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Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

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Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#291
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…

Why not just run Linux in a Hyper-V machine? Hyper-v is type 1.

Hyper V has no USB support (I've often needed to pass-thru USB for a VM) and unfortunately when I first tried it with Windows 8, Debian had a bug where loading the Hyper V client drivers would crash the installer.

Just a note, if you have VirtualBox or VMWare installed and you go to enable HyperV (on Win8), you may get a BSoD.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm rooting for MS. My (not so serious) test for windows is simple: the day I can resize dos command prompt as easily as terminal windows on linux/osx is the day Microsoft I need to seriously consider going back to windows :)

I know you're not being serious, but there are some other terminal apps that are better than the basic DOS prompt. Check out ConEmu, for example. Now, once you've got ConEmu or something like it that will resize nicely and do other things, you'll still be stuck on the crappy DOS-style prompt though. :)

Is it as slow as cmd? I found that running `readelf -a` in cmd will take, say ~5 seconds while running the same command under Cygwin+PuTTY, the command completed in well under a second. The text output is just plain slow and to a baffling degree.

Anyone know why that is?

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similarly, and seriously. It's not so much just the usability of the command prompt, but that it would be a symbol of a change in priorities towards adding functionality for developers, and welcoming non-Windows technical audiences. If I'm using a non-built-in terminal, and a non-built-in Unix compatibility layer, why am I using Windows?

Why are you using Windows if you want it to behave like Unix?

Most developers don't have a choice in the supported platforms of the product they work on. If your product targets Windows (and it will if the customers demand it), you don't have much choice!

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#294
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm rooting for MS. My (not so serious) test for windows is simple: the day I can resize dos command prompt as easily as terminal windows on linux/osx is the day Microsoft I need to seriously consider going back to windows :)

Properties -> Settings -> Layout -> change res -> Save. I never understood why some people make such a big fuss out of it.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#295
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, back here in reality, iOS dominates the enterprise: http://media.www1.good.com/documents/rpt-mobility-index-q413...

iOS is great for certain tasks but comparing it to OSX or Windows for productivity is silly. I have 3 iOS devices in my household, we love them. None of us use it for work though, they're leisure devices. No one at my company uses iOS for work, they use Windows and OSX. Also, your link is showing smart phones and tablets used at work, which certainly favor iOS. What does this have to do with the Microsoft Surface?

I agree, what does anything have to do with the Microsoft Surface? As I can tell, it has virtually no traction for "work," which makes it entirely irrelevant outside of the flood of fanboys in announcement discussions on the internet.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, back here in reality, iOS dominates the enterprise: http://media.www1.good.com/documents/rpt-mobility-index-q413...

Hacker News 2014: where empty, baseless Microsoft marketing regurgitation gets upvotes and actual statistics get downvotes. Keep making enemies, Microsoft. That'll be a very effective strategy.

OR maybe Hacker News 2014: where people grew up to look past their fanboism and review a product for what it is.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#297
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News 2014: where empty, baseless Microsoft marketing regurgitation gets upvotes and actual statistics get downvotes. Keep making enemies, Microsoft. That'll be a very effective strategy.

OR maybe Hacker News 2014: where people grew up to look past their fanboism and review a product for what it is.

Not among the microsoft fanboys, clearly, which is the entirely point.

But, you know, why don't you go ahead and regurgitate a Microsoft market phrase since that apparently trumps actual facts. Note that I'm the only person who actually cited a real source with hard numbers in this discussion, and I've been the most downvoted. Go figure. I suppose we've already established that actual facts are irrelevant to you people.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#298
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Perhaps someone will make a counterweighted and braced keyboard like they have for iPad to solve this problem. Did you watch the video I posted above? He does show the feature where the top of the keyboard can be folded and magnetically attached to the bezel to provide a stable structure. I am just curious, what kind of job requires you to place your laptop on your lap for 4 hours a day? I learned it the hard way no…

I've seen he old one many times, it just doesn't seem like the typing experience would be very good...try typing on a piece of cardboard....for example. A beefier keyboard is really needed for laptop usage, braced in somehow into the tablet. The new video isn't loading for me right now, but I'm in china so.... It's my preference to use a laptop on lap, and I don't have a problem with it using modern ultra books (like…

>It's my preference to use a laptop on lap

Gotcha. Here is that video on Youtube if you are still interested [1]

[1] http://youtu.be/ZfvhKBp-Chw?t=42m

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similarly, and seriously. It's not so much just the usability of the command prompt, but that it would be a symbol of a change in priorities towards adding functionality for developers, and welcoming non-Windows technical audiences. If I'm using a non-built-in terminal, and a non-built-in Unix compatibility layer, why am I using Windows?

Why are you using Windows if you want it to behave like Unix?

I'm not, in that at work I use a Mac. I write Java server code for web servers and batch data-analysis, deployed on Linux boxes. A significant portion of my time is spent either ssh'ed into a Linux machine, or using the various Unix utilities as well as git and mvn in the terminal.

My point, perhaps poorly stated, was this: I prefer a terminal-heavy development environment because that is the most efficient way of interacting with remote servers for the work that I do. I can't consider using Windows without a sense that they've made it a priority to address my use cases and scenarios, and the single lowest hanging fruit possible in that regard is to spend half a dev team (2-3 devs) on modernizing the terminal to the point where when I'm at home and want to check something on a server, I use my Windows desktop instead of switching to my Mac laptop. Even better would be dedicating one or two dev teams to supporting a Unix environment natively, so Cygwin isn't necessary.

For what it's worth, I much prefer the Windows GUI to either Mac or Linux. I was a test developer at Microsoft for Windows 7 and part of 8, and I wrote this comment on my home PC running Win7. I would like to be able to use Windows for the UI and the familiarity I have with it, but those two things, a good terminal and a Unix-like environment, are requirements for my job. And I know from experience that this scenario is absolutely the furthest thing from the minds of the people working on Windows.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Id honestly love a dock-able iPad with a sandboxed OSX app. <-- this is my prediction as to where Apple is going. They won't merge the two OSes. One would assume that they already have an arm version of OS X running, emulation probably isn't strong enough yet.

I believe iOS is derived from OSX, so that would be correct.

I don't believe that is exactly correct. Both OS X and iOS are based on the BSD kernel, but I don't think iOS was 'derived' from OS X.
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