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Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

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Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#81

Post by danudey »

coryking wrote: post #72
pling wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powershell ISE

The ISE is clever, but honestly, nothing beats a PuTTY-like terminal.

I actually find PuTTY to be horribly frustrating to work with, compared to a proper terminal emulator on OS X or Linux. Part of that is just Windows (when the window closes it's gone), part of it is that it's really just an SSH command (no local terminal, no easy SCP), part of it is the cumbersome UX (make a bunch of changes to the connection and then hit 'go'; oh wait, you didn't save the changes first? crap).

I do agree with the core of your point though; an actual terminal with actual commands that actually work well would be great.

Windows Powershell is actually really fascinating from one point of view though: the idea that instead of passing raw (inconsistently formatted) ASCII/Unicode data between pipes, the data is actually presented in terms of a data structure; thus you can easily say 'sort by the third column descending' or 'show every second record'. A significant amount of my bash scripting on-the-fly tends to be chaining several commands together to munge output data solely for the purpose of letting the next command parse it properly. Powershell, in some ways, takes care of this.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#82

Post by bratsche »

One thing that Microsoft could learn from Apple is to have their online store ready immediately.

Sure, you can't always buy Apple stuff immediately when it's announced (see Mac Pro), but you can always go onto the online store and 'window shop'.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#83

Post by rbanffy »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #9
rbanffy wrote: post #5

Looks good, but I was expecting a screen with the same specs as Google's Chromebook Pixel. I understand that, beyond a certain point, pixel density ceases to be relevant, but the different numbers mean this is a different part. Now, I wonder how good would Linux support be. Also, weighting a keyboardless tablet with a MacBook air is disingenuous at best.

They put the typecover on - stills weigh less.

Is that a mechanical backlit keyboard? Are we comparing apples to apples (no pun intended)?

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#84

Post by [deleted] »

robotresearcher wrote: post #48
mhurron wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office isn't the only thing people use to 'get work done.' One of the reasons I'm planning to get a Surface Pro instead of a Android tablet or a iPad is it is a full, real windows OS on an intel processor. I can install and run ALL my existing Windows applications on it. For me it's more of a light laptop then a limited tablet device.

And then there's the ARM version, which manages to not have the single best feature of Windows: the outstanding backwards compatibility. A very weird decision. Maybe they'll kill it with the 3rd gen.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#85

Post by rbanffy »

ggreer wrote: post #50

That's a really nice piece of hardware. I've used MacBook Airs since 2010, but the Surface 3 looks to be strictly dominating in the hardware department. Unfortunately, I don't think Microsoft will convert many OS X devs unless they make some changes to their software. One of the advantages of OS X is that it's a Unix, and lots of Unix software runs on it. It's not hard to compile tools such as nmap, Vim, or steam loc…

> It would be very interesting if Microsoft made Windows a Unix.

Microsoft's strategy has always been to make it easy to port other apps to Windows (offering POSIX services since ever) but to make it as difficult as possible to port away Windows apps. Offering a full-featured Unix environment would go against that.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#87

Post by danudey »

robotresearcher wrote: post #48
mhurron wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office isn't the only thing people use to 'get work done.' One of the reasons I'm planning to get a Surface Pro instead of a Android tablet or a iPad is it is a full, real windows OS on an intel processor. I can install and run ALL my existing Windows applications on it. For me it's more of a light laptop then a limited tablet device.

And then there's the ARM version, which manages to not have the single best feature of Windows: the outstanding backwards compatibility. A very weird decision. Maybe they'll kill it with the 3rd gen.

In a way, the ARM version makes sense; if you're going to buy a bunch of new apps anyway (iPad or Windows RT), why not get the Windows you're used to? I mean, if you're going to buy new apps all over again…

The problem with this logic is that if I'm going to buy new apps all over again, why wouldn't I buy an iPad, which has more apps and an easier interface than Windows RT, which is essentially nothing like the Windows I'm used to. If I have to re-learn a new system, why wouldn't I pick the one that everyone else uses and knows than the new one that no one else really cares about or understands (and which everyone hated when it came out).

The real key now is Universal apps; if you can build one app that works on Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Pro (and maybe the XBone in some cases), then we're going to see the potential for a huge increase in apps as people start realizing they can hit all three markets with 'one' build (and three UIs).

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#88

Post by rdfi »

mikerg87 wrote: post #46

Small things continue to kill the surface pro acceptance: - The Surface site on the surface site hasn't updated with surface pro 3 info/pricing. The run way for this is long, why isn't the site updated or ready to go? - Accessories are notoriously out of stock. Why are they hard to get? Docking station, keyboards, mice. Fix that. - The dock has 10/100 Ethernet. In 2013-2014? Why? - Updates for firmware and drivers as…

When the cursor gets stuck, just press one of the arrow keys to unstuck it (works for my Surface Pro Gen 1 with the type cover).

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#89

Post by bunderbunder »

ggreer wrote: post #50

That's a really nice piece of hardware. I've used MacBook Airs since 2010, but the Surface 3 looks to be strictly dominating in the hardware department. Unfortunately, I don't think Microsoft will convert many OS X devs unless they make some changes to their software. One of the advantages of OS X is that it's a Unix, and lots of Unix software runs on it. It's not hard to compile tools such as nmap, Vim, or steam loc…

I think there's something of a double-standard here.

I use a virtual machine running Windows to take care of software my Mac won't run natively. I could just as easily run Linux or BSD in a virtual machine on a Windows box. Or even OS X, if I were in a EULA-violating mood.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#90

Post by bri3d »

ggreer wrote: post #50

That's a really nice piece of hardware. I've used MacBook Airs since 2010, but the Surface 3 looks to be strictly dominating in the hardware department. Unfortunately, I don't think Microsoft will convert many OS X devs unless they make some changes to their software. One of the advantages of OS X is that it's a Unix, and lots of Unix software runs on it. It's not hard to compile tools such as nmap, Vim, or steam loc…

You mean like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX ?

In my experience Cygwin works better for the "compile software targeted mostly at Linux users" use case, but Microsoft definitely pursued the "make Windows a Unix" approach. Sadly Interix saw limited adoption (probably due to pricing) and has been discontinued, so we're left with the user-space emulation approaches (like Cygwin).

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