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Microsoft Surface Studio

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Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#321

Post by jff »

kayoone wrote: post #303
gthtjtkt wrote: post #132

$2,999 and the best GPU option is a last-gen mobile card? The default 965M is a crappy budget card (half the performance of the 980M), and if you want the 980M you have to pick the $4,199 configuration. And hybrid drives!? This thing starts at $2,199 and you can't even get a full SSD? I know 2D designers probably won't mind the GPU, but they could definitely benefit from a true SSD. Hell, the recently announced Razer…

typical HN naysayer, if Apple did this everyone would be raving about it. Maybe you missed that the screen also includes a Wacom digitizer ? Compare the price to a 27" Wacom Cintiq and it might make more sense to you. Other than that it's gorgeous, GPU performance is adequate for the usecase, better than the 5K iMac anyway.

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#322

Post by Ant5do »

usaphp wrote: post #171
mozumder wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Apple (Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, PowerBook, PowerMac G5) user for 15 years, of photo processing & inDesign layout, I agree. XCode & iOS development is going to keep me on Apple for now, though, but the Linux subsystem for Windows is really appealing. The BSD Unix environment is the whole reason I went with Apple in the first place. OS X is basically a Unix workstation & perfected anything the Linux desktop wanted t…

> "Surprised MS went with nVidia 980s instead of 1080s" It's not even 980, its 980m which is significantly slower than 980, nevermind 1080. And the 980m only comes in the $4199 option, that's ridiculous...

Okay, seriously. The iMac comes with a 395x mobile gpu. It's pretty comparable to the 980m. The 1070m and 1080m don't exist yet. If you guys actually knew more about hardware than nothing, maybe you'd realize that it's not possible to get a 1080m.

iMacs and Macbook Pros (top of the line 15-inch with dGPU) have always used mobile GPUs. Also, illustrators/designers don't need dGPUs. That's why the designers/illustrators at hte tech companies that you work at can use macbook 13 inch laptops and 15-inch laptops without the dGPUs

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#323

Post by WorldMaker »

bhauer wrote: post #188
mhomde wrote: post #71

I can't but feel sad that Microsoft somehow is dropping the ball on mobile despite them having been, briefly, in a prime position to succeed. They've executed well with their "One platform"-strategy. UWP is great and with the new composition API their finally moving into being able to compete in the modern software arena. Meanwhile on the hardware side Panos is basically doing what Apple should have been doing if the…

I strongly agree with your sentiment. As a Surface Book and Lumia 950 user, I have watched the Surface product line receive good attention and necessary quality improvements. Meanwhile, the phone space is all but ignored, with a curious caveat: for whatever reason, Windows 10 Mobile continues to see gradual updates and improvements. The core applications (email, music player, browser, calendar) continue to improve. S…

«for whatever reason, Windows 10 Mobile continues to see gradual updates and improvements.»

Well the big obvious thing is that this shows how the efforts put into making the UWP truly Universal seem to be playing out. Certainly a lot updates and improvements benefit every device and the low overhead benefits a "low usage" platform like mobile.

That said, I'm still kind of weirdly optimistic and I think this quiet, continual improvement really is a good sign. I know some criticism existed that Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 and Windows 10 Mobile were "half-baked" early/at launch, and there's an interesting question about how much Microsoft just wants the platform to "catch up" and "feel solid" before a bigger marketing push.

For instance, one thing that I think has unfortunately been under-cooked has been Windows 10's efforts in the People hub, especially given where Windows 8.1 eventually built up to before some of it getting broken up in 10. The new "My People" functionalities shown at today's event seems to prove that a lot has been going on that space and is due for the Creators Update. I was hoping they'd at least give us a small glimpse of the mobile experience for it, but I realize the gee whiz factor of showing it off on a desktop taskbar.

There was a definite signal in Microsoft only using an HP mobile device on stage. Could be Microsoft is confident in deeper OEM support for Windows mobile devices.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#324

Post by lifeformed »

kayoone wrote: post #303
gthtjtkt wrote: post #132

$2,999 and the best GPU option is a last-gen mobile card? The default 965M is a crappy budget card (half the performance of the 980M), and if you want the 980M you have to pick the $4,199 configuration. And hybrid drives!? This thing starts at $2,199 and you can't even get a full SSD? I know 2D designers probably won't mind the GPU, but they could definitely benefit from a true SSD. Hell, the recently announced Razer…

typical HN naysayer, if Apple did this everyone would be raving about it. Maybe you missed that the screen also includes a Wacom digitizer ? Compare the price to a 27" Wacom Cintiq and it might make more sense to you. Other than that it's gorgeous, GPU performance is adequate for the usecase, better than the 5K iMac anyway.

