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Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before

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Re: Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before

#151

Post by jbigelow76 »

EasyTiger_ wrote: post #68
martijn_himself wrote: post #18

I can't believe anyone using macOS for their professional workflow would consider switching to Windows 10 despite all the criticism leveled at Apple's hardware (most of which I think is totally justified). I use Windows professionally (for .NET development) and I think Windows 10 is still light-years behind, with an unstable, jarring OS experience full of bugs and niggles and unloved and underdeveloped touch interfac…

I just installed Windows 10. My start menu by default was full of stuff I will never ever use. After deleting/uninstalling apps (where it would allow me) the OS decides to install Candy Crush and other games I never asked for. Unacceptable.

Microsoft deserves every bit of ridicule lobbed its way for adding advertising to it's start menu in Win10. That being said they aren't the only offender, my iPhone has a folder of apps called Apple Trash filled with Apple's collection of worthless default apps that can't be removed from iOS.

Re: Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before

#152

Post by rocky1138 »

EasyTiger_ wrote: post #68
martijn_himself wrote: post #18

I can't believe anyone using macOS for their professional workflow would consider switching to Windows 10 despite all the criticism leveled at Apple's hardware (most of which I think is totally justified). I use Windows professionally (for .NET development) and I think Windows 10 is still light-years behind, with an unstable, jarring OS experience full of bugs and niggles and unloved and underdeveloped touch interfac…

I just installed Windows 10. My start menu by default was full of stuff I will never ever use. After deleting/uninstalling apps (where it would allow me) the OS decides to install Candy Crush and other games I never asked for. Unacceptable.

Get some perspective. Operating systems have included simple games since the 80s. Minesweeper, anyone?

Re: Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before

#153

Post by lucisferre »

blahblah12 wrote: post #129
bangonkeyboard wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two days ago, immediately after several programs crashed and shortly before the entire OS locked up, I managed to capture this: http://i.imgur.com/ecCPlcs.png That is Crash Reporter crashing. The following is the last screenshot I was able to take before the system stopped being able to write files: http://i.imgur.com/IK7j98P.png Sierra has been an absolute nightmare in every respect that I have been forced to reboot…

+1 to this. I purchased a brand new touchbar 2016 MacBook Pro. At a cost of 2800 dollars to me. I've had the following problems: 1) They wrote a driver that blew out my speaker and I had to wait 5 weeks for a replacement. http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/11/30/apple-updates-boot... 2) There is graphical tearing and glitching everywhere. http://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/02/new-macbook-pro-graphics... 3) The OS rest…

Wow, we have a bunch on order at our office. If we have even half these problems they are all going back and we're getting Dell's or Lenovo's. Which is a really sad and disappointing outcome for me to consider.

Re: Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before

#154

Post by slantyyz »

pdimitar wrote: post #145
Stratoscope wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fonts and UI rendering look awful on Windows compared to macOS, there is just no comparison. I've heard a number of people say this, and I'm always puzzled because it is exactly the opposite for me. Running on the same hardware (late 2013 MBPR 15"), Windows 10 font rendering is much more pleasing to my eyes. When I boot into OSX, the text looks terrible to me. (I'm still running El Capitan - has text rendering chan…

I am no professional in typography nor have I used any other Mac than the Macbook 12" (2015), but putting it side by side with my Acer Predator Z35 (35" curved screen), I still like macOS' text rendering a lot more. Maybe it's the fact that it has a huge resolution on a 12" screen. Seems very likely that the higher pixel density makes for a crisp and beautiful text. Again, I am not a pro in this area. I am a programm…

>> putting it side by side with my Acer Predator Z35 (35" curved screen)

The reason why you notice the difference is because of the low DPI for the screen size on your Z35. Windows fonts render badly on those screens at small point sizes. If your same screen was, say, 4K and you were running with text scaling, the fonts would look -way- better.

Re: Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before

#155

Post by shiftpgdn »

I am a Surface convert after Apple discontinued OS support and updates for my still powerful, healthy, relatively new Macbook.

Surface is much more flexible and provides a greater degree of customization. It is the perfect hybrid between and tablet and a laptop device. I'm just as comfortable using it as a consumption device on the couch as I am using it as a production device on a desk.

It really feels like Apple has become more and more hostile to the "production" crowd as a means of catering to the consumption crowd. I love their hardware but the company and it's attitude towards customers can take a hike.

