Surface Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Analyst: For every 20 iPads sold during the holidays, Microsoft sold one Surface tablet

by Mike Wehner (Jan 14th, 2013)

If you've watched any amount of television in the past month or so, you've probably seen plenty of ads for the Microsoft Surface tablet. But while the brightly colored keyboards and techno music of the advertisements might be inseparable from your must-see TV time, the device itself isn't ...

iPad, iPad mini win battery life shootout among tablets

by Michael Grothaus (Dec 5th, 2012)

UK consumer watchdog site Which? has tested the world's leading tablets to see how their battery life compares and both the iPad with Retina display and the iPad mini came out on top by a large margin. To be fair to all tablets, Which? took into account the screen size and brightness of each ...

Reality Absorption Field: A slow rise to the Surface

by Ross Rubin (Nov 15th, 2012)

After all the teasing and secrecy and controversy around its launch, the recent announcement by Steve Ballmer that Surface with Windows RT (the only chip-defined flavor of Microsoft's debut branded tablet that's currently shipping) was off to a "modest" start might have seemed like a shocking ...

Microsoft: Surface display superior to iPad display

by Kelly Hodgkins (Oct 17th, 2012)

The iPad 3 is known for its gorgeous, high-resolution Retina display, but it is not the best tablet display, said a Microsoft engineer during a Reddit IAmA event on Tuesday. Though its display is a lower resolution, Microsoft claims the screen on its upcoming Surface tablet is even better than ...

Woz wants a Surface

by Mike Schramm (Jul 10th, 2012)

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak spoke at a recent conference in Chile, and perhaps the most interesting thing he said was that he is looking forward to Microsoft's new Surface tablet. Yes, there's something about Microsoft's consumer-focused attempt at making a tablet computer (maybe the case ...

Talkcast tonight, 10pm ET / 7pm PT: Under the Surface

by Michael Rose (Jun 24th, 2012)

Tonight on the Talkcast, we're going to consider the tablet landscape for the rest of this year and 2013 in light of Microsoft's jump into the pool. The software giant's decision to compete with its own licensees with Surface is a big move -- but does it have the smell of success or the reek of ...

Video: Surface intro and iPad intro compared

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jun 21st, 2012)

Microsoft introduced its Surface tablet earlier this week and the comparisons to the iPad are only beginning. As pointed out by John Gruber of Daring Fireball, one clever side-by-side is this one from ReadWriteWeb that looks at the unveiling of the Surface tablet and compares it to Steve Jobs's ...

Plug your iPad into a 150-inch touch display

by Kelly Hodgkins (Sep 21st, 2011)

Earlier this year, Crunchy Logistics unveiled an interactive, multi-touch table to rival Microsoft's surface devices. The LED table had 36 touch-points and supported common gestures like swipe and pinch-to-zoom. It's literally the size of a conference table. Best of all, the Florida company has ...

Apple patent features sound-driven commands

by Mike Schramm (Feb 21st, 2011)

A new patent by Apple reveals that the company has been working on gesture-based commands determined with audio transducers on the corners of a given surface -- in other words, as your fingers press and tap on a surface (like a keyboard or a computer casing or even the bezel around an iPad), the ...

Apple's Magic Trackpad approved by FCC

by Mike Schramm (Jul 19th, 2010)

We've seen the Magic Trackpad name before, and we've even gotten a glimpse of what the device might be -- a larger, Bluetooth-enabled multitouch surface designed to bring all of the gestural and multitouch capability found on the iDevices and MacBooks to the desktop itself. Now, Engadget notes that ...

iPad steel drum played with conductive fiber mallets

by Mike Schramm (May 20th, 2010)

Jobs told us, "If you see a stylus, they blew it," but what if the stylus is a steel drum mallet? Someone built an iPad app, as you can see above, that is designed to imitate the look and sound of a steel drum. It needed something a little extra, though, ... like actual mallets to play with. So, ...

Apple patents multitouch gestures

by Mike Schramm (Apr 30th, 2010)

Patently Apple reports that Apple has picked up a major patent from the USPTO for a long list of mutitouch gestures. The gestures all involve moving two or more fingers on a multitouch surface, and cover everything from cut and copy shortcuts to global search and find and replace motions. I'm sure ...

Rumored tablet could include dynamic tactile surface

by Mike Schramm (Dec 24th, 2009)

As a guy who still kind of winces at the iPhone's touch surface sometimes (especially when playing games -- you don't realize how nice buttons are until you see a character die because your thumb's in the way), this is extremely interesting news: Apple's rumored tablet, which we've been hearing a ...

Apple announces iPhone now delivers up to 8 hours of talk time, new glass display

by David Chartier (Jun 18th, 2007)

Talk about last minute upgrades: In a press release today, Apple has revealed a number of significant upgrades to both the iPhone's battery life and touch screen. Instead of what I believe was around 5 hours of video/talk and 16 hours of audio playback, Apple has updated the iPhone's battery life ...

Microsoft Surface: it is like an iPhone, in table form

by Scott McNulty (May 30th, 2007)

It looks like interactive surfaces are all the rage nowadays. First we had the iPhone from Apple with its multi-touch technology and now we have Microsoft's Surface (of course neither of these devices is actually shipping yet, but when does that stop us from talking about them?). Surface is a 30 ...