Three days ago, Microsoft did something it almost never does: announced its own piece of hardware. Not a phone, not a traditional PC. A tablet.
The Surface came out of nowhere on Monday. I mean, yeah, rumors have been floating around for months—they always are—but nothing prepared people for the actual thing. Microsoft built a device with a kickstand. A built-in keyboard cover. They called it the "iPad killer" before anyone else had to do it for them. Which is either incredibly confident or incredibly desperate, depending on which tech writer you ask.
Here's what actually matters: it runs Windows. Full Windows. Not some stripped-down tablet OS. You can run desktop applications on this thing. Photoshop. Excel. Whatever. The 10.6-inch screen has real Windows 8 on it, and you get what Microsoft is calling a unified experience between tablet and laptop. (They used that word about forty times in the announcement. I'm already tired of it.)
The keyboard situation is weird enough to actually be interesting. They've got this magnetic cover that folds into a stand and also functions as a keyboard. It's called a Touch Cover. The angle looks awkward as hell when you're typing, but I'll reserve judgment until I see someone actually using one for more than thirty seconds. The idea is clever though. Everyone else just slaps a keyboard in a case and calls it a day. Microsoft's at least trying to make it integral to the device.
There's two versions. The base model with 32GB and Windows 8 Pro hits $499. That's the price point everyone's going to argue about for weeks. Apple's iPad starts at $499 for the third-gen with 32GB. So they're directly competing on price, except the Surface does... more? Except it's also got a completely unproven trackpad and keyboard combo, unproven software on a tablet, and Microsoft's never shipped a consumer device that felt natural in your hands. But sure, same price, apparently more features. Math checks out until you actually try to use it.
The weirdest part is that this breaks Microsoft's entire relationship with device makers. Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer: they all make Windows machines. They all make tablets now, too. And now Microsoft is coming in as a competitor to their own partners. That's not a new situation for Microsoft, but shipping actual hardware? That's different. Steve Sinofsky stood up there and basically told every PC maker that Microsoft doesn't believe in them anymore. Or at least doesn't trust them to make tablets.
Apple's sitting pretty right now. They just announced iOS 6 and a new MacBook Pro with that insane Retina display at WWDC, and the iPad's still the device everyone wants. Google's supposed to be launching something called the Nexus 7 in a few weeks, if rumors are right. Everyone's piling in.
But here's my actual take: I'm curious. I don't know if I'm curious because the Surface looks good or because I'm watching Microsoft swing for the fences on consumer hardware for the first time in forever. Maybe both. I definitely won't be buying one in October when it ships. That's launch day chaos territory. But I want to hold one in my hands. I want to see if that keyboard actually works. I want to know if Windows 8 on a 10.6-inch screen is the thing Microsoft thinks it is or a disaster waiting to happen.
The tablet market was supposed to be decided. iPad wins, everyone else fights over the scraps. Now Microsoft's decided the scraps aren't enough. Let's see if they're right.