It is not compatible to Surface RT tablets. I don't understand how Microsoft is willing to burn its early adopters so much. Surely it is not a technical matter or a matter of resources? If anything, Microsoft should do everything to keep all of them happy. Regarding the hardware itself - if you have ever tried out a Native Instruments Maschine, which this is kind of modeled on, you know that the haptics of the pad keys are key. This won't work well with the type of switch of the touchcover.

I don't understand why Microsoft even calls the two tablets the same, when they couldn't be any different from the software, hardware and price perspectives.

The only explanation I can come up with is that they're trying to confuse the consume and think that one is just as good as the other (you can do the same things with both), and this title "Surface Music Kit", even though it's just for the Surface Pro device, proves my point.

You are confused. It's compatible with non-pro "Surface 2" (second generation Windows RT based device). It's incompatible with "Surface RT".

Even the confusion seems to prove the point that Ms are confusing their customers.

My company just ordered some of the original Surface Pros on discount.

The labelling on the boxes had us doing a double take, because we thought we received the ARM units by mistake.

Surface Pro boxes just say Surface on them, so you actually have to look at the additional text to see that the OS is Windows 8 Pro or that the SSD is larger than the RT before you realize you go the right unit.

How is this any different than Apple only supporting nth Gen iDevices?

Generally when Apple stops supporting some generation of devices it's 100% because of a hardware reason. Sometimes that hardware reason is processor bound (siri, and yes I know people have used siri on jailbroken 4's but the performance is adversly effected) and sometimes something else ( iBeacon and other Bluetooth LE technologies ).

I generally don't like to give MS the benefit of the doubt, but in this case I know a lot of work went into the keyboard cover between the 1st gen (both pro and RT) and 2nd gen surface units. Is it possible that the connector has changed?

Yes, Microsoft's keyboard connector changed between the Surface RT and Surface Pro to add additional pins for power.

This is why Microsoft's latest Power Cover also doesn't work on the Surface RT but works on the rest.

It is possible the Music Cover takes advantage of the additional pins.

How is that at all like this? Apple doesn't drop support for their devices after a year, plain and simple, and that's what Microsoft has done here. If there's a genuine "hardware limitation" that prevented them from giving support to their early adapters, then it's absurdly shocking to me that they didn't have the foresight to know that they might want to create covers like this in the future and add support for them preemptively.

The iPhone 4S and below are completely unusable with iOS 7. Even switching between two apps will require one or the other being evicted/reloaded into memory. That phone is only from ~2011 mind you, and it's clearly become a third-class citizen in its own ecosystem.

Also, it's not as though Apple didn't introduce Siri with the 4S and exclude the 4 from that feature.

The iPhone 4 was released June 2010 and I know people who use iOS 7 with it.

Sure, it has hiccups but the point was more about Apple not abandoning the users than about how well older products run the new stuff.

>The iPhone 4S and below are completely unusable with iOS 7. Even switching between two apps will require one or the other being evicted/reloaded into memor

I'm running iOS 7 in a iPhone 4 (not even 4S), as do millions of others, and what you are saying is BS.

I can even upload a video if you don't believe me.

I had a 4S with iOS 7 for several months and what you're saying is complete BS. I can upload a video if you don't believe me.

Try non-hostility as an initial response in the future.

>I had a 4S with iOS 7 for several months and what you're saying is complete BS. I can upload a video if you don't believe me.

You do understand that "had a 4S with iOS 7 for several months" and "totally unusable" are contradictory, right?

I'll have the video, please.

>Try non-hostility as an initial response in the future.

Well, sorry, I guess.

You could also try not generalising from your outlier example.

Unbelievable levels of narcissistic nitpicking here, I don't even care to have any more conversation with someone possessed of your level of pedantry. I began shooting a video but decided that you can fuck yourself instead, as there's no convincing someone who can be this anal. Probably you'd bitch about the portrait orientation with which I shot it.

How do you know you're not the one generalizing from N=1? Why wouldn't I expect that all iPhones have roughly identical performance charcteristics, as one of the highlights of the Apple business model is strict hardware control. Equivalent hardware, ergo equivalent performance on that hardware.

Clearly you have been confused by a small amount of hyperbole which, according to votes, many people have had zero problem understanding so far. I imagine life for you being an expanse of loneliness punctuated by moments of extreme confusion. More so than for most, I suppose, just so you can better understand what I'm saying about you.

They still support Surface RT. It's simply that they introduced effectively a new HW port on the new devices, which they haven't retrofitted on old devices. Apple has done the exact same thing on gen X to gen X+1 in the past. Everyone has.

