It is really fascinating to look at laptop and tablet and phone evolution from a distance.
Computers became "personal", and then "luggable", and then "portable", and then "laptop", and then "handheld", and then "phones." As they walked that transition computers were getting more and more powerful, but they were still shedding features as the evolved.
And then at the 'phone' endpoint of evolution they sort of 'bounced backward'. The key to that bounce was screens. First they got to be higher resolution, and then they got to be bigger (clearly testing what was more desirable). And as boundaries along size have started to settle out they have been getting back peripherals (pens, styli, and keyboards).
I feel like the current hardware has re-affirmed a couple of truths. One is that keyboards remain an accelerator for input much like bicycles accelerate walking. Very difficult to improve upon. Styli only make sense if they are at least as good as the instruments most people use and that measure of 'goodness' is sensitivity and lag. The last is that command entry is often gesture based, and while you can do it with keyboards or styli there is a certain "grace" associated with turning the page by flicking your finger rather than pressing the 'down arrow' key or the 'next' button.
The tension is that all of them, the laptop, the tablet, the phone are the "same" thing but tuned in slightly different ways.
The biggest thing that's dragging Surface down is its UI. Neither classic Windows apps, nor Metro apps are very pleasant to use on the given hardware.
I wonder what Alan Kay thinks of Surfaces compared to iPads.
Mentally, whenever I hold a Surface, I don't find myself thinking of the kind of experience I expect from the iPad. I realize now there is the iPad Pro, which has more horsepower/keyboard/pen etc., but it still doesn't feel like a full laptop.
Does anyone else feel like the iPad experience is more.. I dunno, geared towards casual use and entertainment with the walled garden of apps, and Microsoft really doesn't reach/target the same market (even though they are trying)?
EDIT: I guess I am trying to say, something about this market still doesn't feel quite right.. maybe there are still options to innovate.