Samsung trolls Apple with Galaxy Note Pro

Samsung had a less than impressive holiday quarter, especially in the face of Apple's monster sales and profits. So they are back to doing the only thing they truly believe in: trolling Apple with a new product and ad campaign. This time, it is for the Galaxy Note Pro. Have a look:

You know those kids who sit in the back of the class who just sit around mocking everything and causing trouble? They also like to go to parties to which they were not invited, and mock and heckle everything from the sidelines. They do not understand concepts such as beauty and grace. If you appreciate the finer things in life, you are a sissy, gay, and worthless. They are the types of bullies who like to take away your nice things and smash them just to watch you cry. Now, their piece of junk is the coolest thing around. Yeah! That's Samsung.

They are no longer even going for tasteful. They have opted for a voice actor and script that does nothing but mock and hector. They took Apple's artful Pencil ad and sprayed graffiti all over it. It's not funny. It's belligerent. It is Samsung going to an art gallery and heckling all of the exhibits. 

The only selling points Samsung tried to make were that the Note Pro is bigger and can have two applications on screen at the same time. While true, it is misleading. Bigger is not necessarily better. The Verge review the Note Pro and found the awkward size to be a major liability:

Samsung Galaxy Note Pro review

It's meant to be used flat on a desk, too, or cradled by your elbow, since it's virtually impossible to hold in one hand and only slightly more stable in two.

As for the multitasking...

The Note Pro lets you open up to four apps at once on the huge display, and move pictures and text between them; I spent a lot of time with a browser open in one half, a YouTube video playing in the top left corner, and a blank document in the bottom for taking notes. Moving things around is really slow and awkward, though, and the list of apps you can use is quite small. Back on my Surface Pro or my MacBook Air, I can freely resize as many windows as I want, and stick Evernote next to Rdio next to Chrome as I work. The Note Pro can't do that.

As for the stylus...

Most apps, though, even most drawing apps other than Photoshop Touch, don't support the S Pen as more than just a replacement for your finger. That left me mostly stuck writing and drawing with Samsung's Action Memo and S Note apps. If your companies use something else, you'll spend a lot of time moving documents in and out of a half-dozen different apps to get things done.

This might be the nicest thing they had to say about it:

The Note Pro is powered by Samsung's latest Exynos processor and 3GB of RAM, and mostly does its job fine, but it still runs into occasional problems. As is all too common with Samsung's tablets, it has a habit of stuttering as apps open or close, and for taking two beats too long to do some things. But the problems aren't crippling, or even annoying save for the gigantic delay in resizing the multitasking window. The Note Pro isn't overwhelmingly fast or impressive, but it's not slow.

Finally...

If you can read down the Galaxy Note Pro's feature list and see everything you need, and you can swallow the astronomical $749.99 price, then go for it. It's as productive an Android tablet as I've ever seen, though there are better options for almost everything it does. The iPad Air is cheaper and has more apps, even those for business; the Nokia Lumia 2520 is cheaper and always connected. And for getting work done on a tablet, nothing competes with Office, Windows, and the Surface Pro.

...Until we are, go buy a laptop. And if you want a tablet, save your money and buy one that won’t break your arms when you’re watching movies in bed.

That's Samsung. They mock the good stuff, replace it with junk, and honestly can't fathom the difference, nor do they care. For Samsung, copying Apple is just a way of selling things, not a way of improving things or making great products that empower consumers. The only reason Samsung puked out this product was to beat Apple to the punch. Everyone knows that Apple is working on an iPad Pro. That is the only motivation Samsung needed. 

On internet forums, you will sometimes see a post that only says, "IBL". That stands for, "in before lock". It is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. It is a person who wants to mark the fact that he was there before a moderator comes along and locks a useless or harmful discussion thread. Samsung is in before lock. When Apple comes in, that locks up the juiciest part of the market. That is why Samsung released the Galaxy Gear smart-watch so prematurely. They cared nothing for the product, or the dupes who would buy it. They just wanted to get something on the market before Apple locked it up. That is the Note Pro. IBL.

There is no other company at the moment that I wish a more painful and lingering death than Samsung.

David Johnson