Yeah, seems so. However, real press conferences and satirical ones are so similar these days that I can't really tell which one I am watching right now. ;)
I think the windows store just did not fit the usage patterns: People were used to download stuff right off the net, or use platforms like Valve's Steam.
On a chromebook-style laptop, expectations might be different.
I personally don't like the walled-garden aspect of app-stores, but I like that there is someone who can effectively respond if malware is reported. Sometimes malware is even proactively removed.
For non-power-users this is definitely an advantage. I hope in a few years I can just tell my parent to only install software from the app store, and they will be fine. Additionally, they don't have to do anything to stay up-to-date.
Even for power users there is a (theoretical) advantage, which is explicit dependency management. Once you know that all your software is distributed through one channel, libraries and versions can effectively be shared. This is what happens in the Free Software version of app stores: All major distros have them, and without them dependency management would be impossible.
So what is the potential gain here? In some version of the future, we might hope that apps don't include hard-copy versions of the libraries they are using, but just tell the app-store which versions they like to use. Security updates can then be pushed by the app-store vendor vs the app vendor.
> For non-power-users this is definitely an advantage. I hope in a few years I can just tell my parent to only install software from the app store, and they are fine. Additionally, they don't have to do anything to stay up-to-date.
I think this is often so easily overlooked for the technologically inclined.
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It's also not a situation that will likely dissipate. For instance, if in 100 years we're all (I dream) boarding starships, do the engineers really expect the average passenger or crew to understand the intricate workings of the entire vessel? Is this true for airplanes now?
Computers are essentially a vehicle for knowledge. If it's not where one is at one moment, it is where one can arrive. Not everyone who drives a car is an automotive engineer, kinetics or physics expert, or even a mechanic. Most people just want or need to get in and drive. Demanding more of somebody who's true goal is to become an expert in a subject that doesn't involve technical engineering is frankly just stupid. This is one of the things I liked about Steve Jobs, in that he believed this. Of course, that developed into the walled-garden approach but I think that's something else altogether.
It's far more beneficial for the world to have easy access to knowledge than to wish everybody saw computers and other technology the way people like us who spend time on tech forums do.
TL;DR - I agree! But I also think there's much more to be said about that.
If the store had launched with vetted Win32 programs from day 1 it may have gained some traction.
But right now all i can see in there are UWP "apps", and those are usually very limited in capabilities vs their Win32 equivalent.
For example, if i want to use a UWP file manager, i have to go through the Win32 file picker to allow the UWP file manager to access anything but the sub-folders of my user's home folder.
>I think the windows store just did not fit the usage patterns: People were used to download stuff right off the net, or use platforms like Valve's Steam.
I don't think I'll ever understand the weird logic of most Windows users where DRM Online Store A is the best thing ever and a selling point of the platform and DRM Online Store B is an abomination that should never exist.
For quite a white the Store was similar, with fake paid apps. Search for Netflix and get many $10 apps that did nothing or wrapped a handful of video files. Netflix had to contact MS several times to get them to permanently remove it. Disney, HBO, and others all had the same issue.
Even right now, a search for Game of Thrones has the first result of a $2.99 app that promises the first season. Published by "ViWi Corp" that has broken HTTP links _in the store_ (that is the privacy policy etc don't link). Same publisher has tons of other crap apps.
I own a Chromebook precisely because it's limited in the software it can run. Other people own it because it's simple to own and use. Restricting to the Windows Store is a good move for security, but I'm not sure the different groups of customers will take away the same message.
Some people will see it as a move to water it down or take away features while others will see it as a positive step toward improved security.
I'm not envious of the tightrope Microsoft has to walk to set the right expectations from their customers. If they're smart, they're going to make simplicity and enhanced security the key features. If they're not so smart, they'll be emphasizing the "one windows" message they were pushing a few years back.
