Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

windowslatest.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 686 posts

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#651

Post by chis »

illiac786 wrote: post #225
chis wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also shockingly twitter-nerd-coded. "The cure for token anxiety", it advertises. To be honest it's hard to see why anyone would buy this product so maybe they decided to take a wild swing with the marketing. The only use is people who really, really, want to run models locally vs getting a much cheaper and higher performance result from a cloud host.

Higher performance, I agree, but cheaper? I didn’t check how much this costs, but if you use AI locally a lot, it’s going to be amortised pretty quickly. Burning 100$ a month on tokens has become insanely easy. I remember when it was unimaginable for me…

This won’t be able to run any of the cutting edge models. And the models it can run can be served from cloud providers for very cheap - like It’d take many years to break even on your $6000 investment, meanwhile better and better models will come out that the DGX can’t run.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#652

Post by chis »

illiac786 wrote: post #520
girvo wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You top out at 20 tokens per second on hardware with memory bandwidth this low for any local model actually worth using. Doing the maths, it’s not financially worth it. Only worth it for privacy and control reasons. I do love my GB10 Asus Spark-like though still!

I don’t understand your calculation, can you elaborate? At 25USD/Mtk output, assuming your 20tk/s, I generated/saved (minus power costs) ~15k$ in a year. Granted, it won’t run 24/7, but over a couple of years, this is definitely cheaper.

This can’t run any models that cost $25/mtok lol. I think the fastest model it’ll reasonably run will be GPT-OSS 120B which costs $.05/mtok.

This is a laptop for CUDA devs and AI larpers.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#653

Post by Forgeties79 »

exmadscientist wrote: post #623
Forgeties79 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going to come across a flippant, but aren’t they Microsoft? Couldn’t they order whatever parts they wanted to spec? It’s hard to imagine that every fundamental piece is so horrifically useless as you describe, but it’s also not my world. It just seems to me if any company could, M$ could just spend their way through the problem. Grabbing everybody else’s cheap hardware and going “there’s absolutely nothing we…

>aren’t they Microsoft? Couldn’t they order whatever parts they wanted to spec? Economically and logistically, yes, absolutely. Would it have had positive ROI (stuff like that is expensive )? Who knows, there's a lot of factors to consider, like accessory costs, increased sales, brand goodwill, new markets, whatever. But they could do it if they wanted to. Culturally, though, this is just not how Microsoft operates.…

Interesting, thanks for elaborating

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#654

Post by ExoticPearTree »

delfinom wrote: post #603
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #546

Call me a hater, but the problem is Windows, not necessarily the hardware. I get it they want to stop the MacBook Pro, but: Windows is slow for no reason; it collects everything it can about the user; takes screenshots of whatever the user is doing; has ads - even though you pay for the OS; drivers are still a mess; hardware is made by different companies and no actual proper integration like Apple does. I could go o…

> hardware is made by different companies and no actual proper integration like Apple does This is literally a Microsoft made hardware product which is extra integrated with Windows.

To be picky, it is Nvidia made hardware with Windows bolted on top. And who knows how many other hardware components whose drivers are shipped by their respective manufacturers. I wouldn't hold my breath on the quality of the final software product and user experience.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#655

Post by ExoticPearTree »

elxr wrote: post #630
troupo wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Call me a hater, but the problem is Windows, not necessarily the hardware. Thing is, MacOS was heading the same way until the new chips saved it. The last few versions that were still running on Intel shouldn't have been as slow as they were. Software is going to shit everywhere, it's just there's now M* equivalent for Windows and Intel. All that to say: yes, I think you're spot on, the problem is sowftware, not ha…

Apple is lucky so many talented devs have built alternatives and fixes for the sorry state of factory MacOS. The settings app, the finder app, spotlight, the general lack of innovation are just a few things that really should've been fixed about a trillion dollars ago. It's gotten to the point that I've switched to omarchy and somehow this tiling-only, arch based distro, with big changes every ~2 months is still more…

I switched to Mac in 2013, with the launch of the 13" MBP Retina and haven't looked back. With the exception of some minor annoyances here and there, I did not feel the need to install an app to customize the MacOS experience. Using migration assistant from Mac to Mac over many laptops, most of the settings have been kept and did not really got on the bandwagon for all the new enhancements introduced in MacOS over the years. Like the desktop thingie where you can have your windows tiled on the side, or Stage Manager or whatever is called and so on.

Search in Finder sucks, but luckily I know how to use find in the terminal so it's a non-issue for me. And so on. As I said, minor annoyances.

There is no perfect OS to make everyone happy.

For me MacOS brings the best of two worlds: Windows (GUI, friendly apps, etc.) and Linux (terminal, access to *NIX tools, etc.). And with the stability of a UNIX based system. And now with the size of its market share, there are so many apps for Mac that were Windows only.

