Microsoft Surface Studio is no doubt a very cool computer. It elicits the same awe I had when the first iMac was unveiled, and then the white, and later the aluminium iMac. Microsoft really surprised lots of people during its October event.

Surface Studio is certainly powerful but who are the target users? And with a retail price of USD $2,999, will it sell?

Display

The 28-inch 4500 x 3000 resolution screen with 192 PPI looks awesome. It's sharp, no doubt. If you still run old software like Adobe CS5 or CS6, their user interface are going to look tiny and will be too frustrating to use. But since you can afford $2,999, you could already be running all the latest versions of graphic software. If you're upgrading from a 1080P or 1440P screen, check out relevant forums first for app and screen resolution compatibility.

3:2 aspect ratio is great. More visual working space is always great.

There's no mention of the exact gamut range it supports except that it supports a "wide color-gamut". Microsoft promises fast color profile switching between sRGB, DCI-P3, and Vivid (P3-D65).

The fact that this is a touch screen that you can also draw on is amazing. This competes with Wacom Cintiq 27QHD which is also really pricey. However, to compete effectively, it will come down to the accuracy of the Surface Pen. That slow-diagonal-wavy-jitter-line issue has been well documented by now. I hope with the Surface Studio, they have managed to solve that. Gabe from Penny Arcade has already review the Surface Studio and he seems quite pleased with it. I'll remain skeptical until I can experience it myself.

If the display could be sold separately on its own, it would be perfect. Mac users are always on a look out for good monitors. This screen looks sleek enough for them. By combining the display with the computer, it basically excludes the whole of the Mac user market. It also excludes those who already have a (good) computer. Does it mean they have to sell off their computer and screen for this all-in-one?

Pros and cons of all-in-ones

The pros is obviously the lack of cables.

The significant con is everything is now combined into a single point of failure. It's just like a laptop when it goes down. I mean, who has two laptops anyway? Just worry about it when it happens. Can you afford the downtime when you send it in for servicing? Do you have a backup display and computer, and storage with your files to allow you to get back to work quickly?

That's something to think about. Recently, I had to send in my Mac Pro for servicing for the 4th of 5th time. My Mac Pro is still at the service centre after 2 weeks. Thankfully, I have a quad core Mac Mini as backup. With the Mac Mini connected to the monitor, I went straight back to work, and the only downtime I had was the time it took to boot up the Mac Mini.

For the price, they should have included better graphics card and a real SSD instead of some hybrid drive

That's the most frequent complaint that I see on forums. It's the type of question commonly asked whenever computers are released, especially for Apple computers.

If they have included the better graphics card, the higher capacity SSD, more RAM, you will be looking at a higher price bracket. And at that higher price bracket, we'll still have people wishing for better specs for the price they are paying. The higher price bracket also excludes a lot of potential customers. The Surface Studio is already USD $2,999.

Ports

• 4 x USB 3.0 (one high power port)
• SD card slot
• Mini DisplayPort

It's great that they have included the SD card slot. Photographers would love it. I love it. There's also a mini DisplayPort should you want to use another display.

Hybrid drive

I'm not sure what they mean by a hybrid drive. If it's one of those SSD + Hard Drive combo, then it better have a large enough SSD partition. Apple has something like it called the Fusion Drive.

If the SSD portion is too small, once the internal flash storage gets filled, it can be challenging to work with large data files, e.g. editing hundreds of huge RAW photos, dealing with 4K video. My Mac Mini has a 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD hybrid drive and it slows down whenever I import large amount of data, e.g. video and photo files.

Since there are four USB 3 drives, editing 4K should not be a problem since you can get an external USB 3 SSD, such as the Samsung T3.

Why are they still using 6th generation Intel Core i5 or i7

6th generation processors are still fast, like very fast. It's no big deal that they are not using Intel Kaby Lake.

Who are the target users?

I believe this is targeted at digital artists who draw a lot. If you're a storyboard artist or animator, I can see how this will be beneficial to your workflow. It's essentially like a Wacom Cintiq but with a build-in computer. Basically any artists who uses digital stylus, who want to get that traditional experience of being able to see what you draw under the pen, those are the type of users who will enjoy this.

And you would need to be a rather rich artist to spend USD $2,999 on a new computer when there are so many options out there in the market, even if they don't look as sleek as the Surface Studio.

Would I buy it?

I like to keep my computer and screen separate. I'm using a Mac only because it allows me to boot up from an external drive regardless of the computer. If my Mac Pro is down, no problem, I can connect my external drive to my Mac Mini and keep on working. I can't do that if I have an all-in-one. I can't afford a single day of downtime.

So before buying, do ask yourself if the Surface Studio can fit into your workflow, how it's going to fit into your workflow and your backup plan.

Want to get that last drop of paint out from the tube?

Tube wringers or squeezers are not new, but this one looks nice and has an ergonomic handle. The campaign ends on 3 Dec 2016. If you want to get it, you can do so at https://kck.st/2eD8QRz

Yesterday, the Microsoft event unveiled the Surface Studio and Surface Book i7.