I agree with your take, many will not see improved security as a benefit but will instead resent the limited functionality. This is nothing more than a rebranded Windows RT which already failed in the market with the Surface RT. IMO this laptop will also fail, regardless of whatever hardware they pair it with
I have friends that very much love their Windows RT devices as quick, secure browser-first tablets (and were disappointed by a lack of an upgrade to Windows 10). Windows S has the benefit that you can upgrade to "real" Windows 10 Pro if you decide you are tired of the limited functionality.
It's definitely interesting. Where everyone expected a new ARM SKU, Microsoft delivered a new x86 SKU, with an easy upgrade path. Through the lens of Windows 10 S as an "educational" SKU, it's particularly interesting in that idea that you could start the device locked down with S and eventually (plus $50 one time charge) "graduate" the device to "real" Windows 10 as the people themselves age into device ownership or out of locked down education environments or the devices get repurposed for different parts of a learning environment, etc.
(This seems to be a clear case where Microsoft is trying to separate itself from the iOS/Chromebook pack. For now you can't graduate and turn an iOS device into a macOS device. With a lot of work you might be able to graduate a Chromebook to Linux or Windows, but certainly not the ease of a $50 purchase from the Windows Store, or a free button click with an existing education site license for Windows 10 Pro.)
(Meanwhile, some of us are still hoping for that next ARM SKU, too.)
There was that time that Apple charged a few bucks to enable 802.11n on MacBooks after the standard was ratified supposedly for accounting reasons. https://arstechnica.com/apple/2007/01/6679/
Windows has had the option to upgrade editions from within the OS for many years, without requiring an OS reinstall. The first version I recall having it was Windows Vista, but it may have existed with Windows XP as well. Within a few minutes and a reboot you could go from having the Basic version of Windows Vista to Ultimate.
Pretty much kills us from buying it. I would love to, but grants and high education in general have a lot of custom software that won't be put in the store. Damn shame too.
This is the drug dealer play book, Hook the kids early, so that when they are adults they go with what they know, instead of being critical thinkers and evaluating the available products to pick the best technical solution for the needs at hand.
this is why small to mid-sized companies are struggling with MS server products, and are locked into this merry-go-round licensing fees. Other products that could alleviate are ignored because of F.U.D. Thus giving us Camps of Pro Apple, Pro Microsoft, anti open source, pro open source.
We should be teaching kids at a young age about all platforms, what they are good for, what they are not. So that we can educate the next generation of workers about computers in general. while not trying to indoctrinate them into a particular platform.
So educators and decision makers please take heed, and realize life is about choice., We should be teaching about choices, and then evaluating the choices once made. Then regardless of the choices we make, we learn from the outcome. If you make a poor choice, you are free to make a different choice the next time around.
I think it's different from drugs in that it is not actually addicting and also is necessary. I don't think teaching kids about different operating systems is very necessary, most people just do basic word processing and Web surfing on their computers, which is pretty similar across operating systems
"Hook the kids early, so that when they are adults they go with what they know"
What exactly do you think Apple (iPads) and Google (Chromebooks) are doing by encouraging the use of their devices in the classroom?
"We should be teaching kids at a young age about all platforms,"
Most schools don't have the budget to purchase a sampling of all the major products/platforms. You also can't train a staff on all platforms. Lastly, that's not the point of bringing these devices into the classroom - it's not "pick a future computing platform 101" These are tools and teachers want to give them to, and teach their students how to use them to accomplish their goals.
I'd rather see an assortment of different products in schools. Web functionality is pretty much the only thing that has to be common for all.
Teachers should be taught the principles of connecting to Wi-Fi, just like the students. How to figure things out on your own is more or less the whole point of computers in schools. Maybe I just like the directed chaos of Montessori.
Parent is right, a mix of platforms is inevitable. Might as well take advantage of the opportunities, instead of trying to preserve a monoculture. The school board could quite reasonably insist that all digital school work must be submitted in open file formats. They could acquire a wide range of hardware, continuously, and allocate higher or lower spec machines depending on the actual needs of each class or grade year.
What the school loses in simplicity, they gain in budget flexibility. What the student loses in familiarity, they gain in resiliency. Change and diversity cannot be stopped or squashed. Open source does take a bit of work, but it pays for itself, partly in lowered risk, especially for large non-profit or low-budget organizations.
