Austin's local "upscale" mall ("The Domain") has both an Apple store and a Microsoft store; I went to both this weekend. The Apple store had perhaps 50 shoppers and a selection of covetable updated hardware, most of which I would be delighted to buy the moment any of my current device fleet breaks. Despite owning three tablets (Kindle Fire1, Nexus7, IPad3), the only thing stopping me from getting an iPad Mini are the rumors that the Mini2 will be out this spring.

The Microsoft store was quieter, with perhaps five shoppers walking around and looking at the new hardware. Notably, every device in the store was Win8 and Touch-enabled, which was great from the standpoint of being on message, and terrible from the "appeal" standpoint, since most of the 3rd party hardware is very clearly "v1" targeted and not nearly as compelling as the slick Ultrabooks that have been out for a year. I took a quick look at the Surface in the front of the store, and it sadly didn't leave me with a good impression. The touch cover was falling apart at the seam (literally) and launching IE led to an immediate modal error message (http://twitpic.com/bs8fcv) before leaving me on a white screen. I fired up the new PenguinMark benchmark to find that the Surface scores 0. Zero. Zip. Nada. The iPad Mini (running Apple's older tablet processor) scored better than that.

It was a pretty depressing morning. :-(