Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before
theverge.comI'm one of the people that switched from a MacBook Pro to the new Surface Book.
The ENTIRE experience was dreadful for me.
The day I went into the Microsoft store to purchase it (Black Friday), their credit card system was down, so I had to wait around for nearly 2 hours until they finally figured things out. That wouldn't typically upset me, but my brother-in-law went through something similar just 2 weeks prior. Aside from that, the reps in the store were constantly trying to up-sell me on different items and get me to purchase other things throughout the store. This is something that is extremely irritating to me and something that I appreciated the reps at the Apple Store not doing.
As far as the actual product goes - I found the trackpad to be lacking. It just FELT a bit buggy and non-responsive at times. I have yet to find a trackpad as solid as the ones that Apple ship. This became more apparent of time after using the product. Aside from the trackpad I don't have too many complaints, except for things that are of personal preference (I can't say I like the design / functionality of the snake hinge). I also realized, as mainly a pro user, that I don't have much use / need for the touch screen or tablet portion of the device.
Needless to say, I ended up returning the device and buying the new touch-bar 15" MBP a few days ago. Aside from how annoying it is to locate / use the touch-based Esc key, it's a really solid device.
Trackpads are one of the main things that other companies just can't get right, even on premium devices. Given how long ago Apple 'solved' trackpads, I'm amazed that the rest of the industry hasn't caught up.
True story: I still have one of the old white plastic MacBook 4,1s (w/ Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4 GHz) from 2008. Even though it's eight years old and runs Snow Leopard, and will not run current XCode or Chrome/Firefox, and has slightly outdated command-line tools, it's still a functional rig that I can do a surprising amount of work on (especially since it remains plugged in all the time, SL is very stable, and I do a lot of work in vim/zsh/tmux).
Well, my wife has a brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad running Windows 10, which is probably one of the better-quality non-Apple laptops. My five-year-old son recently tried my old MacBook for the first time after using nothing but Mommy's before to watch Minecraft videos, and the first thing he said to me was, "Wow, Daddy! The trackpad on your old laptop is so much better than the one on Mommy's laptop."
This was not prompted by any audible parental Apple fanboyism. Somewhere, Steve Jobs is smiling...
It's a tricky thing. From my experience, the capacitive sensing chip vendors (e.g. Broadcom, Cypress, Atmel) want to move units but don't want to spend the time working on the necessary physical integration to make the sensing pad work correctly. A trackpad is really nothing more than a phone-class touchscreen without an LCD behind it. There's a lot of sensitivity tuning and noise rejection that needs to be performed to refine the performance.
It's not their field of specialization, and they don't want to manufacture the finished components themselves. Apple obviously has taken the time and care to get it right. A lot of others...it seems like they went with the reference design as being good enough.
It's not just the hardware either, it's the drivers. Try using bootcamp on a macbook pro. The previously-perfect trackpad becomes unusable. There is an apple-recommended driver you can install that helps, but not much.
The thing that bugs me is that companies are mindlessly copying Apple.
PC makers are basically copying Apple's implementation of trackpads without consideration to the execution. They spend a lot of time copying the superficial features of the Apple track pads, but no time on the actual functionality of the trackpads.
My main problem with trackpads on Windows laptops is actually a software problem: there's no separate sensitivity/acceleration settings for trackpads vs mice for Windows (MacOS has this).
Acceleration is pretty much a necessity for trackpads to be usable with high-res/multi monitor setups for me, but I cannot stand to use mice with acceleration enabled (probably a relic from my hardcore PC FPS gaming days... I get horribly distracted when my mouse movements don't map 1:1 to movements of my cursor). Not being able to keep separate settings for these different classes of input devices means I simply can't get any decent amount of work done on my laptop without connecting a mouse or going into my settings and enabling acceleration (and of course, disabling it afterwards when I need to use a mouse again, which is a huge PITA).
Having touch alleviates the problem somewhat, but there are still plenty of instances where having the precision of a touchpad is necessary.
Mainly, from what I can gather, because laptop makers (or trackpad makers) still haven't got their act together about including "precision touchpads". That was meant to sort out the touchpad issues a few years ago!
Mostly they seem not to bother fitting the newer type.
I've heard the new "Precision Touchpad" based devices are much better than the current crop of bad trackpads. They are on all "Surface" branded products and some OEMs. I haven't used any personally. YMMV.
Why is this so? Has anyone ever investigated the root causes?
Doesn't show up on a checklist. The checklist will just say the thing has a trackpad. Is it any good? Who knows, who knows.
I believe that Apple has patented a lot of what makes their touchpads so great, which makes it difficult for competitors to make an equivalent.
I don't think that's the reason why. Track pads are just another part of Apple's obsession with UX. They invest millions (literally) into track pad placement, feel, and ability knowing that users care about it and they'll make it up with volume. It's hard to justify UX spend.
Indeed. They purchased FingerWorks[1], a maker of obscure touchpad-based keyboards, in order to get their touchpad experts.
Most other companies would just integrate Synaptic's reference design and call it a day.
Yes, these comments are exactly right. The other companies resigned to it being Good Enough for them, and don't care about making the trackpad excellent.
I'm not positive but I would guess that the hardware is pretty similar. The same manufacturer, synaptics, made the touchpad in my MBP and Thinkpad. Yet the Apple touchpad is far superior. Aside from the fact that my lenovo has a textured tract pad, I think the Apple software is just that much better.
Apple acquired FingerWorks[1] in 2005. They were pioneers in multi-touch pads. I believe their technology is one of the reasons the original iPhone was successful.
Samsung seemed to manage to do somewhat decent trackpads with their New Series 9 models, now discontinued in most parts of the world.
It's interesting, because my experience has been the opposite. I've found the Surface and Windows 10 to consistently exceed my overall expectations for the platform and are mostly on par with my experiences with OSX.
But I have found with some units, after you move the device the trackpad does have issues. In a few cases (perhaps once every 2 weeks) I have to disconnect and reconnect the base to fix them.
> The day I went into the Microsoft store to purchase it (Black Friday), their credit card system was down, so I had to wait around for nearly 2 hours until they finally figured things out.
Every store's shopping experience on black friday ranges from barely tolerable to unbearable. You know where I had to drop by on black friday to do a chore for my hospital-bound sister? The Apple Store. It was an unpleasant experience.
> I also realized, as mainly a pro user, that I don't have much use / need for the touch screen or tablet portion of the device.
What does this mean? Do pro users not look at or create webpages, mobile apps? Touch works everywhere but IDEs.
I find myself accidentally touching my corporate macbook's screen all the time to click a distant link because it's so much faster than the trackpad travel, and I'm better at home-rowing my hands from a high position rather than a wrist swivel.
Needless to say, I am sick of being "forced" to use OSX. It's slower for my purposes, it's less developer friendly, and the battery life on most of these devices is just atrocious the instant you start doing I/O intensive things like compilation.
My Surface book w/ battery saver mode on still goes 6+ hours doing clojure and kotlin compilations periodically with battery saver on, with only maybe a 10-15% speed loss (which amounts to less than 10 seconds per compile in my worst case). That's substantially better than any mac product I have.
> Every store's shopping experience on black friday ranges from barely tolerable to unbearable.
This is true and I would be completely sympathetic to this if the same thing hadn't happened to my brother-in-law (also purchasing a Surface Book) a couple of weeks prior. Note: this isn't a dig on Microsoft or even the product - I was more trying to make the point that I went into the store super excited about a product, and the experience alone completely turned me off to it in the long run. Granted, I probably didn't give the product enough of a chance in the end.
I'm glad to hear you're enjoying yours.
I am sorry you didn't, and I do want to sincerely invite you to try powershell on your mac and other MS dev stuff. You don't need a surface book to enjoy the environment improvements.
We don't have Microsoft stores here in Asia so I really cannot compare.
But I absolutely hate going into Apple or iStudio stores.
They try to upsell and add all sorts of crap. When I bought my 12" Macbook I ended up leaving the store and buying it online.
I just went in to the store today to buy a case for my new iPhone 7 and I wanted a flip case just so i didn't need a screen protector and the guy kept insisting on getting a screen protector. Despite me saying no a dozen times. I ended up taking my stuff and handing it to another staff member at the counter.
Let me guess. Singapore? Good news is, an Apple store is coming.
Yup Singapore. Had similar experience in Sydney when I lived there too.
I can't deny tho that both Apple and iStudio are great in regards to support. Something doesn't work, take it in, they sort it out ASAP.
Also: There's a real Apple store coming here?
Unless there's specific reasons (like credit card extended warranty), it's probably best to avoid those chains like iStudio. Third party support via AppleCare has been great though.
> Also: There's a real Apple store coming here?
Yes, opposite Paragon.
Though this was just my very limited experience with the apple store , I really did appreciate the lack of upsell. When I bought my macbook air, I walked in, asked for a macbook air, and the only questions were screen size and amount of ram. Same experience when I had to get a replacement power cord after a cat got at it. Only question was "what model?" And wss donr
Lol
>The ENTIRE experience was dreadful for me.
Entire list of complaints: found the trackpad to be lacking. It just FELT a bit buggy.
I think that sentence was talking about the experience at the store, not the device itself.
I picked up a Surface 4 Pro on Black Friday as well, and my experience was fine. Then again, I live in the middle of nowhere.
> I think that sentence was talking about the experience at the store, not the device itself.
I would've thought so too except:
> Needless to say, I ended up returning the device and buying the new touch-bar 15" MBP a few days ago
I can't imagine anybody returning a device a few weeks later due to their experience buying it but :S
I've got a laptop that I hate using precisely because of it's awful trackpad. Anymore I use it only for watching old episodes of adventure time and playing sega genesis games.
Sounds like you were looking for excuse to go back to Apple.
Agreed. Though I have no idea what motivates other people, and opinions vary, so I can't say the decision to go back to Apple is wrong.
I am surprised that for all of the online ordering we do in today's society, so many people use bricks-and-mortar stores for their high-tech purchases. I had my Surface Book shipped to my doorstep like most anything else I purchase in my life. I find it unpleasant to go into Apple stores or Microsoft stores. I've had negative experiences with both and prefer to just get things shipped to my home now.
In my experience, the Surface Book trackpad is as good as any Mac trackpad. I'd say both trackpads are about 80%, if a good mouse is 100%.
"I am surprised that for all of the online ordering we do in today's society, so many people use bricks-and-mortar stores for their high-tech purchases."
Many tech products, like laptops, are quite personal. You're going to be staring at this thing for several hours a day, almost every day. It makes sense that most people would want to see it in person and try it out. And, at least regarding the Apple Store (and presumably the Microsoft store; I haven't checked), it's not cheaper to buy online than it is in the store.
"In my experience, the Surface Book trackpad is as good as any Mac trackpad. I'd say both trackpads are about 80%, if a good mouse is 100%."
I cannot agree, but I have a feeling that this is one of those things like Pepsi vs Coke: There's no objective measurement, so no one can say they're right or wrong.
I work around a 5 min walk from both Apple & Microsoft stores. When my old Thinkpad laptop died, I went over to the Microsoft store and got a Surface Pro. Much more convenient than waiting for one to be delivered. The annoying thing with the Microsoft store is that you can't order online and pick up in-store. I did the same thing when buying my iPhone. Ordered it online and picked it up in store a few hours later. If you have the store close by, you can get your stuff much quicker.
When I purchased my Surface Book, I was told it's best to purchase it in the Microsoft physical store so I could return it with no questions asked if I encountered any problems. Whereas if I purchase it online, from a website like Amazon, I would have to deal with Amazon's customer service.
Edit: The only problem I have with my SB trackpad is that I normally use two finger swipe to scroll down with my hand slightly at an angle to the touchpad (since I'm right handed). I've never had a problem with any MacBook, but on the SB it frequently registers that as a pinch and attempts to zoom.
The Microsoft Store itself has online ordering, so why not order online from there. The return policy specifically allows returning an online purchase at a retail store ( see near bottom of https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/DisplayHelp... ).