Highly unlikely, Valve have always said they won't pay Microsoft the 30% fee. Having said that it's been reported that Valve charges a similar fee on Steam.
tankenmate is saying that it will only run applications installed from the Windows Store. Steam isn't in the store, and isn't going to be int he store, because they don't want to give Microsoft a cut of their revenue.
Yes, well it makes sense that Valve are not going to pay Microsoft 30% of every Steam sale via Steam installs from the Windows store as it'd mean Valve would get 0% of that sale themselves, and they're the ones who built the store and infrastructure up over a many years. Microsoft are just coming in at the last moment and hosting a very small Steam installer binary!
You would have to upgrade the Windows license first. These ship with a version of Windows that only allows installations from the windows app store. To upgrade to a 'real' Windows license will cost an extra $50.
I have seen a few messages about this being clickbait. I am confused by this. I clicked on a link and it is an unveiling of a new Surface which seems to be a Chromebook competitor since it is aimed at the education market. That seems to be in line with what the title says. What qualifies this as clickbait?
When it was first posted it was before any announcement, thus the headline was based on guesswork and rumours as opposed to linking to an article containing any actual information.
Well, given that your other recent posts show up fine, i doubt it's actually that. So might be worth asking what happened in any case. Plus, that docking post is really good and i'd like more people to think that open-minded.
They're now demoing the Surface Laptop. Thinner than a MacBook Air. Faster than a MacBook Pro. Longer battery life than either.
The downside? "Windows 10 S", which only runs apps from the Windows Store. The upside over Windows RT from the Windows 8 era? You can port Win32 apps to the Store today, don't think you could back then.
Edit: You can upgrade Windows 10 S to ordinary Windows 10 Pro for $50. Laptops that run Windows S from other manufacturers will start at $189.
I am not sure if they still have that feature but when first info about Windows S was leaked it said that you can "upgrade" to full Windows with an extra fee.
Except that having each kid able to brick their computer leads to significant problems for IT in debugging everyone's computer. As well as letting them move away from educational material extremely easily.
I agree that great things can happen when kids can truly explore their computer and take away the 'magic', but just handing all kids a laptop and having them go wild is not the way to do it. I don't what is, to be fair.
Handing them a laptop and having them go wild is exactly the way to do it.
If they brick it, they have to work out how to fix it.
As one of the kids who was lucky enough to get a BBC Micro, I had zero support. No-one else in my family even knew how to turn it on. No teacher at my school could support me because none of them knew how it worked either. If I broke it, I had to fix it. And no Stack Overflow, so no code to copy-paste. I had to go back to first principles every time and work out what went wrong and how I could make it go right.
This would have been great for you and me, but 95% of students won't even try. My kids barely know how the TV works, and have zero interest in learning how computers work, despite my efforts.
your kids know how the TV works better then you do. If you don't realize this you're not paying attention. Just because they don't care to write web apps doesn't mean they don't know what they are doing.
I'm sorry can you expand on that? I don't know how could average kids understand AC/DC Power, Signal transmission, different display types, etc better than average adults, especially those interested in technology, maybe I'm missing something from your comment?
I can, see you took my statement of "works" to mean they could explain to you why the Higgs field allows particles to have mass and then extrapolate that up to explain the existence of a TV. I simply meant they know how to use it for its desired purpose, better then most adults do.
If they did they wouldn't ask me to turn it on and find their shows for them. I finally had to put my foot down and now they are starting to do it againthemsekbes and maybe soon will be better than me at it.
But they still won't know or care how their computer works, or how to program.
Which is all well and good until my students aren't able to - you know - do basic educational tasks because their computer 'is broken'.
If I - as a teacher - can do an immediate 'restore to neutral state' with core educational files and programs retained then by all means open them up.
Otherwise, I have to be curmudgeon and say that the existence of the computer in the classroom is to more effectively complete educational tasks. If having an open system gets in the way of that then the system should not be open.
