Windows has a tablet mode that adapts to be touch friendly. Its pretty good actually

with what apps? Windows has very few good touch based apps available. If all you do is browse or read pdfs/books sure but my surface is all but useless for much else. The stylus is ok but most graphics apps do a really poor job of supporting touch. Whereas the iPad has a bunch of great touch based graphics apps.

yeah but do you need core i7 and full GPU to use a tablet mode? What can you do in tablet mode to use the specs that surface users gloat about?

I feel like you're grasping at anything you can right now. Would you like to be more forthcoming with your opinion here without the required song and dance?

On the contrary, usaphp is making a valid point, which is that the Surface has two modes, and that many things that work well in one mode don't work well in the other. In tablet mode, you're generally using lighter weight apps, so you don't need the full power of the device. Or, if you're using pro apps like IDEs, they're generally not touch-optimised. You can't have both at once. You can in theory, but not in practice, as every review points out.

It's a textbook example of moving the goal posts.

I dont think its a stretch to see that it is nice to have a tablet device for things like note taking and web browsing on the same device that I can do things like run Matlab simulations

Where is this coming from?