Mark Zuckerberg wants us to run a mile a day in 2016, but he's doing it wrong

It's a commendable goal for anyone who doesn't run and wants to get a little healthier: Run 365 miles in one year.

That is what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is challenging his billion-plus users to do in 2016. "This is a lot of running, but it's not a crazy amount," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. "It's a mile a day, and at a moderate pace it's less than 10 minutes of running per day."

He's right in one respect: A mile a day is not a crazy amount, and you'd be surprised how quickly you can get used to it and build up your mileage. (Personally, I started running by training for my first 5K in 2010, when a mile seemed like a long distance; two years later, I ran my first marathon).

But he's wrong in another important respect: A "less than" 10-minute mile is nowhere near what a beginner would call a "moderate pace." It's quite fast, even for many experienced runners.

If you're going into this challenge expecting to run anything less than a 12 or 13-minute mile, you're not only going to be sorely disappointed, you're also going to be extremely sore, out of breath and unlikely to keep it up for a year.

As any seasoned runner will tell you: The first mile always sucks, so take it easy if you can.

There's yet more wrongness in the photo that Zuckerberg posted of himself running in Delhi last year with a couple of fellow Facebookers. We're not just talking about the fact they're all fine physical specimens — perhaps too fine to encourage the beginner runner that anyone can do this.

Nor are we talking about the fact they're all holding their smartphones rather than wearing them on armbands or in fanny packs. (Someone's going to be guaranteed a cracked screen running like that.)

No, we're talking about what is quite clearly a heel strike in Zuckerberg's running form. This is a fancy term for landing on your heel instead of the ball of your foot, and was thought in the 1970s to be preferable because it gave you a longer stride.

Since then, heel striking has been fingered in a large number of running injuries because it sends a dangerously large jolt up through your skeleton that can damage bones and joints over time. See for example this landmark study [PDF] from Zuckerberg's alma mater, Harvard, which found forefoot runners get way fewer injuries.

Zuckerberg has started a Facebook group dedicated to the 365-mile challenge called A Year of Running, so hopefully he'll introduce more tips and nuance as the year goes on. But here's what we'd advise: If you're a beginner, start out really slow — so slow that it almost feels like cheating. Accept that your body is going to take some time to adjust to running, but also that just about anyone can and should do it — the health rewards from even a moderate amount of running make it one of the most efficient exercises around.

And you don't need fancy shoes, you just need proper forefoot running form, which you can practice by imagining how you would run uphill. (If you tried landing on your heels, you'd fall over.)

For more information and a tremendous dose of inspiration, read the excellent Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. And stay safe out there.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

LinkedIn Rival Viadeo Exits China

Viadeo, the French rival to LinkedIn, is to exit China in order to focus on becoming a profitable business. In a further cost-cutting move, it will also shutter its data center in California and migrate to the cloud.

The company moved into China eight years when it acquired local professional social network Tianji.com, but that site will cease to exist once it is closed down on December 31. Viadeo claims that Tianji has 25 million users, but it has struggled to attract the “very considerable development resources” necessary to drive it forward in “China’s fiercely competitive market”. Viadeo had planned to use one-third of the proceeds from its 2014 IPO to develop Tianji.com, but the listing didn’t raise enough capital and the firm wasn’t able to pull in money from private investors.

“In the first half of 2015 the company went looking for an investor, buyer or local partner, who could guarantee stability and commitment to support it in this market,” Viadeo said in a statement. “However, China’s changing economic conditions marked by a historical slowdown in growth, a major financial crisis in the summer of 2015 and repeated devaluations of the nation’s currency dashed hopes of identifying such a partner.”

Post-China, Viadeo said it will refocus on its home market of France and other French-speaking countries, while putting great emphasis on its B2B sales model.

Viadeo’s foray into China was a fascinating one, since it doubled down on the country in 2011, a time when Twitter and Facebook were heavily linked with opening local operations there. The company two-sided play — having a global site (Viadeo.com) and a China-only one (Tianji.com) — was a model that both of the U.S. social networks had reportedly shown interest in.

In contrast to Viadeo’s troubles in China, LinkedIn seems to be finding some success there. The U.S. social network opened a joint-venture with Sequoia China last year. LinkedIn China isn’t a totally separate site, but it does block some content from Chinabased on the country’s web censorship regulations.