> As one of the kids who was lucky enough to get a BBC Micro, I had zero support. No-one else in my family even knew how to turn it on. No teacher at my school could support me because none of them knew how it worked either. If I broke it, I had to fix it. And no Stack Overflow, so no code to copy-paste. I had to go back to first principles every time and work out what went wrong and how I could make it go right.
What is this weird obsession that we have with making children do everything the hard way? I understand that we want them to apply critical thinking and for them to grow into self-sufficiency, but why do we suggest these archaic hazing rituals?
We've made strides in many areas of technology. We have the power to troubleshoot a non-working laptop, unsuccessfully diagnose, and then re-image it to a saved state in less than a school day. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be consequences, but I think we can put Timmy's time to better use.
They same reason we teach them basic math that a calculator can easily do. The primary reason for schools it to learn. Learning to type "8 * 7 =" is different then learning what it means to multiple 8 by 7
These are two entirely different things. Is the goal to get them to troubleshoot a computer, or are they being issued laptops to enable their education? If it's the former, then I can kind of understand. Trial by fire and all that good stuff. However you just said yourself:
> we teach them basic math
Keyword here is teach. We do not give them a math book and tell them to figure out what 8 * 7 means. We break down the concept of multiplication into its constituent parts. In that same vein, we should enable the child to learn how to troubleshoot the system.
Like I said: I think we can put Timmy's time to better use.
We had laptops at my high school 10 years ago, some of us learned how they worked inside and out, most did not.
When the curriculum depends on having a functional laptop, teachers wont want to wait around for kids to figure out how to fix their laptops. 90+% will go go the tech. Little Johnny who's already struggling with math class will not be helped by having a non-functional laptop. Not everyone needs to know how computers work.
EDIT: Probably you are like me and many people on here who found the HS curriculum easy and boring and stimulated yourself by hacking around with computers instead. This is not everyone's experience of HS, some kids legitimately struggle.
Can you install, like on normal Chromebooks, Crouton on school Chromebooks if you know how to ? Because then kids have good opportunities; just for doing their school stuff, doing browser (and server) dev if they want to and dive in deeper with Crouton. All for $100-200.
A minute fraction of kids will use the ability to install downloaded software to flourish. The vast majority of children will just download games, malware, and porn. Society should be more honest with itself about the simple reality that the vast majority of children are not and will not ever be special.
For the vast majority of kids these machines are replacing textbooks, and aren't supposed to be tools for learning computer science. That said, you can also learn programming with nothing more than a browser.
Maybe controversial, but I first got internet access in 1999 as a 15-year old. And yes, that meant games, malware, and porn. But I did flourish, not despite all that, but also because of all that.
Games are now a rich part of our culture. They can tell great stories, and are not "better" or "worse" then a book per se. If you enjoy them in moderation, and go outside enough, games are a great thing. And LAN parties were a great pastime.
Malware, hacking tools, warez were one gateway for me into serious programming. I downloaded Visual Basic or Visual Studio and proceeded to write a trojan, to make friends' CD tray open and close on LAN parties.
And porn? Grown ups and parents don't like to hear it, but as a teen I of course enjoyed that there was porn on the internet. It didn't hurt me, and I've had healthy, normal relationships in my life.
Similar story. I learnt how to code because I wanted to become a hacker. Somewhere along the way... I learnt that it was far more satisfying [and legal] to actually make things rather than just break them.
And in the absence of computers (or any other tool to stimulate their curiosity; computers are just an excellent tool), the "special" (I hate that word) kids will just be miserable. If 90% of the kids who are given one of these computers squander them and 10% of kids use them to find an outlet for their curiosity, then it's worth it.
Unless you actively try to stimulate the smarter kids and give them something to sink their teeth into, it's extremely difficult to tell the difference between kids who are bored and miserable because the material is below their level and kids who just don't give a shit about learning. In both cases, they'll be goofing off, not paying attention, and possibly disrupting class, but one group can flourish under the right conditions, and the other group is a lost cause.
