In addition to higher capacity battery life, a docking solution would also be possible since the Surface Pro includes a DisplayPort. The Verge has confirmed that Microsoft isn't creating a first party dock, but that doesn't mean a third party peripheral manufacture won't. (I contacted my Microsoft reps, and they didn't have any further information to announce beyond the tease.)
What about the app marketplace? While the Surface Pro can run legacy Windows software, many users also want a robust app experience within the Modern UI of Windows 8. The anemic selection of apps is still a problem for Windows RT owners, but Microsoft is well aware. Here is the associated dialogue:
[–]SurfaceTeam At Windows 8 launch we talked about the Store as a "grand opening" because even though we felt great about the day 1 app selection we knew we were just getting started. In the last 2 months we have seen over 100M app downloads and since GA we have seen the selection grow by 4 times over. I think we added 10K apps in the last month. Those are all big numbers but don't exactly address your question about what we are doing with the top ecosystem partners to make high quality, in depth apps. Our relationships with each of these partners is unique and in some cases we are supplying test hardware, engineering support or other kinds of support to help.
Admirable progress has been made, but there are stil significant holes in the Windows 8 App Store
Many Reddit users — who are likely potential customers — expressed concerns over both storage and battery life.
That said we picked a smaller battery to be sure we were able to give you the same performance and to keep it thin. This kept the weight under 2lbs, and still kept it thin enough to take advantage of our great Windows work for inking and give you a great inking experience (like pressure sensitive inking, ability to do kanji, great sketching). While these tradeoffs are challenges as much as they are opportunities, we think given the performance and experience you will be getting, it is an exciting product.
As I pointed out in this post, the available Surface Pro storage space to users is significantly lower than advertised, but this is by no means a new issue. The Surface team had this to say:
Available disk space is a design choice and a tough one to make as an engineering team. It is a clear set of tradeoffs to provide the customer more space while providing them the tools out of the box. We created a simple disk image with only a few critical applications out of the box installed to provide choice. There has also been questions about why including the recovery image by default. Ideally, you will never need your recovery image, however this is a choice we would prefer the customer to make vs. having the customer need the recovery image not realizing they needed to create one themselves.
The final highlight of the AMA centered around independent display scaling, especially since the device has the capability to power external displays. For many, maximizing productivity is crucial with a device like this and the Surface team had several suggestions.
[–]Costco_Law_Degree As many reviews have pointed out, the Surface Pro has a very high resolution for a 10.6? screen, which has made it so that it is scaled to 150% to be usable on the desktop. Windows 8 doesn't allow you to run independent scaling between the Surface Pro and an external monitor when using an extended display option. I want to keep scaling at 150% on the Surface Pro, and have scaling on my external display at 100%. Are there plans to fix this in Windows 8?
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