TechRadar’s Mary Branscombe looks at how Microsoft kept Surface a secret for so long, and so successfully, noting that while rumours about a Microsoft Windows RT tablet had been circulating on and off for months, there was never enough detail to make them credible.
She says it’s now been revealed that the Surface design team initially worked in what one member calls an underground bunker with no windows, later moving above ground to a larger building with windows but also the kind of security you associate with bank vaults, with guards carrying guns and requiring biometric verification to gain entry through airlock-style doors.
One engineering priority cited was to make the action of the hinged kickstand snapping shut sound like the door of a high-end sports car closing, Branscombe reports, noting that in addition to adopting Apple levels of secrecy and an Apple-style attention to detail in the physical design of Surface tablets, Microsoft appears to have taken another leaf out of Apple’s book when it comes to describing the specifications, demurring on announcing CPU speeds or any details other than that both ARM (she says NVIDIA claims it’s a Tegra 3 inside the Surface RT) and Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor silicon will be offered, or details on battery life and screen resolution, and being coy about pricing as well.
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