That dial made me envision my life with a Windows PC - that's a good thing Microsoft.

The surface studio looks amazing, but the dial looks gimmicky to me. It looks cool in the demo, but I suspect people won't adopt daily usage of it..

As someone who uses both Windows And OSX quite regularly,I don't see any meaningful differences between the two OSes. Besides OSX isn't touch friendly.

I don't think professional designers really care, as long as it has their program (CAD, Photoshop, etc.) supported.

Unix people (developers, etc.) might care, but this computer isn't really for them.

The music in that video is cringeworthy.

Not just Office and Xbox. Azure, Loop, Flow, Band (Health services), Server, etc. They are bigger, and moving so rapidly now. It's pretty amazing.

"Apple is looking for profit only"

Pretty sure Microsoft have an eye on their bottom line here too.

Hmmm.... Very productive tools are limiting?

I think Microsoft has a REAL problem because very good alternative developers love making creative software for the Apple ecosystem and not for Windows… It's hindering the real migration of these profesionals to their "good" (yes, they're making good hardware) platform.

Affinity hasn't released yet Affinity Photo. There is only a beta of Designer for Windows. Pixelmator is not there; Sketch neither. Or Tumult Hype for HTML5 animation. All of them EXCELLENT apps and not at all pricey.

If you ask these developers, they will give real reasons why they feel comfortable not making any of their software for any other platforms.

Microsoft should buy it's way out of this mess —¿maybe buy Affinity?—, only Adobe is committed to Windows. And that, my friend, is worrisome, whether you can admit it or not.

Way back in the day, when Macs were better, people didn't migrate because they had so much more soft for their Win machines. That's coming with a vengeance for the creative market, only this time against Microsoft.

And yes, I think Windows has gotten better, but it has still a lot of unnecessary complexity under the hood that makes you lose a LOT of time doing configuration and software maintenance for your machine.

Sorry impressive hard like this are not making that much people to switch, but productivity and having much more software choices still matters a lot.

Let's all hope for tomorrow

Nice review.

"The Studio sits at about $3000 which might sound high but consider that I paid $2500 for my Wacom Cintiq 27"HD and that isn’t even a computer. I still had to get a machine to run it!

When I first saw the device months ago in that secret room at MS, they asked me what I thought. I said, “Well I have no idea if anyone else will want it, but you have made my dream computer.”

Gabe makes some interesting observations with real world use.

You have to wait at least 5 years until Apple does something similar, and call it revolutionary. They are lazy. Adobe is bringing all the big stuff to Windows anyways so I prefer multiplatform tools.

I've been on Windows for the last couple of years since switching from Mac and there's so little difference between day to day tasks the whole OS thing is to me a bit of a red herring.

Windows 10 isn't faultless but lets be honest, Apple aren't exactly churning out perfect stuff these days either.

The only thing as a web designer/developer I miss right from having my old Air now is Sketch and I'm going to give Affinity Designer a go.

The Surface I've been using is a good bit of hardware.

Most of the Surface line can pretty easily run MacOS, Linux, and Windows. Bootcamp on Apple devices is garbage with bad drivers being provided resulting in all sorts of issues.

Many Chromebook, Linux devices, Custom hardware setups can also run MacOS, Linux, and Windows? Why limit yourself to a single hardware vendor?

To me the issue with MacOS license restrictions, and closed platform ecosystem. It's a pretty disgusting practice.

Uhh. Google Material is a Design Pattern, and not a OS?

In art school I was trained to not touch the paper. Imagine painting with your hand on the canvas? OIL EVERYWHERE! Classically trained designers tend to not touch the paper / screen / insert thing. To me it's either that reason, OR the more likely reason being that they wanted to really highlight the pen touching the screen in the video, so they asked her to hold it a certain way.

And considering I've used the Surface Pro, Surface 3, Surface 3 Pro, etc. I never had any issues with interaction from anything. Windows has been doing tablets for a LOOONG time. They have the palm rejection thing down.

If you look closely at the shot of the comics artist sketching in Photoshop, he has his hand right on the screen. It's also mentioned out loud about the palm rejection.

The Surface Pro/Surfacebook line is selling between $1500 - $3200, and their making decent sales (at least according to theor last earnings) I assume this aimed at the same market.

$3k isn't just enterprise, I see start ups and professional designers affording this.

But yes, this PC, based on their marketing, is for professionals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMklcdzcNcU

How much is a top of the line MacBook Pro? How much was the Apple Thunderbolt Display?

A 27" inch cintiq runs $2300, and that doesn't include the computer (or doesnt have as nice of a display). If you are using pen on your screen all day, this is not prohibitively expensive.