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Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

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Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#311

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Yeah I have a Surface Pro 1 and I now use it for everything - development, taking notes, writing apps, playing minecraft, scribbling on PDFs. The direction they're taking the Pro 3 seems to be a good clear message at last 'the tablet that can replace your laptop' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t7rSZT_77E The bigger screen is a good move I think. I've started using the ArcTouch mouse with my surface when I'm out and…

Just out of interest, are you developing on Windows? Do you have any experience running Linux on them or know if that's pretty much a no go?

For my case, windows runs vagrant pretty well, so i have no problems developing web apps on windows as i have used vagrant on OSX before anyway.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#312
post #298

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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

I can view it at work (well, it is Microsoft). The leg crossing experience is interesting (that is a common posture for me). I really need to try this to get a feeling for whether it would work form me or not.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#313

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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.

It's most certainly derived. The kernel, system libraries and frameworks are common between Mac OS X and iOS (except for Appkit and UIKit)

This article covers some of the Apple internal history of iOS

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/09/the-history-of-ios/

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#314

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Strange, I think it's the opposite. That's a lot of money for an i3 with little memory. It's cheap next to a MacBook Air perhaps, but still quite expensive.

MacBook Air base model ($900): * 1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor * Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz * Intel HD Graphics 5000 * 4GB memory * 128GB PCIe-based flash storage The base Surface is cheaper than the Air but the second tier Surface (The one with more or less parity) is $100 more than the Air.

however for $100 more you get a High DPI touchscreen and a digital pen but the GPU (HD4400) is a bit slower.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#315

I wonder what the battery life and graphics performance are like? If they're decent (6+ hours of moderate use, plays CS:GO at 60fps), this will be a really great machine. The latest i7s tend to have pretty good integrated graphics, so I think at least that won't be an issue.

Looks like HD4400 which is not great, but should run older games on 720p pretty good.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#316
post #116

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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 would agree, except for the lack of support for Unicode and LF line endings.

What are you missing in terms of Unicode support? Line endings aside, it doesn't do too horribly with http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/examples/UTF-8-demo.txt

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#317

I wonder what the battery life and graphics performance are like? If they're decent (6+ hours of moderate use, plays CS:GO at 60fps), this will be a really great machine. The latest i7s tend to have pretty good integrated graphics, so I think at least that won't be an issue.

Looks like HD4400 which is not great, but should run older games on 720p pretty good.

Ah, that's too bad. I was hoping for Iris graphics. (CS:GO at 60 might still be doable, though.)

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#318
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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 is running a very confusing strategy here. Google understood that with Motorola and it's why they sold it off. Microsoft hopes to keep its monopoly in the PC space with its multi-OEM operating system, yet still try to get every PC consumer to buy its own devices. Something's got to give. I expect Microsoft's partners will increasingly continue to push other operating systems into the market on their devices…

I think there are signs of change. I read somewhere that they are practically giving away the Windows mobile operating system.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#319
post #307
post #260

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The whole point people are making is that tablets aren't good for work, which is why the surface is so great. So the surface has to be better than the MacBook Air for work, or better than an iPad as a tablet. Otherwise it's just a compromise that is worse at both. [edit: the downvotes are pretty indicative of the nature of this thread given that all I've done is ask valid questions to which I don't know the answer]

So to enlighten you. With a Surface, I can go full developer mode in the desktop, while making use of, if you prefer, the old style applications. I can detach the keyboard, switch the Metro (Modern) mode and make use of the tablet as a digital notebook thanks to pen input and handwriting recognition. Finally, I can go put the pen aside and just use touch input. And the ability to have a docking station made specifica…

You haven't enlightened me at all. I know that the surface can do a lot of things.

The question is - does it do any of those things better than the competition.

When in "classical desktop mode" it needs to be better than the MacBook Air, otherwise for most work it will be a worse experience regardless of whether it could at any time transform into a tablet.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#320
post #186

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As soon as Apple's press event is done, anything they've announced is up on their site to read about or often buy. Is MS announces something, you should be able to go to microsoft.com to read about it.

You seem to be deliberately missing the point. Apple doesn't pre-announce products at all. Criticizing the way Microsoft did it is reasonable. Making a comparison to Apple while doing so is a little bit nonsensical. If Apple were to get into the habit of pre-announcing products would they put detailed product data on the web? Would they allow for preorders, as Microsoft is apparently going to do tomorrow? Who knows?…

I'm not expecting it to be available for purchase/pre-order (although that's nice). But if you announce it, the information you announce should be on your website.

That just seems like common sense.

What if Amazon announced they were going to start selling houses and then decided not to put any information about it up on their site for a few hours? Plenty of people would go to Amazon.com to learn about it and they're only frustrating those people who have already shown themselves interested in the product.

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