I'd rather have it just be a nicer Cintiq that I plug into a proper desktop.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#325

Post by mhomde »

jarjoura wrote: post #253
mhomde wrote: post #71

I can't but feel sad that Microsoft somehow is dropping the ball on mobile despite them having been, briefly, in a prime position to succeed. They've executed well with their "One platform"-strategy. UWP is great and with the new composition API their finally moving into being able to compete in the modern software arena. Meanwhile on the hardware side Panos is basically doing what Apple should have been doing if the…

UWP is mostly a validation that Microsoft employs brilliant engineers. They took all the knowledge of their platforms over the years and condensed it into a unified story. For that, UWP works. However, the same problem that plagues the Mac App Store, UWP code is sandboxed in weird ways that make it hard to just recompile your existing IP into the new environment. Plus Microsoft developer relations pushed C# as the de…

You make some good points, and some I didn't quite agree with. The notion that you could just recompile old win32 apps, while nice in theory is not practical IMO. Software has gone from being heavily GUI oriented (windows, dialogs, buttons) etc to converge into something between web and UI. I'd rather they make a clean cut with that past than incorporating it into the future. Also lots of new stuff like notifications, roaming notifications/settings etc are things that simply did not exist with traditional software. I do agree however that I miss some deep level win32/OS integration possibilities in the current UWP world, on the other hand there's lots of new cool stuff like App services, notification listeners etc.

I agree completely that a big problem was the constant reboots between Zune/silverlight/NT/Win10. They ended up where they needed to be but it certainly made things difficult for both developers and consumers, and lost them a lot of momentum

Supporting 512 mb devices was one of the biggest mistakes they ever made, the impact on that the development side was just devastating, for what, saving a couple of bucks in RAM memory?

I think it's hard to generalize the speed and pace of Windows Mobile overall, they put a lot of money and effort in it, and still is, but something definitively changed with the Nokia acquisition and/or Nadella taking over from Ballmer

As for updates I always got frequent updates (europe), the problem was more that their QA seemed substandard. Might be an american problem with providers like Verizon. They had an interesting strategy with their insider updates... which is nice in theory but it sometimes felt like they fired their QA team and put the burden of testing on their consumers, resulting in major bugs frequently getting through

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#326

Post by ebalit »

ryanSrich wrote: post #304
1st1 wrote: post #3

I have to say this is the first time in years when there's a feeling that MS has outpaced Apple. The product looks amazing.

The indie tool market has a much stronger foothold today than they did a few years ago. Adobe, Autodesk, etc. still reign supreme, but that's slowly changing. They are being overtaken by smaller, more niche products. See affinity, sketch, figma, etc. Unless Microsoft can woo these companies into building apps for their platform, I don't see MSFT making a dent with this market.

Affinity Designer for Windows [1] is currently in beta. Figma is available for Windows too [2].

1: https://affinity.serif.com/fr/windows/ 2: https://www.figma.com/downloads

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#327

Post by nkassis »

romaniv wrote: post #67
1st1 wrote: post #3

I have to say this is the first time in years when there's a feeling that MS has outpaced Apple. The product looks amazing.

This seems to compete with Wacom Cintiq more than any Apple product I'm aware of.

I think that's part of the point the parent. This is a combination of an iMac and Cintiq. Something Apple currently doesn't have a answer to.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#328

Post by LyalinDotCom »

kayoone wrote: post #311
jarjoura wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UWP is mostly a validation that Microsoft employs brilliant engineers. They took all the knowledge of their platforms over the years and condensed it into a unified story. For that, UWP works. However, the same problem that plagues the Mac App Store, UWP code is sandboxed in weird ways that make it hard to just recompile your existing IP into the new environment. Plus Microsoft developer relations pushed C# as the de…

> Microsoft developer relations pushed C# as the defacto way to write apps targeting the platform, something that doesn't scale when you also need to support Android and iOS. Actually, our company has an Android and iOS App written in C# with a 80-90% shared Codebase using Xamarin. It has been pretty awesome so far.

Yeah I wish more people realized that C# + Xamarin tools (that Microsoft now owns & is totally free with Visual Studio Community) making C# something that can take you cross-platform in the mobile space.

https://www.xamarin.com/

Also .NET Core now runs on Mac and Linux for the server OS code written in C#.

Then if you add Unity supporting C# on top of that for game/dev and I really can say that we're in a cross-platform world now :). But I am a bit biased since I work on these teams.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#329

Post by reitanqild »

mikestew wrote: post #278
reitanqild wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came to Mac in 2009 expecting great keyboard shortcuts because of everything I had heard. IMO they were fewer and less consistent than Windows and Linux shortcuts at the time and a huge disappointment. (Example: no consistent way of selecting from cursor to end of line - there was no end button and which modifier to use varied with the application you used...! I have joked that the superior touchpad on the Mac is a…

no consistent way of selecting from cursor to end of line Cmd-shift-right arrow. There are others, but that's the one I use and I don't recall it ever not working.

You might very well be right now but IIRC between 2009 and 2012 this was hit-and-miss for me. I cannot remember which applications anymore but I was a Java programmer back then as well.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#330

Post by mhomde »

enos_feedler wrote: post #242
partiallypro wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is going to set Microsoft apart in mobile at this point? The fact that you probably can't answer that is why Microsoft is still at the drawing board. One day they will return to the mobile world, probably next spring; but for now launching a good smart phone, even a great smart phone, that lacks the eco-system of Apple and Google is DOA unless it has something else appealing about it. I suspect the "Surface Phon…

Is it possible that Microsoft ships an Android-based phone with Microsoft services plugged in? If it could run existing Android apps yet plug into Microsoft developer tools API for the future, that might work?

I don't think so, making hardware is not something you do for profit these days IMO. Only Apple has been able to do that and I think the days of their margins is coming to and end. The new way is simply being their in hardware to feed people into your ecosystem of software, services and app store... and there is no need for Microsoft to do that on Android.
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