What a bizarre conclusion at the end. Is it a Macbook alternative? Yes but no, because "Switching ecosystems is dicey business."
Tech journalist's reasons for the Surface not being a viable option are getting ridiculous. The SP1 apparently wasn't powerful enough as a laptop and didn't have the battery of a tablet. The SP2 was powerful enough with a longer battery, but it's hard to use full Windows in a touch device. The SP3 is powerful enough, long lasting battery enough, light enough, with a big enough screen to use via touch, but then "lapability" became a metric in articles. Now everything's great, but "switching ecosystems is dicey business".
It's strange the way goalposts keep getting shifted with each iteration. I switched completely to the MS ecosystem with the SP3 and it was easy.
But all those criticisms of prior iterations were valid. My dad tried to use a surface 2 as his main machine. His big complaints? Screen is too small to use as a laptop and the kickstand + keyboard cover suck for using on your lap or in an airplane seat.
SP Book isn't so much an evolution of SP1 as it is an abandoning of most of SP1's key design decisions: laptop-size rather than tablet-size, full-keyboard rather than keyboard-cover, and clearly designed to be used foremost with keyboard and trackpad attached (most of the battery is in the keyboard base) rather than with touch.
It's slowly worked its way towards being a MacBook with a stylus and flexible hinge, instead of being an iPad with full-powered CPU and keyboard cover. And that's probably what it should have been all along.
But that's what I mean, fair enough if the screen was too small and kickstand fiddley on the SP2, but the SP3 fixed that completely. But then the goalposts shifted...
And they definitely aren't abandoning this philosophy seeing as they announced the SP4 at the same event. The Surface Book is a competitor to the Macbook Pro, but they aren't slowly creating a Macbook Pro. My sense is that Apple are now slowly moving in this direction.
The goalposts didn't shift. High priority complaints just tend to get more visibility than low priority complaints. Each iteration of the Surface Pro has fixed a high priority complaint, shaving it off the queue and revealing the rest of the queue. But the entire queue was always there from the beginning.
In other words, the issues that are now primary were previously secondary or tertiary in prior iterations of the Surface Pro. They existed, but there was little reason to focus on them because of other, more glaring problems that had to be fixed first.
I think you could say that the goalposts shifted. After a long time of whacking down the other complaints, people who would like machines like that have been using MacBooks. And so their target has likely been becoming increasingly entrenched in Mac Products.
> But that's what I mean, fair enough if the screen was too small and kickstand fiddley on the SP2, but the SP3 fixed that completely. But then the goalposts shifted...
I see it the other way. The SP2 was too small to use as a laptop so the lack of a proper hinge and keyboard was secondary. SP3 was big enough to use as a proper laptop, so the lack of a proper hinge and keyboard became more glaring.
In any case, the whole narrative is a bit revisionist. Here's me complaining about the Surface 1's lack of "lapability" almost three years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4869442. It was a common complaint at the time.
Switching ecosystems is dicey business, though. I definitely want a Surface Book, but my entire development setup is now UNIX-centric having used a Macbook since 2006(?). It's not that I can't switch back, but there's a big, $1,500 leap into the unknown to be made, which is a professional risk.
The point (as I understood anjc) is that "switching ecosystems is dicey business" would be a ridiculous statement to make in a review for an Apple product.
The press tends to treat Microsoft like Cinderella's stepmother treated her: unreasonably critical.
Historically, Apple absolutely would have been the risky platform to go for (I waited until their Intel laptops, using Boot Camp as an insurance policy). But these days people have iPhones, iPads, some even have Apple TVs... the Apple hardware ecosystem is actually far stronger than Microsoft's. You absolutely are risking that syncing with your iPhone etc will be worse.
Why are people trying to bend over backwards here? Let's step outside the startup world for some facts:
iPhone market share in the US is 43%. Macbook market share is 12%. So the vast majority of iPhone users are "risking" this.
Which is really not a risk at all, because if it really were a risk Apple would be shooting themselves in the foot. They would be killing one of their most successful products for the sake of some of their least.
I don't know for sure how many iPhone users have ever plugged their device into a computer for anything other than a quick battery top up, but my hunch is most people just don't sync phones with computers any more, they sync them with iCloud or Google. I don't own an iPhone, but I've never even attempted to synchronise my phone with my laptop - contacts, calendar, and email come from Google, music from Spotify, and video from Netflix or Amazon. The closest I've come is copying some photos off the SD card.
The only people that need to worry are professionals. Developers and so on. And they can decide themselves whether switching is a risk without a journalist saying that a good product isn't an alternative because of this risk.
The Microsoft hardware product line is arguably more complete than Apple's at this point, when you factor in the Xbox. There's minimal risk to casual users in switching.
I’m old enough to remember when people said things just like this about Apple products: “It’s very nice, but switching ecosystems away from Windows s risky.”
But it still is. As another comment said, only 12% of laptops are Macbooks; it'll remain very hard to replace PC's and Windows in the large corporate and government worlds, thanks to Windows-specific software. A lot of software is moving to a more OS-agnostic platform (i.e. web), and cross-platform applications (like MS Office) are becoming more and more the norm, but there's still a long way to go.