I ordered at launch and it was sold out for some time.
For something like a laptop, I <i>have</i> to get my hands on it. I <i>hate</i> any kind of keyboard flex.
Think about it this way: people who leave an ecosystem for mostly-aesthetic or status-signalling reasons (e.g. a small touchscreen replacing some keys they don't use, making their favoured device appear less 'professional' according to people who've never used it) are likely willing to discard other options for reasons that are just as petty.
I haven't heard any criticism of the touchbar predicated on it making the device "appear less 'professional'" at all; I don't even understand why anyone would think that.
It also sounds like MS has a few issues to work on.
I wonder what the hourly rate and shift schedule is in Apple stores versus Microsoft stores.
There's nothing like low pay and long hours to ruin a product because employees are treated like cattle.
If that's what's going on.
Funny you should mention that experience you had at an MS store, that what I THOUGHT it was going to be like but when I ended up buying myself a SB it was the exact opposite. I guess each store is going to be different, I remember when the Apple store in my city first opened - they hired younglings from similar stores nearby and for the first month or so they were really pushy when it came to upselling stuff.
Overall though I'm a huge fan of my Surface Book, I wouldn't say it's 'better' than my previous MBP but it's definitely better at different things. For example the MBP was a bit nicer to type on and the trackpad felt nicer, but it's screen wasn't as good. I've also found the pen to be a HUGE benefit for me, anything from meetings to note taking has gotten a lot easier.
Plus I'm pretty happy with Windows 10 overall, nice and easy to use and I have to say I like the aesthetics of it a little more than the current OSX.
I had the opposite experience. The MS Store was quick and easy. The Apple store was more than a 2 hour wait to buy something I had already picked out. It wasn't even Black Friday. I'd happily return to the Windows store. If I had to go to the Apple store, I'd expect it to be a bad experience.
It seems like you're basing your judgement largely on your Black Friday shopping experience. You go from saying the "ENTIRE experience was dreadful" to "Aside from the trackpad I don't have too many complaints". This is a rant about Black Friday, not Microsoft.
I heard that people were having terrible times with the surface book. its a shame. wonderful concept.
I think Microsoft is still resolving scalability challenges producing a mass-market in-house hardware line. A friend of mine purchased a Surface Book shortly after release and it had a litany of hardware and software issues, the Microsoft Store replaced it free of charge and he hasn't had issues with the new device.
That makes a lot of sense.
I can't believe anyone using macOS for their professional workflow would consider switching to Windows 10 despite all the criticism leveled at Apple's hardware (most of which I think is totally justified).
I use Windows professionally (for .NET development) and I think Windows 10 is still light-years behind, with an unstable, jarring OS experience full of bugs and niggles and unloved and underdeveloped touch interface. I would love the opportunity to move to macOS and iOS professionally. Fonts and UI rendering look awful on Windows compared to macOS, there is just no comparison.
Two days ago, immediately after several programs crashed and shortly before the entire OS locked up, I managed to capture this: http://i.imgur.com/ecCPlcs.png
That is Crash Reporter crashing. The following is the last screenshot I was able to take before the system stopped being able to write files: http://i.imgur.com/IK7j98P.png
Sierra has been an absolute nightmare in every respect that I have been forced to reboot on a weekly basis.
Apple's precipitous and continuing software quality decline is not an exaggeration or an illusion. It is flat reality. Professionals with any awareness should be evaluating their alternatives very seriously.
+1 to this. I purchased a brand new touchbar 2016 MacBook Pro. At a cost of 2800 dollars to me.
I've had the following problems:
1) They wrote a driver that blew out my speaker and I had to wait 5 weeks for a replacement. http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/11/30/apple-updates-boot... 2) There is graphical tearing and glitching everywhere. http://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/02/new-macbook-pro-graphics... 3) The OS restarts itself randomly. 4) You cannot plug in an external monitor and use a bluetooth mouse simultaneously.
I love macOS. I make software for macOS. The decline is real and people should start considering alternatives.
I considered all these issues and just ordered the new XPS 13 Dev Edition. I'm a bit nervous about making the change (and the rest of my ecosystem is macOS/iOS), but kinda excited.
Wow, we have a bunch on order at our office. If we have even half these problems they are all going back and we're getting Dell's or Lenovo's. Which is a really sad and disappointing outcome for me to consider.
I was a solid proponent of OSX for all development. I've only had to go through 2 macbooks in the better part of a decade, upgrading the OSX versions along the way ... and so, when it was time recently to buy macbook #3, I was actually a little sad that Apple's slipped so much recently and I had to go with an Asus zenbook (of course gutting windows 10 and running Ubuntu :-) Its running great, with none of the issues I was having with Mavericks.
yes, I would've liked to stick with Apple & OSX. no, I don't feel I could and still be as productive as I need to be.
Have you ever considered the possibility that your storage medium or random access memory is corrupt?
The Mac has passed the hardware diagnostics at the Apple Store multiple times. The components are unchanged from Yosemite, which did not have these issues. The OS has been freshly reinstalled, with the same problems.
This is also just one of a myriad of issues that have plagued the OS. Sierra has introduced me to new and wonderful ways to fail: http://i.imgur.com/HbVLWDq.png
If git is failing due to a system-wide file limit, that would explain why other programs are also failing. Perhaps some process has gone mad with creating files and if you find and delete those it will help things recover. (I agree with your general point -- just trying to be helpful in getting your computer back working.)
I reached the same conclusion, and the prime suspect in my investigations is Safari 10. However, once the system has hit the file limit, it never fully recovers without a reboot.
Google "too many open files" and you'll find posts about OS X but also Linux. Could it be git itself that's hitting a limit? Maybe you're hitting the shell's ulimit, not the system's per process or per-system open files max.
What year and ssd/hd?
I've had no problems except a couple programs that had broken features for a few weeks.
> Fonts and UI rendering look awful on Windows compared to macOS, there is just no comparison.
I've heard a number of people say this, and I'm always puzzled because it is exactly the opposite for me. Running on the same hardware (late 2013 MBPR 15"), Windows 10 font rendering is much more pleasing to my eyes. When I boot into OSX, the text looks terrible to me. (I'm still running El Capitan - has text rendering changed in Sierra?)
One thing I did in Windows that I recommend to everyone: I went through the ClearType tuner and adjusted the settings to my taste. I picked darker and heavier text compared to the defaults. That really punched up the rendering; everything is so crisp and clear, much nicer to my eyes than the blurry text in OSX.
I understand that OSX text rendering may be more typographically accurate, and I have some sympathy for that view. I appreciate good typography, especially after working at Adobe many years ago. (I built the first scalable font system for Windows, Adobe Type Manager.) But OSX text just doesn't look good to me.
And of course I don't disagree with anyone who prefers OSX/macOS text rendering, since this is very much a matter of personal taste.
Many confuse hardware differences (low-DPI versus high-DPI screens) with operating system differences.
Windows has had sub-pixel text alignment and LCD-oriented anti-aliasing ("ClearType") for, what, a decade? Text on my 267-DPI Surface Book looks absolutely amazing, and obviously text on a 226-DPI Macbook will look great as well.
For those who are not confused by hardware differences, I suspect the remaining matters are taste and familiarity. Having used Windows for a long time, my preference is for Windows' rendering and I find the rendering on macOS to be odd and uncomfortable. I'm struggling to find the right adjective—perhaps too comical or whimsical? Overall font selections and rendering don't seem as crisp and professional as on Windows.
Windows also supports ligatures and advanced kerning, so text on a web browser with good Windows API support (e.g., Edge or Firefox) looks fantastic. (Chrome was a notable laggard here, refusing to use modern Windows text rendering APIs for a very long time.)
It's mainly true on low DPI screens at 1:1 scaling with small point sized fonts. At a certain size, all fonts basically look alike in that case. It does happen on high dpi screens at 1:1 scaling too, but you need a magnifying glass to see the issues.
There's an app called MacType which makes the rendering more like Mac on low DPI screens, but I don't think it gets updated very often.
I am no professional in typography nor have I used any other Mac than the Macbook 12" (2015), but putting it side by side with my Acer Predator Z35 (35" curved screen), I still like macOS' text rendering a lot more.
Maybe it's the fact that it has a huge resolution on a 12" screen. Seems very likely that the higher pixel density makes for a crisp and beautiful text.
Again, I am not a pro in this area. I am a programmer. So just speaking intuitively, macOS still wins in my eyes.
However, probably the best test would be to put Windows 10 and macOS side by side on identical 27" full HD monitors?
Higher pixel density makes a huge difference in text quality, of course. Your MacBook has 226 pixels per inch, and the Acer Predator Z35 has a very low 79 pixels per inch - that's almost a 3:1 difference linearly, and more than 8:1 by area.
On other words, given the same physical text size on each monitor, your MacBook is using more than eight times the number of pixels to render each character.
Given a choice between macOS on a 226 PPI monitor and any other OS on a 79 PPI monitor, I would definitely prefer macOS too. :-)
You're right that the best way to compare font rendering is on the same monitor for each OS. I wouldn't use 27" FHD monitors though. Those would have 81 PPI, about the same as the Predator.
In my case I'm comparing OSX and Windows on the same hardware: the MBPR 15" (220 PPI) plus a ViewSonic VX2475SMHL-4K 24" 4K monitor (187 PPI) rotated to portrait mode. I'm a big fan of smaller high-DPI monitors like this. 187 PPI is a reasonably close match to the MBPR's 220 PPI. Both Mac and Windows look nice on each of these displays, I just find I like Windows better of the two.
Here's a spreadsheet I've been maintaining that lists the pixels per inch for a variety of machines and monitors:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K4bCgr-VjMmeCjHf6Udy...
>> putting it side by side with my Acer Predator Z35 (35" curved screen)
The reason why you notice the difference is because of the low DPI for the screen size on your Z35. Windows fonts render badly on those screens at small point sizes. If your same screen was, say, 4K and you were running with text scaling, the fonts would look -way- better.
> If your same screen was, say, 4K and you were running with text scaling, the fonts would look -way- better.
Oh, I'm sure of it. Thing is though, I picked the Z35 and not the Z34 because I also want to game on the machine and going to [almost] 4K was a no-go, even with a GTX 980.
I suppose one day I might just switch to huge dual-monitor setup: one for gaming and one for everything else. Seems like quite a hassle though, having in mind that my Z35 occupies a huge chunk of my otherwise pretty big desk.
I have 2 x 27" 4K screens side by side (at 1:1 text scaling - yes, I'm crazy, but it's for work so the tradeoffs were worth it for me).
You can still play your games at 1080p on a 4K screen - the pixels divide up evenly by 4, so I don't think it would look any worse than playing on a native 1080p panel of the same size.
If you really, really want mac style text rendering on your monitor, check out an app called MacType. The text will look much closer to how Mac renders fonts.
I'll definitely try MacType. Seen your other posts about it. Thanks.
If by "professional workflow" you mean programming, I agree. But I'd have no problem using Linux for that instead of MacOS.
However, for many "professional workflow" means using the MS Office suite and a browser. For that use, Windows 10 is not only adequate but better than MacOS.
I've had fine experiences with Java, Javascript, and Python development on windows. I've developed also on Mac and Linux and after maybe a getting used to the the workflow on each system I haven't found the OS to be a major impediment for me outside of some tools and libraries only existing on certain platforms.
I'd say that macOS tends to be more stable, and The office suite has an actual price instead of a shitty subscription model.
Does it have a price? The last time I checked it was free.
OTOH, I don't see many professionals trusting Apple software in the long run (ex. Final Cut).
It's only free to the original buyer of a new Mac since something like 4 - 5 years ago. If you've never bought a new Mac and registered it with your Apple ID, it's not free.
I always thought it was free too, but learned otherwise recently from a colleague battling with it.
There are tools purposely missing from Mac like visio and project(?). I don't get why they are needed but my project manager does.
Visual Studio for Windows applications and XCode for iOS ones pin you to particular platforms.