Microsoft still support the Surface RT in exactly the same way that Apple support their year-old devices - they're still providing software updates for them, but some newer features aren't available. On iOS stuff like Siri and the new motion tracking features wasn't available without upgrading from hardware only introduced a year or so earlier.

It's different in that Apple's "n" is quite higher and has a very good technological reason (a 4 year old machine or older is quite a difference to a 1 or 2 year old machine).

As I said in a separate comment below, I believe there is an actual hardware limitation here. According to two of the MSFT team's reddit AMA, the peripheral connector hardware did change (a few power pins were added).

Did they seriously not have the foresight or product planning to know that they might want to create covers like this in the future? That's such a weak excuse. It's not like the Surface RT came out four years ago, it was the end of last year.

They should've done everything they could to prevent themselves from leaving their early adopters behind, although I'm not surprised in the slightest that they did so. They did it to Windows Phone 7 users in the transition to Windows Phone 8, and they're doing it again now.

Saying that everything people do needs to be backward-compatible is what leads to having to support IE 6.

I'm sure you had the foresight a year ago to know that they'd want to attach different covers in the future, why didn't you tell them?

I mean come on, I'm not expecting 12 years of backwards compatibility, I'm just saying that maybe one of their hardware engineers might have said: "Gee, is it possible that we might develop a new cover next year that needs power, for a backlight or something? We're under a time crunch now, so we probably won't have time to take advantage of it yet, but maybe we could add a couple pins for power to future proof it?"

It's absurd to consider that an impossible foresight to make.

They still don't sell it, it's only for contest winners... Why?!

Indeed, didn't knew about that...

They reference the store, but the music kit can't be found there.

PS. the site is http://www.surfaceremixproject.com/

Additional, the link to the app: http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/surface-music-ki...

This app/hardware actually looks really neat..

It would be cool if applications like Amplitube supported it.

For those of you who are saying the Music Cover isn't a good device for making music, I don't think Microsoft was trying to make a music product, but rather an example. A while ago, some people from the Microsoft Surface team did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. I think the idea was that different "blades" could be made for different tasks [1]. Microsoft made the first blade to show what was possible, and this is what they came up with.

[1] "This unique digitizer platform we built can enable a number of different blades and unique interactions. We are super excited about the possibility." - http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mz20e/hi_im_panos_pan...

As a DJ beginning to look into music production, this feels poorly designed to me.

The sliders are without any physical control, so they add little over pure touchscreen sliders. And the fixed-functions are disappointing. Similarly the control buttons don't seem to add anything at all.

The pads do make sense - having even slight physical definition to them will make them easier to use when performing. Really it needs piano keys, as again, the physicality they would have offered would have helped with performance.

Another case, I suspect, of designed by someone who wouldn't actually use the final product.

Joe Hahn has composed with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK6Hs-qHh84

As an ex-DJ I could definitely find use in something like this. The core music program has to be good, but a complimentary keyboard like this one would certainly enhance the experience -- especially for live Performances.

Oh, I could find uses for it, especially if it presents as a usb midi device[1]. And I'm sure it can be used for some fun things and actually have a place in a live set. It just feels like a toy, rather than a serious bit of music kit for musicians (even if it has been used by serious ones, however anything can be used by musicians :P)

[1] Actually, if it did, that would get me a lot more excited by it!

As an electronic musician, it's totally a toy. No velocity sensitive anything, nothing but a mediocre imitation of a drumpad for input, and no inter compatibility with other devices.

It is M$'s answer to the tenori-on.

I couldn't tell from my quick skim through... So does anyone know, is it velocity sensitive?

The pads appear to be sensitive to pressure, if I've read it right, which is a start

This doesn't make sense... Why not use the touch screen as the controller, with variable number of sliders and track numbers and attach it to a PC/monitor for displaying the rest of the UI?

I imagine it might have to do with the actual surface of the 'keyboard' being embossed. It's very hard to use a tablet based UI to accomplish tasks like this because of the lack of physical controls. Oftentimes the operators attention is focused elsewhere and having to look down at a virtual set of controls is detrimental.

I imagine not even this will help that much. Sometimes nothing beats an actual physical control panel.

Capacitive touch screens are incapable of measuring pressure applied to buttons. This thing allows user to press buttons with different force to produce sounds of different volume.

False. Capacitive touch screens can measure finger pressure based on the size of the contact patch between the finger and the screen. They can also measure impact of the finger against the screen via the accelerometer.