It'd help a lot if Microsoft manages to get .NET applications to become popular on OSX. That's only possible since this year, and it'll probably take a few more years for applications to become properly crossplatform.
You don't need to switch ecosystems when you buy an Apple product. Macs run Windows just fine, either as a VM or dual-boot. They also ship with a full Unix shell. Macs are popular in part because they are very flexible computers.
The Surface line is not as flexible. It's perfect for people who are immersed in the Windows world, but a lot of people are not anymore.
Exactly, not only is it irrelevant in a discussion about specific hardware, it's also subjective. I've found the transition to Windows easy (and well worth it) and I'm sure that my demands are more thorough than the average user's.
But with a Mac, if I find I don't like the OS X ecosystem, I can always install Windows and be done. I get to enjoy my laptop and the ecosystem I want. I can't do the opposite with a Surface.
I had to solve this problem when I built a new high-end desktop aimed at gaming a while back.
As it happens, Windows 10 is actually pretty great from a basic UX point of view. In many ways I find it better than OS X now in this regard, which I didn't think I'd ever say.
But the lack of Unix underpinnings was a big loss. My solution was to run Debian in Virtualbox. I set it up with xfce as the default window manager, since it tends to run really well in a VM. But in truth I almost always use xmonad, which runs even better in a VM. For me at least, this has been a nearly perfect solution.
With the addition of virtual desktops to Windows 10 you can keep the full-screen Virtualbox in another desktop. Switching between OSs just by pressing Ctrl+Super-Right/Left is fun.
Hyper-v runs debian fine if you rather avoid virtual box. Also there's cygwin for anything that doesn't require a vm (scripting). I'd always run a dev environment as a vm to simulate a production environment. However, if I'm just writing bash scripts or anything that doesn't require installing a db/web server/etc cygwin is adequate enough.
I think that's what I'd do. I don't have a problem running Sublime etc. in Windows, so I figure I'd only need command line access to the Linux box, so even windowing isn't a problem.
But still, my Macbook Pro is only about a year old. As much as I want to justify that upgrade...
Yes, I got an SP3 a couple of months ago so I'd have a machine for a road trip I was planning.
I'm pretty heavily invested in Linux, and before getting my SP3, I only ever used Windows for gaming. I considered dual-booting Linux, but I was nervous about accidentally screwing things up ahead of my trip, so I decided I'd postpone that to after my trip.
So I installed stuff to make myself comfortable instead. PuTTY was one of my first installs, so I could SSH into my VPS whenever I wanted a familiar command-line environment (and with that, access to my coding projects and vim). Another was the suite of KDE apps, so I could use the GUI apps I'm familiar with. TortoiseHg, too, so I could pull stuff down that I wanted to work on (I use Hg as a means of backing up my stuff -- not just code, but a lot of plain text documents and stuff -- to my VPS).
So, yes, if you want a Nix-like ecosystem on a Surface, you can do that. I could've gone even farther and installed a full Cygwin environment, but I didn't bother just because PuTTY into my VPS was a much more efficient way of accessing a CLI environment. For that matter, I could've installed a Linux VM, too (and I probably would have, but I forgot, and it didn't come to mind until I was already packing).
And it's totally possible to install Linux, if you want. There are guides for installing Arch, Ubuntu, etc. on the SP3, and I doubt the SP4 or SB will be much different. Only reason I didn't is because I wanted to make 100% sure that if I accidentally did something wrong and blew away the wrong part of my SP3, it wouldn't happen until after I'm home from my trip.
I currently do my dev on a Macbook Pro but exploring the options available on Windows because I intend to switch to either the Surface Book or SP4.
I think with babun for a basic unixy terminal and vagrant to manage projects I'll have a nice dev machine. The massive plus to the surface is having ability to sketch out anything I want which helps immensely trying to solve problems, kind of like an ultra mini whiteboard.
I have used MSYS2 but decided to come back to Cygwin.
1. Commands in MSYS2, while fast in its shell, are slower than Cygwin's commands when run in PowerShell.
2. MSYS2 can't be installed via Chocolatey. It's because MSYS2 owners are against Chocolatey (insane!). Which makes it harder to automate the replication of my environment across machines.
3. Cygwin does has package managers. I use Cyg-Get, which is also available via Chocolatey.
How is Cygwin terrible exactly? It’s fast and lightweight (compared to other recommendations like MobaXterm) and has a huge selection of packages¹. Frankly, I don’t get why Cygwin gets so much flack; I’m glad it exists.
And then there's vagrant. I switched back to MS because C# and profit, all other dev is on vagrant boxes which actually made things easier as I tend to be more comfortable with that what I push will work as I have the same *nix setup on my 127.0.01 as on remote.
Vagrant under VirtualBox is a little slow, but taking the time to set up WinNFSd is very worthwhile for real file I/O gains. If you want to pay for VMWare + VMWare's Vagrant plugin, you'll get even better performance.
Supposedly you can also use Hyper-V which is included by default on Windows 8 and later. But since the time I found that I didn't yet have a need for vagrant again.
I'm currently on Win10 Home, but I use Vagrant so extensively that it's probably worth an upgrade (besides that, it provides a lot of other great features, anyway).