Twitter’s Fiscal 2015: Up, Flat, And Down

Twitter did not have a lovely 2015. The world-famous social company saw its revenue rise, its usage flatten, and its share price fall.

The company failed to change the arc of its own narrative during the year: Strong financial performance, but continued failure to grow its user base, the latter of which the market appears to weight more strongly. It brought in a new CEO to turn things around, but so far it still hasn’t found a way to really do a better job of building its audience.

The result? Share price declines that have put Twitter near all-time lows as the year concludes.

Twitter Inc. (TWTR) Stock Price - 1 Year | FindTheCompany

The numbers speak for themselves. After its IPO, Twitter shot to more than $60 per share. The company then spent time in the $30 range, the $40 range, and the $50 range. This year, Twitter has seen its value fall further, bouncing around the low $20 range.

For employees who have options priced at a far higher levels, the declines are not theoretical. They are material. And there is a rot that can set in when it comes to falling share prices — the public equivalent of a down round, in some ways — as it becomes more difficult to hire, retain key talent, and keep morale up.

So, what’s happened this year? Let’s take a look.

Twitter’s financial performance

Key to Twitter’s success story — and it has been a success story — is its financial performance. The company has posted strong revenue growth, beaten expectations, and impressively monetized its user base. To its former critics that decried it as a fad, or financial impossibility, Twitter can drop the following revenue figures and saunter away:

• First quarter, 2015: $436 million, up 74 percent, compared to the year-ago period.
• Second quarter, 2015: $502 million, up 61 percent, compared to the year-ago period.
• Third quarter, 2015: $569 million, up 58 percent, compared to the year-ago period.

If you were curious as to how to monetize social services, Twitter has blazed a trail worth studying. The company’s monetary performance is a credit to its management team.

However, there is a cap on Twitter’s future financial performance. While it has done yeoman’s work extracting more value from its existing user base, the firm is still dependent on user growth. That, in the long-term, is necessary to generate new revenue. The argument is simple: If Twitter can’t grow its cadre of active users, it cannot eventually further grow its revenue.

You can only squeeze a rag so hard, in other words.

And, where Twitter has been precisely brilliant regarding its improving top line, it has seen difficulty convincing the masses that using Twitter is what they should do.

Twitter’s stalling user growth

In the second quarter this year, new CEO Jack Dorsey pretty much summed up a significant challenge for the company in a single statement: “Our Q2 results show good progress in monetization, but we are not satisfied with our growth in audience.”

This statement serves as a microcosm for the company. Its financials looked good, but its number logged-in users did not grow as much as the company had hoped. The company’s monthly active user growth had essentially stalled — and for a company whose performance is dependent on its audience, that demonstrated a massive problem for investors.

Twitter MAU Over Time | SoftwareInsider

Still, that doesn’t mean Twitter’s total user base isn’t growing. There’s a whole swath of users that may simply be logged out — which is difficult to track, and something Twitter is working on. The company is also actively experimenting with new products in order to increase engagement among its users. But the best advertising targeting Twitter can do is on users that have built an interest graph, which involves signing up, logging in and following others to get a sense of what the user is looking for.

“One other thing to note, we also are monetizing logged-out users across the network,” COO Adam Bain said on the last earnings call. “This is the first time that we’ve been doing that. It’s going to come in handy as we also begin to run a pilot here in Q4 for on-Twitter logged-out monetization. So we’re going to take some of that learnings and apply it back on Twitter logged-out [advertising] products.”

But while Twitter’s financial performance continues to beat expectations, slowing logged-in audience growth serves as a limitation for the upside for the company. There are a couple of ways to increase its bottom line — it can improve its advertising products and come out with new ones, or acquire its way into new venues of advertising, for example. But in the end, if it’s going to really explode to new heights and impress investors, it needs to re-ignite its user growth as well.

In sum, while Twitter’s revenue has grown, and its user growth has stalled, its shares have fallen.

It’s up for you to decide if the investing classes are being too hard on Twitter. The firm still has a strong cash position, and is worth billions and billions of dollars. The proper question, perhaps, is how Twitter will manage to bolster its larger consumer appeal, without losing the interest of its key content creators.

In the end, Twitter is still a bit of a confusing company. It continues to improve and develop new advertising products, and bought its way into a brand-new kind of video format in the case of Periscope. That’s something that should impress investors, but Twitter’s finding that challenging — particularly because these kinds of bets are, in theory, long-term ones.

