I think it's a use case issue. If you want to run a desktop game, Ivy Bridge fairs better than Atom. If you need to do something computationally heavy or that requires rendering, you're gonna prefer Ivy Bridge.
Biggest things Ivy Bridge allowed MS to do is expand the upper end of the tablet market to have a $900 space and disrupt the Ultrabook market. With an Atom device, they would've gone head to head against the $500 tablet space and disrupted the Netbook market, which is already dead.
As a converged device, Ivy Bridge tablets will always be a step behind the individual markets it tries to disrupt. The question is how good does it need to be to reach the point of good compromise. For those who need more portability, Atom is a better fit and Ivy Bridge is not there yet. But for a lot of power users, the Surface Pro is already a good compromise. For me it's the best hardware purchase I made over the past year and I'm excited because Intel's roadmap only means the device will get better.
As chips, both Atom and ARM compete for the same market segment - mobile devices that require passive cooling.
From a strategic POV, MS releasing RT makes sense. Trying to hedge itself in case x86 loses the x86 vs ARM war (as opposed to Apple, whose entire tablet strategy is predicated on ARM winning it all). Execution wise it's been a failure though and I expect MS to either scrap it or keep it as a pet project in the background.
Yeah I agree, it is a case by case issue, although having owned a surface Pro I still think it's poor for running games as a tablet AND a laptop, although I won't deny it is still better than an Atom tablet but that's not saying much. Besides games I really haven't seen anything the Pro is not anything more than nominally better than the Atom at doing computationally.
I see your point about disrupting the ultrabook market, which I agree to a certain extent, but in a future iteration, not with today's product. Even besides that though the tablet market is MUCH larger than the ultrabook market ever was or will be, and to disrupt the tablet market would be MUCH much more valuable IMO.
As for power users, I still don't see much of a need for the power, not at the expense of the poor battery life and size/weight, at that point you are almost certainly tied to a power outlet and still have a sore back and shoulder as with a laptop. You've just lost 90% of the appeal of having a tablet, and you still don't have a real keyboard or even a laptop keyboard. Unless you have a specialized niche need the Pro is pure overkill, I don't deny it's a nice machine, but it will only be niche at best in todays iteration. The future will be a different story though and I'll be first in line for that.
As for mobile devices that require passive cooling, this is something that is invisible to the consumer, it's most apparent with the Surface Pro which has active cooling, but to the consumers eye is passive, just as technology to a native will be like magic hehe.
I still think the RT strategy was a mistake from the beginning and didnt make sense. Well let me quantify that, it *might* have made sense if MS was able to have a huge App market and was able to release a truly mobile version of win8 and was able to garner true support and loyalty from the OEMs, it did none of these, although I think even with these things it was still putting itself head to head against Apple and look how long it took Google to make headway there and that's WITH Google accomplishing those things I mentioned. No RT was a terrible strategy versus the Atom tablets. The atom tablets boast doing ANYTHING windows can do, and that's such an incredibly strong ability but MS squandered it. I'm still having a very hard time seeing where ARM tablets fit in anywhere, where is the advantage? Apps/programs? battery life? size/thinness/weight? It has an advantage in none of those and in some a deep deep disadvantage.
