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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

#61

Post by CydeWeys »

gnaddel wrote: post #7

I have become extremely weary of buying Microsoft hardware products. I was (and am) very happy with my Surface Pro 2. Recently, my power supply broke after two years of use, perfectly fine in my book, it happens. However, Microsoft has stopped selling replacement parts after less than three years. I did not find any vendor in Germany that could still deliver. I got lucky and found _one_ seller in the UK. There are so…

I'm transitioning all of my hardware over to charging on USB-C and it's great. Both my laptop (HP Chromebook 13") and phone (Nexus 6p) charge via USB-C, and I just went on my first trip in which I only had to bring a single, small charger. It's super convenient, and because it's becoming the de facto standard, I never have to worry about replacement chargers.

It'd be hard for me to buy anything that uses a proprietary charger ever again. This includes iPhones and Surface Books. And I've already committed to not buying anything that uses older versions of USB either -- it's all C for me.

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

#63

Post by vaishaksuresh »

izacus wrote: post #5
jamesmp98 wrote: post #2

Unless you are a mobile developer and your clients always want iOS apps.

Well, you kinda pegged your fate and future to Apple by choosing to worked into their locked ecosystem right? It's not like it was an accidental choice, you knew that you'll have to buy whatever Apple serves you in whatever form they want as long as you want to service that platform.

Last I build a windows phone app, which was ~3 years ago, I needed windows running on my Mac. With a mac I can build for iOS, Android and WinPhone. With a Windows box, I cannot build iOS apps. I don't know what is more locked.

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

#64

Post by Unbeliever69 »

As an industrial designer, Ux designer, and a programer I have found anything "Microsoft" (hardware or software) offensive to my sight, taste, touch, ears, and soul. I'm a Mac user at home and in the office, mainly for application development. BSD Unix under the hood just makes my life as a programmer feel more integrated. I'll have to look at the Linux CLI on the Surface and see how I feel. Most importantly, I love how my Mac just stays out of my way.

I also use Windows at the office for AutoCAD because the Mac version is inferior to the Windows counterpart. Our machines and OS are modern, but I want to carve my eyes out with a spork on a daily basis using Windows 10.

THAT BEING SAID, we've got our eyes on the Surface Studio for the boss to use. We'll see how I feel then. I still have a copy of Adobe Master Collection cs6 that I paid good money for with, no Windows machine to use it on!

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

#65

Post by codazoda »

icinnamon wrote: post #16

I like that Microsoft is making an effort to capture the audience that wasn't impressed by Apple's MBP launch, but I can't get over their comparison chart. They compare the main screen of the Surface to the lower screen (touch bar) of the MBP. That's just a shady comparison. At least be honest.

It's even a good comparison that they used the 13" model. At first I expected the 15" to have a better ppi, but the 13" has a 227 PPI and the 15" has a 220 ppi.

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

#66

Post by jacobolus »

Meegul wrote: post #26
morley wrote: post #18

I'm a frontend dev who worked on Windows for 4 years, and switched to Mac in the last 2. The biggest hurdle I had with switching was the muscle memory of cmd-[char] vs. ctrl-[char], and tangentially the Windows-specific productivity keyboard shortcuts (mainly win-[char]) and Mac-specific ones. The second-biggest hurdle is the different mouse movement kinetics on each platform. These are still "hurdles": I have a Macb…

As a dev that frequently works on different linux distros, mac, and Windows, I recommend just getting used to disabling mouse acceleration. That is, if you're using a mouse. On a touchpad, I'd never recommend that, but if you're mouse-only then it makes the transition between the three os's fairly seamless.

If you want to do that you need to get a very sensitive mouse with the sensitivity cranked up (so that you can move the mouse across a large screen, something especially important on a Mac where menus are pegged to the top of the screen), and train yourself to make very careful tiny movements when you need precision. For a Mac user used to making relatively large but slow mouse movements for precision, this is definitely doable, but takes some significant retraining effort.

Personally what I’d love to do is disable acceleration on the computer side, and have my own hardware intermediary between the mouse and the computer, on which I can implement whatever sensor input -> pixel movement logic I want. For example, having a button to hold down for more precise movement, and another button to hold down to convert movement to scrolling.

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

#67

Post by bitL »

lostgame wrote: post #11

Unfortunately, Apple's done such a good job of keeping me locked to their software ecosystem I cannot consider this, though I vastly prefer the Surface hardware. Even if I wasn't an iOS developer, my other two jobs are Audio Production/editing and Video Production/editing. While I could almost happily toss Final Cut out the window (we all know what a disaster the FCP7 -> FCPX transition was, and my friends in the ind…

Ableton Live Suite comes with around 90GB of instruments bundled. You'd get used to UI. I oscillate between FL Studio and Live depending on genre I am working on and don't mind UI differences.

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

#68

Post by vaishaksuresh »

mgkimsal wrote: post #4
jamesmp98 wrote: post #2

Unless you are a mobile developer and your clients always want iOS apps.

this was the opposite of 20 years ago - sure, you can do loads on macs, except build visual basic apps for the windows ecosystem. shoe's on the other foot now. if MS had done a better job in mobile, there'd be more reason to target windows for regular joe consumers, but they lost that market (for now anyway?). :(

> except build visual basic apps for the windows ecosystem

Parallels/BootCamp?

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

#69

Post by slantyyz »

wlesieutre wrote: post #30
gnaddel wrote: post #7

I have become extremely weary of buying Microsoft hardware products. I was (and am) very happy with my Surface Pro 2. Recently, my power supply broke after two years of use, perfectly fine in my book, it happens. However, Microsoft has stopped selling replacement parts after less than three years. I did not find any vendor in Germany that could still deliver. I got lucky and found _one_ seller in the UK. There are so…

For all the complaints about Apple dropping magsafe, I'm happy to finally have industry standard charging. Brick is easily replacable. Cable is easily replacable. Should work with any new computer, or even to cell phones and tablets (with a C to Lightning cable if you're an iPhone person). Apple made a similar switch from one proprietary charging connector (magsafe 1) to another proprietary connector (magsafe 2) and…

>> I'm happy to finally have industry standard charging.

Real question to people in the know - is this truly the case?

I get that the port is industry standard, but are there electrical protections put in place?

If I use a 100W non-Apple charger on a MacBook Pro that uses a 63W charger will it damage the battery? Will a USB-C phone charger (with presumably very low wattage) work as well (albeit slower)?

While I really like that TB/USB3 ports are standard, it is incredibly confusing to laypeople with respect to understanding all the nuances.

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

#70

Post by ryanSrich »

twblalock wrote: post #42
tomtang0514 wrote: post #9

The image on the top of the page seems to feature a 2nd gen macbook pro (the one before retina display). Hmm, a bit shady...

You mean the non-retina Macbook Pro that was sold as the base model until last week?

Macbook pros were retina before last week.
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