It's especially dicey because Windows as an operating system has been a convulsing mess of confusion for years as they've tried and then partially abandoned a shift to mobile-first. It would make sense to wait for an actual paradigm to re-emerge before trying to get used to one.
I find that the UX experience of Windows 10 is better than that of OS X. That's highly opinionated, of course, but this is coming from someone who's been a more or less OS X diehard for 8 years.
Of course, Windows is still a mess under the hood, which is why I also run a VM (debian with xfce or xmonad).
Wow, it looks great! I especially like this section:
“unicode as expected
Unicode in midipix is not an afterthought, but rather an essential concept. When your application enters its main() function, for instance, its argv and envp point to utf-8 strings, just like they would on modern unix systems. Similarly, the size of the framework's native wide character (wchar_t) is four bytes, meaning that your unicode application can share its entire code-path between platforms. Last but not least, midipix adds an important 'M' (as in multibyte) variant to the 'A' (ansi) and 'U' (utf-16) GUI flavors, meaning that you can seamlessly call functions such as GetWindowText or SetWindowText using utf-8 input and output.”
Maybe they've fixed it since I tried it, but enabling Hyper-V on my Surface Pro 3 messed up sleep. It would only Hibernate and not reliably. Took me a couple weeks to figure out what happened.
Unix and Windows are two different cultures, it's not just about features/commands/tools - any of the latter has always a counterpart which "at least somewhat works", but that is besides the point.
Yes - and given that I'm trying to be more disciplined about doing my development work in Docker instances it might actually be the direction I'm headed in anyway.
It's difficult to test drive that idea, though. VirtualBox on my Macbook to Windows, SSHing to another VirtualBox for development? Hmm.
So true. Not everyone in the world is a programmer, developer or a "power" user.
Internet consumption and most applications are run within a browser today; so what does the author mean my ecosystem for everyday users? I'm pretty certain that installing a Linux distro would be a non-issue.
I held off on buying a machine when I heard MS was doing the Surface. I figured they'd nail the convertible tablet - it's not that hard. When they announced, I thought the specs were terrible, but hey maybe I could live with it. Then it became clear the keyboards were crap, and you couldn't actually use them as laptops, I laughed and got another ThinkPad.
Windows as a touch device has sucked forever. I know this having used convertibles in 2005. It's great when it works, but you better have a keyboard nearby. MS has done effectively nothing to make touch/pen really outstanding on Windows. Apart from their terrible Metro apps approach.
Surface Book looks great from the waist up. If Lenovo made a $500 adapter that let me slap an X201-style bottom on it, I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
The price/performance ratio wasn't good enough. I went with an ASUS laptop instead. Same price, but instead of 8GB of ram, I get 16 GB. Instead of 256 I get 512. Instead of i5, I get i7.
The monitor is much bigger as well. Sure, form factor is not as compact, but geez.
It used to be mediocre software where you got locked in and paid much. Now, it's a much more attractive experience with excellent hardware and reasonably priced, sexy software, but you are now the product.
Accepting this depends on your privacy requirements.
I'd really like to get one of these as my next laptop/mobile computing device.
However, with the Surface Pro 4 (and all previous iterations), it seems impossible to actually use on your lap. Granted, I haven't had an opportunity to try it, but the kickstand and attachable keyboard seem like they only work on an actual desk. I very rarely use my current laptop, a MacBook Air, on an actual desk.
The Surface Book easily solves that problem, but I've seen reports that the battery life is only about ~3 hours with the screen detached as a tablet. That's low enough to make me question the purchase. I've had to wait at an airport for over 3 hours before, and that means that my tablet would have went from 100% to 0% battery before even getting on the plane. Granted, the keyboard base has more batteries built into it, so the device would not be unusable in this scenario, but it would not be usable in its ideal form factor.
(This article, for what it's worth, claims 4 hours for the tablet and 8 hours for the bottom -- slightly more generous numbers.)
Edit/update: I forgot when writing this that the Surface Book's screen can be attached to the base backwards with the base folded back, thus getting the full ~12 hour battery life (plus the discrete GPU) at the cost of some extra bulk. Depending on just how bulky it is, that just might solve the problem for me.
I use my Surface Pro 3 on my lap a fair amount. It's not the best, but it's functional if I'm in a seat at the airport, or a hotel lobby, or on the couch. I've also realized that a lot of the work that I do in those situations involves more reading than intensive typing, and I'll just switch to using it as a tablet.
I would say that "lapability" comes up with about the same frequency that "I need to use my laptop while standing and it's a pain" and "this laptop is getting really hot on my lap" have happened with previous laptops I've owned.
I have the SP2 and it's almost impossible to use on your lap as a laptop it doesn't stay put.
The keyboard is not hard enough to type on comfortably and there aren't enough points of contact to prevent the damn thing from constantly sliding and tipping over.
The SP3 might be a bit better, the keyboard is supposed to be considerably better but as far as the SP2 goes the best way i found to actually use it on your lap is to lay it pretty much flat, using the kick stand never worked for me.
The SP3's continuous kickstand makes it a lot easier to use it in your lap. I upgraded from an SP1 to an SP3 (it hit a tile floor corner first), and while I know exactly what you're talking about, I don't think it's an issue anymore.