> For that use, Windows 10 is not only adequate but better than MacOS.
"Denny's is as good as any Michelin Star restaurant."
Dollar for dollar Denny's is as good as any Michelin Star restaurant.
I think this was flagged down because it was flippant but the statement is true and insightful. And I think it's is a big driver of why the App Store went to FTP.
I've eaten €1500 meals at 3 star restaurants like L'Ambroisie and $10 Grand Slam meals at denny's. They fill different roles and both can be enjoyable.
For years there was a restaurant in Palo Alto that was really quite good and which my wife loved to visit. I was never happy because while the food and ambience were good, I always felt the bill was 50% higher than it should have been.
In the case of apps, most of them, for most users, don't justify the time put into them. Since that's true, people aren't idiots and won't take an up front risk on buying an app that doesn't work for them. That's why free download/in app purchase to really use has really taken off.
Oh, and it's well worth it to me to pay for a Mac. The fact that it's true for me doesn't justify your decision to buy a Mac or contradict your decision not to.
> I was never happy because while the food and ambience were good...
...supply and demand. That you were willing to eat there despite the higher prices suggests you found value in the food. You can bitch about higher prices all you want, but you paid them.
Likewise, for a lot of professionals the difference between a $3000 MacBook and a $1500 Windows notebook over the lifespan of 3-4 years is inconsequential. You could easily make up the difference by brewing your own coffee versus getting something at a store.
> ...supply and demand. That you were willing to eat there despite the higher prices suggests you found value in the food. You can bitch about higher prices all you want, but you paid them.
Yes, well the decision criterion was that it made my wife happy. So I suppose they optimized for that factor :-).
If you could afford to eat at both, if the difference in cost was mostly inconsequential, which one would you choose on a regular basis?
If both were free I'd pick the most expensive one obviously.
This is definitely an example of YMMV, if someone claims that macOS is better than Windows because of a prettier UI and smoother font rendering, I simply laugh.
For me it is more important to have a file manager that doesn't lock itself creating .DS_Store files in the middle of an I/O operation (ex. copying a folder from an external drive).
To be fair, Windows has the same issue with Thumbs.db files, but I can't remember the last time it happened to me, in contrast, with macOS it is annoyingly easy to trigger error -36, just connect a clean drive and copy a big folder...
Windows hasn't used Thumbs.db files on most drives since it switched to a central cache in Vista.
It still uses them, it was not difficult to find a screenshot from a recent version of Windows.
http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/ximg_54e...
Yes, it still uses them on (certain types of) external drives (in certain types of folders) and in folders that already have them from a previous version of Windows (sometimes), but nowhere to the extent that it used to use them (because there now is a central cache for most of them), and nowhere near the extent that macOS uses .DS_Store.
ETA: All of which is why my first post said "most drives"...
It switched back in a later version
It didn't "switch back", it just uses them in certain compatibility and/or external drive situations. I hedged with "most drives" for a reason.
If I'm staring at something for 10 hours a day smoother font rendering is a big benefit.
Smoother means less legible, at least on low DPI screens. But it seems to be a personal preference as to what someone will actually like more.
The only time I've had any problems on windows is if the font is too small.
I just installed Windows 10. My start menu by default was full of stuff I will never ever use. After deleting/uninstalling apps (where it would allow me) the OS decides to install Candy Crush and other games I never asked for. Unacceptable.
"OS decides to install Candy Crush and other games I never asked for. Unacceptable. " - I would like more details on this. I don't think I've heard of that before?
Not sure if you're being sarcastic (there's the non-Nexus Android experience after all), but I did a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro on my gaming machine a while ago. Full retail license and an official .iso downloaded from Microsoft. There's barely anything installed on that machine, however I was also surprised to find Candy Crush in my start menu after a while. It's probably just a shortcut to the store, but it does look quite a bit like it's already installed.
by default windows 10 will show you 'suggested' apps in your start menu programs list. This can be disabled in the settings (just open settings and search for suggestions)
It does happen after an upgrade (ex. the anniversary update).
Although it does not install Candy Crush, just a stub to install it, anyway, it is certainly unappealing.
Showing a featured app on the windows store tile != Installing an app.
It is certainly not "the" Windows Store Tile, they're annoying stubs like the "Get Office" one.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7b/Windows_10_bu...
The OS puts Candy Crush in your menu and it's installed on demand. So to users it will seem like it's always been installed.
All the pre-installed software is my big pet peeve for Windows 10. I don't want weather, or contacts, or xbox, or 3d builder, or email, or alarms, or skype, or office, or calendar, or groove, or money, or news, etc... I've deleted them and they just come back because of some provisioning setting.
Buy a signature edition laptop directly from the microsoft store, then you will not et any crap-ware.
Things like Candy Crush, Skype, and Office aren't the full installs but instead are stubs that install the applications on first run. Even if you buy a retail copy of Windows 10, that junk is still in there.
A signature edition makes sure that the only crapware is stuff that Microsoft installed.
This isn't true. You get Candy Crush. That's the whole problem.
OK, then Microsoft changed what gets installed. A year ago when I bought a signature laptop, no junk was pre-installed, IIRC
Wait until you get the random start menu no longer works bug. Not only does the start menu not appear, clicking on the File Explorer icon will take 30 + seconds to open, every time. There are links where thousands of people have posted various fixes but from my understanding MSFT hasn't actually fixed the underlying cause. To their credit they have released a utility that fixes the issue however.
Microsoft deserves every bit of ridicule lobbed its way for adding advertising to it's start menu in Win10. That being said they aren't the only offender, my iPhone has a folder of apps called Apple Trash filled with Apple's collection of worthless default apps that can't be removed from iOS.
Like what? This used to be true but I believe most of it was remedied with iOS 10.
Watch and Home, for example
Most built-in Apple apps can now be hidden in the normal way.
Get some perspective. Operating systems have included simple games since the 80s. Minesweeper, anyone?
While I agree that it's more a minor annoyance than a dealbreaker (for me at least), the fact remains that there's a big difference between including a simple game or two and installing (or "suggestive-selling") a "freemium" money-sink from a third party.
Basically the way I look at it in order of annoyance/offensiveness:
- Free, standalone application made by same company (this is a free gift as far as I'm concerned)
- Free, standalone application made by another company (ok, this is starting to approach crapware but as long as it can be uninstalled and doesn't try to sell me anything, I'll deal)
- Link, installer, or preinstalled application that requires later purchase from same company (OK, this is an ad and pretty offensive)
- Link, installer, or preinstalled application requiring later purchase from third party (this is most certainly unwanted crapware that they were paid to include)
Try to get the LTSB build, less clutter.
Many would use Surfaces with Linux. They are excellent hardware, albeit tricky to run Linux on as they include some exotic components for touch recognition and dreadful Marvell network adapters.
Win10 is pretty stable, what issues are you referring to?
Windows itself isn't bad, but the driver ecosystem is completely rotten. Any muppet with a code signing certificate is apparently capable of writing driver code that gets injected into the kernel.
But this isn't a problem if you buy quality hardware?
Yes. It's often the case that a good motherboard will have some super generic driver either for the ethernet component or the on-board audio chip.
It's truly astonishing how bad it is even with big name vendors like Asus.
I've had various issues on two separate clean installs of Windows 10 in the last two weeks, one of which was the start menu being broken, and the user profile being damaged to the point where I had to do a full reinstall. Official App Store apps don't install for various reasons (Onedrive) or become damaged etc.
I guess this may be a case of 'grass being greener' as suggested by someone else in this thread. I just don't seem to remember having any of these issues on my 2010 Macbook Pro running El Capitan. Then again, this is purely anecdotal.
Win 10 is pretty stable, but I for one had all kinds of issues when it just installed the Anniversary Update on it's own. I couldn't use my start menu without the computer locking up for about a minute. Spent a few hours researching it, tried multiple fixes which didn't work.
Grass is greener. You start noticing issues with Mac OS X as well once you start using it professionally.
I agree, I hate the state of mac hardware, but I would have a very hard time leaving the macOS for the windows OS
On 4k hidpi monitor fonts and UI looks great. And you can run windows on Mac :)
"Great" on Windows is "typical" on macOS. The approach to rendering fonts is completely different, where Windows tends to nudge things towards pixel boundaries and in so doing ends up distorting the type considerably.
Font rendering on Windows is barely better than Linux.
Right after I switched from Mac to PC, I used something called MacType [1] to ease my transition.
On HiDPI monitors, though, it turned out to be unnecessary.
[1] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/make-windows-fonts-look-like-ma...
It really depends on DPI of your monitor. I have both MBPr and Windows PC with 4k 24'' monitor. On FullHD I can't look at Windows, on 4k it looks great (UI looks more sharp than in macOS, fonts looks almost as good as in macOS). And Linux fonts rendering is not even near - last time I saw it, it was completely awful, although it was on FullHD monitor, not 4k.
Seems just fine on my 1080p 22" monitor, or on this 26" 2560x1600 monitor beside it. Then again I'm a dirty Gnome user on Debian, so perhaps my vanilaness is saving me. But even a few years ago on my last A8 & 1080P 15.6" laptop it was fine, definitely much better than 1366 by potato.
I'm sorry if my words were offensive for somebody - it's all questions of personal perception.
Hah, was being sarcastic with the whole dirty Gnome user bit, no worries!
On 4K a Windows machine looks tolerable, but I'd hold back from calling it "great". It's more like the deficiencies are less obvious.
Windows has long been indifferent to faithfully representing fonts, to accurately representing colors. They've always promoted readability at the cost of mangling fonts, and of performance.
The macOS rendering system has always been set up with high-DPI displays in mind, they were able to work out a lot of rendering problems on things like the iPhone and iPad before committing to the computer version of same.
Windows on a 4K display looks close to but not quite as good as a Mac on a 1440p display, it's just that stark.
This is all personal preference obviously, but having done a lot of design work I'm more easily irritated by little quirks.
Do you think your points are valid for an office workflow?
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Just to chime in. Since the displeased are always loud. I got my maxed out TouchBar MBP 15" about two weeks ago and I'm really happy with it.
It replaces a Mid-2010 MBP 17". It's light, fast and has a gorgeous screen.
After a week, I even prefer the new thin keyboard versus the old. My external keyboard feels like trudging through mud. No trouble hitting the ESC-key on the touch bar. The context awareness of it is actually pretty great.
For USB-connectivity I simply bought a few convertors on AliExpress for about 70 cents each. How often do I plug those in? Almost never. Everything is wireless these days.
Except for those two 5K screens coming soon... but I wish Apple would release them for € 200 more with a nice alu bezel ;) or 5K iMacs with target display mode, that'd be fine too.
Similar boat, my 13" (not maxed out) touch bar MBP arrived last week.
The touch bar works really well. I didn't anticipate this, but it's really slippery. Feels almost like it's coated in teflon. Your finger just glides on it, moreso than the trackpad. Wouldn't have occurred to me, but the slightly rougher surface gives your finger a better feel for trackpad movement. On the touchbar, it's very wide and 1-dimensional, and the low friction is perfect.
The screen is impressive. DCI-P3 does great reds, and better greens than sRGB (but not quite as saturated green as Adobe RGB's). It's also very bright. I rarely feel like I have to set it for maximum brightness, even when I'm plugged in.
Keyboard is great. It took me maybe a few hours to get used to it, and I like it better than the previous MBP keyboards.
Being able to plug in the power cord on either side isn't the biggest deal, but it's nice to have. When your outlet is on the right side, you just plug it straight in. No more looping the cord around and into the far side.
My previous laptop is a 13" MBA (2011), and the new MBP is both smaller and faster.
Honestly, I don't use external devices that much, and when I do, I'm at my desk 99% of the time. USB-C is no big deal to me. Right now I'm still carrying USB-A cables because that's what my power bank is, so carry a one USB-A to USB-C cable that I can use to connect my iOS things to the laptop, or in case I need to connect to someone else's external drive or something. My personal flash drive has both types of connector.