Because then you wouldn't need the surface's differentiating feature to use it.

It would be great too if Microsoft develops something for real musicians to make some real music !

The biggest reason that audio software/hardware manufacturers tend to ignore Windows is its latency problems. Latency is the amount of time it takes to send input to the system, or to get output from the system. Total latency is the combination of the two; how long it takes from the time I pluck a string until I hear the processed version play back through my headphones. High latency throws your timing off. It's a lot like when you speak into a microphone in an auditorium and the delay between when you speak and when you hear your voice is confusing.

The two primary audio APIs available on Windows have very high latency, to the point where they make tracking with effects virtually unusable. You can increase your sample rate to improve the latency, but that is far more taxing on your CPU.

OS X uses a system called Core Audio, and it has very respectable latency and is comparatively easy to develop for. We're at the point where a sort of self-sustaining feedback loop is well under way. Poor latency causes musicians to prefer OS X to Windows. Audio hardware manufacturers want to release products for platforms that people are actually using, so they target OS X. Now musicians who were on the fence about switching to a Mac have to in order to get access to decent recording equipment.

I have an Apogee Duet that works on OS X and iOS(!), but it doesn't support Windows. The really weird thing is that I get better latency when recording through my iPad then I do when recording through my beefy gaming rig.

tl;dr: Nifty controllers won't fix the problem. Microsoft needs to get serious about audio performance if they want musicians to use their platform.

> audio software/hardware manufacturers tend to ignore Windows

Really? Apogee is the only manufacturer in this market I can think of, out of many, that supports Apple products but not Windows. All latency-fearing Windows audio software and hardware uses ASIO, for which there is broad industry support.

> Audio hardware manufacturers want to release products for platforms that people are actually using, so they target OS X.

I think you perceive their motivations correctly, but most people would reach a different conclusion than you have. Anecdotal evidence suggests that said manufacturers have as well.

> The really weird thing is that I get better latency when recording through my iPad then I do when recording through my beefy gaming rig.

The latency of a digital audio system is determined by the amount of buffering in the signal path, but your computer must be able to keep those buffers reliably full. Your iPad, being a more controlled system with fewer background processes, should be able to do a much better job of this than your desktop box, where anything goes.

Universal Audio's UAD satellite boxes and the Apollo range of interfaces don't support Windows. Focusrite's discontinued Liquid Mix DSP box didn't support Windows. All of Metric Halo's audio interfaces are Mac only. I believe some of MOTU's audio interfaces used to be Mac specific, since their Digital Performer DAW software was Mac specific. If memory serves DP went multi-platform with version 8, and their audio interfaces have also become increasingly Windows friendly.

These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. That's before we even get into software.

> The two primary audio APIs available on Windows have very high latency, to the point where they make tracking with effects virtually unusable.

My understanding is that pro audio software on Windows generally bypasses the Microsoft audio stack. Instead, they use ASIO to access the sound card directly.

Thus, the Windows ecosystem is not at a disadvantage when it comes to audio latency.

Wrong. You still have a lot more software for Windows than for Mac OS X (thanks synthedit and the Apple developer fee), and latency has never been an issue here thanks to ASIO. Moreover, a lot of people amateur or professional uses Windows software to create and record music, such as Reaper, Cubase, Ableton Live, Pro Tools etc.

Anyway, it's true that is a shame that you need to use a third developer party SDK as a standard to have the lowest latency available on Windows, when you have CoreAudio on Mac OS X.

But you know, developing music hardware/software for Apple has a lot of serious/ridiculous issues too, mainly about compatibility between Mac OS X versions, developing tools broken after an update, signing apps, the whole Apple Store thing, sandboxing AU plug-ins... That's why I'd like Microsoft to perform better here.

Windows latency is fine. If you use ASIO drivers.

However you can't beat real instruments for latency.

Anyone know what the licensing restrictions on the surface keypadcovers is? Could anyone make a custom one?

...and MSFT is 10 years behind once again. Garage Band has been around and highly successful for years. If only they'd done a Google, err...Bing search to know that.

Wow din't know Garage Band had a music kit for my Ipad. Where can I buy one? /s

I believe OP intended to emphasize discussion on the hardware and not the software when posting this.

Huh? Where did you get your crack pipe? Windows has made a reasonable DAW for at least 10-15 years.

And hell I don't even use a PC. Some of us still use workstations (Korg: you rock).

I think i'm missing the news-worthy part of this. Looks to me like a half-assed product that's stuck in limbo. What of it?