And for Twitter to be a long-term safe bet, it has to be firing on all cylinders, which includes finding ways to do a better job of building, measuring, and monetizing its audience.

A representative for Twitter directed us to the company’s 2015 Q3 earnings call when we requested comment.

BSNL offers 10 percent discount on broadband speed restoration add-on plans

BSNL has announced a special promotional offer where it is providing a discount of 10 percent on broadband speed restoration add-on plans as a part of Christmas, New Year and Republic day. This offer will be effective from 25-12-2015 to 31-01-2016 in all the circles on a promotional basis.

BSNL’s speed restoration add-on plans for broadband subscribers offer restoration of unlimited broadband plan speed even after crossing the FUP limit. Subscribers can choose from Rs. 100 for 2GB, Rs. 200 for 5GB, Rs. 300 for 10GB, and Rs. 500 for 20GB high-speed data quota for the rest of the billing cycle. Subscriber will then receive to a pop-up message when the data quota gets exhausted. Subscribers can then choose add-on plan of choice and the charges will be included in the next billing cycle.

Christmas and New Year holiday are the times when a lot of data is used by customers. Hitting FUP limit and using slow Internet speed for the rest of the month is something that everyone hates. This is a welcome move from BSNL to offer discount on its add-on plans broadband plans.

Pinterest Launches A New Way To Track Price Drops On Buyable Pins

Pinterest has a new way to entice users to come back and buy things: keeping tabs on the price.

That comes in the form today of a new tool that helps Pinterest users monitor price drops on products they’ve pinned. When users save pins, they’ll get a heads up when a price drops in the form of an in-app notification and an email. They can then jump straight to that pin and make the purchase.

The tool was driven by some user behavior the company expected to see in the shopping experience, Pinterest product marketing manager Sarah Shere said. Often when users are shopping, they are also waiting for the price to drop to the right point before finally making a purchase — which is something the company wanted to ensure it could enable as part of its shopping experience.

“I don’t think it’s a unique psychology to Pinterest, but we tried to build a shopping experience that worked for that customer experience — discovering a product, waiting for the right moment, and then completing the purchase in a seamless way,” said Shere. “In this case one of those right moments is waiting for the price to drop.”

Pinterest launched buyable pins earlier this year, which lets retailers add a “buy” button to pins and enables users to buy those products straight through Pinterest. After putting in a credit card and an address, a user can purchase products that have that buy button on them. Users can make purchases from anywhere on the app, like boards and through search.

In the end, this is likely about getting Pinterest users to come back and buy products on Pinterest. Though the company might not treat commerce as a strong monetization channel just yet alongside its advertising business, it helps get users to come back to Pinterest over and over again. That, in general makes the service more sticky — giving it an opportunity to better monetize its user base.

Still, commerce is becoming increasingly important to Pinterest, which is still rolling out new products that could one day drive additional revenue for Pinterest. According to an earlier report, Pinterest is forecast to make around $169 million in revenue this year.

Facebook Makes Changes To Its Real Name Policy Enforcement Process

After over a year’s worth of controversy around Facebook’s real names policy, Facebook has announced a couple of changes to its process in order to better serve all of its members, including those in the LGBTQ community.

Last October, Facebook promised it would make changes to its real name policy after a number of false account flagging incidents led to the suspension of LGBTQ members’ pages. Facebook requires people to use the names their friends and family know them by. For many drag performers, for example, their drag names are the names people know them by, but that didn’t prevent the suspension of their accounts.

While Facebook is not getting rid of its real names policy, it is starting to test new tools to improve the policy in order for it to work better “for everyone, especially for communities who are marginalized or face discrimination,” Facebook VP of Global Operations Justin Osofsky and Product Manager Todd Gage wrote on Facebook’s blog.

For one, Facebook’s new reporting process requires people to provide more information and context around why they’re reporting that name in the first place. Before, reporting a potentially fake name was as easy as the click of a button.

Secondly, Facebook is testing a new tool for people to defend and verify their name if someone else flags it. So, if your account gets flagged, even though you’re using your drag name, or are using a different name in order to protect your privacy out of fear of abuse, harassment or stalking, you’ll have a week to be able to describe your situation before Facebook suspends your account.

“SF Pride is committed to our diverse community and is encouraged by the positive steps Facebook has both taken, and continues to work on, in addressing the reporting tools associated with their Authentic Names policy,” George Ridgely, Jr., executive director of SFPride, told TechCrunch in a statement. “We appreciate all of the engaged community leaders and Facebook for their contributions in this effort. It has been our priority to work closely with all parties to facilitate ongoing working-group meetings, as well as a forum that will bring together members of the community and Facebook to discuss these changes.”