Probably won't be getting any of the fancy thunderbolt screens, but I may invest in a thunderbolt docking station to get power, ethernet, and my existing displayport screen all running on one cable. Awaiting reviews on any of those, and need to confirm that they handle DisplayPort multi-stream transport for 4K@60Hz.
Another thing: I'm used to this with my phone, but being able to plug stuff into the computer without checking whether the cable is oriented the right way is totally cool.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2388 no more.
I'm glad you're having a good experience with the new MBP.
However, I wouldn't plug a $.70 adapter into a $3000 computer. Maybe you should splurge and spend $10 on the Apple adapter.
This is one of those cases where it's good to know a bit of electrical engineering.
If an adapter, connector, cable, etc. is both "passive" (i.e. isn't doing anything clever in there with ICs that consume some of the power sent along the line) and "digital" (i.e. has transmission semantics which moot RF interference as long as the cable is within a proscribed length and between powered switches) then it doesn't matter whether you pay $0.70 or $70 for it. For example, an HDMI cable is an HDMI cable is an HDMI cable.
If an adapter/cable/etc. is "digital" but "active"—like, for example, a USB-C to Thunderbolt adapter—then it might do the wrong thing, which in extreme cases (e.g. the https://www.usbkill.com) can damage your devices. But, most data-transmission PHY layers (Ethernet, USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt, etc.) are built to protect host devices against most "dumb mistakes" that might be made by a peer device or a piece of infrastructure (and things like lightning strikes, shorted sockets, and chewed-through cables besides.) You really have to intentionally try to make a USB Killer to make a USB Killer.
Now, if (at least one end of) an adapter is analogue, then you're basically screwed and should be very scared of cheap kit. Basically, don't trust $0.70 DACs. There's a reason there's no such thing as a $0.70 USB audio or USB wi-fi receiver: these are the sort of things where the correctness of the DAC is all that stands between your computer and a huge current.
Even with passive devices, there's a risk that it's miswired and will connect things that should not be connected to each other. Most famously, earlier this year the Google engineer who reviews USB-C cables had one fry both his Chromebook and USB-PD analyzer.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-finds...
USB-C cables aren't (exclusively) passive! USB-C cables can carry the signalling protocol for, among other things, Thunderbolt 3.1, which is an active protocol (requires powered ICs in the cables), and thus can't simply be opto-isolated by the modems on either side like a purely-passive protocol would be. A given USB-C cable might be a passive component and still be able to wreck the system it's a part of, if the system is active—that is, if the system is constrained from protecting itself against damage by simply re-defining line voltage at each medium change.
This is a compromise most people don't usually realize they're making when they favour the addition of an active "feature" to a previously-passive spec. For example, Ethernet used to be a pure-passive, easily non-ground-referenced wiring standard. But then PoE came along...
Although price can sometimes be an indicator of quality, it doesn't necessarily mean quality. I think this is especially true when the alternative higher priced product has a lot of "Brand Value" that can be attributed to the higher price.
In the case of Apple-branded adapters, it has been demonstrated time and again that they actually put some thought into their adapters so that your device or house do not catch on fire. Not so much with the $0.70 ones. Maybe, likely not, but hey, you saved $9.70 that you can apply to your home owners insurance premium!
This is where Apple really confuse me…
They obviously put lots of thought into their adapters but everyone fails where the cable enters the charger - I'm about to buy my third in just over three years and the cable on my daughter's actually melted through where it shorted inside.
Why could they never be bothered to address this well know issue give them thought they put in?
Are there any Apple brand adaptors available for $10.40?
I was going to edit my original comment, but then your subtle catch wouldn't be nearly as humorous. I'll leave it there as a monument to my lack of skill in ad hoc math.
Since cheap USB-C cables and chargers are known for destroying laptops [1] I would heed the parent's advice.
You'd be appalled at what gets sold online as acceptable adapters and chargers.
Nah. USB-C to USB3.0-A is trivial. It's just a simple electrical connection, without any signalling logic (correct me if I'm wrong).
Also, I like that it's just a conversion plug versus a cable: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/LAIXI-USB-Type-C-Adapter-Mal...
Just because it's trivial doesn't mean someone can't screw it up and destroy your computer: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-finds...
So far my Macbook Pro 13" fully loaded has done a great job of replacing my Macbook Air.
What does bug me though after spending over $2.5k (sales tax) for a brand new 'state of the art machine' I can't even play the new Civilization 6 on 1024x768 resolution and lowest possible settings without the computer fan on full blast to stop it from basically melting. It's utterly pathetic.
Why did you get a 13" when they have no dedicated graphics card? Assuming you have the best on-board graphics for the 13" MBP it isn't much better than the minimum requirements for Civ 6: http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Iris-550-Mobile-S...
Portability, mainly. I didn't buy it to play civ on, and it's a good thing too-it's basically unplayable. Graphically, there's not much thats special or impressive about the game so its quite surprising it can't even run it without having a heart attack.
I tried to make this switch because I bought into all the online criticism of the new MBP.
The build quality was very lacking compared to the new MBP.
The screen wobbled like crazy even when just typing on it.
The model I was using had a really horrible display with active ghosting (not sure if that's the correct term -- it appeared that the refresh rate was just very low, so moving the cursor around or dragging a window would leave a sort of "ghost trail" behind). It's possible this was just a defective display.
The trackpad was nowhere near as good as I was led to believe from online comments. It wasn't horrible, but multitouch gesture recognition felt years behind Apple's. Leaving a finger resting on the trackpad would break all kinds of gestures, but Apple's trackpads handle that just fine. I also didn't realize how nice the Force Touch trackpads are until I went back to a hinge-based trackpad where you can't even click everywhere.
Windows 10 is a big advance over previous versions, and I use it extensively on my desktop at home. However, the experience with a touchpad didn't feel anywhere nearly as polished as on my MacBook. Using trackpad gestures to slide between virtual desktops for instance had a very janky and obviously buggy animation.
Windows now has the Ubuntu subsystem, but I immediately ran into serious dealbreaker issues. I couldn't get Haskell or Elm to run on it because a core system call hadn't been implemented yet. The team is aware of it and I'm sure it's slated to be fixed soon, but I still couldn't do my work on the laptop without firing up a VM or dual booting.
I never used the touch screen and never felt the need to detach the screen and use it as a tablet. The aspect ratio of the screen also bothered me.
I'm now using the much hated 2016 MBP with Touch Bar and am extremely happy with the purchase.
> The screen wobbled like crazy even when just typing on it.
It sounds to me like you had a somewhat defective model. That said, the surface book is not the best physical laptop computer and will always be less stable than a standard hinge laptop.
> Windows now has the Ubuntu subsystem, but I immediately ran into serious dealbreaker issues. I couldn't get Haskell or Elm to run on it because a core system call hadn't been implemented yet. The team is aware of it and I'm sure it's slated to be fixed soon, but I still couldn't do my work on the laptop without firing up a VM or dual booting.
Why not just use Powershell and the windows builds? They work fine. Powershell isn't going to kill you.
But it's also weird, because I got GHC to compile just fine.
I never used my XPS touchscreen at first but I slowly started to and now I find myself using it at least once a day. Usually when I'm on the couch browsing websites or watching a movie and need to pause it.
I'd personally love to try out a laptop that converts. But I guess the use-case in question in this thread is for professional usage where I haven't found utility.
Windows Subsystem for Linux is still very much in beta; I ran into multiple issues just trying to recreate the Ruby development environment I use on my MacBook.
It's going to be great in a year or so, but right now there are some pretty sharp edges.
I'd be curious to see the real numbers:
Again, Microsoft refuses to provide numbers but vaguely claims “our trade-in program for MacBooks was our best ever.”
If you go from 5 trade ins to 7, you can site your best year ever. It doesn't mean you've made a dent. I can see that people are disappointed in the new MacBook, but there are very few I know that would just say "screw it, I'm switching platforms." Admittedly, my friends are mostly designers and developers, so it's a biased sample, but I'm a little skeptical about the numbers.
It's definitely reminiscent of Apple's marketing language, calling everything the best ever. Which isn't technically wrong, but still.
I always chuckle at "Our most advanced iPhone ever."
One would certainly hope so!
No - their most advanced /yet/ maybe, but not ever...
Microsoft is known for playing catch-up, so this is their best catch-up ever.
True, but seeing that trend upwards allows Microsoft to put more dollars towards developing Surface.
I don't know if Microsoft has reached parity with Apple with professional development machines, but it does look like they've set themselves up to be a contender for next generations.
With increased internal funding, they may actually achieve that goal.
> I don't know if Microsoft has reached parity with Apple with professional development machines
I assume they are still way off, and may not catch up in the near future. But I also think for Microsoft that's not a problem: when professional developers buy a nice Dell or a Lenovo model instead of a Mac, and run it on Windows, that's still a win for Microsoft. Surface is also meant to show that PC's do not have to suck.
I have both a Asus ultrabook running Win10 and a Macbook Air. Win10 has a harder job to do because it has to work on third party hardware they don't have control over.
OSX has complete control over their hardware, so the overall impression I get is that more attention can be dedicated to the small details. I also prefer UNIX over CMD(?).
What I have noticed is a sense of diminishing returns from the Apple camp. There just haven't been any really compelling innovations for years now. Microsoft seems to have fixed its development processes to actually start building compelling technology, and since they have lagged behind the gains are bigger.
Personally, I think Apple needs a kick in the pants; the thought that Microsoft is positioning itself to be real competition hopefully pushes both companies to build better products. Capitalism, right?
*PS: Apple should be careful though, Microsoft knows how to exploit an opportunity.
Unfortunately everyone does it.
It's not much different from Tim Cook saying Apple Watch sales are breaking records this quarter without actually providing actual numbers.
I played with the Surface Studio yesterday and it was a BEAUTIFUL machine. The screen was a lot thinner than I imagined, it was super sturdy, and just felt good in the hand. My experience fell apart with using the pen/my finger to navigate windows. I felt like I was double/triple clicking icons because I wasnt sure if my action registered or not. But once into photoshop (it was right on the desktop) the pen worked well. If I were to leave macOS as the os on my development machine, it definitely wouldn't be for Windows. I've heard people still have problems with *nix symlinks in their VM shared folders -- that is very minor, but it could cripple certain projects.
Yeah, the stylus isn't very good. I bought a Surface Pro 4 tablet with a ~$500 discount which made it attractive. The device has some nice points, but compared to my Wacom Cintiq or even my Apple Pencil/iPad Pro combo, the stylus on the Surface is sub-par. The pressure sensitivity is weak, there's no tilt capability, and it frequently fails to capture clicks/strokes.
The Surface type cover is definitely nicer than the keyboard cover for the iPad Pro though. MS did a nice job with that.
I believe it. I just abandoned Apple after years of loyalty. I looked hard at Surfaces and after considering them for a while I decided they weren't ready to be my main dev machine, so I went with a Thinkpad. But Microsoft is doing great stuff with its hardware lately.
Microsoft is doing excellent stuff with hardware. It's a pity that it comes at the price of being bundled with their user-hostile nightmare of an operating system.
I've been saying this about Apple for years. It's amazing how the tables have turned.
I hope my MBPr doesn't die on me for another year and in the meantime Cook will see some sense. I have to say I'm not in love with the Surface either, but their trajectory seems opposite to the Apple one: MS now "gets" what developers want, even non-MS ones. The change of CEO did wonders for them, whereas it seems to have sent Cupertino on the path of being Yet Another Consumer Electronics Company.
I've been using Macs since 2008. My next machine will probably be a Thinkpad or a Dell. Apple has dropped the ball too many times now, both hardware and software vice. And somehow everything Apple does now feels stale and off mark.
No OS license key. No "Patch Tuesday". No finger pointing between hardware vendor and OS vendor. No third party drivers necessary to clean boot.
Built-in backup system, both to "cloud" if desired or external hard disk if preferred. Application signing that serves to protect users rather than nag them into unquestioningly running anything and everything as administrator.
Fantastic, fully native support for the wealth of open-source software available for UNIX/BSD.
