The secrecy surrounding Microsoft's Surface extended to Redmond's hardware partners.
When rumors of a Microsoft tablet first started doing the rounds, one of the bigger arguments against the idea was that Microsoft was a software company with a healthy pool of hardware partners. How could it snub its partners by coming out with its own hardware? As you might have noticed, Microsoft did just that -- the company announced two Windows 8 tablets earlier this week, one based on Intel technology and another based on ARM and running Windows RT.