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Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

microsoft.com

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Re: Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

#111

Post by brazzledazzle »

Swinx43 wrote: post #23
mastermojo wrote: post #13

I just. I just really don't want to have to learn powershell =(

I could not agree more. I make my living using Microsoft tech in the analytics space and I absolutely HATE powershell.

I don't want to rehash it here since it's been done a few times on HN already but PowerShell is awesome. I encourage you to search HN for previous discussions and give PowerShell another shot. The old windows command prompt definitely took away some of its appeal when I first tried it so I can understand why some folks have a distaste for it. First impressions and all that. But it's extremely powerful compared to bash or other "string passing" shells.

Of course if you use it regularly and hate it you can safely ignore what I just said. I'd be curious as to what you hate about it though.

Re: Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

#112

Post by brazzledazzle »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #73
wyager wrote: post #8

This "switch from mac" furor is hilarious to me. In 3 years people will be saying "Remember how upset people were getting about losing the escape key?". This feels the same as Apple not supporting flash or microsd cards on iPhones. Everyone made a big stink about it at the time, and a few years down the road flash is dead and no one cares about microsd cards. It will be the same with USB C and dongles; in a few years…

One reason this feels different is the pricing bump, which I didn't think would be a big deal until I read theverge's review earlier today [0]. They spent the entire time talking about the low-end model, and entirely dismiss everything with the touch bar as "the price for those models is really quite silly right now." Given that low end model is intentionally crippled with only 2 USB-C ports it's not great that the r…

For that price I expected more than 16GB of RAM or at least the option to increase it. I've heard that it may be Intel's fault but it's frustrating to be limited to the same amount of memory I have on this Mac purchased 3 years ago.

Re: Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

#113

Post by francisl »

neals wrote: post #52

I was actually planning to switch to OSX last year, but when no new MBP came out, I opted for a Surface pro 4 instead. Sure am glad I did.

Why not a Surface Book. What is your use case?

Programming, design? Oh is the keyboard as a laptop replacement?

Re: Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

#114

Post by aq3cn »

emeraldd wrote: post #77

My biggest complaint about Windows, from a pure usability stand point, is the fact that I have yet to find anything close to a functional multi-desktop app. There used to be something as part of XP powertoys (it performed badly as I remember it) but I have yet too see anything since then. Ignoring most of the philosophical issues, that alone makes the platform a non-starter as my daily driver. I tend to use desktops…

Along with native multiple desktop support of Windows 10, there is a single portable exe by Sysintarnals called Desktops for multiple desktops feature.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/sysinternals/cc817881.as...

Re: Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

#115

Post by vaishaksuresh »

imgabe wrote: post #60
jarcoal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like he chose to work as a mobile developer, not an iOS developer. A Mac let's you write for iOS and Android. Windows doesn't.

To be fair, it's Apple that doesn't let you develop for iOS on Windows, not Microsoft.

Yes but Microsoft doesn't let you build on macOS either. With mac, you still have an option of installing windows. I am not saying one is better than the other, but as a developer, I feel macOS gives me best bang for the buck.

Re: Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

#116

Post by csixty4 »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #106
csixty4 wrote: post #3

The page is kinda light on details. From my experience doing web development, msys2 + PuTTY/Pagent give me pretty much everything I need. I don't even use bash; everything I need is available from cmd.exe, including tools like ls & grep. Microsoft isn't going to say so, but you can get an Office365 gift card for like $20 on eBay. That gives you the Office apps plus a good chunk of storage on OneDrive and some Skype c…

I find PuTTY so aggravating to use. I've only used Cygwin but I assume msys2 has an ssh client. Do you use PuTTY over that since it's the workflow you're used to or do you find it to be a better experience?

Pagent has become a sort of de-facto standard for ssh agents on Windows. Once I get my Yubikey set up, I can even substitute gpg for Pagent and have it speak the same protocol (it's a setting, off by default).

Git for Windows drops in a command line ssh client pre-configured for Pagent auth, and git itself can pull keys from Pagent as well. I just needed to tweak my path so that ssh client gets used instead of msys2's.

I'm with you. I can't stand the actual PuTTY app itself.

Re: Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

#117

Post by Swinx43 »

Swinx43 wrote: post #47
miahi wrote: post #28

What's interesting for me is that nowhere on the site, even when you compare, configure, or try to buy the Surface Book, is mentioned what kind of "i5" or "i7" you get (also for GPU). All you can see when you "configure" is something like "6th Gen Intel Core i7, 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM / dGPU"

Totally agree. If Microsoft wants to made proper comparisons then they need to state what CPU it actually is. The amount of times I have heard people say that a particular notebook is "Way" cheaper than a MacBook Pro only to point out to them they are comparing a dual core i7 to a quad core i7 is just ridiculous. When they then look at quad core i7 notebooks the prices become much closer if not end up being the same.

From what I could dig up online the CPU is a i7 Dual Core CPU, which makes this one VERY expensive dual core laptop at the i7 + 1TB SSD range (http://pureinfotech.com/surface-book-laptop-technical-specif...)

Granted there is not much information but if the above is correct then you are better off getting a Dell XPS, at least they run about £1800 for the i7 quad core with 512SSD.

Re: Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

#118

Post by imgabe »

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #115
imgabe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it's Apple that doesn't let you develop for iOS on Windows, not Microsoft.

Yes but Microsoft doesn't let you build on macOS either. With mac, you still have an option of installing windows. I am not saying one is better than the other, but as a developer, I feel macOS gives me best bang for the buck.

It's Apple that doesn't let you install macOS on a VM or other hardware. Microsoft has no control over that.

Re: Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

#119

Post by vaishaksuresh »

imgabe wrote: post #118
vaishaksuresh wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but Microsoft doesn't let you build on macOS either. With mac, you still have an option of installing windows. I am not saying one is better than the other, but as a developer, I feel macOS gives me best bang for the buck.

It's Apple that doesn't let you install macOS on a VM or other hardware. Microsoft has no control over that.

Microsoft does have control over building a version of Visual Studio that runs on macOS if they really don't discriminate based on the platform. They want their phone apps built on windows and I think it is fair, but they aren't that much different from Apple.

Re: Surface Book – It’s Easy to Switch from Mac to Surface

#120

Post by tekklloneer »

codq wrote: post #34
tekklloneer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should probably start the transition off of Logic now, while it's still supported software.

I'm in the same boat as OP, as I absolutely love Logic's built-in software synths and composition-friendly UX. Care to elaborate as why you think Logic is a long-term mistake? You think Apple is transitioning away from support?

I think locking yourself into any single proprietary format is a mistake. I realize my comment came off as implying Logic is doomed, but if you're really worried about vendor lockin, spending an afternoon on tutorials and a few side projects in the new environment can really help build your skills, not just in the new toolset but in the old one as well.
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