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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

#451

Post by bandrami »

pmontra wrote: post #435

Every time I read something like "completely redefines professional computing" I think that somebody in the marketing department didn't do a good enough job to disguise a sponsored content, or at the very least didn't review what the independent author wrote. Anyway, what I like of this machine is the 15" screen with a keyboard without a numberpad: the center of the body of the user can be aligned with the center of…

I just got one of the lighter Snapdragon surface laptops and the software ecosystem is still hit and miss. LuaJIT in particular still has build problems on WoA and that's unfortunately upstream of a lot of stuff I use day-to-day. The NPU is apparently neat if you're into LLMs (it can allegedly run gemma) but that's not my thing.

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

#452

Post by DeathArrow »

They brag about the Nvidia superchip:

>The custom NVIDIA superchip challenges both Qualcomm and Apple

But it seems NVIDIA didn't have enough in house know how and they needed MediaTek to develop the chip.

>20-core NVIDIA Grace CPU (Arm architecture, co-developed with MediaTek)

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

#453

Post by DeathArrow »

camillomiller wrote: post #450
pmontra wrote: post #435

Every time I read something like "completely redefines professional computing" I think that somebody in the marketing department didn't do a good enough job to disguise a sponsored content, or at the very least didn't review what the independent author wrote. Anyway, what I like of this machine is the 15" screen with a keyboard without a numberpad: the center of the body of the user can be aligned with the center of…

>Anyway, what I like of this machine is the 15" screen with a keyboard without a numberpad: the center of the body of the user can be aligned with the center of the screen. The screen seems to be particularly bright, which is good. There are claims of good self repairability, we will see when it starts to sell. Oh you mean like the incredible MacBook Pros of the last two generations that have been selling like hotcak…

Apple wouldn't ever do something like that. "Good artists copy, great artists steal"

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

#454

Post by rbanffy »

RankingMember wrote: post #170

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…

> local Microsoft Store

The backrooms version of an Apple Store… I’ve been to precisely one and it was, indeed, a sad experience.

You’d also need to pay me a lot to use Windows. I even have an assigned Windows virtual desktop at work, but I also have a MacBook for actual work - the VDI is only used for the stuff that doesn’t quite work right on Macs.

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

#456

Post by thisislife2 »

fodkodrasz wrote: post #443
pmontra wrote: post #435

Every time I read something like "completely redefines professional computing" I think that somebody in the marketing department didn't do a good enough job to disguise a sponsored content, or at the very least didn't review what the independent author wrote. Anyway, what I like of this machine is the 15" screen with a keyboard without a numberpad: the center of the body of the user can be aligned with the center of…

I'm curious about the openness of the platform. As long as the openness and standardization of the PC platform is not present, this platform is not a contender of x86 in my eyes. We can see with the highly praised Apple M platform on the example of the Asahi Linux what the lack of openness brings: people are locked in to operating systems by the vendors, and planned obsolescence, even with long support periods. On th…

Yes, with 128GB RAM, I guess one could even ignore that it is soldered (and hence "unrepairable"), but if it can't run Linux or *BSD it is a definite no go. We definitely don't need two closed hardware platform duopoly (Apple and Microsoft), as together they will dominate and kill the "open" platforms. But I am pessimistic here as everything seems headed towards that eventuality. We should never have accepted smartphones as closed platforms.

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

#457

Post by rrgok »

ActorNightly wrote: post #336
denysvitali wrote: post #302

The Surface line is, HW-wise, very good IMHO. Too bad the software is awful. Thankfully the Linux Surface community is pretty strong. Proprietary Microsoft drivers don't make it easy, but we're getting there... https://github.com/linux-surface/surface-pro-x I'll buy another one if there's some commitment from Microsoft to be more open source friendly, but since this will never happen, they can keep their HW.

>Too bad the software is awful. I swear, people just live in their echochambers these days. Win 11 pro + WSL2 is literally the best, do it all OS you can get these days. Most peoples experience is with Windows home, which ironically is about as intrusive as Mac OS. When you get Windows Pro, you can disable all the annoying AI/Advertising shit that comes with Windows, and at that point, you get a system that is cleane…

W11 Pro is awesome. I think currently it is the best OS.

Professional softwares, WSL2 and awesome native apps (Dopus, AHK2...)

I always try Linux but the fragmented nature just is not for me for desktop usage.

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

#459

Post by rsynnott »

bigyabai wrote: post #154
hackyhacky wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like you aren't familiar with Nvidia's dedication to low-power ARM SOCs. Ever heard of the Nintendo Switch before? The Tegra inside that is a 15w TDP gaming SOC. And it supports CUDA (somehow). I think that GP comment is not intending to throw shade at ARM SOCs (many of which are quite nice, including those from Apple an Qualcomm), but specifically the Microsoft products built on them.

I'm mostly surprised by the insinuation of bad performance or battery life. That's what will be ostensibly solved by putting an Nvidia SOC where a Ryzen or Intel one used to be.

Has this chip actually been used in any real product yet? Nvidia has, er, a bit of a historical problem with overpromising and underdelivering with their mobile chips (in particular see the Tegra 2 and Denver); I would be cautious until there are real benchmarks. It's hard to describe any previous Nvidia general-purpose mobile chip as anything other than a failure.

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

#460

Post by rbanffy »

One of the key features of the MacBook is a rock-solid Unix operating system. Windows ain’t one, therefore this might, at best, be a nice, thin, fast, Windows ARM computer with a lot of RAM. If you want a Windows computer, this might be it. Otherwise, there are better options: x86, which will not be as fast or light, but can easily run Linux, or a Mac, which is light, fast, and runs Unix.
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