Hey, New England Patriots' fans — don't even think about blaming the Surface tablet for your team's road loss to the Denver Broncos in the AFC championship game on Sunday.
Yusuf Mehdi, the corporate vice president of Microsoft's Windows and devices group, took to Windows' website Tuesday to author a blog, refuting CBS' live sideline report that the Surface Pro 3 tablets failed on the Patriots' bench during Sunday's game.
While there could have been a network problem at Sports Authority Field at Mile High in Denver on Sunday, there were definitely no issues with the Surface Pro 3 tablets themselves, Mehdi said to set the record straight.
"Microsoft Surfaces have not experienced a single failure in the two years they've been used on NFL sidelines," Mehdi wrote, as part of the blog post. "In the past two years, Surfaces have supported nearly 100,000 minutes of sideline action, and in that time, not a single issue has been reported that is related to the tablet itself. On rare occasions like we saw on Sunday, the stadium has network issues that prevent the delivery of images to the Surface devices. In these cases, we work with the NFL to quickly troubleshoot possible network issues so we can get the photo imaging solution to proceed as normal."
Back in August, Microsoft told Tech Times that a company tech representative donning a purple hat is present at every NFL game, just in case a coach or player needs assistance with the tablets.
While Microsoft was criticized for the Surface's reported failure, Mehdi wanted to present the facts that the company's tablets work just fine.
As part of his blog post, Mehdi also reminded people that coaches and teams turn to Surface tablets during the most critical moments of games and have been doing so without any issues.
While shutting down reports that Microsoft's tablets failed, Mehdi also addressed notorious meltdowns during the regular season from quarterbacks Johnny Manziel and Aaron Rodgers, who abused their Surface Pro 3s in frustration.
To that end, he presented the following two pieces of evidence:
"1) players are getting information faster, even if they don't always like what they see," Mehdi said, "and 2) these devices were built to endure just about anything, even Johnny Manziel's head."
The Surface tablets will be on the sidelines during the Super Bowl 50 matchup between the Broncos and Carolina Panthers on February 7 in San Francisco.
With San Fran being in Silicon Valley, there shouldn't be any network disturbance at Levi's Stadium.
