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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

#151

Post by vetinari »

daxorid wrote: post #34
sinatra wrote: post #10

Such articles always give too much importance to the hardware (which is somewhat important, no doubt) and not enough importance to the software. Many people are looking for quality alternatives to Macbooks, Mac Mini, etc (myself included). Mac Mini hasn’t been updated for 4-5 years. So, I started setting up a Windows desktop as a Mac Mini replacement. But when it came to finding all the alternatives to the OS X softw…

LibreOffice works perfectly well for 99.9% of MS Office documents.

Even MS Office is not always compatible with MS Office.

Some time ago (shortly after MSO2016 for Mac release), I had to fill in a certain document, which I did and returned. Except it wasn't filled correctly, because Word 2016 for Mac didn't support the form controls, the document used them and I had no idea about that.

The other party called, we met, compared what we have both seen on the screen, corrected the document and closed that with "word acting funny for whatever reason" (the other party used 2013 for Windows). If I was using LibreOffice and something similar would happen, despite that they do a great job, the blame would be distributed in another fashion.

Fast forward several months and I see in the monthly update release notes, that the forms feature was added to the Mac release.

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

#152

Post by lcfcjs »

benologist wrote: post #108

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 redun…

LOL yeah they should also just give out MBP's for free while they're at it.

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

#153

Post by AgentOrange1234 »

vetinari wrote: post #118
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…

> Not failing to recognize the external display upon docking, despite the display working a few minutes earlier. Now that you mention it... I have exactly the same problem with rMBP since upgrading to 10.13.5. Just this monday morning I've spent 20 minutes checking all the cables and why it doesn't work, until I rebooted the machine and then it suddenly worked.

It's so bad. My MBP used to work flawlessly here, connecting and disconnecting from monitors, shutting and opening the lid. Now every time it goes to sleep it loses the ability to talk to my mouse. I've given up and just set the display to remain on for an hour. Sigh.

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

#154

Post by lcfcjs »

schappim wrote: post #149
maxxxxx wrote: post #16

How is the trackpad? I have played with the original Surface Book and there it was still far away from my MacBook.

The trackpad is actually better. Apple actually broke their perfect trackpad from the 2016 MBP onwards. I didn’t realise how perfect the Mac’s trackpad previously was until “upgrading” to the 15” MBP with the oversized trackpad that has spurious input whilst typing!

Nah you should actually try post 2016 trackpads, still the best you can get.

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

#155

Post by schappim »

alexland wrote: post #111
collinf wrote: post #50

> I don't want a serious gaming monstrosity, I just desired something that can do the job well, had great build quality and could run the Unix-based tools I need to use to get through the day while offering reasonable battery life. It's a tall order, but should be feasible. Proceeds to not touch upon a single way the Surface 2 is UNIX-y in any sort of way? I know the WSL is there but the biggest stop for me using any…

He talks more about WSL near the end: > The Bash on Windows environment is now so performant and well supported that you won’t even know the difference if you move from a MacBook, and Microsoft continues to improve it at an impressive clip. > Unless you’re using Xcode, your workflow will almost certainly move from macOS to Windows as a non-event: it’s that good now, and I spend most of my time living in the Bash envi…

> you won’t even know the difference if you move from a MacBook

Just a heads up: IO has some serious bottle necks in WSL that makes it feel quite slow in comparison to my various Macs. M$ is headed in the right direction though!

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

#156

Post by baq »

hackujin wrote: post #134
freeone3000 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you do this is to cd into your Windows system from within WSL. WSL can see files from the Win32 subsystem just fine.

That is not a solution. I want to work on files in my WSL home folder. Lots of language based package managers like npm and composer "live" inside a folder in your home directory. It's very important that VSCode running as a windows application be able to read/write to these files. As it is right now I can't even edit my ~/.ssh/config from VSCode without jumping through hoops.

I'd install vscode in wsl and run it through a Windows X server.

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

#157

Post by wilde »

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…

I have literally this same list of problems on MacOS. Connecting to external screens is apparently hard. MacOS also ignores commands to lock the screen until it’s done changing screens. :(

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

#158

Post by philjohn »

vetinari wrote: post #118
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…

> Not failing to recognize the external display upon docking, despite the display working a few minutes earlier. Now that you mention it... I have exactly the same problem with rMBP since upgrading to 10.13.5. Just this monday morning I've spent 20 minutes checking all the cables and why it doesn't work, until I rebooted the machine and then it suddenly worked.

I tend to do a PRAM and SMC reset after major updates ... seems to flush most of the kinks out.

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

#159

Post by coldtea »

wilde wrote: post #157
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…

I have literally this same list of problems on MacOS. Connecting to external screens is apparently hard. MacOS also ignores commands to lock the screen until it’s done changing screens. :(

>I have literally this same list of problems on MacOS. Connecting to external screens is apparently hard.

Never had any problem connecting 3 different MacBook Pro's (across the years) to 3-4 different external monitors (Dell, LG, Samsung, etc) and to several projectors (including through a VGA adaptor and HDMI ones).

>MacOS also ignores commands to lock the screen until it’s done changing screens.

So for all of 2 seconds it takes?

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

#160

Post by cncrnd »

People don't consider reliability as much as they should when they buy a device. The Surface line has been known for poor reliability, with nearly a quarter of customers being affected for some products.

The time spent investigating an issue, arranging a repair, sending a device in, setting up on a backup device, and communicating with repairmen only to get an unfixed product back approaches a couple of days of lost productivity. Rules out the Surface Book 2 in my eyes.

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