My pen loop fell off after 2 days of use, and now it won't stick back on. Who designed this thing anyway? It's essentially a small sticker that attaches to a fuzzy cover. How did they expect this to actually work in real life?
So I called Microsoft to see if they'd at least send me another pen loop with a fresh sticker. They said "No, the loop isn't covered under warranty." So my options are to return the entire type cover to get just a new pen loop (environmentally unwise), or live with it.
Microsoft, it's stuff like this that Apple wouldn't let out the door. The Surface Pro 3 is an excellent computer, but you fell asleep on the last 1% of the product design. *sigh*
Sadly, I agree with the your assessment. I'm no fan of Cupertino (refer to my username for proof of this
but you're absolutely on point when you say that Apple wouldn't sell a product that isn't pitch perfect. The design team would have slaved and toiled over the problem until a solution was found. There's no way they would have slapped a sticker on the side of the keyboard and gone "hey, live with it" primarily because they know that charging a premium for a product means that customers buy the right to expect perfection in every aspect of the design and performance of the product.
I refuse to believe that the big thinkers in Redmond couldn't find a better way to house the pen....magnetise it, make it smaller, create a slot to insert it into the tablet or the keyboard....hell, even attaching it to the device with a bit of string would be better than the stupid loop on the side...
This really is Microsoft getting 99% of the way there, having a sales meeting and concluding that 99% will have to do because Christmas bonuses will be missed if they don't ship ASAP.
In other words, I think commercial pressure forced an early release of the product, and that's a bad business model for the end user.