When Microsoft first announced their Surface tablet, I was excited. The higher priced version would come with the new OS, Windows 8 (which has problems of its own), there would be USB ports, and it looked as if it would come with a keyboard, plus it was shiny. All new products need to be shiny.

Now that the surface tablet pre-orders are well under way and the pricing has been revealed, I’m not so excited about the tablet anymore. In fact, I am disgusted that Microsoft is following in the footsteps of the current iOverlord: Apple.

Pricing for the tablet starts at $499 for a 32 GB version without a touch screen cover and goes up to $699 for the 64 GB version with a touch screen cover.  At first things don’t look so bad, until you look at the prices for the touch screen cover and the keyboard. $119 just for the touch screen cover, and $129 for a touch screen cover that includes a keyboard. You can get a keyboard for the iPad as expensive as 70 dollars. 70 dollars! Furthermore you can get a cover for the iPad at the high high price of $50, and I thought Apple was price gouging. What does this cover/keyboard have that makes it worth half of a Nexus 7 tablet or Kindle Fire tablet? Does it perchance have some secret alien technology in it? Or maybe it’s something a little closer to home: Greed.

With this new surface tablet I’m starting to see a lot of how Apple operates come to life in Microsoft. Give people a shiny new toy, and make them pay overpriced values for something that we produced for three bucks so that we can have sole control over your LIVES. You can get a decent desktop for the amount you would pay for the 32 GB Surface tablet (and for the 16 GB iPad for that matter) with far more storage space and a lot more capability. If you’re not big on storage and just a casual computer user, there are these things called laptops that you can get for pretty cheap on the market right now. And if you REALLY don’t like how “bulky” laptops are, there are the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 tablets available starting at $199. Both very capable Android powered devices with a far superior choice of casual games and other apps for on the fly word processing and what not.

As for Windows 8 Microsoft seems to be trying to eliminate free speech as we know it, well at least the part of free speech that allows me to have adult rated apps on my android phone. Mature content does not seem to be what Microsoft wants, as developers wanting to submit apps will have to pass stringent guidelines, like no adult rated apps. Sorry gamers, no Call of Battleduty 5 for you on the Windows 8 platform (except if you are in desktop mode which may be eventually phased out) or your Surface Tablet.

It seems like Microsoft is pulling up alongside Apple’s grave plot and digging a hole that they soon will not be able to get out of. All the while Google is laughing as they carry their huge sacks of money to the bank. I was hoping that Microsoft would be better than this; they revolutionized the PC back in the 90’s when Windows came out. Now, they are downgrading themselves to a Nazi-Tech regime that feels they need to control every aspect of a user’s experience. This is a sad day indeed.