Facebook has also received criticism around requiring people to provide forms of legal identification, which don’t always reflect someone’s preferred name.

Facebook has since expanded the options and documents that people can use to verify their name, and early next year, Facebook will look at ways to “reduce the number of people who have to go through an ID verification experience, while preserving the safety of other people on the site. We will also continue to work on making the experience itself more compassionate and easier to navigate.”

Lightsaber Yourself With Facebook’s Star Wars Profile Pics

Show you’re down with The Force this week then hide your Jedi ways with Facebook’s new Star Wars temporary profile pictures.

Just in time for the release of The Force Awakens, click here then hit the Try It button and Facebook will let you add a scary red Dark Side cross-guard lightsaber or a benevolent blue over one of your photos. Then you can make it your profile pic and set an expiration date for when you want to go back to your normal profile from this galaxy.

You can also find the option in the Star Wars Facebook Page’s timeline.

The temporary profile pic feature is the same one Facebook used to let people celebrate Pride, rep their college football squad, and root for other sports teams. Facebook seems to like the idea of Snapchat’s branded selfie lenses.

Is this shameless way for Facebook to cash in on all the Star Wars buzz? Absolutely. But it’s still fun. And at least since they’re temporary, you won’t have friends stuck as Sith Lords.

Apple names the best iOS apps of 2015

Apple on Wednesday announced its choices for the best iOS apps of 2015. Taking top honors was Periscope, an app Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, called "truly revolutionary."

hat Periscope was named app of the year for iPhone shouldn't be surprising; Meerkat may have hit the market first, but Periscope really captured the zeitgeist. It didn't hurt that Twitter acquired the small team behind the app before it even launched.

Other iPhone apps honored this year include photo editing app Enlight, stock-trading app Robinhood, the amazing productivity tool Workflow and health apps such as Lark and Fit Men Cook.

For the iPad, The Robot Factory by Tinybop was selected as iPad App of the Year. The Robot Factory is an app that lets kids build, test and collect robots. Other iPad app honorees includeHBO Now, Patterning: Drum Machine and LiquidText.

"I continue to be really impressed with the types of apps that are getting created," Cue told Mashable. "You think everything that's been created has been done and then people continue to innovate and push the envelope across all the apps."

For the editorial picks for Apple's best iOS apps of 2015, they ran the gamut. Some winners, like Periscope, originally had small teams and were acquired by bigger companies. Other apps, such as HBO Now, are truly the product of big companies, but they still managed to push the envelope in other ways. Cue cited HBO Now as one of his favorite apps of the year, just by the virtue of how much more HBO he now watches as a result.

And some apps — especially in the gaming categories — are successes that grew out of upstarts. Prune, which Apple names its Best iPad Game of the Year, is the product of one person. It's the type of game Cue loves: "Who'd think a game about trimming trees would be so beautiful and fun," Cue said. "But they've done an amazing job."

The most-downloaded apps of the year

In addition to the editorial picks, Apple also released its year-end charts of its most-downloaded apps and games of 2015. Most of the big players — Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube — are on this list, but so are some apps you might not expect.

Crossy Road is the most downloaded free iPad app and in the top 10 of the most-downloaded iPhone apps. From Aussie-developers Hipster Whale, Crossy Road is an updated take on Frogger.

We spoke with Hipster Whale cofounder Matt Hall, one of the founders of Hipster Whale, about Crossy Road and its success in 2015 — an app that has transcended just mobile andmoved to the Apple TV.

Originally, Crossy Road was a project that cofounders Matt Hall and Andy Sum worked on as a game to do between projects. But quickly into the development process, Hall said he knew something was different and that "this could be something really special."

"We assumed failure but planned for success," Hall said. At launch, Apple featured the game as one of its best new iPhone apps of the week. And while Hall can't say how much that early exposure ultimately helped the game (we think it's the sort of game that had a viral component regardless of how it was featured), he acknowledged that being featured was "enormously helpful" and helped give the game "legitimacy."

With more than 40 million downloads for Crossy Road on iOS alone, the game has legs.

