Surface Brand Was Confusing Early On, Admits Microsoft

Redmond is all poised to unleash its second generation Surface lineup. Only two devices are on track for arrival later this month, in a variety of flavors, but more models have been promised by the technology titan for early next year.

And the company hopes to sell many more units this time around, compared to the original devices. The first generation Surface RT in particular was off to a slow start and ended up being disappointing.

Looking back at the first generation, Microsoft admits that the Surface brand was a fair bit confusing for customers — a number of users could not really differentiate between the RT and Pro models.

Jack Cowett, Microsoft Australia marketing manager said in an interview with PC Pro:

“We think that there was some confusion in the market last year on the difference between Surface RT and Surface Pro. We want to help make it easier for people, and these are two different products designed for two different people.”

Well, Redmond seems to have done a dandy job of this, as the Windows RT powered device is now simply known as the Surface 2, while the Pro model retains its original name and will be sold as the Surface Pro 2. That should go a long way in clearing up confusion.

Nevertheless, come to think of it, we still don’t know about the genius that gave Windows on ARM the name of Windows RT. It is utterly confusing and does not really denote anything special.

In fact, the company could have gone with anything else, really.

Not to mention WinRT actually already stands for Windows Runtime — an application architecture on Windows 8. So yeah, Microsoft could have gone in with a much better name, and in the process saved itself the trouble with Surface RT.

Surface and Surface Pro have a much better ring to them, whichever way you look at it.