No Price, No Date, No Apps ⇥ massivegreatness.com

Jesus Diaz is superlatively impressed by Microsoft’s Surface:

If Microsoft delivers—which means that the price and the battery life should be competitive with Apple’s offerings, and that keyboard lives up to its billing—it has a real chance of stopping the seemingly unstoppable Apple empire. Or at least slowing it down.

The title of that post, by the way, is “Microsoft Surface Just Made the MacBook Air and the iPad Look Obsolete”. So impressed, then, that he believes it renders two existing platforms obsolete because it combines them into one. It’s a completely different approach to the contemporary tablet market.

But very few convergent devices are good at everything they do. In fact, they tend to be mediocre at many things, instead of many devices that area good at one thing each.

MG Siegler isn’t convinced, either:

Two years ago, I think this thing would have been pretty competitive. Today? Color me very skeptical.

First of all, for everything Microsoft did show off yesterday they left out some of the most important details. Namely, the price and the release date.

For all the Apple-esque keynote stuff yesterday (secretive invitations, no details, emotional design videos during the presentation), they left out the one thing they should have copied: instant availability. I like the Surface a lot, as I suspect many people do. All we want to know is how much it’s going to cost, and when we can get our hands on it. Right now, it’s just a production sample.

Update: ZDNet says that the ARM version will be available with the release of Windows 8, which the latest rumours say is happening in October. If that’s true, why unveil the tablet now? Why not sit on it until a release date for both it and Windows 8 can be confirmed?