The list: Top downloads

Top free iPhone apps:

1. Trivia Crack
2. Messenger
3. Dubsmash
4. Instagram
5. Snapchat
6. YouTube
7. Facebook
8. Uber
9. Crossy Road - Endless Arcade Hopper
10. Google Maps

Top paid iPhone apps:

1. Heads Up!
2. Minecraft: Pocket Edition
3. Trivia Crack (Ad Free)
4. Five Nights at Freddy's 2
5. Facetune
6. Geometry Dash
7. Five Nights at Freddy's
8. Afterlight
9. Plague Inc.
10. Goat Simulator

Top free iPad apps:

1. Crossy Road - Endless Arcade Hopper
2. Candy Crush Soda Saga
3. Messenger
4. Netflix
5. YouTube
6. The Calculator - Free
7. Microsoft Word
8. Trivia Crack
9. Skype for iPad
10. Pinterest

Top paid iPad apps:

1. Minecraft: Pocket Edition
2. Five Nights at Freddy's 2
3. Five Nights at Freddy's
4. Geometry Dash
5. Terraria
6. Goat Simulator
7. Heads Up!
8. Five Nights at Freddy's 3
9. Toca Kitchen 2
10. Monument Valley

""

Ultimate Guide to Speed up Your Internet Connection

he 21st century is the age of speed: fast travel, fast communication, technology getting more and more mobile and of-course, faster. But even now, in the age ofspeed, some people still suffer from lack of a decent Internet connection. AlthoughInternet speed has significantly improved over the last few years, some of us still suffer with slow connections and browsing the web can prove to be a daunting task.Although one cannot force the ISP to provide faster internet, there are some solutions to making the most of your existing Internet connection.

Tips & Tricks to speed up your Internet

1. Keep a clean and secured computer

Clean your hard drive as often as you can. Try using an anti-virus software, but a very resource demanding one (check our list of the best free antivirus programs and paid anti-virus programs), look for a anti adware/spyware program. These bugs can drastically lower your Internet speed, so scan your computer regularly, also, try using a simple firewall, but keep in mind, heavy firewalls (such as Zone Alarm) require a heavy duty Internet connection, so if you don’t want to make it worse, look towards a firewall that is not resource hungry.

Also,another important thing you can do to make your browser faster, is to clear your history and other useless data your browser stores on your computer (except temporary internet files for sites you usually access), clear your cache and also make it bigger. A bigger cache for your browser means more information stored on your computer and faster load time for your regularly accessed web sites. This is a great way to speed up your Internet connection.

2. Upgrade your computer

If you have an old computer, with a low-end processor and little memory, then your computer might be the problem, not your internet connection. Try adding some more RAM and/or a more powerful CPU. If these are old and slow, they load web-pages slowly and even more slowly if they have complex graphics.

Another upgrade to keep your mind on is your notwork card (LAN card) or Modem Card. These are also physical components, in which you plug in your Internet cables (standard telephone cable or RJ45 connectors). These cars have a maximum connection speed (check the model or the manual to find out how much). Some older models are 10/100 Mbps, and these models are slow, and if you have a faster connection, they will limit the speed to their maximum (it’s funny, just today I had a course at school about this). You should try to get a 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN card for better connections.

3. Update your softwareIt’s important to keep your computer up to date and install the latest updates for all your software (including the OS). Updates normally include bug fixes and your programs should load and run faster, so keep an eye out for updates. But remember, never keep open programs you do not necessary need. Always have installed the latest version of your browser and OS, but also for flash player, shockwave and java.

4. Do not use slow programs

Try to get a fast web browser, this is the key for web surfing. Traditionally, Internet Explorer is considered to be very slow, specially the older versions. It also consumes more resources. Try using something like Opera, Firefox or Chrome (the fastest in my opinion). And another thing, do not get too many extensions, this advice is for any browser. Try to use only the necessary add-ons or extensions, because, if you pack your browser with them they will reduce your internet speed and your browser’s overall performance.

Resource hungry anti-virus and firewalls also have an impact on your computer and browser performance, so do not aim for something your computer can’t handle. Try to get some easy to use and resource friendly programs.

5. Keep an eye out for bandwidth consumption

Firewalls, anti-viruses, OS’s and other programs that use an internet connection eat up bandwidth, so try to set them to do only manual updates and close all unnecessary ones, this will free your bandwidth a great deal and you will see the difference. But remember to update them often, if they are out of date, than your performance will drop.

On the other hand, if you have a wireless network, protect it with a strong password. If other people connect to your wireless network, then your speed will definitely drop.

