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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

#321

Post by eddieroger »

slantyyz wrote: post #233
eddieroger wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which MacBook are you using that you consider "relatively new," but Apple stopped supporting? In my experiences with Apple, support has gone on for years, and in the case of my original iBook, a full decade. It has gotten shorter over the last few years, but Sierra officially supports computers from 2009, which after 7 years I don't consider new any more.

AFAIK, the 2011 MBPs are no longer supported for hardware repairs (although they will run the latest OS). Maybe that's what the parent is referring to? FWIW, the 15" 2011 MBPs with the i7 quad cores, GPU issues aside, are still pretty fast when compared to the latest Macs using the ultrabook CPUs.

The explicitly said "Apple discontinued OS support." That's just false, unless the machine in question is over 8 years old, which is not new.

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

#322

Post by wlesieutre »

revelation wrote: post #286
metafunctor wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? This is about how Microsoft is saying the new MBP is so bad that users are switching to Surface en masse. It's entirely relevant to bring up the point that not everyone hates the new MBP.

No, the anecdotal experience of a single person with zero attempt to put it into a broader context is still entirely unhelpful.

If you're looking for statistical significance, Microsoft's "We have numbers but we're not telling you what they are" isn't helpful either.

As another counterpoint, of the 4 people I know who had a Surface Pro, 2 still have it, and 2 eventually sold it to switch back to either a MacBook or iPad Pro. A 5th person got a SP1 from a family member and put Linux on it.

We're not looking at a strictly 1-way Mac to Surface user flow here.

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

#323

Post by derefr »

wlesieutre wrote: post #319
derefr wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those cases where it's good to know a bit of electrical engineering. If an adapter, connector, cable, etc. is both "passive" (i.e. isn't doing anything clever in there with ICs that consume some of the power sent along the line) and "digital" (i.e. has transmission semantics which moot RF interference as long as the cable is within a proscribed length and between powered switches) then it doesn't matte…

Even with passive devices, there's a risk that it's miswired and will connect things that should not be connected to each other. Most famously, earlier this year the Google engineer who reviews USB-C cables had one fry both his Chromebook and USB-PD analyzer. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-finds...

USB-C cables aren't (exclusively) passive! USB-C cables can carry the signalling protocol for, among other things, Thunderbolt 3.1, which is an active protocol (requires powered ICs in the cables), and thus can't simply be opto-isolated by the modems on either side like a purely-passive protocol would be. A given USB-C cable might be a passive component and still be able to wreck the system it's a part of, if the system is active—that is, if the system is constrained from protecting itself against damage by simply re-defining line voltage at each medium change.

This is a compromise most people don't usually realize they're making when they favour the addition of an active "feature" to a previously-passive spec. For example, Ethernet used to be a pure-passive, easily non-ground-referenced wiring standard. But then PoE came along...

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

#324

Post by mark_l_watson »

lmm wrote: post #214
mark_l_watson wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy a signature edition laptop directly from the microsoft store, then you will not et any crap-ware.

This isn't true. You get Candy Crush. That's the whole problem.

OK, then Microsoft changed what gets installed. A year ago when I bought a signature laptop, no junk was pre-installed, IIRC

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

#325

Post by jimbokun »

pdimitar wrote: post #186
jimbokun wrote: post #142

No numbers, so no way to evaluate how significant this is. For the record, just played with the TouchBar in the Apple Store, and think it's super cool. Also love the humongous track pad, and believe USB-C support will explode in the near future. So I'm curious to see sales numbers for Surface vs. the new MacBook Pros. Might be more "switchers" to Surface, but also a big increase in MacBook Pro sales overall.

As a guy who uses the top bar of keys a lot, I wouldn't buy the new MBPs even for $500. IMO that was a foolhardy decision; Macs are (were?) very popular amongst designers and programmers, why limit the accessibility of the keyboard? Do you realize how many strokes on the Esc key a VIM-using dev does per day? It's as if Apple doesn't care about the professional audience anymore. They should've offered a "touch bar" an…

How much of Apple's sales do you think go to vim users?

And they do have a normal bar variant of the 13", although that might go away when prices come down.

Lastly, your argument sounds similar to me to the people who vowed they would never give up their physical phone keyboards. I don't think they made much impact on Apple's iPhone sales.

Seems your top priority is preserving what you are comfortable with. My gut feeling is potential for better interfaces no one has even thought of yet for Touch Bar is immense.

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

#326

Post by cmdrfred »

astrodust wrote: post #226
cmdrfred wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dollar for dollar Denny's is as good as any Michelin Star restaurant.

If you could afford to eat at both, if the difference in cost was mostly inconsequential, which one would you choose on a regular basis?

If both were free I'd pick the most expensive one obviously.

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

#327

Post by extra88 »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #98
jjawssd wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever considered the possibility that your storage medium or random access memory is corrupt?

The Mac has passed the hardware diagnostics at the Apple Store multiple times. The components are unchanged from Yosemite, which did not have these issues. The OS has been freshly reinstalled, with the same problems. This is also just one of a myriad of issues that have plagued the OS. Sierra has introduced me to new and wonderful ways to fail: http://i.imgur.com/HbVLWDq.png

Google "too many open files" and you'll find posts about OS X but also Linux. Could it be git itself that's hitting a limit? Maybe you're hitting the shell's ulimit, not the system's per process or per-system open files max.

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

#328

Post by pdimitar »

jimbokun wrote: post #325
pdimitar wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a guy who uses the top bar of keys a lot, I wouldn't buy the new MBPs even for $500. IMO that was a foolhardy decision; Macs are (were?) very popular amongst designers and programmers, why limit the accessibility of the keyboard? Do you realize how many strokes on the Esc key a VIM-using dev does per day? It's as if Apple doesn't care about the professional audience anymore. They should've offered a "touch bar" an…

How much of Apple's sales do you think go to vim users? And they do have a normal bar variant of the 13", although that might go away when prices come down. Lastly, your argument sounds similar to me to the people who vowed they would never give up their physical phone keyboards. I don't think they made much impact on Apple's iPhone sales. Seems your top priority is preserving what you are comfortable with. My gut fe…

As a matter of fact, I do miss physical keyboards on phones but frankly they don't make sense because they're nowhere near the level of comfort of my mechanical keyboard. My answer to this has been to stop spending on smartphones. I'll be buying the next iPad Pro and will settle for a midrange Android and an iPhone 7 / 7s / 8 and will just call it quits for 3-4 years.

I am not "vowing" anything. There are changes that do make sense and others who don't -- and that's subjective, of course. For me the real physical feedback when typing is irreplaceable.

And don't give me that talk that I am a grumpy old fart. Until we have computers able to react on voice like the Star Trek computers do, full physical keyboards are not going anywhere. It's about convenience and speed of the interaction, not about trends.

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

#329

Post by 0wl3x »

jetti wrote: post #33
0wl3x wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. I use a surface pro 3 as my daily driver but I have two 23" monitors I plug it into. I can only use the 13" screen for movie watching and reading.

If you have it plugged into two monitors I'm curious as to why you ended up buying a surface pro.

I bought the SP a while ago, before the two monitors. If I had my druthers I'd go with something more powerful. Either a dedicated desktop rig or a beefier laptop
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