When asked by analysts to comment on Microsoft’s newly launched Surface tablet, Apple CEO Tim Cook brought up reviews that say the product is “compromised” and “confusing.”
“I haven’t personally played with the Surface yet,” Cook told the analyst during the company’s earnings call, adding, with a heavy sigh, “but what we’re reading about it that it’s a fairly compromised, confusing product.”
It sounds like Cook may have read the Wired review by Mathew Honan, who described the Surface as “a tablet of both compromises and confusion.”
Or maybe he was thinking of CNN’s Harry McCraken, who wrote that working with the Surface’s Office apps “feels like an exercise in compromise,” ot maybe Josh Topolsky of the The Verge who wrote “Instead of being a no-compromise device, it often feels like a more-compromise one.”
Cook added that Apple recognizes the inherent tradeoffs required in both engineering and design.
“I think one of the toughest things you do with each product is to make hard tradeoffs, and decide what a product should be,” Cook said. “And we’ve really done that with the iPad. And so the user experience is absolutely incredible. I suppose you could design a car that flies and floats, but I don’t think it would do all those things very well.”
He added that he thinks that when people look at the iPad versus other tablet offerings, they’re going to conclude that they really want an iPad.
