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Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

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Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#181

My experience with Surfaces and, particularly, the Surface Book and its accompanying dock were such that I'd have to be paid to use one again. For example, the dock would get its own updates silently and brick itself randomly and the proprietary magnetic connector between the dock and the computer was prone to a poor connection. I remember many occasions trying to work and my screens just randomly blinking in and out…

I've used surfaces of various kinds for more than 10 years. Overall they've been significantly less troublesome than the laptops from other major brands I've had over the same period. I put this down to the dogfood eating nature of the Surface. Whoever is responsible for the sound interface driver in a Dell laptop is unlikely to be a user of that laptop and even less likely to have the capability to get Dell to ship a fixed version. Microsoft however I suspect uses Surfacen extensively in house. In this respect it makes the Surface products more akin to Apple computers. The same is probably true for high end Chromebooks. I never used a dock, fwiw.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#182
post #7

Surface has seen so many iterations, some terrible, some nice. Still rocking the discontinued surface laptop studio as Wacom on the go, smallish footprint (14”) creative development machine. I just love its quirkiness and the fact that I can jump on photoshop to touch up an image, use it as tablet for movies, or vs code for (not great nowadays) 6h on battery. It is an odd intersection.

>Wacom on the go ?!? https://surfacetip.com/surface-laptop-studio/ notes: >Supports Microsoft Pen Protocol (MPP) which is NTrig --- or do you use a Wacom AES stylus? (bought a Bamboo AES stylus, but it wouldn't work w/ my Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10) Or are you genericizing "Wacom" as "active digitizer stylus"?

Exactly that, same basic functionality as a Wacom, active digitizer stylus.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#183

What's conspicuously absent, is the CPU that's going to power this thing. Yes, it's got an Nvidia GPU, but does it have an Intel CPU, an AMD CPU, an Nvidia ARM CPU, or someone else's ARM CPU?

It's the same configuration as GB10. 20 core MediaTek 3nm part which is competitive with a AMD's 2025 16 core 4nm part with similar power draw.

https://www.servethehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/cpu2...

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#184
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In recent times support is part of what I consider when I buy Apple products. It is by no means the best but I can always get a human at whatever time of day and they will listen to my problem and attempt to address it. But as for getting rubber feet, I'm sure it's some backwards process with Apple too, if at all possible.

Apple does positive scripting ("I understand that must feel frustrating, I had a similar issue once, I'm going to solve your problem"), but at least I can reach a human, even if that human talks like they've been brainwashed by a cult. My ISP has actual techies answering the phone, and their approach is more "well that's a bit crap, I can have an engineer there by Thursday". I've only needed them a couple of times in…

Yeah the support is scripted and annoying a lot of the time. There's always a song and dance like having you remove your VPN (mine is split tunnel but they don't care) to verify some failure case, loading profiles, etc. - but at some point when all avenues are exhausted they will escalate to an engineer and make detailed notes, and usually follow ups which might be with another engineer usually has a full understanding of your situation. A few times they've managed to fix these issues but it can take months.

For hardware issues too it's pretty good, though I've only ever dealt with the Genius bar, and never done a mail in of the product in question.

For software I've never really seen this kind of service at scale, e.g. with Microsoft. And for hardware, it's essentially chatbots in a loop these days which I experienced with Lenovo trying to get support for a laptop that wouldn't power on (never managed to get a human to support me and gave up).

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... who can't run half of their large-scale software with an ancient version of .NET on Arm.

... yet they still struggle to try and port their code to a newer .net version that does run on ARM. And do a bunch of other work tasks that can utilize this hardware. (But, you bring up a great point, regardless!)

Here is a particularly irritating example. Cabinet Vision, some CAD type of software.

Requires ancient .NET. That actually is available for Arm though.

Required Jet DB driver 2010, which doesn’t exist on Arm, although it’s only needed for the installer.

Requires SQL Server embedded 2012 and 2016, which don’t exist on Arm at all. Yep, both versions.

Also required PowerShell version 2, which was deprecated in 2017, although they magically figured out how to fix that once Windows 10 was EOL’d and Win. 11 doesn’t support v2.

The vendor has zero plans to ever support this on Arm.

They will eventually get their lunch eaten by a new competitor who decides to just release a macOS version.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#186

For many, the appeal of a Mac is that it isn't running Windows. I'm not seeing how this won't be a repeat of the OG ARM Surface, just with a higher spec'd GPU.

>For many, the appeal of a Mac is that it isn't running Windows Pretty much. I broke down and finally bought my first Windows machine in over a decade to play Subnautica 2. It was so infuriating to use I returned it a week later. You literally have to hack it with shell commands to bypass Microsoft login now. Never again.

Subnautica 2 runs great on Linux via Steam/Proton. My HTPC/Steam Machine and gaming rig are both running Linux now. ;)

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#188
post #37

I will never buy a Surface device ever again. I've been using an SL4 for the last four years with Linux on it, thanks to the surface-linux kernel. It's awful. It feels like it's actively refusing to work properly with Linux. Fair - it's not for Linux, and clearly that is expected with a Microsoft device. I've recently had to call their support for missing rubber feet. I figured I could get the replacement mailed(that…

Hilarious, "Designed for serviceability" is one of the headline features about 3/4 down

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-lapt...

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#189

My experience with Surfaces and, particularly, the Surface Book and its accompanying dock were such that I'd have to be paid to use one again. For example, the dock would get its own updates silently and brick itself randomly and the proprietary magnetic connector between the dock and the computer was prone to a poor connection. I remember many occasions trying to work and my screens just randomly blinking in and out…

I've used surfaces of various kinds for more than 10 years. Overall they've been significantly less troublesome than the laptops from other major brands I've had over the same period. I put this down to the dogfood eating nature of the Surface. Whoever is responsible for the sound interface driver in a Dell laptop is unlikely to be a user of that laptop and even less likely to have the capability to get Dell to ship…

> Whoever is responsible for the sound interface driver in a Dell laptop is unlikely to be a user of that laptop and even less likely to have the capability to get Dell to ship a fixed version

Oh boy, don't get me started on Dell haha. Sure, they've got a better service model (people come to you), but at least in my experience they contract with service people who service multiple brands who can't help but shit-talk Dell. Not very confidence inspiring, particularly when the cause of the issue ends up being a connector not being fully plugged in from the factory.

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