And before anyone starts, I used Linux as the main desktop from ~ 1999 to 2006 or so. And went through all the pain of configuring X, make the sound card work, compile my own kernel because reasons and so on. I have touched it sporadically since then but it still feels unpolished compared to MacOS.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#656

Post by ExoticPearTree »

elxr wrote: post #631
zamadatix wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of column A and a bit of column B. Of laptops I'd like to run Windows on, I'd definitely choose the latest MacBook. Of reasons I don't run Windows on all of my desktop hardware, it's mostly because it's loaded with bullshit.

> the latest MacBook Which one? Outside the macbook pro 16, almost every other macbook has pretty reasonable competition now. At least hardware wise, and excluding the raw single-thread performance of the SoC. On the windows laptop side, the zephyrus g14 and g16 (among others) are honestly just as nice as what Apple sells on the high-end. And better in certain ways, like the keyboards.

> Outside the macbook pro 16, almost every other macbook has pretty reasonable competition now.

It depends on how you look at it. I've been a happy Air user since the launch of the M2 air. I did not find any Windows laptop comparable in build quality to match it. Not to mention performance. It is not a bash on Windows per se, but on the hardware manufacturers that make crappy plasticky laptops that bend wildly. And don't get me started on display quality.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#657

Post by elxr »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #656
elxr wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the latest MacBook Which one? Outside the macbook pro 16, almost every other macbook has pretty reasonable competition now. At least hardware wise, and excluding the raw single-thread performance of the SoC. On the windows laptop side, the zephyrus g14 and g16 (among others) are honestly just as nice as what Apple sells on the high-end. And better in certain ways, like the keyboards.

> Outside the macbook pro 16, almost every other macbook has pretty reasonable competition now. It depends on how you look at it. I've been a happy Air user since the launch of the M2 air. I did not find any Windows laptop comparable in build quality to match it. Not to mention performance. It is not a bash on Windows per se, but on the hardware manufacturers that make crappy plasticky laptops that bend wildly. And d…

The display quality of a 14 inch 1800p oled at 120Hz (asus, lenovo, dell all offer this) is honestly a league above the 60Hz IPS panel the air has had for way too long now.

In response time, vibrance, smoothness, contrast ratio, and even display size at the same overall weight.

This year, you're starting to see tandem oleds too, which are even better than those. Do some more research, and don't just blindly regurgitate statements. Display quality?? That's the one thing macbook airs have lost out on for many generations at this point.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#658

Post by fmajid »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #546

Call me a hater, but the problem is Windows, not necessarily the hardware. I get it they want to stop the MacBook Pro, but: Windows is slow for no reason; it collects everything it can about the user; takes screenshots of whatever the user is doing; has ads - even though you pay for the OS; drivers are still a mess; hardware is made by different companies and no actual proper integration like Apple does. I could go o…

I ordered a ThinkPad about a year ago, and removing Windows 11 Pro from the configurator saved me a cool £110 ($150). Despite this ridiculous overpricing, the surprising thing is, Windows isn't even in the top 5 businesses at Microsoft any more, even Xbox makes more money.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#659

Post by fmajid »

com2kid wrote: post #305
exmadscientist wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with some of the people responsible for the Surface Book, Surface docks, and specifically the Surface Book's dock. These were hardware people (EEs), not software people, and this was after their time at MS. Unfortunately I don't remember specifics (both because it's been a few years, and because I'd probably have to fuzz details anyway), but... : Docks are horrifying products. Thunderbolt docks are doubly ho…

My team (Microsoft Band) discovered the reason why the surface's keyboard sometimes wouldn't work when connected. There was a hardware bug in the cortex MCU the keyboard used involving waking from deep sleep. One of our FW engineers spent several months figuring it out and eventually reported it to the manufacturer, and to the Surface team. IIRC it was something about wake on interrupt in a specific deep sleep mode a…

For an amusing take on the life of a systems programmer, James Mickens' "The Night Watch":

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#660

Post by fortran77 »

elxr wrote: post #634
fortran77 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I'm running Windows 11 Arm on an Asus Zenbook A16 right now. Lighting fast. I'm typing this comment while I'm compiling code and having Claude analyze packets coming from Wireshark that's on this machine. It's got 18 cores and 48GB of integrated memory, great battery life, and an OLED screen for $1699 I run Linux in a VM and Docker on it, and WSL2. No problems with anything. I don't see any ads. I turn a num…

That's one of the laptops I've been sort of looking into. Can you run stuff like hyprland, and the linux-version of ghostty on it? Not familiar with the state of WSL2. I'm honestly happy just using linux, but that zenbook a16 is just better value than a panther lake or mac alternative with a similar spec (RAM and display quality mainly). So if WSL2 essentially lets me just treat it as a linux laptop, or a close enoug…

I run Windows 11 Pro on it. I like it. I use WSL2 for command line/Docker stuff. If you're not insterested in using Windows 11 Pro as your main OS, I'd make sure someone's figured out how to run Linux native on it (and make sure all power management/audio/etc works!) before buying.
Post reply on HN