Apple hasn't dropped the ball. You'll realize this once you end up in the Windows world frustrated and trying to do the same things you take for granted now.
> No OS license key
Not something you see as a user, at least on the Surface.
> No "Patch Tuesday"
Because Apple leaves you running vulnerable software for months at a time. (Remember the zlib double free?)
> No finger pointing between hardware vendor and OS vendor. No third party drivers necessary to clean boot.
Not an issue with Surface.
> Fantastic, fully native support for the wealth of open-source software available for UNIX/BSD.
"Linux on Windows" may theoretically be non-native but it's a better experience than mac - real apt-get, install anything that works on Ubuntu without having to compile anything yourself. And has OSX figured out how to display any OSS GUIs yet?
The double-free thing dates from 2002. I'm sure there's better examples than that.
The Surface is a big step forward in terms of eliminating a lot of nuisances from the Windows experience but it also proves that the biggest nuisance of all is OEMs. Eliminating them also cuts out a lot of reasons for using Windows in the first place, like low-cost equipment. I agree it's a great product, but it's also great because of the tight integration you get with a unified hardware/OS vendor. Dell, HP and others don't have this luxury, so their experience is always second-rate.
Also "Linux on Windows" is a huge step forwards, but sheesh, it's still atrocious compared to proper native support. It's like a slick version of Cygwin. Remarkable but not a drop-in replacement for Linux.
You can compile GUI apps on macOS, but I've never needed to. The one app that depended on that was Wireshark, but I found a way to use tcpdump instead. It's mostly a non-issue.
> Also "Linux on Windows" is a huge step forwards, but sheesh, it's still atrocious compared to proper native support. It's like a slick version of Cygwin. Remarkable but not a drop-in replacement for Linux.
What's the practical distinction you're making? I develop a program that has Linux as its primary platform there. It gives you a closer-to-Linux experience than OSX does.
But they really haven't dropped the ball in terms of pricing or privacy, which is enough to scare me away from Windows.
I looked at a surface book last month, decided to stick one more cycle with the new MBP, but I was moderately tempted. Hardware looks and felt pretty good. Biggest drawback was window 10 itself - too many colleagues and clients still have daily issues with it (mostly unscheduled updates and downtime) - I don't want to deal with that right now. But if it shakes out and stabilizes in the next couple years, a Surface might be my day to day machine then.
Same, I bailed for a Dell Precision this year, though I'm running Fedora, not Windows. Apple has steadily lost direction over the past 5 or so years and it shows. There's no way I'd buy a new laptop with nothing but USB-C, a headphone jack, and a million dongles.
But one TB3 port can run a dock with more ports than previous MacBooks.
Sure, that is great, but even with prior generations of MacBooks dongles were a hinderance. I'd end up at the end of a conference with at least a couple mini-Displayport to VGA adapters from people who were presenting but forgot them for one reason or another, and I'd usually only be able to get 2/3rds of said dongles back to their rightful owners.
With USB C at least for now, this will be a constant source of fustration for users who don't own a Google Pixel and have to deal with legacy hardware (everything else out on the market). That being said, USB C itself is great, Apple should adopt it on the iPhone.
Mind if I ask what Thinkpad? And are you happy with it?
Highest end X1 Carbon, and yeah I absolutely love it.
Fantastic machines, even better Linuxed-up :-)
That's what I ended up doing! Latest Ubuntu. I sometimes still boot into Windows, but do all my development in Ubuntu.
I am a Surface convert after Apple discontinued OS support and updates for my still powerful, healthy, relatively new Macbook.
Surface is much more flexible and provides a greater degree of customization. It is the perfect hybrid between and tablet and a laptop device. I'm just as comfortable using it as a consumption device on the couch as I am using it as a production device on a desk.
It really feels like Apple has become more and more hostile to the "production" crowd as a means of catering to the consumption crowd. I love their hardware but the company and it's attitude towards customers can take a hike.
Which MacBook are you using that you consider "relatively new," but Apple stopped supporting? In my experiences with Apple, support has gone on for years, and in the case of my original iBook, a full decade. It has gotten shorter over the last few years, but Sierra officially supports computers from 2009, which after 7 years I don't consider new any more.
AFAIK, the 2011 MBPs are no longer supported for hardware repairs (although they will run the latest OS). Maybe that's what the parent is referring to?
FWIW, the 15" 2011 MBPs with the i7 quad cores, GPU issues aside, are still pretty fast when compared to the latest Macs using the ultrabook CPUs.
> AFAIK, the 2011 MBPs are no longer supported for hardware repairs (although they will run the latest OS). Maybe that's what the parent is referring to?
The GGP specifically stated that "Apple discontinued OS support and updates". This is either incorrect, or the GGP has a very different definition of "relatively new" than I do - with 7 year old hardware being supported on Sierra, he'd have to be talking about something 8+ years old...
The explicitly said "Apple discontinued OS support." That's just false, unless the machine in question is over 8 years old, which is not new.
I love my SP4, but after having owned one for a while, I would absolutely not buy one if not for the inking. It's just so goddam buggy. It constantly has some issue, whether it's the keyboard not connecting or some Windows chrome element glitching out, or failing to restart when I tell it to. It's still worth it to me though, because the ability to write and draw are super nice, and it's great for reading and highlighting documents. MS needs to drastically improve the Polish of their products if they want to win more customers from Apple though.
My 2008 MacBook got updates until Sierra. 8 years is an excellent lifetime for a entry level laptop.
2008 MacBook airs stopped getting support in 2012 for Mountain Lion. Just 4 years of ownership until a device becomes "antiquated" is very frustrating.
Dang, yeah the early 2008 MacBook Air (MacBookAir1,1) had an unusually short life. Looks like the late 2008 MacBook Air (the next iteration MacBookAir2,1) would have had an 8 year life. I guess the upgraded Penryn processor and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M made all the difference.
What do you mean by "attitude towards customers"? This has always been a selling point for me. Especially if I have an issue with a device, I can get it solved quickly without being made to feel stupid by a CSR.
"I am a Surface convert after Apple discontinued OS support and updates for my still powerful, healthy, relatively new Macbook."
Which one? Cause anything they discontinued support for isn't really "relatively new".
"It really feels like Apple has become more and more hostile to the "production" crowd"
I absolutely do not buy this argument at all. Usually it's made by people who's definition of "production crowd" is so narrow as to only include what they do.
I tried to like it. I have my Surface Book sitting here next to me.
Windows 10 is much better than previous versions, and I like the direction MS seems to be moving. That said, I feel like in spite of how nice a machine the Surface Book is, QA is still sorely lacking on Windows 10.
"Sleep of Death" (google it) and working in *nix 99.99% of the time is what killed it for me. Trying to make the workflow work, it's just too painful, compared to working from my MBP.
New MBP touch on order. Should get here next week.
Did they ever solve that "very hard computer science problem" with power management on the Surface Book? I don't think I've ever heard of a more condescending excuse to give to your customers than that.
Just my experience, but a relatively recent (late summer?) OS update must have fixed it. Since then, I haven't had any problems with my SP4 not waking from sleep.
I'm religious about keeping this thing up to date.
I've had the "sleep of death" issue occur multiple times, in spite of keeping my SB current on updates.
I've been to the MS Store and talked to support multiple times. It's a well-documented and reoccurring issue that MS has not fixed yet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> working in *nix 99.99% of the time is what killed it for me
Have you tried their Linux on Windows thing? I find that works really well, better than using nix on mac in fact: you have real apt-get and it all just works.
Yes, and it's still not production-ready, in my opinion.
Ruby gems are still problematic, for example.
They're working on it, but it's not there yet.
Oh yeah... and to the part of your comment where you say it works even better than on a Mac? Not even close. The Mac works so much better than WSL, it's not even funny. Like I said... they're working on it but it's not there yet. :)
QA is lacking in MacOS too. Lots of tweets about bugs with the latest Macs with touch bars.
Users switching from macOS to Surface last year: 100
Users switching from macOS to Surface this year: 150
"Best year ever!"
--
When companies say things like this and refuse to give actual sell through numbers, the above is what I think. I'm sure I'm not alone.
I've been on Macbook pros since 2010, had a few of them by now, my latest is a retina 2013 with an i7, 8gb ram, 500GB hard drive. When surface book came out last year I bought one, with i7, 16GB ram, dedicated video card, 500GB hard drive. I really fell in love with drawing on my surface book with sketchbook pro, also great is fact that solidworks runs well on it, and finally windows 10 is much improved. Throw in the new linux subsystem on Windows 10 and general opensource embrace these days, altogether it is really more interesting to use my Surfacebook vs my MBP. It certainly feels like Microsoft is on the rise while Apple is on the decline. Further, I'm honestly excited to read about the upcoming Windows 10 phones that can run full desktop programs.
If anything, it sure is nice to see that Microsoft might actually begin to become a real Apple competitor again. Competition is good!
Without numbers to put this into context it's a fairly meaningless claim.
Exactly. Record numbers could mean 100 people.
Never before have so many Mac users switched to Microsoft Surface Pros
Win10 is ok, but there are two things that have turned me off:
1. The "Start" menu (tiles) have ads in them by default. I do not like this. 2. Connected Standby is still in development. To view advanced power management settings, set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\CSEnabled to 0. If you are having connectivity issues on a Surface device, make this reg change, then reboot and uncheck "Allow the operating system to turn off" under the "Power Management" tab in the Marvell wifi adapter.
I just can't get behind either the Surface or Macbook Pro. I had a Macbook that my wife has taken over and I'm currently rockin' an Asus ultrabook that has a 15" screen. I love the bigger screens and 13" is just way to small for me. For the price of a Surface Book I could get a Dell/HP/Lenovo with a 15" screen, 32GB of memory and a large SSD.
15" is way too small for me. Basically it boils down to differences in usage patterns.
For my part I have a 17" laptop that is almost exclusively for home office use, a 11" chromebook for meetings or light work away from home, and an 8" tablet for entertainment and the odd emergency ssh session (I can fix servers over ssh from my phone too, but it's not exactly a fun experience).
The way I see it, there's no single form-factor that'll keep me happy, so I'd rather go for multiple.
I don't think people will ever agree on a single screen size or what other specs actually matters (e.g. I do have an SSD in my laptop, but quickly realises it doesn't really matter what type of storage I have, because I boot, I start Chrome and a bunch of terminals + ssh sessions, and then I rarely touch disk again; meanwhile other people load and store massive files regularly)
That's very similar to what I used to have pre-Surface Book. But I found that the Surface Book was small and light enough to replace the 11", but powerful enough to replace the 17" (I have a Surface Dock for the "home office" part - leave stuff connected to the dock (which could include a big screen, though I haven't found the need yet - the 13.5" screen is high-resolution and very clear, so it ends up being more readable than the larger screen it replaced), but take the laptop itself travelling when need be). The tablet form is a bit clunky, but close enough that the convenience of a single device outweighs having a lighter dedicated tablet (in fairness I was on a 10" tablet, and I have a 6"+ phone that probably displaces some 8" use cases).
I don't think we'll ever see a single form factor dominate as such, but a single device that can shift between form factors simplifies things a lot, I think that's the future.
For my part, I just can't work on a smaller screen. I certainly get what you mean regarding getting away with smaller screens with a higher quality and/or higher resolution screen - I'll never go back to less than full HD for my phones, for example, - but the distance of my laptop screen is largely dictated by the attachment to the keyboard (if someone offers a hinged display that can be lifted up closer to the face, perhaps) and I've found not being forced to lean in towards the screen while working is essential to my physical comfort, but I want to be able to largely fill my field of view.
My current laptop "only" has a full hd screen, but it was well over half the cost of my not-at-all-cheap custom build laptop when I bought it, and I expect to spend a similar proportion of the cost of my next laptop on an above average screen (edit: which will mean at a "4K" 17" screen, most likely)
I'm all for a single computing device, but not a single screen size. I don't think we'll ever settle on a single screen-type until/unless we have good enough head mountable screen replacements.
