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Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

67 pointsby vsakosover 8 years ago

30 comments

gnaddelover 8 years ago
I have become extremely weary of buying Microsoft hardware products. I was (and am) very happy with my Surface Pro 2. Recently, my power supply broke after two years of use, perfectly fine in my book, it happens. However, Microsoft has stopped selling replacement parts after less than three years. I did not find any vendor in Germany that could still deliver. I got lucky and found _one_ seller in the UK. There are some third party copies of the adapter, but due to the proprietary connector they are rare and reviews are abysmal.
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lostgameover 8 years ago
Unfortunately, Apple&#x27;s done such a good job of keeping me locked to their software ecosystem I cannot consider this, though I vastly prefer the Surface hardware.<p>Even if I wasn&#x27;t an iOS developer, my other two jobs are Audio Production&#x2F;editing and Video Production&#x2F;editing.<p>While I could almost happily toss Final Cut out the window (we all know what a disaster the FCP7 -&gt; FCPX transition was, and my friends in the industry tell me Premiere is where it&#x27;s at right now), I am highly, highly dependant on Logic.<p>I&#x27;ve been using Logic in some shape or form for more than a decade, I picked up my first Mac Mini G4 in 2004(5?) and proceeded to learn Garageband inside out and backwards, got all the Jam Packs (which are now included in Logic, they used to be $99&#x2F;apiece and now all 6 are included in Logic for $199...go figure) and got completely used to making music this way. (I moved to actual Logic from GB in 2008-2009.)<p>I&#x27;ve tried Ableton, and can&#x27;t get past it&#x27;s convoluted UI and complete lack of bundled instruments (Logic comes with more than 50GB of included content, and recently added a phenomenal new synth called Alchemy), Pro Tools is expensive and almost requires better than top-of-the-line Mac hardware, etc, etc.<p>The amount of time it would take me to switch, and learn another DAW, after 10 years of experience, I&#x27;d never get back.<p>I can open Logic, pick up a MIDI instrument, select some of the phenomenal built-in sounds, get a USB mic and have a freakin&#x27; awesome track down in like a half-hour.<p>Possible with Ableton or Pro Tools? Of course. But I&#x27;m not about to throw 10 years of experience out the window.<p>Combine that with xCode and it&#x27;s iOS-specific toolkit, Final Cut (which I&#x27;m finally used to) and I get this really shitty realization that I&#x27;m going to be stuck with this software for a long, long, time and am basically just at the mercy of Apple&#x27;s business decisions.
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csixty4over 8 years ago
The page is kinda light on details.<p>From my experience doing web development, msys2 + PuTTY&#x2F;Pagent give me pretty much everything I need. I don&#x27;t even use bash; everything I need is available from cmd.exe, including tools like ls &amp; grep.<p>Microsoft isn&#x27;t going to say so, but you can get an Office365 gift card for like $20 on eBay. That gives you the Office apps plus a good chunk of storage on OneDrive and some Skype credit for a year.<p>It wasn&#x27;t as painful of a transition as I expected. I guess it helps that so much of my life is in the cloud these days anyway.
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morleyover 8 years ago
I&#x27;m a frontend dev who worked on Windows for 4 years, and switched to Mac in the last 2.<p>The biggest hurdle I had with switching was the muscle memory of cmd-[char] vs. ctrl-[char], and tangentially the Windows-specific productivity keyboard shortcuts (mainly win-[char]) and Mac-specific ones.<p>The second-biggest hurdle is the different mouse movement kinetics on each platform.<p>These are still &quot;hurdles&quot;: I have a Macbook at work, and a Macbook Air and Windows desktop at home. I basically can&#x27;t do external keyboard + mouse at work for fear of screwing up my muscle memory for when I use my Windows desktop.<p>All this to say, it&#x27;s not the camera, graphics card, detachable screen, or whatever is highlighted on this page that makes the switch hard. It&#x27;s the low level stuff.
