The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by com2kid » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:43 AM UTC

neya wrote: post #371

I am a die hard Mac fan. I upgraded from Windows and never looked back. Recently, I thought Windows might have improved over the years and decided to give it a shot with my girlfriend's Windows 10 laptop and it was because she wanted me to setup a new user account for her. And you wouldn't believe me if I told you that it's near impossible to create a normal user account without a Microsoft Live account along with it…

> And you wouldn't believe me if I told you that it's near impossible to create a normal user account without a Microsoft Live account along with it. You need to google for it and find some specific workflow to make it happen.

The button is labeled "Add a user without a Microsoft account", I found it rather quickly, never having looked for it. The flow certainly is focused on MS account creation though. I remember in Windows 8, having to look up on Google how to link my MS account! (For me, I appreciate the change, I have enough grandfathered in OneDrive storage that I'm a happy camper.)

All of my other computing devices require an account. PCs are trying to hold out. Linux obviously does not, and Apple requires an account login to access a lot of the services that come with the OS.

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

#392

Post by eksemplar » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:00 AM UTC

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’ve used windows since 3.11. Sure I’ve had a stint of Linux here and there, especially when I was young enough not to be bothered by the configuration.

I’ve never not liked windows, though I did skip both ME and 8, but windows 10 has been such an awful experience that I bought a mbp late 2015 version last year, and I doubt I’ll ever use windows as my main OS again.

I still use it at work, and while you avoid a lot of the shit, like auto-installed pre-installers for Facebook styled games in an enterprise setup, it still lowers the brightness of my screen when I undock it, even though I’ve specifically told it not to in every setting I’ve been able to find.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, windows 10 is quite frankly the worst OS I’ve ever used.

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

#393

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:08 AM UTC

philjohn wrote: post #158

vetinari wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's one thing I don't get. Why doesn't apple do this periodically instead if the user having to do it? I have had several occasions where resetting PRAM or something else resolved problem. Why not do it once a day, week or whenever?

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

#394

Post by ScottBurson » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:15 AM UTC

brazzledazzle wrote: post #357

coldtea wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first thing I always do on a new laptop (or install) is go into Power Settings and change the Closing Lid action from putting the computer to sleep to just turning off the screen. Or you can get a Mac laptop, where getting the computer to sleep when you close the lid and start again fast when you open it just works. Why would you let the laptop keep running, waste battery, risk overheating and endanger any spin…

You should talk to the last couple MBPs I’ve had. Sometimes they pretend like they’re going to sleep but they actually stay up late and when I pull them out of my bag the next day they have 30% of their battery left or less. Sometimes I’m lucky and the fans will be screaming so I realize before I put it into the bag that it didn’t actually sleep. You could say it’s my (non-OS) software and you might be right, god onl…

When I had this problem it was because I had Bluetooth on, and the setting "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer" (on the Advanced dialog of the Bluetooth system preferences) was enabled. I turned that off and the problem went away. I think it was being awakened by my phone.

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

#395

Post by syn_rst » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:15 AM UTC

owenwil wrote: post #70

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…

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…

That's exactly the problem: they work well enough for some limited applications. Thing is, "well enough" isn't a reason to get people moving to MS's platform - if I already have a great dev environment that runs on Mac or Linux, why would I switch? I already have perfect integration between my CLI tools and the OS, first-class support in a lot of FOSS projects, and a strong community around the platform, all of which I'd lose if I switched. In exchange I'd gain nothing but the numerous headaches (forced updates, spyware, in-OS ads, general cruft and legacy baggage, etc) of Windows.

"Good enough" might stop people switching away from the platform, but it's not enough to bring back those who've already left. If Microsoft wants to bring people back to Windows as opposed to just stopping the bleeding, they'll have to deliver an experience that's actually superior to the other platforms. Given the current state of Windows 10, I don't think they'll have an easy time pulling that off.

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

#396

Post by bubblethink » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:15 AM UTC

philsnow wrote: post #254

oso2k wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s tmux, abduco, & screen for that on Linux.

mosh is an infinitely better user experience for certain use cases, particularly poor/intermittent connections. session establishment is very slow and requires a lot of round-trips, and if you have high latency and packet loss, it becomes painful. if you establish a session once with mosh, you don't have to establish connections after that, you just blit UDP packets.

mosh on its own doesn't handle scrollback buffer. So you're back to tacking on other things like tmux on top.

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

#397

Post by NicoJuicy » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:26 AM UTC

andrei_says_ wrote: post #190

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 spying on me and not transmitting unknown to me personal information to unknown parties would be a killer feature. I treat any windows machine as if it has a keylogger and submits all my activity to all major governments (maybe only one today and “all” in a few years when my data gets sold, shared or stolen). This is a serious issue for me.

This issue comes again and again, I'm getting really tired of this "issue". After all this time this is the top comment, while discussing a really good convertible?

He mentions that people don't trust Windows for savely restoring their session, but if i'm not mistaking, it's Ubuntu ( i think) that had such a bug for a VERY long time ( https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2321399 ). I have never heard such problems on Windows...

It's measuring activities and performance yes, it's not stealing your information. Ubuntu did it too and even integrated Amazon in the search field.

You can even see what it sends: https://www.howtogeek.com/348699/how-to-see-what-data-window...

PS. Probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, but please respond with comments and not with (too much) downvotes.

PS 2. I also use Ubuntu a lot, which is why i can compare it too Windows on experience. Can't compare to other distro's, if i didn't use it. Both have their pro's / cons.

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

#398

Post by Joeri » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:43 AM UTC

throwawayqdhd wrote: post #31

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…

Windows keeps breaking with every update. My touchpad randomly stops working. Startup is excruciatingly slow even on an i7 laptop with 16GB of RAM. Starting up from sleep takes nearly as long, and for some reason, it takes at least 5 minutes for the machine to work at normal processing power again. The search function is still as broken as ever. There is a useless "People" tab near the clock that hogs my memory. Then…

That’s not normal behavior (random sounds, slow startup and wake). You should check the event viewer for errors, something is wrong with your system. I’ve had problems like that in the past with bad drivers. Once the driver was upgraded the problems went away.

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

#399

Post by zumu » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:55 AM UTC

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…

This is exactly how I feel about my 2016 MacBook Pro

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

#400

Post by SECProto » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 6:03 AM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #140

Casseres wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing I always do on a new laptop (or install) is go into Power Settings and change the Closing Lid action from putting the computer to sleep to just turning off the screen. It's surprising how many people never change the settings on their computers. Whenever I saw someone with the taskbar icons combined, I always asked them if they liked it that way, and they would say "No." So I always offered and they a…

> The first thing I always do on a new laptop (or install) is go into Power Settings and change the Closing Lid action from putting the computer to sleep to just turning off the screen. Yikes! Why? I haven't had an issue with a laptop properly going to sleep and coming back in many years. This was something I used to do back in 2008 but it's hard to imagine today.

I had an issue where I got a pink screen of death every time i woke my windows 10 laptop up from sleep. I believe it was a driver bug. It finally got fixed with the Spring Creators Update, so now I can sleep my computer again!

(side note/separate complaint, windows 10 tries to update one driver repeatedly, every time I check. I wish there were some way to disable that update.)