> For my part I have a 17" laptop that is almost exclusively for home office use, a 11" chromebook for meetings or light work away from home, and an 8" tablet for entertainment and the odd emergency ssh session (I can fix servers over ssh from my phone too, but it's not exactly a fun experience).
15" is perfect for all-around use. Plug in an external monitor or two and you won't notice the difference between 17", and it's still plenty portable in any bag that holds more than a tablet.
Maybe it is for you. It is not for me.
I used a 15" for years, and I'll never use a 15" again. Plugging in an external monitor was a workaround that helped when I was at a desk, but much of the time I much prefer to have my laptop actually on my lap in a comfortable chair or on the couch, where external monitors is not an option.
And it's still way too big for my travel needs. Yes, it fits in my bag, but I regularly have other things I want to take with me too.
So back to my point: It depends on your usage pattern.
I'm curious as to why you don't just have a desktop for home office.
I wouldn't be able to use the 11" chromebook, especially coming from a 17" screen.
A desktop would be very uncomfortable to use from the couch, or my bed, or my living room table, or kitchen table, or any of the many other places in the house I enjoy being able to sit down when I fel like it... It's about being "luggable". I might very well look for an 18" or bigger next time.
Regarding the 11" I sort of agree - it's for note taking in meetings and the occasional use on trains etc., not for anything that requires very frequent use. I only went that small exactly because I don't need to use it very often. If I did more meetings, I might have used a somewhat bigger one.
That makes sense. When you're moving around the house when working then a laptop is a necessity.
13.5" is great for portability - my surface book is small enough to slip into a satchel in a way that a larger laptop wouldn't, and light enough to do that with. Before I got it I used to have two laptops (an 11" ultrabook for travel and an 18" gaming laptop), but the surface book replaces both - powerful enough to game on but small enough to transport. I used to be a big fan of the big screens, but you adjust quickly, and the resolution is high which is the main thing; I could keep a screen plugged into my surface dock if I wanted to use a bigger screen at home, though so far I haven't felt the need.
I have a close to 4 hour train commute per day and I just bring my 15" laptop on the train with me. I have a laptop section in my backpack so carrying it isn't an issue. Being on the train is typically the only time I bring my laptop out of the house as it is a long ride to work on side projects. If I had to do more travel, especially on a plane, then I could definitely see how a 13.5" screen would be worth it.
But the equivalent MacBook is thinner than a lecture pad, and more powerful at most price points.
> But the equivalent MacBook is thinner than a lecture pad
Sure, but how much value do you get from that? Weight matters, diagonal matters, but thickness alone makes very little difference unless we're talking about something too thick to fit into a satchel.
> and more powerful at most price points.
I don't think that's true? The top and bottom end specs are pretty similar IIRC (same RAM, similar processor, similar resolution...), except for the Surface having a touchscreen, and the price points are mostly higher for the MacBook.
It's a function of how you use your computer. I travel a lot and find 13" is a pretty good compromise between portability and usability. No way would I travel with a 15". I do sometimes just go with a small Asus Flip Chromebook but with the knowledge that I can't use it for everything.
I think it also depends on how you travel. I have a 4 hour commute each day but it is on the train. I'm lucky enough to be at the first stop each way so I typically get a seat and the train is typically empty enough so I get a seat to myself. Because of that I'm able to plop my 15" laptop on my and go to town. When I fly it is more of an issue because of the limited space, so I definitely understand why a 13" becomes a better option.
Yup. I decide on form-factor primarily based on whether I can easily bring the device on a brisk 30 minute bike commute without sweating (too much).
I agree with you. I use a surface pro 3 as my daily driver but I have two 23" monitors I plug it into. I can only use the 13" screen for movie watching and reading.
If you have it plugged into two monitors I'm curious as to why you ended up buying a surface pro.
I bought the SP a while ago, before the two monitors. If I had my druthers I'd go with something more powerful. Either a dedicated desktop rig or a beefier laptop
So according to Microsoft, based on their numbers, which they won't release, more people are trading in Macs for Surfaces than before. There's also no way of knowing if this claimed increase is in any way significant.
I'm rather puzzled that even with this complete lack of data, which The Verge seems also skeptical about, they still decided to write an article about it.
Maybe the focus on fake news about politics in the popular press will get people to wake up and realize that the problem has been worse, for longer, in the tech press?
I've resuscitated an older Windows PC, after years of exclusive OSX.. I've changed the CPU cooler (Intel Q9550), added an SSD drive - and my old PC is back up, with the SSD it has enough juice to do the tasks I need it for - run Visual Studio 2015, browsing ... plus I can also play some (older) games on it, which is a lot of fun.
I miss the old days of being able to play with the hardware, buy new video or sound cards, overclock the CPU and so on.
Years ago when I was using Windows 7 it seemed the best OS Microsoft has put out so far (and I think since).
But after years of working on a mac, I have to say that Windows feels like a huge hack in comparison. There are countless UIs you have to access in order to configure the OS, all kinds of voodoo utilities, registry editor hacks and so on.
Should I also mention the daily blue screen of death ? Probably my fault somehow, but still..
Yes yes, I remember.. this used to be the Windows experience - I used to liked that.. It was what made me an 'experienced' user.
But I don't anymore. I'm not sure what the Windows experience is today, but I'm not eager to spend a lot of money to find that out...
Of course I'm curious about the Surface hardware - but not as much as to accept an inferior OS experience.
After all, these little things, the details, the polish, the smoothness ... they trickle down into the creative work that I do, they do influence me subconsciously.. all the time.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Your old 'revived' PC doesn't not represent the Surface signature experience which Microsoft designed to appeal to Mac users.
Curious though: Who was the OEM for your PC and how much did you spend on it? How much was your Mac?
I think I have seen maybe 2 or 3 Windows BSODs in the last 5 years, and all of them due to hardware issues.
Why is this on HN? There are NO NUMBERS to back up such a click-baity claim.
Cause lots of people like to hate on Apple.
like the people at 9to5mac.com?
It's amazing. I used to hate Microsoft. I wasn't a programmer or even that technical but I still kept trying to use linux in college, I jumped on the reboot of Netscape/Firebird/Firefox, and I wrote a long essay comparing Bill Gates to a Robber Baron.
But this past couple of years they've just improved their offerings, particularly those for devs, incessantly. I was kind of on the fence about VSC vs Atom a year and a half ago. Now it's not only far faster but also a significant boost in productivity. Ubuntu tools are available from inside Windows. Office, the very program I most used to love to hate, is killing it.
I still have a macbook, but it's been gathering dust. The iMac 27" was my favorite computer I've owned but the Surface Studio has leapfrogged beyond it. Especially as a creative dev, it's hard to justify staying with Apple at this point.
I switched from an MBP to an SP3 and I could never ever switch back. It's the best tech purchase I've ever made. It has its quirks for sure, but using my MBP now feels almost claustrophobic due to the limitations (evidenced by the fingerprints on its screen).
What made me switch was the realisation that using my iPad for productivity reasons would've been useful - even just for typing a document with a keyboard - but actually trying to use it was like a sick joke perpetuated by Apple.
So I got an SP3 to fill that gap, and within a week my iPad, MBP and desktop were all useless to me.
I was set on getting a new 15" MBP to replace my late 2013 model, and I put aside just over $2k for one. Sadly, after prices came out, I would have been spending $3k minimum after taxes for what I wanted. I looked into buying a used 2014 or 2015 instead.
When I looked into the actual spec difference, the biggest upgrade for me would have been going from 8GB to 16GB of RAM, since the integrated GPU (Iris Pro) is the same, and the CPU performance upgrade is minimal. The idea of spending $1100ish on a used MBP and then having to sell my current laptop (probably spending $500-600 total) just to upgrade my RAM was so offputting, so I held off.
I ended up building a mini-ITX hackintosh instead. It turned out great -- the new UEFI method is so much better than the old way, since you can update with no risk of breaking your drivers, and upgrade without a full reinstall. I also just found out we're all getting loaded 2016 15" MBPs at work, so I'm glad I didn't go through with either of my first two considerations.
Until I see actual numbers I take any advertising material like this with a hefty grain (nugget?) of salt. As far as we know they went from 1000 people using the trade-in program last year to 5000 using it this year. Yes, a big uptick, but not necessarily meaningful until we get to larger numbers.
I've seen/used the Surface and honestly it's a lot like the iPad Pro in that it feels like the sort of computer I'd happily hand to someone who doesn't actually need a PC, but I'd hate to have it be my development experience. The Surface is a bit more full-featured due to it having less of a sandboxed app model, but it's underpowered for the stuff I do with a computer. On the other hand the new MBP is pretty good. It has some annoyances (USB-C annoys me once every couple weeks so far, and the keyboard takes getting used to), but it's fast, light, and has a beautiful display. And I can run everything on it that I need to.
Odd. Isn't the biggest complaint against the new Macbook Pro the lack of memory? There's no Surface with 32GB at this moment, is there? There are rumors of a Surface Book 2 next year with 4K and 32GB but nothing more than that.
I'm stuck working in Windows 10 right now due to VR only being supported by it. I spent around 8 hours getting AutoHotkey set up so that most of my shortcuts are back to Mac versions (I use mac keyboard, just can't beat it). The last missing link was Linux Subsystem for Windows. I now use my standard Vim setup and besides being limited to 16 colors (ugh), everything mostly just works.
I'd switch back to Mac given the choice, but the embarrassingly bad hardware specs make it a complete no-go for game development.
Edit: I also use Cmder to give me a very capable console window.
Care to share your AHK script? Here's mine: https://gist.github.com/mikew/18a0e5c6f6bdbf1bb3be0a9cfa3b5d...
Of course, here's mine:
https://gist.github.com/justonia/caf8c8a794d5252e8dbc149d457...
I also added a .reg file that lets me right click on an .ahk file and get a menu item to run as administrator.
Besides the hardware, do not forget the absence of Vulkan and latest versions of OpenGL.
I bought a Surface Book recently and it has been a mixed bag.
On one hand there's Windows' horrid display scaling issues. Hooking the Surface Book into an external HD monitor means dealing with blurry fonts and inconsistant scaling on some apps. Not entirely Microsoft's fault but its still a concern.
On the other, I really like marking up documents and drawing sketches on the screen. The machine is fairly solid and a joy to type on and use on a day-to-day basis.
Like others have said, the trackpad has taken some getting used to. It feels less "solid" than my 2011 MBP's, and it's definitely more limited than the MBP's. It doesn't handle palm rejection as well as I'd like, and the swipe to go back gesture is inconsistent across applications.
There are other issues too. Flux fucks with things; when I use it things get sluggish as the screen begins to warm. I've recently gone ahead and uninstalled it. Sometimes when I press the Windows key to bring up the Start search the search bar doesn't register the keyboard. Detaching and reattaching sometimes confuses the machine and it doesn't know whether to drop into tablet mode or return to desktop mode.
Despite that, if someone reads this in the future, I will say I overall enjoy the machine. I really like what Microsoft is trying to do in terms of bridging the gap between devices like tablets and traditional PCs. My girlfriend and I both like doodling on it, it plays older games good enough with its dGPU, and it's battery life is superb. So I'd recommend it as a great prosumer device.
Yeah, Windows 10 is a huge improvement but there are still some hairy parts.
I've run into the search issue as well, and resolved it by tweaking some options in "Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows". I believe it was the "Animations in the taskbar" option, but I'm not 100%.
Flux also destroys your framerate when it transitions. I tend to just launch it when I need it and set it to always be tinted.
The touch and pen support is fantastic, though, and has become second nature to me for web browsing and note taking.
I've also more or less been able to recreate a Linux-like development workflow with Windawesome[0], cmder[1], chocolatey[2], and qutebrowser[3]. Msys in cmder gives me the unix-like terminal I need while still being able to run Windows-native utilities, and things I install from chocolatey like git, ag, and vim are added to the cmder PATH and just work. Bash for Windows has been quite nice as well.
