I had really bad experience with Surface Pro 3 (lots of hardware and software issues), but I have to say this: Microsoft is trying to do the right thing here. There is no reason tablets should be dumb-down media consumption devices when they have computing power equivalent to desktop PCs of a few years ago. But to be used as real computers they must have keyboard and stylus by default and must allow to install arbitrary apps without jailbreaking and hoops.
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.
Something that works well for a desktop with a large monitor, keyboard and mouse doesn't necessarily work well for a tablet with a relatively small touchscreen and vise versa.
Unfortunately, as far as "tablet mode" is concerned, Windows 10 is still a step back from Windows 8. Obviously Windows 8 had its problems, but the tablet UI was fantastic. W10 has gradually been getting back the W8 tablet features it dropped though, so maybe it'll get there
And that's the problem. The two modes doesn't "change" (or the apps are just the properly optimized for the different modes) the apps enough so in reality, an app is either good in one mode or the other, not in both.
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.