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.
Re:Trade crap for crap (Score:3, Insightful)
Er really?
Maybe visit a sysadmin or software dev conference. Macbook Air's are pretty common and for a good reason.
Calm your nerd rage down a bit.
"up to" $650 for a macbook air trade in? (Score:5, Insightful)
In 'good' condition... they're worth more than that on Craigslist...
Where do I sign up? (Score:4, Insightful)
To get one of the trade in Mac Book Air (s) ??
Re:This is telling (Score:5, Insightful)
'Cause THAT'S what people do with tablets...
Re:Not likely. (Score:4, Insightful)
The MBA and MBP are both fine machines. My wife get's a computer that works most of the time. I get a computer with a bash shell on which I can do my thing. Neither have shown any tendency to falls apart, unlike every Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and HP we've had.
Absolutely, And you have to give up the smooth and functional OSX interface for the freaked out Metro disaster, and the unintuitive controls.
Re:224 miles round trip (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft wants any uptake on these promotions it needs to find religion and begin praying for a miracle, because the group of people you can almost guarantee are the least likely to switch to Microsoft products are Apple owners.
Re: "up to" $650 for a macbook air trade in? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's because people don't understand there's more than one model and if they do they don't understand how to tell them apart or what the benefits of a new model are.
reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is desperate.
How can you tell?
Let's reverse this...can you imagine if Apple gave a similar $$ discount on Macbook Air & iPads in trade for a Microsoft Surface?
bummed out x-mas gift recipients would line up around the corner!
Re:Great deal! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's an expensive piece of hardware whose performance doesn't justify the cost and whose size makes it a terrible fucking tablet. I could buy a Nexus 7 and a tolerable decent notebook for less than a Surface 3 and have the best of both worlds.
Microsoft targeting Apple users? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft wants Apple users to trade their laptops for Microsoft tablets. How thick are they?
Next up: Microsoft wants you to trade your Playstation 4 in for an Xbox One and only offers you a 200$ rebate for for it, too.
Re:Great deal! (Score:5, Insightful)
Surface Pros can do things that no other tablet can. Your jealousy is showing.
That's nice and all, but your lack of useful and relevant examples is rather glaring.
I don't think anyone here is denying that the Surface line is trying to do something that's quite a bit different from what other tablets are doing. They're definitely targeting a different set of use cases than what the iPad, Fire, or Galaxy Tab lines are hitting, and I have no doubt that the Surface Pro can do stuff no other tablet can. But the important question isn't, "Does it do stuff no one else can?" The important question to ask is, "Are the things it can do of interest to people and executed well?" And based on sales numbers, professional reviews, and numerous firsthand accounts both here and elsewhere, the answer is a resounding, "No".
Really, when you get down to it, the Surface line is simply a fresh iteration of the same strategy Microsoft has been employing in the tablet space since the early 2000s: put Windows everywhere so that users can have the power of a "PC" in their hand. The only thing that's changed is the execution, and you don't need to look long and hard at Windows 8 reviews to know that they botched that as well. The strategy may actually work for them if it is executed properly, but the fact that the market stayed nascent for ten years until a competitor introduced a device employing an alternative strategy indicates that they didn't get it right then, and the fact that the Surface line hasn't seen any real uptake should be good indications that either the strategy is a losing one or else that they have yet to execute properly on it.
TL;DR: Just because a device can do stuff other devices can't doesn't mean it's a good idea. We don't want compact cars with truck beds, wedding cakes from Burger King, or tight-fitting exercise shorts made of designer denim. In trying to be both a tablet and laptop, the Surface ended up being good at neither.
Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh good. I am not alone. I've seen some of the most arcane interfaces on this planet, some of them not seen by more than a handful of people altogether, so arcane and mysterious that its name shall not be spoken. GUIs that made you beg for a CLI, for you knew that even if you had to memorize all the commands and had no -? to aid you, it could not possibly take more than a fraction of the time you'd need to get behind the twisted logic of the GUI in front of you. I cursed them, but I mastered them all, in little time.
Metro is a mystery. It simply has no rhyme or reason to it. It fucking makes no sense AT ALL. No matter what you want to do, applying sense and logic is the wrong way to do something. Usually you find your way around by pondering "Now, what would be the LEAST intuitive way to do something?", and usually you shall be rewarded with a solution.
If you offered me the choice "Metro or..." my answer, before you are done with the sentence, is "the other one". Even if you end in "or a stone tablet".
Re: Not likely. (Score:1, Insightful)
doesn't have any flappy bits to fall off.
What are you doing to your equipment? How did these "flappy bits" develop? How is it that every laptop you've claimed to own apparently crumbled at your touch?
You know what? I don't actually believe you. I think you're lying. Are you just trying really hard to justify your overpriced laptop? I have no idea why. Just take the knock to the pocket-book and move on. Everyone makes mistakes.
Perhaps you just like Apple products and are worried about their lack of marketshare? If that's the case, you may want to find a different approach. I've never had a laptop inexplicably disintegrate.
Re:reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate (Score:5, Insightful)
Now many companies have an "eat your own dogfood" policy. But when your product is less desirable than actual dogfood then employees figure out a way around the policy.