This is a great point. I work with exceptionally bright kids, so I push things like computer literacy and exploration, but for most Americans computers are simply tools. "With great power comes great responsibility."
It was cracking bootleg games that forced me to learn how to use hexadecimal editors, binary and computer programming. The skills I learned going off the approved curriculum are the same ones that actually pay my bills today. Hell if 13 year old me was exposed to computers today, I probably would never go past light user. Computers today have too smooth of a surface area. You actually need to be shown the curtain nowadays whereas before it was right in front of you and you needed to get past it to do anything useful
At $189 for the computer they can afford to have a computer that is managed and always works and a bbc micro or raspberry pi for the student to hack on and tear up.
I wonder why 10S is faster than Pro? It can't be doing anything significantly different - perhaps some .NET runtime startup cache or bypassing many of the Win32 APIs regarding RPC?
You can upgrade to Windows Pro, if you need it, per Panay. Given the initial demo target though, it makes sense to lock it down to Windows S, where it's all containerized.
That's remarkable. How did they get the USB-A port in there? The MacBook Pro body is thinner than the type A receptacle.
Edit: Looking at this picture https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/surfa... and there's even substantial space around the type A receptacle. I honestly don't understand how it can be thinner than the MBP. I look forwards to seeing one in person.
A USB Type-A plug is only 0.177" thick; the opening to accommodate it can be as small as about 0.2".
The smaller MBP is 0.59" thick. The Surface Laptop is 0.57" at the thickest point (0.39" at the thinnest). Either one can easily accommodate any USB port.
If you look at a Macbook Pro sitting on a table, you'll see there's a considerable gap between the table and the side of the computer. That's because the MBP is thicker in the middle than at the sides, which makes it appear thinner than it is.
It becomes a lot easier to see it when you look at this.
I think this (the Mac) is Photoshopped 'deceptively'. Look at how the top of the shell and the base don't have concrete edges but are faded into white, too.
https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/ - look at most of the photography, not shot side on, so it looks like just the vertical edge of the MBP is the entirety of it's "depth", which is not accurate.
It's marginally faster than the dual-core 13in MacBook Pro on account of it being a 7th generation chip. They're still using U series chips, so it won't compete with the true quad-core HQ chips in the 15in MacBook Pro.
Let's be honest though, no one is going through the trouble to port their app to Windows 10 only HTML and JS. I don't think MS has even talked about that stack at their recent developer conferences.
It's not a "sexy" stack to talk about, but I don't think it is going anywhere. There are quite a few Windows Store applications built on it, including several first party applications from Microsoft themselves. It's a quiet workhorse stack that does the job and gets out of the way. So quiet I don't think people often realize when an app is built on it.
The singular issue with electron is how fucking huge the simplest of apps have to be. I see desktop HTML/JS as a RUNTIME being a very near-future standard.
I'm sure electron has thought about it. It couldn't possibly be any bigger of a hassle than the java runtime.
For what it is worth, I agree. The web browser is a required component of operating systems these days and first class/"native" support for web applications is a standard that we should celebrate and encourage.
I don't think it is "sexy" to most developers right now because there are still a lot of developers that still cling to ancient "native" control toolkits, ancient ideas that web platform is already the main UI platform for the majority of user these days, and for whatever reasons dislike HTML and JS for application development. You see a lot of the complaints here on HN every time Electron or Cordova are brought up.
I'm sure Microsoft knows they don't get a lot of enthusiasm from a lot of developers for the native Windows 10 web stack, so I'm not surprised they underplay it at conferences. Those of us that do care know we can follow the Edge team blogs and know that UWP API enhancements benefit all three main stacks.
You can use that but you can also bundle Electron apps with WebKit/Blink if you want. Both cases are possible but using the "Windows way" leads to smaller downloads since it doesn't require bundling the engine.
Slack in the Windows Store is packaged by that. It packages the Win32 executable, so it only runs on Desktop environments.
