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The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

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Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#101

Post by hackujin »

fgonzag wrote: post #96
singularity2001 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Bash on Windows and it was absolutely not good enough . Not yet.

What problems did you find it with it? I've been using it for the past 6 months after dual booting and running VMs for a long time and found I haven't found a reason to boot into my VM yet.

I can't open files in VSCode that live in the WSL virtual file system. Which is a huge problem for setting up the same exact dev environment I have on my Mac.

It's honestly dumbfounding. VSCode works great on Mac with the existing terminal but the WSL team can't figure out a good way to allow you to edit WSL files from a normal Windows application.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#102

Post by hackujin »

tomnipotent wrote: post #99
maxxxxx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is really annoying. Tons of notifications and random stuff preinstalled. Even on the Enterprise version. I also don't like the Edge/IE split. Now we have two half baked browsers. And on my HP blue screens are back. I thought that was a thing of the past.

> and random stuff preinstalled It's less horrible if you buy MS hardware like the Surface - only a few games come pre-installed, unlike the misery HP & Dell inflict.

An OS should not have any bloatware at all.

This should not exist and yet it does: https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#103

Post by makecheck »

It’s 2018 and I still see people walking around with Windows laptop lids open because they presumably have no confidence in Windows’ ability to sensibly preserve state after closing the lid. Software matters, and how it integrates with hardware.

And I keep waiting for them to fix just the basics in Windows 10. Not utterly losing both the sizes and positions of all windows just because the laptop was undocked. Not failing to recognize the external display upon docking, despite the display working a few minutes earlier. Not completely failing to find files and apps based on how I typed them (“A” brings up “abc” but typing “ab” makes “abc” go away!?). Such a long list.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#104

Post by singularity2001 »

fgonzag wrote: post #96
singularity2001 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Bash on Windows and it was absolutely not good enough . Not yet.

What problems did you find it with it? I've been using it for the past 6 months after dual booting and running VMs for a long time and found I haven't found a reason to boot into my VM yet.

file corruption was the worst, incomplete apt package support second.

It says officially: don't edit ubuntu files from windows editors, so it's not their fault. But not ready for work.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#105

Post by cornellwright »

makecheck wrote: post #103

It’s 2018 and I still see people walking around with Windows laptop lids open because they presumably have no confidence in Windows’ ability to sensibly preserve state after closing the lid. Software matters, and how it integrates with hardware. And I keep waiting for them to fix just the basics in Windows 10. Not utterly losing both the sizes and positions of all windows just because the laptop was undocked. Not fai…

These are fair criticisms, but I don't think anybody has this nailed. I use a mix of Windows, Mac, and Linux, and have found myself walking around with the lid open in all three. Mac seems to handle what you describe better than everyone else, but it's far from perfect.

I have one monitor that used to work fine on Windows and Mac. After a software update the Mac only recognizes it about 1 in 20 tries of plugging and unplugging.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#106

Post by [deleted] »

singularity2001 wrote: post #95
owenwil wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! Writer here. I discuss the software at length in here, but as I point out in the piece I've already covered why WSL and Bash work very well at length, so didn't want to muddy the water too much: 1. How to use Bash on Windows to retain your previous setup: https://char.gd/blog/2017/how-to-set-up-the-perfect-modern-d... 2. Why WSL/Bash is good enough these days: https://medium.com/charged-tech/why-i-left-mac-for-w…

I tried Bash on Windows and it was absolutely not good enough . Not yet.

[deleted]

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#107

Post by egypturnash »

I gave the Surface Pro 2 a serious shot last year. Ultimately the deal-killers were (1) Windows, especially Windows’ lack of an equivalent to OSX’s colored Finder tags, which I use to keep track of the status of the hundreds of files involved in drawing comics, and (2) Illustrator had a ton of input lag on the stylus no matter what settings I played with.

It came real close though. And if Apple put out something in this form factor I would be putting my order in within a day.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#108

Post by benologist »

I think Apple should open source macOS so it can be decoupled from their hardware, or just start cloning it in open source against their wishes as was done to Windows.

Otherwise it's time we let macOS go because Apple plans for it to run iOS apps and to use their iOS processors in their computers, so we and our tools and software are approaching obsolete and when iOS devices can compile apps we will start being redundant too.

Even if they released new hardware for us tomorrow it would be coupled with iOS processors and how many generations of having both processors can we really expect?

Until server ARM processors are compatible with iOS processors we are eventually going to lose parity with all the server software that made MacBooks good developer platforms too.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#109

Post by ScottBurson »

WesleyLivesay wrote: post #6

I would love to see more laptop manufacturers use the 3:2 aspect ratio, especially on screens smaller than 15".

It's interesting to see some bounceback after the industry's mad rush to 16:9. I'm very glad that Apple stuck with 8:5, which I greatly prefer. Haven't tried 3:2.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#110

Post by ghaff »

cornellwright wrote: post #105
makecheck wrote: post #103

It’s 2018 and I still see people walking around with Windows laptop lids open because they presumably have no confidence in Windows’ ability to sensibly preserve state after closing the lid. Software matters, and how it integrates with hardware. And I keep waiting for them to fix just the basics in Windows 10. Not utterly losing both the sizes and positions of all windows just because the laptop was undocked. Not fai…

These are fair criticisms, but I don't think anybody has this nailed. I use a mix of Windows, Mac, and Linux, and have found myself walking around with the lid open in all three. Mac seems to handle what you describe better than everyone else, but it's far from perfect. I have one monitor that used to work fine on Windows and Mac. After a software update the Mac only recognizes it about 1 in 20 tries of plugging and…

Macs seem to be pretty good in my experience. It was something I really noticed about them when I first started using about 8 years ago. The only real monitor problem I've had was with an iMac that decided it didn't want to initialize the dual displays properly if the 2nd was plugged in when it was booted. Took me about a day to figure I needed to unplug the 2nd display. Eventually some OS update fixed it.

Linux is a lot better than it used to be. I can reliably close the lid on my Lenovo X200 running Fedora. And anecdotally there seem to be fewer people going between meetings with laptops open these days so that's presumably a common experience with RHEL and Fedora on company-issued laptops.

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