[0] https://windawesome.codeplex.com/ [1] http://cmder.net/ [2] https://chocolatey.org/ [3] https://qutebrowser.org
At the local mall if you go to the Microsoft store you might find 15 people in there, very empty feeling. Meanwhile, there are probably 3-400 in the Apple store.
>> More people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before. Our trade-in program for MacBooks was our best ever
You could trade-up with up to $650 credit for your working MacBook Pro or Air. I'm assuming they were giving similar values as you would with Gazelle or another service.
The thing with that though is that you can buy a Surfacebook in a lot of different places. Macbook is mostly the Apple Store, or at least that is the perception. Ever notice how unbusy the Apple section at Best Buy is?
Maybe it's my own experience, but I've only ever see a surfacebook at the MS flagship store.
I bought mine at John Lewis, FWIW.
Not in Boston. The Microsoft store consistently has more than the Apple Store...often a dozen people waiting in line as well to play the HTC vive and Xbox.
I would consider a Surface if I could install Linux on it and it worked as well as a my System76. In fact I'm asking: is anyone out there doing this?
Well, someone must be, since there is even a subreddit for it: https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/
I'm writing this on a Surface Pro 3, and I've commented on it before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300927
I've been compiling the kernel since I got it, later figured out how to compile only the drivers I needed (specially the keyboard/touchpad) which was reduced over time as more and more drivers were built in.
There was finally a guy that set up an Ubuntu PPA [1] repository from where you can install the whole package, and it was fine until last October when I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 16.10.
[1] https://launchpad.net/~tigerite/+archive/ubuntu/kernel
For that version there is no PPA, and the kernel patches I had been using for the type cover did not work any more (they compile, just do not work). Then I re-installed 16.04 from scratch, but now the tigerite kernel does not boot because of some BTRFS crash (divide by zero) and the standard one only supports the Type Cover 3 keyboard: I have both the v3 and v4, and the later is much better and was working with both my patches and the tigerite kernel.
There are ways to get the Type Cover v3 touchpad working by configuring xorg, but the patches are better because they work with the multitouch driver.
The result is that right now I'm typing on a Lenovo Thinkpad Compact USB keyboard. :-\
In general I like this computer a lot, and nowadays almost everything works out of the box (including volume keys and both cameras) except the most crucial part, the type cover. The stylus and touchscreen worked fine from the first day. Suspend never worked, although it kind of did for a few months and now it's broken again. Hybernate should work but I did not do it because I would need to work around the encrypted swap.
I had pledged for the Eve V tablet computer [2], a crowd-funded version which has a few interesting improvements, but I think I'll back down before the deadline because they said they can not support Linux, and I will not have time in the coming months to experiment with it.
[2] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/eve-v-the-first-ever-crow...
This is quite a disorganized answer but I hope it'll be of use to you. I like the Surface Pro, but I'm tired of this back-and-forth getting the basics to work with Linux. At this point the v3 is not a cutting-edge computer any more, and it should be effortless to use it with Linux.
Dude! Thank you for your "disorganized" response! I'm kinda married to the 16 release of Ubuntu right now and it does not seem worth it yet for the Surface 3 Pro. I hope I will never have to run / use Windows again. Not enough hours in my life to make it worth ever going back.
One high price computer for another...
Just kidding. I want a Surface Studio so bad its crazy. Just can't bring myself to spend the scratch, though.
They were 100.000.
Now they are 200.000.
100% increase -- record rates. But totally inconsequential.
(Numbers out of my ass, but without specifics, they are as good as the claim).
'Microsoft still isn’t providing sales numbers, but the company claims “more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before.”'
Maybe this article would be improved with a little journalism to maybe make an educated guess as to what these numbers might be? Something besides just retyping Microsoft's marketing press release?
In my experience, quite a lot of MacOS refugees who are upset with its stagnation are switching to Linux.
Not sure I've read anything about this, it always seems to be going on year round, especially when toolsets become increasing difficult to work with exclusively on mac. vmware fusion on mac is pretty piss poor, amount of ram on a mac laptop is usually the biggest concern I'd have for doing virtualization or setting up a bunch of vm's for simulating deployments, 16gb vs say 32 & 64gb ram configurations on newer laptops is a huge deal in my opinion towards migrating away from macos.
Well, MacOS was experiencing bit rot for quite a while already, especially in areas where Apple simply completely abandoned it. Having a paranoid control from Apple in combination with its indifference bit MacOS users hard.
Example: https://www.winehq.org/wwn/404#Direct3D%2011%20development
> An open issue with anything newer than Direct3D9 is that wined3d still depends on legacy OpenGL 2 features and many drivers do not expose some features necessary for d3d10/11 in legacy contexts. With the MaxVersionGL key set wined3d will request a core context, but certain blitting corner cases are still broken. Mesa and the Nvidia binary driver mostly work. On MacOS you are most likely out of luck.
If they really are switching to the Surface at "Record Rates" then why don't they provide the numbers to back up their claim instead of using superfluous headlines to prop up their ailing product? It's reminiscent of Apple's tired old line of Android users switching to iPhones in record numbers yet the smartphone OS market share reports never really seem to reflect that. I switched from Windows to a Mac about a year ago and found macOS to be a refreshing change from Windows in terms of UI, polish, usability, privacy, app quality and security. Those people switching, that have never experienced Windows, better prepare themselves for the world of hurt that awaits them.
This might be right place to ask; has anyone been using SP4 (not Surface Book) as their main dev machine?
I am debating between 13 inch MBP or SP4. I can get SP4 with same specs as MBP for significantly cheaper. But of course, it may not be as productive as MBP.
I bought a very inexpensive HP Stream 11 a few years ago to experiment with Windows 10, and I think Microsoft has generally improved the environment a lot. After a few months of experimenting with Windows 10, I put Ubuntu on this laptop, and I use it while traveling.
That said, I had to buy a new laptop last month and after almost getting a Surface Pro + keyboard, I ended up with a MacBook. I decided that I didn't want to change my workflow (writing, programming in Haskell, Java, various Lisps).
However, I will carefully evaluate Microsoft laptops (purchased from Microsoft: signature editions don't have crap-ware on them) in a few years when I need another laptop.
I for one am very excited about PR articles like this. It is not worth much but it may be that proverbial drop in a full glass to persuade Apple to release new upgrade to MBP much sooner than it otherwise would.
Apple would love to release an upgraded MBP. Unfortunately, Intel's lack of support for low-power RAM is holding them back:
https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/21/phil-schiller-again-breaks-do...
I have been looking at making the switch to another kind of laptop too (I'm still running a 2012 MBA as a personal machine, 2013 MBP at work, and a Win10 desktop for gaming).
I've test driven a few, but still haven't committed to something. For now, my macbooks are still doing pretty well (though the MBA is feeling low on RAM these days). I know I'll find it tough to give up their trackpads, assuming another vendor has not successfully copied their feel within the next year or two.
How is the battery life on the Surface book/pro? All I about it sounds pretty horrible. Especially compared to the 2011 X220s I use all the time, which have 15+ hours I wonder what people really get from these MS things. I don't really care about the OS, but the last Macbook Pro's I bought had crap battery life; the best was the Air 11 inch for me but they don't make that anymore...
No numbers, so no way to evaluate how significant this is.
For the record, just played with the TouchBar in the Apple Store, and think it's super cool. Also love the humongous track pad, and believe USB-C support will explode in the near future.
So I'm curious to see sales numbers for Surface vs. the new MacBook Pros. Might be more "switchers" to Surface, but also a big increase in MacBook Pro sales overall.
As a guy who uses the top bar of keys a lot, I wouldn't buy the new MBPs even for $500.
IMO that was a foolhardy decision; Macs are (were?) very popular amongst designers and programmers, why limit the accessibility of the keyboard? Do you realize how many strokes on the Esc key a VIM-using dev does per day?
It's as if Apple doesn't care about the professional audience anymore.
They should've offered a "touch bar" and "normal bar" variants for their laptops IMO.
How much of Apple's sales do you think go to vim users?
And they do have a normal bar variant of the 13", although that might go away when prices come down.
Lastly, your argument sounds similar to me to the people who vowed they would never give up their physical phone keyboards. I don't think they made much impact on Apple's iPhone sales.
Seems your top priority is preserving what you are comfortable with. My gut feeling is potential for better interfaces no one has even thought of yet for Touch Bar is immense.
As a matter of fact, I do miss physical keyboards on phones but frankly they don't make sense because they're nowhere near the level of comfort of my mechanical keyboard. My answer to this has been to stop spending on smartphones. I'll be buying the next iPad Pro and will settle for a midrange Android and an iPhone 7 / 7s / 8 and will just call it quits for 3-4 years.
I am not "vowing" anything. There are changes that do make sense and others who don't -- and that's subjective, of course. For me the real physical feedback when typing is irreplaceable.
And don't give me that talk that I am a grumpy old fart. Until we have computers able to react on voice like the Star Trek computers do, full physical keyboards are not going anywhere. It's about convenience and speed of the interaction, not about trends.
Most Vim users I talk to have remapped CapsLock or another set of keys to escape, since the escape key is so far away. I personally use `jk` since I rarely write anything with Dutch names.
(1) I can remap Esc of course, but I shouldn't have to. (2) I also use F1-F12 often. Them being gone and replaced by touch interface is awful for an experienced typist.
Misleading title. Any rate >0 may be a record rate.
One of the things I've noticed that's pretty huge is that a lot of Mac-exclusive apps like Affinity and Tower have recently made full native Windows versions in the last few months. Developers who felt their customer base resided entirely or primarily on Mac seem to feel there's a market on Windows for artists and developers that there hadn't been before.
> Microsoft still isn’t providing sales numbers, but the company claims “more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before.”
How bad does journalism have to get before it's indistinguishable from fake news? Surely MS knows how many people are switching from Macs to surface compared to a previous period? Surely a journalist can push for figures?
Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?
the surface studio looks great. i'd love them to come up with an IDE that takes advantage of touch.
my proposal is: the basic structure of code is represented visually via an AST, i.e the folders,files,classes,method and public variables and public variables and constants. and they could tie in tests and have test show up within that space.
I borrowed an i7 Surface Book to work on a project, and couldn't imagine making it my primary laptop. The worst part was having friends constantly share tips for making Windows approximate a *nix environment... I'd need to rethink everything from a Windows click-menu-checkbox perspective to make it work.
I know it's popular on HN and Reddit to bash the MBP, but could be just me.. I love my new 2016 MBP 15". Haven't experienced any issues with battery life. Use it to program on and have been very satisfied with it.
>Microsoft refuses to provide numbers but vaguely claims “our trade-in program for MacBooks was our best ever.”
But wasn't it the first time they ever offered a trade-in for Macbooks? I just googled it and was not able to find old offers.
Uhh it's a new product record rates doesn't really mean anything.
I switched from a MacBook Pro to a Dell XPS 13 (Kaby Lake i7). From a hardware point of view, it is an excellent machine, and I do not miss Apple at all. What I do miss terribly is macOS.
"Record rates" just means "more than before" but it can be, and likely is, still just a small number that's mostly noise in the data so far as Apple is concerned.
If the market is growing, then every part of it may be growing including trade-ins. They may still be shrinking in market fraction. How would we know? We need numbers.
Interestingly, the Surface Book does not have USB-C. I excluded it from my search because of that.
Currently, the choice at that price point is either full USB-C or no USB-C.
There are options with a bit of both - I think some of the HP Envy line?
I moved to OSX a couple of years ago. I was really surprised that the extra buttons on my Logitech mouse doesn't work at all, ok, I bought SteerMouse, now it works.
I use every app in full size window, sometimes two apps side-by-side. On windows it was really easy, on Mac it's painful. So I bought an app for that, Cinch.
I want a tiny calendar in the corner with the weeknumber in it, I had to download Itsycal (which is at least free).
