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Microsoft just made the iPad an even harder sell

People just aren’t buying iPads right now, and Microsoft just gave potential customers an even tougher decision: Buy a baseline iPad for $500, or buy a new Surface 3 computer, which comes the full Windows experience, for the same price?

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Microsoft unveiled its new Surface tablet-laptop hybrid on Tuesday. It comes with 64GB of storage and 2GB of RAM to start, but the most important distinction between this product and past Surface tablets is its operating system: This computer runs the full version of Windows, including desktop applications, and also comes with a one-year subscription to Office 365, Microsoft’s suite of productivity applications. This will make the Surface very business- and enterprise-friendly right out of the box.

surface 3
Microsoft

In comparison, Apple’s $500 iPad Air 2 only comes with 16GB of storage to start. It has hundreds of thousands of specially-made applications, but it can’t run desktop applications from the Mac, and it doesn’t have a kickstand for multiple viewing angles while sitting flat on a desk — you'd need to buy a third-party accessory for that. And the Surface 3 is particularly useful on those occasions where it’s easier to write or draw using a stylus than use the touchscreen or touchpad on the keyboard.

The Surface 3 also has a larger display than the iPad (10.8 vs. 9.7 inches), has a better front-facing camera (3.5 megapixels vs. 1.2 in the iPad) and it takes 1080p video; the iPad still only records in 720pHD. You shouldn’t be shooting too much video on these devices anyway, but it’s still important to know for certain niche use cases. 

While it’s unclear how Apple plans to spark iPad sales again — the company is rumored to be working on a bigger 12- or 13-inch tablet with new features aimed at productivity in the enterprise — the Surface 3 already looks like a solid contender that’s more affordable and possibly even more functional and useful than an iPad. This is especially true for large businesses that rely on internally developed programs that aren’t totally compatible with iPads and other tablets. It will be interesting to see how Apple responds in the near-future with its own hardware and software offerings. 

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