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hartatorover 8 years ago
I think it&#x27;s interesting they don&#x27;t mention Linux subsystem for Windows 10.<p>As a developer, MacOS CLI was the biggest advantage over Windows. Now, you have the full Ubuntu CLI at your fingertip including apt-get install. No VM. It&#x27;s a big selling point.
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wyagerover 8 years ago
This &quot;switch from mac&quot; furor is hilarious to me. In 3 years people will be saying &quot;Remember how upset people were getting about losing the escape key?&quot;. This feels the same as Apple not supporting flash or microsd cards on iPhones. Everyone made a big stink about it at the time, and a few years down the road flash is dead and no one cares about microsd cards. It will be the same with USB C and dongles; in a few years everything will be on USB C anyway.
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bhupsover 8 years ago
&quot;Hello I&#x27;m a Mac. And I&#x27;m a PC!&quot;<p>We&#x27;ve come full circle!
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jamesmp98over 8 years ago
Unless you are a mobile developer and your clients always want iOS apps.
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nealsover 8 years ago
I was actually planning to switch to OSX last year, but when no new MBP came out, I opted for a Surface pro 4 instead. Sure am glad I did.
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miahiover 8 years ago
What&#x27;s interesting for me is that nowhere on the site, even when you compare, configure, or try to buy the Surface Book, is mentioned what kind of &quot;i5&quot; or &quot;i7&quot; you get (also for GPU). All you can see when you &quot;configure&quot; is something like &quot;6th Gen Intel Core i7, 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM &#x2F; dGPU&quot;
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newtorobover 8 years ago
Man, it seems everyone is chomping at the bit to take Apple&#x27;s customers after that awful keynote.
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tomtang0514over 8 years ago
The image on the top of the page seems to feature a 2nd gen macbook pro (the one before retina display). Hmm, a bit shady...
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dluanover 8 years ago
I wonder with the sheer number of these kinds of posts, is anyone at Apple panicking at all?
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Unbeliever69over 8 years ago
As an industrial designer, Ux designer, and a programer I have found anything &quot;Microsoft&quot; (hardware or software) offensive to my sight, taste, touch, ears, and soul. I&#x27;m a Mac user at home and in the office, mainly for application development. BSD Unix under the hood just makes my life as a programmer feel more integrated. I&#x27;ll have to look at the Linux CLI on the Surface and see how I feel. Most importantly, I love how my Mac just stays out of my way.<p>I also use Windows at the office for AutoCAD because the Mac version is inferior to the Windows counterpart. Our machines and OS are modern, but I want to carve my eyes out with a spork on a daily basis using Windows 10.<p>THAT BEING SAID, we&#x27;ve got our eyes on the Surface Studio for the boss to use. We&#x27;ll see how I feel then. I still have a copy of Adobe Master Collection cs6 that I paid good money for with, no Windows machine to use it on!
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gueloover 8 years ago
If the Surface Book had a 32gb ram option and 7th gen Intel chip it would be more interesting. As it is, it&#x27;s pretty much the same specs as the Macs. If you&#x27;re a gamer it does have a better GPU option for an extra $200, and if you&#x27;re a photographer maybe the SD slot could convince you.
emeralddover 8 years ago
My biggest complaint about Windows, from a pure usability stand point, is the fact that I have yet to find anything close to a functional multi-desktop app. There used to be something as part of XP powertoys (it performed badly as I remember it) but I have yet too see anything since then. Ignoring most of the philosophical issues, that alone makes the platform a non-starter as my daily driver.<p>I tend to use desktops to organize tasks or task sets. (one for email, jira, time tracking. Another for the set the current ticket I&#x27;m working on: editor, browser, logs, query tool, and maybe others for incidentals that pop up: research, support questions etc...) Mutli-desktop has become my goto technique for off loading a large chunk of mental state.
