Microsoft Wants You To Trade Your MacBook Air In For a Surface Pro 3 365
mpicpp writes with news about a new Microsoft trade-in program to encourage sales of the new Surface Pro 3. Microsoft is offering a limited time Surface Pro 3 promotion via which users can get up to $650 in store credit for trading in certain Apple MacBook Air models. The new promotion, running June 20 to July 31, 2014 -- "or while supplies last" -- requires users to bring MacBook Airs into select Microsoft retail stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada. (The trade-in isn't valid online.)...To get the maximum ($650) value, users have to apply the store credit toward the purchase of a Surface Pro 3, the most recent model of the company's Intel-based Surface tablets.
This is telling (Score:5, Interesting)
What this tells me is that Microsoft has given up trying to promote the Surface as a tablet. It's a laptop that happens to have a detachable keyboard. Note that they didn't even try to offer a trade-in of ipads for the surface, which would be a more reasonable comparison if the surface was successful as a tablet. The ipad is a different use case, and Microsoft just doesn't play well in that space.
Bring in your junk, get a tablet (Score:4, Interesting)
I am sure ebay is full of cheap damaged Macbooks which power on and don't have screen cracks or water damage. Buy for less than $650, resell Surface, profit!
HA! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"up to" $650 for a macbook air trade in? (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny thing is, MBA's even early models are still worth a pretty dime second hand (usually 50-80% of purchase price based on condition and age), Surface Pro's won't fetch more than 1/3 of their purchase price.
Re:Great deal! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is telling (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, Microsoft is now going for portable business integration. You can manage them with Active Directory - I just added one.
We are looking to go more portable at work but we don't want to have a laptop and a tablet for every user. Picked up one of the new Surface 3 devices and while it looks like it will integrate nicely for our day-to-day use at work, I don't like it enough to have one at home for personal use. It's actually got some well thought out ideas in the device.
Given that an iPad can cost $1k now (256GB storage, same as this Surface Pro 3 I'm testing) It's not too far-fetched in price in my opinion, seeing as you can do more with it and aren't constrained to the App or Play store. Doesn't mean I'd buy one for personal use, though. Once the docks are released I can see potential for it replacing some of our old workstations.
My 2 year old MBA still beats their Surfactant3 (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. I love the MacBook Air I got a couple of years ago. The thing works very well, and even runs the occasional VMWare Fusion image of Windows 7 I need to run occasionally off of a portable thunderbolt drive. On a whim I got one of the earlier Surface tablets when the wife and I were in Vegas and they had a Kiosk where they were practically giving them away - but for the life of me still cannot use it for anything truly productive.
Trade in a MacBook Air for a surface?! Sorry Microsoft. You've been a day late and a dollar short ever since Ballmer pissed on the idea of tablets and smartphones and Apple smoked you and ate you for breakfast. Apple would have to skullf**k a small, disabled child onstage during their next keynote to even _think_ of falling behind enough for you to catch up to relevancy.
Microsoft - As long as I can virtualize your OS, take a snapshot and rollback when your OS takes a dive and run it all on a machine that, you know, _works_ I won't buy another piece of hardware branded by you. Ever.
And as another poster mentioned, "While supplies last." Really? Wow, even with Steve "Developers Developers Developers" Ballmer gone, you _still_ have a great sense of humor.
Re: Not likely. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a programmer. I've written GUI code, I've written a device driver that shipped in a commercial UNIX kernel. I've used Windows since 3.1 days (WindowsForWorkgroupsForTheWin!). I've even debugged and configured Windows Vista in Chinese even though I can't read it - I was able to get someone to translate the occasional dialog box.
I can not understand Win8. When my sister asks me to help configure something on her Win8 laptop, I struggle with the UI as if I'm some rookie coming from some stoneage tribe.
I hate hate hate hate Windows 8.
Re:reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate (Score:5, Interesting)
Last time I was in their neighborhood, MS employees were hauling MBPs around as their primary laptops. I never understood how they could get away with that, but "research" was in their job title...
Re:Not likely. (Score:5, Interesting)
So the magic mouse swipe gestures aren't obvious to people used to regular mice, I was very resistant, but I now love and miss them.
But I otherwise agree, I don't find anything about OSX to be "intuitive" to people used to using windows or linux. OSX is a fine windowing system, but it's a little rough around the hedges when it comes to usability for the portion of the world that simply cannot become Apple converts.
Hardware wise though, I have not found anything that comes close to an MBP. Windows or OSX, it beats the unholy snot out of its competition.
Re:Great deal! (Score:5, Interesting)
Hold up: you're missing an important distinction.
The MacBook Air isn't just a laptop. It is a laptop. That's all it is, and it's a darn good laptop. It does laptop things really well.
By not just being a tablet, the Surface has failed to be good at being anything at all. If you pit it against laptops, it's under-specced for the price. For that sort of money, you can do a lot better elsewhere. And if you pit it against tablets, it's lacking apps and overpriced. It's in a weird space between the two that no one is interested in. I commend them for trying something different than everyone else and trying to carve out a unique niche (really, I do!), but I don't see how this particular execution of their strategy can be painted as anything other than an extended failure that has yet to turn the corner. I honestly hope it will, but it has yet to do so.
I can see why this would work (Score:4, Interesting)
Gosh, why not? I can see someone looking at their MBA saying, "It works perfectly, has a great OS, awesome battery life, and does everything I could ask for and does it fast. I need to dump this for a barely functional device with an actively antagonistic OS sold by a company unable to secure a wet paper bag or make software that works acceptably. All this for far less battery life and far more money. I wish I had 2 MBAs to trade in!",
Back to the real world....
Did I mention that the day after the S3's release I was at a press event on a bus full of journalists. Anand has his S3 and in less than 24 hours it broke. The entire bus full of tech journos all concluded it was better that way.
That said, some people do like it. Microsoft traded in an absolute monopoly lock on the desktop to cater to 10% of their base. Clever that MS management, clever.
-Charlie