Re: Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before

#156

Post by vidarh »

lmm wrote: post #108
vidarh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15" is way too small for me. Basically it boils down to differences in usage patterns. For my part I have a 17" laptop that is almost exclusively for home office use, a 11" chromebook for meetings or light work away from home, and an 8" tablet for entertainment and the odd emergency ssh session (I can fix servers over ssh from my phone too, but it's not exactly a fun experience). The way I see it, there's no single f…

That's very similar to what I used to have pre-Surface Book. But I found that the Surface Book was small and light enough to replace the 11", but powerful enough to replace the 17" (I have a Surface Dock for the "home office" part - leave stuff connected to the dock (which could include a big screen, though I haven't found the need yet - the 13.5" screen is high-resolution and very clear, so it ends up being more rea…

For my part, I just can't work on a smaller screen. I certainly get what you mean regarding getting away with smaller screens with a higher quality and/or higher resolution screen - I'll never go back to less than full HD for my phones, for example, - but the distance of my laptop screen is largely dictated by the attachment to the keyboard (if someone offers a hinged display that can be lifted up closer to the face, perhaps) and I've found not being forced to lean in towards the screen while working is essential to my physical comfort, but I want to be able to largely fill my field of view.

My current laptop "only" has a full hd screen, but it was well over half the cost of my not-at-all-cheap custom build laptop when I bought it, and I expect to spend a similar proportion of the cost of my next laptop on an above average screen (edit: which will mean at a "4K" 17" screen, most likely)

I'm all for a single computing device, but not a single screen size. I don't think we'll ever settle on a single screen-type until/unless we have good enough head mountable screen replacements.

Re: Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before

#157

Post by rocky1138 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #44
artursapek wrote: post #16

I believe it. I just abandoned Apple after years of loyalty. I looked hard at Surfaces and after considering them for a while I decided they weren't ready to be my main dev machine, so I went with a Thinkpad. But Microsoft is doing great stuff with its hardware lately.

Microsoft is doing excellent stuff with hardware. It's a pity that it comes at the price of being bundled with their user-hostile nightmare of an operating system.

I've been saying this about Apple for years. It's amazing how the tables have turned.

Re: Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before

#158

Post by WorldMaker »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #144
WorldMaker wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows hasn't used Thumbs.db files on most drives since it switched to a central cache in Vista.

It still uses them, it was not difficult to find a screenshot from a recent version of Windows. http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/ximg_54e...

Yes, it still uses them on (certain types of) external drives (in certain types of folders) and in folders that already have them from a previous version of Windows (sometimes), but nowhere to the extent that it used to use them (because there now is a central cache for most of them), and nowhere near the extent that macOS uses .DS_Store.

ETA: All of which is why my first post said "most drives"...

Re: Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before

#159

Post by jimbokun »

droithomme wrote: post #121

I recently went back to Windows from macOS. Now I have many USB ports, a DVD burner, an ethernet port, an SD card slot, an HDMI output, a decent graphics card, expandability and compatibility. All things I'm not allowed to have on Macs any more. Mac fanboys tell me "You idiot, you don't need any of that stuff." Actually I do. They tell me "No you are wrong." No, that's not correct. They don't actually know more about…

Yeah, soldered RAM and SSD is criminal.

As far as I can tell, only Mac allowing for RAM upgrades is iMac 5k and and MacPro. And iMac 5k doesn't allow disk upgrades.

Re: Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before

#160

Post by nilkn »

I tried to make this switch because I bought into all the online criticism of the new MBP.

The build quality was very lacking compared to the new MBP.

The screen wobbled like crazy even when just typing on it.

The model I was using had a really horrible display with active ghosting (not sure if that's the correct term -- it appeared that the refresh rate was just very low, so moving the cursor around or dragging a window would leave a sort of "ghost trail" behind). It's possible this was just a defective display.

The trackpad was nowhere near as good as I was led to believe from online comments. It wasn't horrible, but multitouch gesture recognition felt years behind Apple's. Leaving a finger resting on the trackpad would break all kinds of gestures, but Apple's trackpads handle that just fine. I also didn't realize how nice the Force Touch trackpads are until I went back to a hinge-based trackpad where you can't even click everywhere.

Windows 10 is a big advance over previous versions, and I use it extensively on my desktop at home. However, the experience with a touchpad didn't feel anywhere nearly as polished as on my MacBook. Using trackpad gestures to slide between virtual desktops for instance had a very janky and obviously buggy animation.

Windows now has the Ubuntu subsystem, but I immediately ran into serious dealbreaker issues. I couldn't get Haskell or Elm to run on it because a core system call hadn't been implemented yet. The team is aware of it and I'm sure it's slated to be fixed soon, but I still couldn't do my work on the laptop without firing up a VM or dual booting.

I never used the touch screen and never felt the need to detach the screen and use it as a tablet. The aspect ratio of the screen also bothered me.

I'm now using the much hated 2016 MBP with Touch Bar and am extremely happy with the purchase.

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