It was a perfect day. Clear skies, warm weather, palm trees, orange juice, listening to Cats on my Microsoft Zune music player. Then Surface Studio 2 made me cry.
Microsoft Zune
The short-lived success of the Zune, Microsoft's answer to the Apple iPod, was hot and short, just like today. Calm clear skies, warm weather, palm trees swinging gently in the ocean breeze...
It was a wonderful little machine. I loved the squircle of the original Zune.
The second generation Zune HD was even nicer.
Oh, and I was listening to Andrew Lloyd-Webber's 'Cats', not Cat Stevens.
Surface Studio 2
Surface Studio 2, oh, how you made me cry.
"Don't cry for me, Argentina, the truth is, I never left you... all through the wild days, my mad existence, I kept my promise, don't keep your distance"...
The Surface Studio 1 was stunning, but flawed: it had that gorgeous 28 inch 3:2 aspect screen, the zero-gravity hinge, the ability to lay the screen down like an architect's desktop, or upright like an iMac.
The internals were already two generations old by the time it debuted. Sad, because I was very tempted to buy one. It was hideously expensive, the internals were already obsolete, it just didn't make sense to spend all that money (nearly AU$5000).
We had hoped the Surface Studio 2 would right these wrongs. It almost succeeded.
While it upgraded all of the internals, and gave us modern dedicated Nvidia graphics chips, they were still the late-2018 recently-superceded GTX series, not the brand new Nvidia RTX series.
We also got a 2017-series Intel 7th-generation processor instead of the brand new 8th-generation; or the soon-to-be-released Core i9 or even the newer 9th generation Intel processors. What could have been... get an 8th-generation Core i7 or a Core i9 in there and it would be awesome... it would need cooling, but it would be awesome.
We get blessed with one USB-C port, but it's not Thunderbolt. Cry cry cry.
The Surface Studio 2 keeps making me cry. It's awesome, it's expensive, and it's already outdated before you buy it. Why, Microsoft? Why, Panos, why? Whyyyy?
Just like that lady from Argentina, I'll keep my distance.
Until next time,
Xavier Zymantas
XYZtech
Read Next