I can buy content from itunes for similar price, not have to leave my home, and play it as many times as I want. I will never scratch the non-existent media, never lose it, and it will play on all of my devices. Sure if Apple goes broke i lose access to my media, but the chances of that happening are probably smaller than WW3 starting and us all being nuked back into the stone age.

Yup. The appletv is crying out for a controller - there are millions of iOS developers who would love to break into the home console market. The hardware is capable enough, it just needs the relevant gaming APIs. The fact that apple have recently done the game-related kits for iOS IMHO strongly suggests that gaming is definitely going to be more of a focus in future. A controller enabled AppleTV makes sense.

Also... to clarify, the resolution scaling I *have* seen "function" in windows 8.1 tends to make widgets and fonts clearly look like they are not rendered in native resolution. They look "off" ... somewhat smudged/blurred. The worst is when you have two monitors, same pixel resolution but different physical size (e.g., my laptop's internal 15" 1920x1080 display, and a 22" 1920x1080 monitor). Windows insists on DPI scaling my laptop display, making text render badly, and windows re-size in relation to the portion of the screen they take up as i move them from monitor to monitor. I have tried to turn it off, this does not fix the problem.

Calling the resolution independence in Windows 8.1 "half baked" would be kind. I'm calling it crap.

... without needing a physical keyboard (type/touch cover), i might add.

I agree. For what I want to actually use a tablet for, I find the limitations of the iPad acceptable. This is the thing the android developers - mostly Samsung (and Microsoft) it appears, don't quite seem to get. Making something actually good doesn't just mean adding features. It can/does often mean stripping away extraneous crap that just gets in the way.

The latest smartwatch fad is a prime example. No, i don't want a camera on my watch. No, i don't want a web browser on my watch. No, i don't want the ability to send SMS from my watch. That is all bullshit stuff that I can already do far more easily on the phone or tablet that I already own.

Windows 8.1, 2 months ago.

Sounds so much easier and comparable to pinching out...

Yeah because winkey + is SO much easier than pinching.

Already happens... plenty of companies run Microsoft Online Protection for exchange (or whatever they call it this week) which scans all inbound and outbound mail for their domain. Oh, what you never consented to microsoft getting a copy of your files? Too bad...

Nobody's making ME do it, but if i send any of the content i generate to others, there's nothing stopping them uploading my content, is there?

Well, yes, a 4-5 year old machine is good enough for most people power wise, but it is 4-5 year old hardware with a shagged battery, hard drive, and old standards for RAM, etc.

The surface is aimed at exactly the market you describe: those who want a laptop for running WIndows, that they can also carry around easily and use in situations where a machine with a keyboard is just a pain in the arse. E.g.. walking around with it, on a plane, etc.

It doesn't really suit the home user market at all, but i don't think it is aimed at that so much. The enterprise is crying out for a decent machine that can run Windows on the move and is still touch friendly for the tablet-y type stuff an iPad is good at. The surface is almost there in my opinion, but Windows 8 misses the mark.

And in the last 20 years that I have you know... actually been running Linux, I still can't actually reliably decide to install Linux on a machine and have it work. I still can't reliably upgrade my kernel, and have X functionality survive the reboot. Yes, I can fix it. The fact that I have to, in 20-fucking-14 is a joke.

This is not intended to be primarily a content consumption device. If you want maximum screen real estate for running applications in minimum physical dimensions, you run close to square. Yes, it is not ideal from an aesthetics perspective or for running high definition media. Those are the trade-offs you make to get more usable screen area. By "content" i was not referring to multimedia.

It doesn't compare at all. I am a die hard apple fanboy myself, but they are two entirely different products. The MacBook air has a crappy resolution screen, no touch interface, and no win32 application compatibility.

You may not value those things, but those who the Surface Pro is aimed at, do. Some of those things can be added to an MBA at extra cost (e.g., a VM running Windows for Win32 apps), some of them put you in MBP-R territory (e.g., the high DPI screen) which is a larger, more expensive device) and some of them are simply not available in the one device.

And if you can't tell the difference between 1366x768 and 2160x1440 (or whatever the res is, i can't be arsed checking right now), you need to see an optometrist. Seriously. Text in particular is SO much more readable. 1024x768 on a 7" iPad mini screen is bad enough (and yes, I have one).