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Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

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Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#151

Post by nivla »

IBM wrote: post #23
bane wrote: post #16

I'm starting to see more and more Surface devices in my area. It seems to be getting popular with the Starbuck's salesguy crowd who need something as compact as a tablet, but they can use real applications on. I know that's kind of cliche, but you don't really "get" that meaning until you walk into a coffee shop and see 2 or 3 people sitting around with tablets sticking up on the tables. The Android and iPad guys are…

They've kind of killed this whole angle of "Surface is for getting work done" after they hedged by releasing Office on iPad.

From a business perspective I agree with you, that was huge leverage which could have boosted the sales of Surface considerably. However, from a consumer point of view, nahh that falls into the grey area of a typical monopolistic behavior. So I am glad they didn't. I am all for that gives people choices, regardless of the brand, OS or price.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#152

Post by freehunter »

mrec wrote: post #116
daigoba66 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're going to live forever disappointed. The command prompt shell is one of those programs that just doesn't get updated and/or any new features. Like notepad.exe, there are so many easy things they could do to make it actually _useful_, but won't.

Not disagreeing, but I suspect notepad.exe is the way it is for a reason - it's the Windows equivalent of vi, the thing you use to try to recover when everything else is falling to pieces. As such, it doesn't and shouldn't have dependencies on anything that isn't absolutely essential. I believe Task Manager eschews the common control library and reimplements a lot of UI stuff itself. Same reason.

I still can't believe that a hung program means the Task Manager can hang as well. I don't know how many times I've had a game freeze and had to wait on the Task Manager. Ctrl+alt+del brings up the "lock, log off, task manager" screen pretty quick, then Task Manager doesn't load until I go make and finish eating dinner.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#153

Post by benatkin »

gcb0 wrote: post #140
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…

OSX is less unix than it can get. No X. Crazy apple-only-standards... Heck you can't even use vim! i will eat my hat if you open vim in OSX and be able to copy/paste. The + register just goes to nowhere. OS X is broken unix. windows sucks in many regards, but it always had million more devs than OSX... i know implementing fixes on top of windows goes against the free software philosophy, but there are already too man…

Wow. I think you mean broken X, which makes sense because it isn't based on X and X isn't included by default. The command line vim uses the X clipboard.

UNIX is a separate standard from X. IMO part of really appreciating UNIX is appreciating what is part of UNIX and what sits on top of it. I think that most server-side UNIX installs have a "broken" clipboard in vim too.

The standard distribution of vim includes integration with X11 and Windows, and that's where console vim on linux gets its clipboard from. MacVim on OS X integrates with OS X and I just fired up the console vim and saw that the "+y and "+p use the Mac clipboard.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#154

Post by mikerg87 »

mrbill wrote: post #103
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…

I've got a Surface Pro 1 (with Type Cover 2), and have never had problems getting firmware and driver updates from Microsoft Update. Have no idea what you're talking about regarding "manual upgrade" with CLI tools.

I was talking about these driver/update packs for Surface Pro 2:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3882....

I've never seen these updates come through standard Windows Update for the Surface Pro 2.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#155

Post by freehunter »

dragonwriter wrote: post #139
BugBrother wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the iPad owns the tablet app world, Microsoft didn't have much choice. When [/if] Office is released for many of the differing O/S and hardware versions of Android, I'll agree your description have a point. Edit: Close enough, dragonwriter. I yield the point. (I should have known about this. Also, why is there such a lack of optimized pad sized apps for Android? The phone ones I've seen weren't exactly using th…

> When [/if] Office is released for many of the differing O/S and hardware versions of Android, I'll agree your description have a point. There's a phone version for Android 4.0+, but not yet a tablet version.

Meanwhile there's not a Windows Phone version of Google anything.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#156

Post by nivla »

astrodust wrote: post #52
josefresco wrote: post #6

Microsoft needs to keep at it. While this iteration is great, the platform will not flourish if they falter or take a release cycle off. Consistent upgrades to the Surface hardware, and support of the developer community is key to winning the overall tablet war for MS.

While it's great to see Microsoft innovating like this and pushing their product aggressively forward, it must really chafe with their OEM community. Why would you buy some clunky classic notebook when you can get a Surface 3 for virtually the same price? It's basically impossible for OEMs to compete when Microsoft can include Windows for free and they have to pay a premium to bundle it.

>Why would you buy some clunky classic notebook when you can get a Surface 3 for virtually the same price?

Well one of the reasons why I got my first gen Surface Pro was because none of the OEM's were making a similar product. Did you notice how awful the options were before the Surface came out? The OEM's were doing nothing but cashing in on the "Windows" name, throwing in a crappy product with Win 8 and some their own proprietary bloat and call it a "Windows Tablet". This was the only way MS could save their name, introduce itself to the tablet market and step up the game. I am all for what doesn't cause stagnation in the market.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#157

Post by ChuckMcM »

I would love to see Microsoft come out with Windows/Developer which targeted people who were creating applications rather take existing Windows, which focusses on the big market of App users, and bolting on some developerness.

I could imagine something like CTRL-Alt-F4 on Linux where you press the key combo and the Windows/Apps view is replaced with the Windows/Develop view. Easy access to terminal screens, build tools, layout creators, etc.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#158

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

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'm sure most of would like for Windows to integrate a Bash shell, but the moment that happens, a ton of Windows sysadmins instantly wouldn't be able to do their jobs. I bet dollars to doughnuts most current Windows sysadmins (even the Powershell people) aren't proficient with Bash. God help the GUI sysadmins if this were to ever happen.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#159

Post by nivla »

rbanffy wrote: post #83
JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They put the typecover on - stills weigh less.

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

I have both the touch and type (mechanical backlit keyboard) covers. The difference in weight between the two is barely noticeable so trust me the way the scale is tipping over, it wouldn't make much of a difference with the substitution. Regardless, a fair comparison would be iPad with its keyboard cover too.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#160

Post by matthewmacleod »

Nerdfest wrote: post #60
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…

Microsoft, like Apple, wants you to only be able to use their products, so there's a very low probability of them releasing a Unix version. Both Apple and MS would actively stop people from installing Linux on their hardware if they could get away with it.

MacOS is actually a certified Unix
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