Microsoft has one long building. In the north wing, they build to last, hardware, kernel, software (.NET) - the problem is, in the south-wing, they built to embrace, extend and enshittify. Can microsoft north build performance faster, then the south can enshittify. Place your bets ladies and mentalgen.
Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
501–510 of 686 posts
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#502Every time I read something like "completely redefines professional computing" I think that somebody in the marketing department didn't do a good enough job to disguise a sponsored content, or at the very least didn't review what the independent author wrote. Anyway, what I like of this machine is the 15" screen with a keyboard without a numberpad: the center of the body of the user can be aligned with the center of…
I'm curious about the openness of the platform. As long as the openness and standardization of the PC platform is not present, this platform is not a contender of x86 in my eyes. We can see with the highly praised Apple M platform on the example of the Asahi Linux what the lack of openness brings: people are locked in to operating systems by the vendors, and planned obsolescence, even with long support periods. On th…
> I can recall the horror on reading articles how Raspberry Pi boot was working
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#503I'm on my third Surface Pro (an 11 this time) and basically love it. Tablet form factor, lightweight, multitouch, with a real desktop OS (I mean not ipad's iOS). Decent battery life. True, it's not perfect: slow to wake, the touchpad stops working once in a while & needs to be reset. Missing a GPS chip. But it runs Adobe, Resolve, Chrome of course, msys2, and Linux (WSL2) quite well. I love the absolutely gorgeous Hi…
> slow to wake, the touchpad stops working once in a while & needs to be reset
I was eyeing SP for several generations and could never commit to it just because of issue like that. I want a fast device that's 100% reliable. SP felt sluggish whenever I picked it up in a store.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#504Microsoft doesn't get it. People don't buy MacBooks because they're powerful. People buy MacBooks because they love macOS.
Agree to disagree. I am enthusiastically waiting for Asahi to sort out its display and power management issues, after which I am instantly switching. I'd even take Win 11 over the dumpster fire that is MacOS Tahoe and I am not the only one who uses is begrudgingly amongst my colleagues.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could it be that new tech that passes air over the board without a fan? Was announced last year, I forget what it was called
You're likely thinking of a Piezo fan or solid state fan. It uses a thin membrane that vibrates and moves air though small spaces. Frore Systems had their Airjet Mini make the rounds in reviews and demos a couple years ago (2?).
Demo from 12 years ago:
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#506My experience with Surfaces and, particularly, the Surface Book and its accompanying dock were such that I'd have to be paid to use one again. For example, the dock would get its own updates silently and brick itself randomly and the proprietary magnetic connector between the dock and the computer was prone to a poor connection. I remember many occasions trying to work and my screens just randomly blinking in and out…
Oh wow. I love mine, so much that I've never been back to the apple laptop eco system since. The two surface laptops I've had are the best laptops I've owned.
The build it rock solid, its trivial to run wsl for a Linux environment and I still get a windows environment for work with excel, etc.
The keys don't come off the keyboard like they do with my old mac chicklet style laptop keys and even my 10 year old can still drive multiple external monitors.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are talking about a situation some years past. I member there were USB docks that if you had them attached to external power and ethernet, but not a laptop, they'd instant-kill the network by sending garbage frames that would cause switches to fault off. Only around 2024-ish the situation with USB and TB docks seemed to stabilize.
Yes, this would have been around 2015. (When I said "Surface Book" I meant the original!) Docks were bad, bad products in those days. They were no longer the dedicated bulky-but-reliable things of years past, or the modern finally-debugged dongles we've got now. This was Intel's Alpine Ridge and it was hell. (At least, I think that was the one. Certainly, it was hell!)
> They were no longer the dedicated bulky-but-reliable things of years past
The old bulky-but-reliable things often enough didn't contain much electronics - it was often enough the raw interfaces exposed directly on these multi-pin connectors. Simple, stupid and reliable as long as no electrically conductive dirt was around.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#508Seriously?
Will it be as silent as a MacBook Pro? Will you be able to throw it into a backpack without shutting it down?
At a quick glance it sounds like they're competing on specs and obviously missing everything else.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious about the openness of the platform. As long as the openness and standardization of the PC platform is not present, this platform is not a contender of x86 in my eyes. We can see with the highly praised Apple M platform on the example of the Asahi Linux what the lack of openness brings: people are locked in to operating systems by the vendors, and planned obsolescence, even with long support periods. On th…
Yes, with 128GB RAM, I guess one could even ignore that it is soldered (and hence "unrepairable"), but if it can't run Linux or *BSD it is a definite no go. We definitely don't need two closed hardware platform duopoly (Apple and Microsoft), as together they will dominate and kill the "open" platforms. But I am pessimistic here as everything seems headed towards that eventuality. We should never have accepted smartph…
> Yes, with 128GB RAM, I guess one could even ignore that it is soldered
Unless that RAM fails in some way or another, then you have to replace the whole motherboard because of this.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#510[flagged]