDP of Core m to 2 Watts which maybe will be 2018-2020. They have only one choice in phones and that is ARM. It will be 5-7 years yet, if ever, before there is a Core m SoC that could include the additional components for a competitive phone SoC.

Please Microsoft, let us know what you plan to do ASAP.

Intel says: "I'll be back", in 2020+. Yeah, sure they will.

ARM is an unescapable force and part of Microsoft's future whether they like it or not. i.e. it will be a part of their future they choose to forgo if they don't leverage ARM to the fullest and get on the bandwagon. UWP is also Microsoft's future and UWP will work just fine on ARM. Embrace the future and get with it.

 

[hughlle]

Does a 10" surface have to be fanless though? In my view, the surface 3 is not really being sold as a competitor to apple or android. While it shares a usage case, it's main purpose is very different, to still be a proper computer.

 

[GreyFox7]

Does a 10" surface have to be fanless though? In my view, the surface 3 is not really being sold as a competitor to apple or android. While it shares a usage case, it's main purpose is very different, to still be a proper computer.

Yes, fanless. Silent as a lamb chop

The smaller you get the less total heat can be dissipated so a fan would have to be a screamer.

 

[jrioux]

Yes, fanless. Silent as a lamb chop

The smaller you get the less total heat can be dissipated so a fan would have to be a screamer.

Acer just announced Surface Pro clones with Core i CPUs that are liquid-cooled and fanless. Could that be an option for the Surface 4?

 

[GreyFox7]

Acer just announced Surface Pro clones with Core i CPUs that are liquid-cooled and fanless. Could that be an option for the Surface 4?

This chart should help explain it.
for any given chassis temperature and tablet size and thickness, there was an ideal SoC power to aim for:
Core M is clocked and binned such that an 11.6-inch tablet at 8mm thick will only hit 41°C skin temperature with a 4.5 watt SoC in a fanless design ....

The White box is the target zone.


The Acer Switch Alpha 12 is a 9.5mm thick 12" device. The green line above is for 8mm & light blue 10mm so 9.5 mm will be on an imaginary line just below the 10mm line. The liquid cooling and thermal design components will aid in distributing heat within the device more evenly reducing hot spots however the heat ultimately has to be dissipated out of the device. Acers System design may optimize this somewhat higher than 5W for a 9.5mm 12" device but I'm not sure how much we'll have to see the performance analysis before we can make a judgment but I am skeptical you'd get anywhere near 15 W run time power.

For a 10.8" device the challenge will be even greater but the liquid cooling technique certainly could be applied to optimize the design. Note SP4 also uses liquid cooling although we don't know yet how it compares with the Acer design.

 

[macmee]

This is an oldish thread but, I too bought an iPad Pro 228gb 9.7" with the Apple Pencil and I think it's a great little device. The split screen functionality, and especially PiP make iOS much more functional as a portable computer. My Surface still performs many more and complex tasks, but with worse battery, stability and form factor, so it's definitely an interesting tradeoff.

 

[GreyFox7]

I was thinking of posting a new thread with this and still may but since it sorta follows on to some posts above...

Intel has a Goldmont Atom T5500/T5700 SoC that's meant for the Embedded/IoT market. However it compares somewhat favorably with the Atom X7-Z8700 used in the Surface 3. Of course they compared it to the X5-8500 in the graphic just to make life hell... (so the X7 performs about 6% better than the X5 which would put it a smidgen above the blue line/bars in the graphs but well below the T5700/T5500.

However, this SoC is missing a feature of the X7/X5 namely the Low Power Enhanced Speedstep. i.e. the magic sauce of Connected Standby, meaning it would use more power because it doesn't switch to the lowest power states. I think a vendor may make a Tablet with this in it because it would be better than the 6W Pentium chips while still improving performance over X5/X7.

TBH there are a couple other differences and all the details are not available on the T5700/T5500 yet but they only support 2 displays vs 3. It does use gen9 graphics although again details remain sketchy.

I really don't think Microsoft would use the T5700 for a Surface 4 though but somebody (Asus or Acer maybe or one of the other lower tier vendors) will go outside the box with this.

We better understand the new Intel Atom T5500 and t5700 (Goldmont)

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Atom/Intel-Atom T5700.html

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/35/Intel_Atom_T5700_vs_Intel_Atom_x7_Z8700.html

The Joule 570X uses the T5700 and has most of the guts of a Surface in a matchbook sized unit sans a display. hmm... could you make your own Tablet with this???
Intel Joule is a tiny Atom-powered system-on-a-module for IoT, embedded applications - Liliputing