Could be, the biggest issue I have isn't with the angle of the kickstand (although if you don't sit a manner that allows you to have your thighs perfectly horizontal the SP2's angles are a huge limitations as there isn't an angle in which it won't want to tip over forward or backwards).
My biggest issue with the kickstand and I can't believe I'm using that word is the thigh gap... since there isn't a base and the keyboard isn't stiff enough to provide one the moment you move your your legs a bit either further apart or up / down the kickstand tilts and the surface slides down.
For me using the surface as a laptop pretty much means for me that i have to remain still and close my legs so much that I feel like I'm crushing my private parts, It could be just me but i got quite long legs and and if I keep the Surface closer to me i just can't type on it or see the screen without hunching over or breaking my neck.
I own an SP3 and ran Arch Linux on it for many months of constant roaming use, sitting, at tables, in bed, etc. I do own the detachable keyboard. I can say from extensive experience that it is very awkward to use on your lap compared to a true laptop.
The problem is that the center of gravity is under the screen/kickstand, not the base. The new book looks like a much better option in that regard.
> However, with the Surface Pro 4 (and all previous iterations), it seems impossible to actually use on your lap. Granted, I haven't had an opportunity to try it, but the kickstand and attachable keyboard seem like they only work on an actual desk.
I own an SP3. It's definitely possible to use it in your lap, but I don't know if I'd call it comfortable. It's really finicky: you have to set it up just right for it to be lappable. You have to get the kickstand in the right position (SP3/SP4 have a huge advantage over the SP1/SP2 here), you have to put it on the right part of your lap, you have to put the keyboard in angled mode (which, on your lap, makes it much easier to type but harder to hit the touchpad, so you'll end up relying on the screen for pointing), etc.
I've found that moving the kickstand to suit my position has become second nature. And although this does mean having to move the kickstand every now and then, you have a benefit over a laptop in that the screen wont budge a millimetre as you're using it, which is a benefit I wasn't expecting and makes reading/watching more pleasant.
> The Surface Book easily solves that problem, but I've seen reports that the battery life is only about ~3 hours with the screen detached as a tablet.
Which is why MS presents it as a "clipboard mode", and later descriptions indicated that the expectation and intended use was 80% "laptop". The Surface Book is a laptop first and foremost.
> it would not be usable in its ideal form factor.
Clipboard mode is not the ideal form factor of the surface book. If you do not like the Surface Pro's kickstand, you may be more interested in the iPad Pro whose keyboard stand seems stabler and "full surface".
Then you're looking for a tablet with an optional keyboard. If the Surface Pro seems dodgy wrt support the iPad Pro may be a better fit, the keyboard seems to provide more support than the Surface Pro's kickstand: http://cdn.maypalo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/iPad-Pro-k... (I don't know how flexible it is with respect to viewing angles though)
I really wish MSFT would hurry up and make a plain old one piece ultrabook. I really don't want a device with an innovative hinge and removable screen. An ultrabook with this level of design quality, and vanilla Windows you can buy at the MSFT store, would be an instant winner in my book.
There's the Asus UX305 or UX303 and the Dell XPS 13, both 2015 versions, both configurable at different price ranges from around $700 or $800, up to around $1700. The former is a bit slicker, the latter is a bit more powerful (although the infinity screen is pretty slick, too).
I can't get over some of the Windows trackpads though, I've happily used Windows desktops for 15 years, the hardware on Windows laptops is alright value, but I still choose Macbooks for the trackpad and increasingly the OS (and the resale value has always been great, too. Selling a 4 year old Macbook for 40% of the price means I look at a $1500 MBP as if it costs me $900, at which point using it for 4 years costs me less than $19 a month. Not something I mind paying). And it seems like MS covered exactly that with a great trackpad for once and attention to the drivers (although I've yet to test it, it looks promising). I hope like Google's Nexus series, it sets some minimum benchmark standards for vendors. iirc I tried the Asus UX305 with my gf a few months ago and the trackpad... just ugh. It's surprising how big of a deal this is to be, usually I'm a pretty compromising person who doesn't fret the small stuff but the feel to the touch, responsiveness etc on the trackpads have become a major stumbling block for me for Windows laptops.
My main computer is a UX305 running Ubuntu, can still dual boot to Windows. Trackpad seems great to me. In fact, I don't like the feel of the trackpads on the Macs I occasionally use. I think a big part of it is what you get used to.
I took her to the store to try some laptops before buying one as she'd been asking me to help with the buying decision. First stop, the UX305, had been reading great things, looked awesome and great specs for money (256gb SSD, 8gb RAM at $700 in a laptop that's thinner, lighter and smaller than a MBA yet has a 13' screen and a full HD (higher resolution than the MBA) screen while looking beautiful with a CPU that can handle most things a typical MBA user does? Talk about MBA killer! I mean hell right now this thing's on Newegg for $680, minus another $100 rebate, that's just ridiculous) so I'd been recommending it to her for days.