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huangc10over 8 years ago
These types of ads or product pages will only appeal to individual users. Ineffective.<p>Try convincing the thousands of companies that have their engineers working on macbooks. It is way more efficient to have everyone on a team use the same OS and hardware (for obvious reasons) therefore I don&#x27;t think Apple is even phased at all with these Microsoft comparison tactics.<p>Maybe the ecosystem will change in the next 10 yrs. After all, history does repeat itself. For now, I&#x27;m sticking with my macbook for home and my company issued macbook for work.<p>&quot;Turning and turning in the widening gyre&quot;.
mastermojoover 8 years ago
I just. I just really don&#x27;t want to have to learn powershell =(
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klagermkiiover 8 years ago
If I can&#x27;t get 32GB of RAM on the Surface Book either, then I&#x27;ll blame it on Intel for now and hope it&#x27;s an option in the next MacBook Pro.
H4CK3RM4Nover 8 years ago
$1499 (minimum surface-book pricing) Surface - &quot;6th generation core i5&quot;(no mention of clock speed), 128GB SSD, 8GB ram(no mention of speed), Touch Screen, Whatever the fuck they call their shitty excuse to build a facial recognition database MacBook Pro - 2GHz i5, 256GB SSD, 8GB 1866MHz RAM, Intel Iris 540 graphics (at least twice as many GFLOPS as the HD graphics), trackpad w&#x2F;force touch and good drivers, unlock w&#x2F; Apple Watch.<p>1999(highest price before MacBooks go 15 inch, for a bit less you can sacrifice 256GB storage and get a dGPU on the Surface)<p>Surface - &quot;6th generation core i5&quot;(no mention of clock speed), 256GB SSD, 8GB ram(no mention of speed), Touch Screen, Whatever the fuck they call their shitty excuse to build a facial recognition database Seriously, literally the only thing to change for this model appears to be the SSD.<p>MacBook Pro - 2.9GHz i5, 512GB SSD, 8GB 2133MHz RAM, Intel Iris 550 graphics (at least twice as many GFLOPS as the HD graphics), trackpad w&#x2F;force touch and good drivers, unlock w&#x2F; Apple Watch, touch bar and Touch ID(w&#x2F;their secure enclave so the NSA can&#x27;t log your fingerprint)<p>After that it just becomes unfair because the MacBooks become 15 inch and their dGPU has 2GB memory instead of the Surface&#x27;s 1GB(which is the only actual spec I can find on the surfaces graphics)
davidcollantesover 8 years ago
For me, the OS is a deal breaker. If I could run--legally--macOS on Surfaces, it would be an easier switch. The saying that you marry the bride&#x27;s family applies: nice hardware, got to buy into Windows too. I don&#x27;t want it.
AlphaWeaverover 8 years ago
I have been beyond satisfied with my new Surface Book... no issues whatsoever.
orfover 8 years ago
I&#x27;ve got a 2015 Macbook Pro and I&#x27;m sorely tempted to get a Surface when&#x2F;if it breaks down. The detachable screen is a gamechanger, but it&#x27;s still a bit small (12.3&quot;) for my taste.
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aantixover 8 years ago
But... I work on open source. Does Windows 10 have POSIX compatibility?
anthonybsdover 8 years ago
I love how they use an image of a 7 year old macbook in the ad to make surface thickness look good in comparison. Look at that bezel - it&#x27;s a pre-retina, circa 2009 :)
evo_9over 8 years ago
I remember not long ago when it was Apple running Switch to Mac ads trying to get Windows users to buy Macs. Funny how things have changed.
jaxonduover 8 years ago
Find it strange I can&#x27;t locate the screen size of the Surface Book on this comparison page. Have to go to Tech Spec page.
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sidcoolover 8 years ago
How would the pen and surface dial fit in software development workflow?
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globuousover 8 years ago
How old is that MBP on the first picture ?
icinnamonover 8 years ago
I like that Microsoft is making an effort to capture the audience that wasn&#x27;t impressed by Apple&#x27;s MBP launch, but I can&#x27;t get over their comparison chart.<p>They compare the <i>main screen</i> of the Surface to the <i>lower screen</i> (touch bar) of the MBP. That&#x27;s just a shady comparison. At least be honest.
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