You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.
There is a gray area that exists for me with the iPad. I love using it to read, to browse the web, to share content, to occasionally create content. But there is a moment when I have to put the iPad down and grab my laptop. I travel with both. I keep both nearby when I'm at home. And I think this is true for a lot of people (it's certainly true for a lot of people I know in the tech press).Basically what I find most interesting about Surface is that it seems to be a nothing-to-lost move and exactly the sort of thing Apple wouldn't do. By that I mean Apple created a new computing category with the iPad: It put a computer in a place (bed or couch) that it never really existed before. This wasn't a replacement device, it was additive. I, like many I know, use both an iPad and a laptop and Apple's laptop business is doing pretty well for them. Surface tries to imagine a future where there is just one. It's not to say it will happen, but it feels like something Apple wouldn't do and for that I applaud them.