But the trackpad and to a lesser extent the keyboard immediately turned her off. I didn't mind the keyboard much but coming from the MBP I really wasn't feeling the trackpad, perhaps it's as you say 'what you get used to', but I'd used Windows laptops for 5-6 years, never really liked the experience and was very much a desktop guy, but the MBP really changed that. I still keep it docked most of the time but I don't dislike this specific trackpad anymore (although I do still prefer a mouse). So the Windows trackpad I was used to I really didn't like, and was fine using the MBP's trackpad once I got it. Anyway despite me urging her to reconsider the UX305 and Dell XPS 13 she eventually chose the MBA in large part over that, which is still a really solid machine if you can look past the ridiculous resolution which to my complete surprise she was unable to notice after I pointed it out to her in the store a couple times.
I've seen several 'fixes' to the UX305's trackpad by the way, like on Windows 10 there's a driver issue you can resolve and you can find how-tos on youtube to do this yourself. Perhaps in the store when we tried out the UX305 they hadn't implemented all the right drivers because I faintly recall thinking of the trackpad issues at the time 'this stuff must be fixable with some drivers'.
I'd like that too. My current device is a Thinkpad Yoga that I love, but I've lost a lot of trust in Lenovo and don't think I would buy from them again. There really isn't anything out there other than a Macbook (running Windows in a VM or reformatted) that I can see myself getting.
I also wish they would release a smaller version of Windows for business use. I want my operating system to simply support the software I run. Cortana, live tiles, and most personalization functions decrease the value of Windows 10 for me. I'd get rid of all the Bing apps (Weather, Finance, Sports, News, Music, etc...) too. If you don't use them, it's just bloatware and I don't understand why they make it difficult to uninstall those applications.
Try checking how much space the Bing apps take up, preferably before you've used any of them....
Windows 10 is actually quite economical in the space it uses. Remember, the full OS runs on 32-bit tablets with only 1GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.
The MacBook means giving up the touch-screen, tablet and high-end pen functionality that you would get with a Surface Pro.
Also, it seems a little inconsistent to worry about the space taken up by Bing apps while contemplating a solution that requires two whole operating systems and a VM ;-)
> Try checking how much space the Bing apps take up
Space is one concern. The other is that these things tend to be taking up cycles in the background. So there is some power consumption and bandwidth use. Plus, none of them are bug-free and so there are security concerns as well (not to mention the privacy issues).
> giving up the touch-screen, tablet and high-end pen functionality that you would get with a Surface Pro
If those functions were useful to me, I would be happy with a Surface Pro or Book. I have a Thinkpad Yoga that can do all that stuff and I've never actually used any of it other than to try it.
> it seems a little inconsistent to worry about the space taken up by Bing apps while contemplating a solution that requires two whole operating systems
The difference is that I have no interest in running any of those applications whereas if I had Mac OS available, there are Mac applications I would run (I'm a big fan of the Omni Group's software). No matter what machine I have, I'll be running Linux in a VM anyway, so that VM overhead is acceptable.
> I have a Thinkpad Yoga that can do all that stuff and
> I've never actually used any of it other than to try it.
That surprises me, since I've just had to admit to myself that the ability to manipulate the screen directly is extremely useful.
Thinking like you, I recently bought a new laptop without a touch screen (it was cheaper). A couple of weeks later, I returned it and paid the extra for one with a touch screen.
I work mostly with text so the most important thing to me is having a good keyboard. I don't like touchscreen laptops because I don't like fingerprints on the screen.
> I recently bought a new laptop
What laptop do you use and how do you like it?
As for the Bing apps, I get it that for what they do, they are efficient. But for me they provide no value and so the fact that they use some space, CPU, bandwidth, have bugs, and have privacy issues means that I would like to be able to uninstall them and not think about them. I don't understand why they aren't at least easily uninstalled. It makes me wonder if the data they send back to Microsoft is valuable even when they aren't actively used.
Currently on a Lenovo Yoga, being the cheapest range with a decent keyboard. However, it's a holdover machine. The longer term plan is to buy something designed for Windows 10, probably next year. (Windows 10 isn't finished and the hardware isn't here yet.) So, at this stage, I don't know.
Re Bing apps, they were created to get some stylish-looking apps into the Windows Store, to get Windows 8 users used to apps, and to provide examples to third-party developers. I expect them to be installed on demand, and a couple of them are already scheduled to be discontinued. They're really not worth obsessing over.
Microsoft said: "You can turn off Input Personalization at any time. This will stop the data collection for this feature and will delete associated data stored on your device, such as your local user dictionary and your input history. As Cortana uses this data to help understand your input, turning off Input Personalization will also disable Cortana on your device. At https://www.bing.com/account/personalization, you can also clear data sent to Microsoft, such as your contacts and calendar data, user dictionary, as well as search and browsing history if your device also had Cortana enabled."
Cortana is just a cute name for part of the indexed search feature, which is controlled by Group Policies:
Cortana is not turned on by default, and if she's not been turned on, there is no real benefit to removing "her".
However, for the record, I think Cortana is great....
Since Windows 10 is "Windows as a service", patched and maintained remotely, I'd expect random screwing around to be repaired remotely. However, it would be interesting to know if this will affect Windows' stability or performance. However, in general, it's probably a bad idea to mess around with the workings of things you don't understand.