6. Try changing your DNS servers

It is wise to try changing the DNS configuration of your internet connection whenever you see a sudden drop in the internet speed. Here is a list of free and fast DNS serverswhich should be handy. Well worth giving this a try. Alternatively, try flushing DNS cache which can resolve the slow internet speed issues.

Extensions & Boosters

Extensions and programs that claim to offer you faster browsing are all over the Internet. The vast majority of them do not work, they don’t do anything to speed up your internet connection. But there are a few extensions and boosters that offer some boost in your browsing speed, although not quite noticeable.

However, here are the ones who have some impact on your Internet speed:

1. Webroot

Webroot is a great tool for getting rid of adware and spyware from your computer. It scans your computer with great precision and it consumes next to no resources. I recommend this tool in parallel with NOD 32. Both of these are really resource light and and do an excellent job keeping your computer clean and fast.

2. Opera Turbo

One of the best internet boosters I have ever seen, and the best part about it is that Opera has this tool integrated in their browser. This tool speeds up your internet browser’s loading time for websites quite a lot. If there was ever a real tool for internet speed-up, Opera Turbo is that.

3. FastestWeb

An extension developed for speed. FastestWeb is exactly that. It makes life easier for you by working in the background of your browser and making it surf the internet faster. Although this is not magic potion making your browser lightning fast, it does make it a little more faster and you should notice the difference. This extension is available for both Chrome (download link) of on Firefox (download link).

Common Sense

• Do not open new windows when clicking on a link, just open them in new tabs in the same window. This will conserve resources and make your overall browsing faster.
• Do not overcrowd your browser, try to keep enabled only the extensions you need and do not open lots of tabs either. They consume memory and therefore, your browser will work harder.
• Disable flash, there are lots of flash blockers available on the web store, and they do a really good job. Flash files are usually very big, so the use of one of these tools will definitely change your browsing speed.
• Learn keyboard shortcuts for your browser, each of them have their own shortcuts, but it saves you lots of time when browsing.

If you have a slow connection or a dial-up connection, contact your ISP (Internet Service Provider) and think of upgrading your connection to a better one. If there is no juice left in bandwidth, then you cannot squeeze more out of it.

Surface Vs. iPad Battle Gets Competitive As Microsoft Outsells Apple

Thanks to its iPad family, Apple has been comfortably at number one in the ‘Top Brands’ chart for US tablet sales throughout 2015. At least it was until October, when Microsoft’s sales of the Surface devices spiked and pushed Cupertino’s slabs down to second place.

The research on sales figures comes from 1010data Ecom Insights Panel (via WinBeta) and suggests that Apple’s iPad was not the top-selling tablet brand online in October 2015. While it has been on top for the first nine months of the year in terms of online sales, Microsoft took over in month ten with a 45 percent share of online sales, compared to Apple’s 17 percent.

Apple is in the historically unusual role of playing the establishment figure, with Microsoft casting the Surface brand as the scrappy underdog.

Yes, Microsoft is coming from along way back, which means growth in percentage terms will always look far better than that of any incumbent player. October was also the month when the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book went on sale, generating more heat in the sales than previous months. But the Surface trend has generally been upwards, running close to Apple in August and September.

It remains to be seen if the new hardware release numbers are simply a spike from sales to the geekerati and will be exceeded by the expected Apple spike in November thanks to the iPad Pro, or whether the trend will continue. If the latter, Microsoft can look forward to reaching double-figures in the annualised market share on the strength of a strong calendar quarter to close out the year.

There are two things that do stand out to me. The first is that Microsoft is capturing the ‘underdog’ story arc very nicely. No matter that the Surface devices started with Windows 8, have been through multiple iterations, and are only now reaching maturity, the story that the public is taking in is one where Microsoft is back and not only challenging Apple but gathering strategic wins against Cupertino.

The Surface devices, because of their higher price points, are contributing to a much higher ‘average retail price’ of $844, compared to the iPad’s average of $392. Again, there are a number of mitigating circumstances, primarily the lack of ‘budget’ Surface devices and a Surface Mini with a seven-inch screen, but the story that Microsoft is delivering with the Surface is one of desirable hardware, luxury prices that are worth paying, and an exclusive (almost secret) club that you have the privilege of joining.

It’s as if Redmond has been studying the Apple playbook from the first decade of the twenty-first century. And that worked out rather nicely for Apple…