Surface Studio is sort of like the iMac except you can draw on it. And you can tilt the screen down to an angle comfortable for you. It looks like Microsoft is targeting designers specifically with this new product, and it's certainly a worthy Cintiq alternative.

It's quite pricey though at USD $2,999. That's like targeting designers with deep pockets. If they had separated the screen from the computer, they could have reduced the price and reach more people. Mac users are always on the lookout for good monitors and unfortunately they won't be able to buy this screen at any price.

The screen is a 28-inch display with 4500 x 3000 resolution with a 192PPI. That's 3:2 ratio. It says there are 13.5 million pixels which is very close to 5K resolution of 14.7 million pixels. There's no confirmation on the exact Adobe RGB gamut supported yet.

The big question is whether the Surface has managed to solve the problem with slow wavy diagonal lines. If it has not, then, I don't suppose it has met that professional standard yet despite how beautiful everything is.

The new Surface Book with i7 is nice too. They have added twice the graphics performance and 30% more battery life. But what I'm interested in is the battery life of the tablet itself. Again, no information on that. It's best to wait for reviews before rushing to order one.

I've just reached the milestone of 30,000 subscribers on my Youtube channel. It took less than a year to grow my subscriber base from 4,000 in November 2015 to where I am today. I'm just amazed at the growth potential of Youtube.

Here are some smaller milestones for subscriber count that I've been tracking.

• Nov 2015 - 4,000
• Jan 2016 - 7,000
• Mar 2016 - 10,000
• Oct 2016 - 30,000

I get around 80 new subscribers each day on Youtube now compared to only 30 when I first started tracking my progress. My growth on Twitter and Facebook is so pathetic I don't even want to share them here. What's obvious is different platforms require different growth strategy. With Youtube, my strategy is to put out helpful content with relentless consistency and so far that has been working out well for me.

Where the viewers are from

On average, around 12,000 viewers watch my videos daily. Only 0.6% are referred by my blog -- that's 79 viewers from Parkablogs daily. The rest are viewers from the Youtube platform. In other words, there are a lot of viewers on Youtube searching for art content. That's no surprising though, as this is the 2nd biggest search engine on earth.

Compared to other artists on Youtube

Numbers can actually say a lot about the channel.

Here are statistics artists that I subscribe to, arranged based on the number of subscribers they have.

View count

I may not have as many subscribers as other Youtubers, but my view count is quite high -- almost on par with Lachri Fine Art who has more than 3 times my subscribers. I attribute that to the many art product reviews I've created. I want to make one video review for all the art products that I've reviewed on my blog.

I value view count because ultimately, ads on Youtube payout are based on view count. On a bad day, the payout is around USD $1 per 1,000 views. From there, you can calculate exactly how many views, videos or subscribers you need to make a full-time living. Unless you have a knack for putting out viral content that skews your statistics, growth rate on Youtube is quite predictable and you can do forecasts easily. For example, if I get 2,500 subscribers each month, one year later, I can safely say that I will have 30,000 more subscribers.

If you have a full-time or freelance job, you won't even know if you will have a pay increment next year, or earn as much.

Start early

One reason why some Youtubers have a lot of subscribers is because they started early. A channel that started 10 years ago, provided they produce content regularly, is likely to have many times more subscribers than a new art channel today. If you want to start something, start early. The payoff will only come years later. I wished I had started my channel at the same time I started my blog. So now, I'm actually making up for lost time by putting out as many videos as possible.

There are many different strategies when it comes to choosing the type of content to produce. An art channel can focus on tutorials, artist interviews, speed paintings, art product reviews, advice or whatever you can think of really. This is probably worth an article on its own.

Youtube has incredible reach

My videos reach more people than my blog posts. For example, the article that I wrote regarding Wacom MobileStudio Pro on 14 Oct only received 2,440 views to date. The Youtube video talking about the same thing published 3 days later received 4,229 views. I believe that video was able to get a higher view count because I have a large subscriber base. Each time I publish a video, a notification email is sent out to those subscribed to my channel, making it easy for them to watch. I don't have that feature on my blog and I don't use my newsletters to promote individual posts like this, and even if I do, I only have 1000+ newsletter subscribers compared to 30,000 Youtube subscribers.

Ultimately, content is king

There are some channels with fantastic growth rates even though they don't have a lot of videos, But those channels do have compelling content. Two good examples are the art creation videos from kelogsloops (20 videos with 125,052 subscribers) and Iraville (48 videos with 94,510 subscribers). What this means is, if your content is really great, you can get subscribers easier, although how the subscribers find the content is still something I'm trying to figure out, because it's either a combination of Youtube Suggested Videos or through SEO.

Moving on

Making videos daily is not easy. Some days, I may not have ideas or just don't have motivation. That's why I keep a list of ideas and populate it whenever I have an idea for a video.

I'm just gonna continue what I'm doing now and see where it will bring me next year. My prediction is I will have 60,000 subscribers by October 2017.

Hopefully, I can have 700 videos produced by the end of 2017. That would be incredible.