The bar can be a real mess so I bought Bartender, worked fine, I could even hide the spotlight icon. Then I upgraded to El Capitan, and guess what, you can't hide the spotlight anymore, so I had to buy Bartender 2 because they claimed you can hide icons without disabling SIP (https://www.macbartender.com/system-item-setup/). But it turned out it's not working for spotlight... Thanks Bartender!
Ah, the mess when you plugin an external display, how fckd up is that! My carefully fullsized windows are all resized and moved around to some random position. No worries, there is an app for that! It's called Stay, it can save the position of the windows, but you have to do it for every possible screen combination. If you have one external display, you have to save the window positions three times: internal display only, external only, both. If you happen to using the same MacBook with two external displays (at work and at home), now you have to do this a total 6 times. And it stores the window position on per app basis, so usually I open everything and save them all. On Windows this whole problem just doesn't exists.
I can't turn off the internal display, there is no way to just do a windows+p and chose external display only like on windows. I have to close the lid (so now I can't use the keyboard) and wake it up because now it's sleeping. Great.
I always turn off every animation, doing this on windows is easy, but it's really painful on OSX, and every time you upgrade you have to do it again, and sometimes the same terminal commands just doesn't work, thanks Apple. And you can't turn off everything, basically this is why I don't use the fullscreen functionality and multiple desktops.
Every time I use my desktop pc, I feel like when I was a kid and we upgraded our old 300 mhz computer to a 1 ghz one with a 3d card.
After mountain lion I regret every single upgrade. So for me El Capitan is the last, my next computer will be an Alienware 13 with 32 GB ram and GTX 1060 and an OLED screen and it will be still cheaper than a MacBook Pro.
Microsoft means "than before Surface exists".
A three paragraph "article" from Tom Warren at The Verge which sources a Microsoft blog post with zero numbers to back up their PR fluff.
Apple should realize that most of its cash cow (iPhone) is due to Mac and developers are key to long term success.
"most of its cash cow (iPhone) is due to Mac"
Almost certainly untrue. Most iphone users are still Windows PC users. Yes the developer community is important to the iOS app lead, but most of that is due to the self selecting group of people who purchase iphones - people willing to pay for things.
It's more indirect than that: the apps exist because of Mac using developers. Without the developers having access to Xcode/Swift/etc the quality and number of apps would decline in favor of android.
How are they due to Mac? They outsell macs by an order of magnitude and most of the non developers I know with iPhones dont have macs.
If the implication is that developers will stop writing apps for iPhones, that's highly unlikely because money is still in vogue.
It feels like Apple the PC is neglected for Apple the phone/tablet. If I'm looking for a mobile device, I'm looking at Apple. But for laptop and desktop, their offerings don't seem as great.
The cloud approach is making it less necessary to keep the PC within the Apple ecosystem. iOS devices already don't have expandable storage, and most data ends up being on iCloud or other internet services.
If you're doing full-cloud then a chromebook is the best value.
How to install Linux on a Surface was the first thing popped in my mind
Good for MS, Surface is really a wonderful device.
Insecurity: Look at this handful of people moving from my competitor's highly-regarded product to my promising but flawed one! It's more than ever before!
I decided to get a Surface Pro 4 instead of upgrading my Macbook Air for my casual/portable computing device as I thought the combined Keyboard/Tablet mode would be more useful than an Air. My initial impressions after the first few days use:
- The Surface tablet Hardware has a nice build quality, but the Touch Pen doesn't register touches when it touches the screen you need to press down a little (unlike Apple's pencil). The Type Cover keyboard is wobbly when it's folded up so when I'm at a desk/flat surface I leave it completely flat as it's more sturdy. The touchpad is really small but I find myself using the touchscreen more so I don't notice it much. Otherwise the Type cover is usable, not as productive as a laptop keyboard, but more productive than a virtual keyboard.
- It's pretty fast, especially for its small profile
- The display is gorgeous, screen's a little small but it makes the device ultra portable.
- User Account management is atrocious, I bought the Surface Pro as secondary ultra portable for my Wife and so creating a new User Account is one of the first things I tried to do but couldn't at all, it kept failing with the useless generic "Something went wrong" dialog. You're meant to sign in with your Hotmail and I couldn't add another Local or Internet account for my wife for over 36 hours! it kept failing with "Something went wrong". I really hate needing to use an Internet account or requiring an Internet connection to create User Accounts, I'd prefer to completely disable any notion of Internet/hotmail accounts for Windows 10, it "just works" in Chrome OS but is highly infuriating and unstable in Windows 10. It still didn't let me add any Users after a complete reset, I had to wait 36 hours for that luxury.
- They have this "Hello" face recognition where it's able to log you in without entering a password which was a nice surprise and works pretty well.
- You now get annoying ads on your Lock Screen
- You also get nagged trying to keep you using Edge when trying to switch default browser to Chrome
- The AppStore is also unreliable, I couldn't install 2/4 Apps on the App Store Home Page (Halo and Planner 5D). Just failed with "Error, see details" with details being an empty dialog saying "Something went wrong". The Netflix App stopped loading after a 2nd restart (just an empty black screen) even after completely killing/restarting the App multiple times, only a full OS restart could get it working again. This experience falls way short of any of Apple's App Stores which "just work".
- Win 10 Apps aren't that great, the Facebook App is fairly polished but lacks feature parity with Website, Twitter's App is worse than its website, Netflix is the only Win 10 App I'm using over their website
- Win 10 isn't a great OS for touch, the icons are too small, took me a few goes trying to open a folder in VS which VS thought I wanted to move the folder, so you'll try using the touchscreen first than if it fails fallback to using the small touchpad.
- Within 3 hours of a new install I got by first BSOD, I installed VS 2017 beta with Docker + Hyper V. Docker for Windows refused to install the first time and crashes on Startup, I also couldn't run an empty .NET Core + Docker template, hand a number of build errors saying it couldn't find "System" namespace. The empty .NET Core Web App worked. In the end I uninstalled VS2017 beta, I'll try again in the next release.
These software issues happened after installing all Window updates. It was surprisingly buggy, I'd expect a hardware/software controlled device to be rock solid but the Surface was the most unreliable computing device I've owned.
In summary the Surface Pro4 tablet hardware is nice, quite thin for being able to run full Windows but also gets noticeably hot after a while (unlike iPad), has great display, Touch Pen isn't as solid as an Apple Pencil also its unproductive switching between Finger Touch and Touch Pen but the finger registration is good so I'm only using the Touch Pen for drawing apps.
Overall it's not as productive as a Macbook or as useful as a tablet than an iPad, so definitely not a Macbook or iPad killer, but has a useful niche as a secondary portable Windows 10 device. It's software unreliability issues and stupid User account management means I could never recommend it as on option to my parents who love and spend most of their time on their iPads and use iMac + Chrome OS for more heavy duty tasks - which are automatically backed up and have both been virus free for years which we're both happy about.
That just about mirrors my experience with SP3, I got it not long after launch (It came with 8.1, not 10). Fails as a laptop because of the hardware (i.e., can't actually use it in your lap), fails as a tablet because of the software.
My SP3 pretty much lives in the docking station at home these days. My Google Pixel XL is pretty much a tablet, and my work laptop (XPS 15) covers me for my computing power needs when traveling. I don't even bring the Surface anymore.
I'm thinking my next desktop for home (to replace the Surface) will be some sort of Linux machine. The Surface was my first personal Windows computer. I'm realizing now that Ubuntu fills all my current needs, especially now that I can run some form of Visual Studio on it.
I am one of them.
Yeah, recently bought my first windows laptop in about 15 years. Not a surface but one of the Lenovo yogas. It's a neat little device and I enjoy the touch screen, but everything feels just slightly jankier than my macbook, especially scrolling / touchpad.
ditto here
These PR pieces are getting funnier each day.
Do people really want to switch from a rock-solid, sandboxed Unix to an inferior OS like Windows? Did people already forget the crazy days of regedit, zero app sandboxing, inconsistent installers, anti-viruses etc?
I wish more people jumped ship to Linux instead of the Apple/Windows duopoly, but if wishes were horses...
Windows of today is not the Windows of 10 years ago, and the Apple of today is not the Apple of 10 years ago.
Windows has improved considerably over the past decade, while Apple has shifted away from the professional market. It is realistic to believe that at least some people would switch platforms.
>> It is realistic to believe that at least some people would switch platforms.
I know "Post-PC" is the more popular buzzword, but "Post-OS" is probably a good one to use.
So much stuff is in the cloud these days that a lot of non-developers and non-creatives can probably use any OS these days without too much pain.
I switched to Windows from Mac a couple of years ago, and honestly, I don't miss it much. I did have to write off a pile of Mac software purchases, but I found reasonably priced alternatives that work as well.
If I get sick of Windows, I can easily transition to something else. Outside of some platform specific games, I can do just about everything I do now on another OS.
I detest Windows and much prefer Linux, but I have used OS X at work for years before, and caused it to crash regularly. Your experience will greatly depend on what applications you use and your usage pattern. I'd prefer more people switched to Linux too, but it's by no means certain that their experience would be better.
That's why AAPL must become 10x worse before I think of switching. There is no alternative to macOS. I wonder if they realise it.
good ol' Microsoft FUD if they had numbers I see no reason why the wouldn't make them public
I recently went back to Windows from macOS. Now I have many USB ports, a DVD burner, an ethernet port, an SD card slot, an HDMI output, a decent graphics card, expandability and compatibility. All things I'm not allowed to have on Macs any more.
Mac fanboys tell me "You idiot, you don't need any of that stuff." Actually I do. They tell me "No you are wrong." No, that's not correct. They don't actually know more about my requirements than I do. The real question is what bedevils the fanatics to insist they know more than the real experts such as myself? They make their claims with no knowledge or information with the insistence and loudness of a fundamentalist religious fanatic. Exploring this strange phenomenon is even more interesting I think than wondering what laptop one should get.
Yeah, soldered RAM and SSD is criminal.
As far as I can tell, only Mac allowing for RAM upgrades is iMac 5k and and MacPro. And iMac 5k doesn't allow disk upgrades.
Apple is losing ground, and this time it's not Steve's fault. I'll be sure to follow Apple when it will fall just so I can see the third coming of Christ. This time Steve will have to revolutionize resurrection; it's been 2000 years since the last innovation in that field.
I wouldn't be surprised, considering I was a die-hard Apple user for 15+ years until about three years ago.
After owning virtually every Mac from the iMac G3 to the last iMac, with the exception of the new MacPro and the eMac (lol), I will never purchase another Apple product for myself. That said, I am in charge of purchasing computers for an Architectural firm which insists on buying these computers - they claim clients expect to see Apple products during visits to display the company as "avant-garde", which, to me, just confirms the snobbery behind it.
I now use my Windows desktop for heavy work, carry a laptop with Fedora, Android Tablet for meetings, and have an old MacPro which I'm 'forced' to use for Sketch; I would argue that if it wasn't for the popularity of Mac-only design software like Principle and Sketch, there would be no reason to use OSX anymore outside of the GUI.
To be fair, Apple computers are still a good choice for teenagers, senior citizens and/or Interaction Designers, but I can't think of any reason a professional outside of Video Editing or Design would opt for a Mac.
My Mac just went belly up - a software corruption in my encrypted partition has rendered Mac OSX unusable. I took it to Apple, they spent over an hour throwing every piece of software they had at it. Their own diagnostic tools were freezing up from this issue. The tests that did run indicated no problem with the physical hardware, and indeed Windows runs flawlessly.
So their totally shit software destroyed itself and they don't have the tools to fix it. Now they're recommending forensic recovery and of course they won't pay the $500-1000 for that.
I think I'll be sticking with Windows from now on.
It's nice that they spent a hour trying to recover your software. How much did they charge for that? Now see what happens when you encounter a similar issue with another manufacturer. I'm sure they'll have people dedicated to fixing it for free.
Backups in OSX are extremely easy. The easiest I've ever seen. I can reinstall from my encrypted USB hard drive with just a few clicks. It comes online exactly how it was when the backup was taken! And I can choose from daily snapshots going back more than a year!