This is one of the reasons I don't mess around with Android, or try to remove all the Google apps I don't want, or remove Google Now ;-)
I don't have a Microsoft account, so the account personalization link doesn't work. Unfortunately, my machine is still constantly contacting Microsoft. It's a problem because I'm often tethering my computer to my phone and I have pretty limited bandwidth caps.
Ah. Have you set Windows 10 to not download from a metered account?
The main point of Windows 10 is that it's a mobile operating system with cloud integration. (Remember, the same OS runs on smartphones. Cortana, apps, and Live Tiles came from Windows Phone.)
The Microsoft account gives you access to 15GB of free space on OneDrive, and the online Office apps (including OneNote and some new ones). The idea is to use the same apps on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets so you get the benefits of a cross-platform ecosystem.
It's also maintained and updated on a continuous basis -- remember it's "Windows as a Service". If you read all of this page (1), it will give you a good idea of the telemetry involved.
If you had Windows 10 Pro laptop joined to a company domain you would get a lot of control, but if you're operating as a consumer/amateur then you're fighting the whole design of the system, and that's probably a losing battle. It's like a vegan complaining about a steak-house menu.
That will work if you're tethering via WiFi, but Windows won't let you set an "Ethernet" (RNDIS) connection as metered, presumably because no Microsoft engineer has encountered such thing as a bandwidth cap.
Funny as it may sound, the Razer Blade might fit that bill for you, depending on what you mean by 'ultrabook'.
It's a 14" Retina-like notebook, great trackpad with click buttons, extremely powerful internals, all-metal chassis, and only slightly bigger than a Macbook. They sell them at the MS store and if you buy from there they come with plain-vanilla Windows installed, without crapware. They also run Ubuntu extremely well.
There are downsides: it's very expensive, you're buying from a less-well-known supplier, parts are proprietary so home repair is out of the question, and you have to be OK with the black chassis and 90's-hacker-green keyboard.
But the system itself is outstanding. Don't know why it's not recommended more often, especially considering it's very Linux-friendly.
How's the battery life and thermal management? Those would be my two main concerns with a gaming-oriented laptop. I do agree that it looks quite slick.
It gets very hot during gaming, but for day to day use the temperature is just fine. Battery life is good. I dual boot and use Ubuntu 98% of the time, and on 15.04 it gets 4-5 hours I think.
The $700 Asus Zenbook is probably the closest we'll get to that. MS isn't going to become a company that attacks its OEM's product lines on the regular. The Surface line is pretty unique and doesn't overlap OEM products, at least for the most part. There are some oddball Lenovos and ASUS's kinda sorta close to a Surface, but they weren't selling.
The thing is, MSFT really does need to attack the OEMs-get them to up their game, and (naively, perhaps?) to drastically reduce the number of products they offer.
MS tried controlling OEMs in the 90s and was shot down by the DOJ. I'm not sure if you want a strong MS again, even though its obvious now that the ruling was over-reaching.
Its only now that a lot of those provisions have expired that it can start being slightly tougher with OEMs - making its own products, making its own anti-virus, selling non-crapified computers in its own stores, etc. MS's hands will always be tied from this questionable ruling and the threat of another similar ruling in the future. The rise of mobile is probably also helping as MS can easier claim its not the sole monopoly in computing.
I agree. A couple of the problems it would address is hardware quality and what consumers should expect from a new windows machine. Microsoft can establish a good baseline or a high end halo product like what they've done with their expanded surface line.
I agree, too. Unfortunately, high quality construction costs money, and most people buy on price. That's why those crappy vendors have more than 90% of the market.
Asus is trying a couple of machined-aluminium Windows Transformer Books with Chi branding. They are very well made. Heard of them? Think they're outselling plastic $199 HP Streams?
I really enjoyed my Acer Aspire S7 touchscreen, one-piece ultrabook. Really a fantastic, lightweight, great looking computer. I ended up selling it for a SP3, which I prefer. But after doing lots of research and testing out various ultrabooks, I liked the S7 the best.
I don't see a one piece in their future, but I believe this does run vanilla Windows 10. And even they believe you'll run this as a one piece 80% of the time.
All they have to do is pickup an X201, slap a decent panel and modern Intel chip in it, an they're essentially done.
Surface Book looks like they're trying too hard to copy Macbook, down to the crappy keyboard and no-button trackpad. No trackpoint, either. I wonder if it burns hot like a Macbook, too?
I think the Surface tablets are superior hardware compared to the new iPad Pro, HOWEVER, since I'm mainly going to use the iPad Pro for art, I'm afraid the apps on iOS are actually going to be cheaper and better.
I've been surprised by the quality, low price, and useability of of iOS and OSX creative apps. Hype, Pixelmator, Sketch, and Over. Are really good tools, and they are cheap.
The Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) are still the best tools from a feature perspective, but they are expensive, and they are now on a subscription plan. I don't make art for a living ... I do it for fun ... so I can't justify spending that much money every month, for something I might or might not use.
I have rented Creative Suite to use for a month on occasion (to edit a Wedding video and to design some invitations), but day to day, I'm usually messing around in Pixelmator these days.
The only thing I miss from Adobe is Lightroom. There's nothing like Lightroom. I'm stuck using the last non-subscription version of Lightroom, and will probably never upgrade. Pretty sad about that.
I wish there were products like Pixelmator and Sketch for PC.
The only thing I miss from Adobe is Lightroom. There's nothing like Lightroom. I'm stuck using the last non-subscription version of Lightroom, and will probably never upgrade. Pretty sad about that.
Lightroom is actually available for purchase separately, I think it might be the only Creative Suite product that's still available that way. Just search Amazon for Lightroom 6 or buy directly from Adobe.com.
I will say I like Lightroom but the way Adobe force updates annoys me. Instead of a new Lightroom offering new features and benefits, you HAVE To upgrade Lightroom for new Camera Raw versions (meaning if a camera is newer than the next version of Lightroom, it won't be supported on the old version).
For example, I own Lightroom 4 (2012), it does everything I need but I cannot use it with my camera purchased in 2014 because Camera Raw doesn't support it (even though the actual format of the RAW files is identical, just the camera's ID metadata has changed).
PS - Disclaimer: I actually have Creative Cloud now. Got it after my Lightroom 4 stopped working. It is the "At Home" deal via work ($10 per year for me for home, because my work already pays for an enterprise license).
>I wish there were products like Pixelmator and Sketch for PC.
Sketch hasn't really been replicated on PC yet exactly but I think web tools are now getting there. Webflow, Pinegrow and this new webbased one called "UX App" come to mind.
For photo manipulation, getting something like pixelmator is pretty simple on PC I think. I mean you have the corel software, serif software, xara software plus now Krita is a pretty good and fun painting program. You also have manga studio (aka Clip studio paint) and a bunch of other little ones. PD Howler, formerly known as Project Dogwaffle. I think even adobe released another recent photoshop elements too, which I would think could take care of a huge number of things that pixelmator does.
What do you want from an app that you'd like on PC? If you can't get a student version of Photoshop or something, then presumably Corel Paintshop Pro, Manga Studio, GIMP would cover your needs? Manga Studio is my preference.
Personally I couldn't fathom using iOS to produce anything significant without having a large hard drive, easy access to the filesystem, and a file manager. The iPad Pro will at least have a suitable digitiser, but I don't get why people would use an iPad with the limitations it creates.
> I realized just how far from irrelevant Microsoft has become
When I stay away from the media, I tend to keep this realization. I don't think people realize how nimble Microsoft can be. They've done many firsts in their labs. Microsoft never left the ring.
I've seen previous mentions of it (probably on /r/microsoft or somesuch), though they stated 3h in "tablet mode" (screen only, not design mode with the screen reverted on the base)
I wonder if the top will recharge from the base if I have been using it in tablet mode for a while, then put it back in laptop mode without plugging into external power?
I'd love to know how much pressure can the hinge withstand before deforming. Since the lid does not rest flat on the base, all forces are applied on relatively small regions and it seems like it'd be easy to either deform it or just crack the tablet side.
There's a lot of fluff in this article, but little technical details. I'd be curious how the hinge works, and although a whole section of the article is dedicated to it, I explains nothing.
> It’s also, claims Panay, a first. “It’s never been done before. This product is the first ever where the GPU is in the base and then a second GPU is in the top.” The result is a “balance” between hardware and software.
Apple has had GPU switching for quite a while (my 2010 MacBook Pro has it, and I don't think it was the first). So clearly MS didn't invent that.
I wonder if what he's talking about is the fact that it's a mainstream production system where the dedicated GPU is actually removable. Not a "Plug this into your Thunderbolt port" thing or a "Turn it off and stick this module in", but a "just pull it apart and the GPU is no longer there".
See comments just below. You've been able to use external graphics cards with Windows for ages, and it was a feature of ThinkPad docks back in 2007 or so, if not before.
And you're still missing the point. Microsoft's claim was about a single, integrated product.
So let me simplify:
1) ThinkPad docks are an *optional accessory* that are
not an *integrated* part of the product.
2) the top part of the Surface Book doesn't have USB or
display ports. You can't buy it without the bottom
part.
3) Windows 10 is the first version of Windows to support
the necessary, seamless multiadapter support they
needed to allow seamless transitioning between the
integrated GPU and the discrete GPU
Other products have had bits and pieces of almost everything in the Surace Book (none of them had the changes present in Windows 10, obviously); what Microsoft presented is the first fully-integrated representation of that technology today, that I am personally aware of. If you can show another laptop, that out of the box, in its base, has a GPU, and a detachable screen, I'm sure we'd all like to see it. Microsoft's claims are very specific.
Microsoft had some very specific, contextual qualifications to their statement. Since we're being pedantic, I though it was important to note the subtle distinctions.
How many previous removable keyboard computers even had 2 GPUs?
(The claim isn't that GPU switching had never been done, it's that they put one in each part of the device. Which is sort of less interesting than the switching, but it's neat that the power hungry one is attached to the bigger battery.)
>Apple has had GPU switching for quite a while (my 2010 MacBook Pro has it, and I don't think it was the first). So clearly MS didn't invent that.
Adding to this: Nvidia has also been advertising GPU switching for quite a while now, under the Optimus brand. I don't think it's a coincidence that MS went with Nvidia over AMD for the SB.
> my 2010 MacBook Pro has it, and I don't think it was the first
NVidia had unveiled Optimus (its graphics-switching solution) in February, but I don't know if there were laptops using it by April (when the 2010 MBP was releaased). Considering a bunch of optimus-based laptops were announced with Optimus itself, probably.
The internals of the hinge, as shown in an "X-ray" style rendering in their keynote presentation, appeared to be remarkably similar to the design of the hinge used on the Lenovo Yoga 3.
So if mechanically unlocking the screen has a dedicated key and software sound, does this mean you cannot get the screen off the keyboard if the OS isn't running? That would be unfortunate, for what seems like an otherwise great product.
To energise the nitinol requires battery power at least. I would hope that it would be able to do that without being powered up. But yes, that detail is missing.
Well, given that the Surfacebook utilizes computing power in the attached keyboard, maybe disconnecting it without properly checking processes could cause bad things to happen?
So, given that Tim Cook has welcomed Microsoft onto the stage at the last keynote, and Satya Nadella has been fairly aggressive pushing Microsoft software products onto Apple gear, when will the Surface Book, OS X edition, appear? Or will we have to wait for bastardized hackintosh versions?
the bits about the importance of the "hinge being able to connect two devices going forwards" in the middle of the article really made me remember the MS "courier" prototype.
i really suspect they'll launch a "second touchscreen" peripheral that replaces the keyboard section of the surfacebook.
I've taken to simply running VMware in kiosk mode. Full-screen Linux desktop (cause life without xmonad...), no Windows in sight except via the "boss key" sequence. Then I get the benefits of using Linux, with the battery life, sleep/resume, drivers, etc. of using Windows.
I'd love to not use Windows as a host, but life's too short for dealing with Linux on laptops. Despite how ThinkPads are great for it and stuff "mostly just works".
The work on Surface Book probably started before Nadella even got the CEO job -- shouldn't Ballmer get some thanks for putting Microsoft on the right track?
It's interesting to see how much positive personal acclaim Nadella is getting for the hardware strategy that was initiated in the Ballmer/Sinofsky era.
> It's interesting to see how much positive personal acclaim Nadella is getting for the hardware strategy that was initiated in the Ballmer/Sinofsky era.
I suspect it will run Linux but you're probably going to lose a lot of the hardware functionality. If you have dual-GPU version you can expect that not to work at all.
I have a Windows ultrabook and it's not worth running Linux natively because it won't be able to use the hardware to its full capacity. Luckily, it's painless to run Linux in a VM.
The fact that the surface pro 4 has a much more robust battery life, without the keyboard attached, makes it my product of choice if I'm going to buy one of these things. Thing is, I don't need all the extra horsepower from this machine. Awesome design.
I think this is a promotion / "native content" paid for by Microsoft. The article is unreadable for its fawning over the new Surface laptop. And I even think it looks decent as a piece of hardware!
I suspect that regardless of how good a device MS comes up with, they can't win with the consumers, since Windows is strongly associated with the dreadful office computers and the IT-tyranny of the workplace. Who wants to use Windows at home after using it in the office all day?
Besides, every single Windows computer I have had in family after a 6 months of use turned into slow as crawl horrible insufferable piece of junk. A full minute to switch users on a pretty powerful machine! The Macs, on the other hand, seem to be holding pretty well. Viruses, crappy drivers, bad software, the entire Windows ecosystem just does not work all that well, and it is very apparent to people using it at home.
I suspect the same group of people that bought Lumina phones and Zunes will buy this, a couple of idiotic suits at work will show up with it, and a couple of years later this will wither and die like all other things Microsoft. MS is yesterday and there's nothing they can do about it.
I suspect that regardless of how good a device MS comes up with, they can't win with the consumers, since Windows is strongly associated with the dreadful office computers and the IT-tyranny of the workplace. Who wants to use Windows at home after using it in the office all day?
I'm sure lots of people think of the office when they boot up their Xbox One. Also most offices I have seen don't even run the consumer version of Windows (Windows 8 tile mode).
I think many techies especially techies like myself that live in say Boston, New York, San Francisco are in a microcosm of Apple is everywhere. Other than mobile phones MS is actually pretty damn ubiquitous and is not necessarily going to wither and die.... speaking of which do know how many times Apple has come up with things that have withered and died? Or any big company for that matter? Also wasn't Apple yesterday at one point but then rebooted? Try to keep an open mind.
> I suspect the same group of people that bought Lumina phones and Zunes will buy this, a couple of idiotic suits at work will show up with it, and a couple of years later this will wither and die like all other things Microsoft. MS is yesterday and there's nothing they can do about it.
Tech journalist's reasons for the Surface not being a viable option are getting ridiculous. The SP1 apparently wasn't powerful enough as a laptop and didn't have the battery of a tablet. The SP2 was powerful enough with a longer battery, but it's hard to use full Windows in a touch device. The SP3 is powerful enough, long lasting battery enough, light enough, with a big enough screen to use via touch, but then "lapability" became a metric in articles. Now everything's great, but "switching ecosystems is dicey business".
It's strange the way goalposts keep getting shifted with each iteration. I switched completely to the MS ecosystem with the SP3 and it was easy.