If your codebase is adaptable enough, you can often run directly on the Windows 10 Native HTML+JS stack and cross-compile to that, either directly or maybe through Cordova if you want mobile platform reach.
(I'm wishing there were more convergence between the Electron and Cordova stacks, but writing portable code that mostly runs on both isn't terribly difficult. Every now and then it would be great to have a Cordova plugin in Electron or vice versa.)
I'm kind of gobsmacked at that something like Windows 10 S exists. It's like Microsoft doesn't understand that the absolutely enormous quantity of Win32 apps in use is the moat that protects their Windows business from serious competition. Millions and millions of regular people just assume that it's not really safe for their next computer to be a Mac or a Chromebook or what have you, because they're afraid of the risk of losing access to some niche application they depend on. So they keep on buying Windows machines, not so much from anything about Windows as from the vague feeling that computers that don't run Windows are cut off from the mainstream in some important way they don't fully understand.
And Microsoft is willing -- eager! -- to drain their moat and move to a world where they're just one in a sea of fully interchangeable app stores. It's baffling.
How would you feel if you were a Windows pc maker right now?
MSFT commoditized your business and sucked all the profits out of your eco-system until your net margins were 2%, forcing you to cut R&D, Design, etc, and compete in a brutal price war without much hope of unique differentiating features or value.
Now MSFT is directly competing with you by so lavishly spending on design that they are years away from making money on their Surface line.
We have the history of the XBox, which took ten years to make any money, and is likely still in the red. Currently, the Surface lines volumes are too small to give MSFT the economies of scale to make gem profitable.
It wasn't microsoft that killed the margins, it was amazon. Back in the DOS, windows 3.x and even windows 9x era the OS was just as commoditized, yet people willingly paid high margins. They did this because they wanted the service of their local PC store and therefore were willing to pay their margins. With the boom of online stores and easy exchanges/returns the brick and mortar stores went away and with them went the cushy margins.
The thing that really doomed the PC market was not that the easy margins went away, it's that OEM's responded by making their products worse. They cut hardware quality, they bundled crapware. The PC experience got worse year after year. Truthfully, windows 8 did not help, but I still think that if the OEM's had just bundled touch screens across the board it would not have been such an outright disaster. The reduced quality forced people off the platform, to macs at the high end, and to chromebooks at the low end. Granted, mobile would have always caused PC sales to decline, but not as much as they did. It is only recently that the OEM's have started investing again in quality hardware with a pure windows experience, and unsurprisingly last quarter PC sales went up YoY for the first time in five years.
Apple has to deal with all these forces and it's maintained healthy margins in Macs. It can do this because it offers a unique product, windows PC makers can't differentiate themselves because they rely on MSFT for R&D.
When Apple started kicking butt in laptops by using sealed batteries with substantially more capacity, PC makers were locked out from doing same for years because it required battery conditioning software drivers, which MSFT didn't provide.
Commoditization took time, early PC market didn't have the direct model. And the race to the bottom in PCs isn't the fault of the manufacturers. It's an effect of the business model, and customer decisions. If a large segment paid up for better PCs and local support that model would still work, instead they predominantly choose to save a few bucks on the purchase price by buying the cheapest ones with crapware.
App stores are the opposite of interchangeable. 1 slightly expensive or practically irreplaceable app, is enough to lock in a user for life. That's what MS wants a piece of.
MS has or will release a Win32 converter and a lot of devs will publish on the store as its another avenue for revenue. Also App stores are now the new lock-in. Grandma/IT director knows $app_store_productivity_app and can't leave it easily now either.
I do agree its risky, but they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. They're watching mobile change everything and the WIMP/x86/W32 ecosystem that has sustained them for decades needs to catch up.
That said, its inexcusable all these consumer-oriented features like Candy Crush, Cortana, cloud sourced start menu items, ads, etc are either tough or impossible to disable on the Pro version of Windows 10. MS should have geared LTSB as the 'business friendly' version of Win10 and gone bonkers on the consumer side.
Regarding mobile changing everything, I am not so sure that it is. I still see people using Office over Google Docs (due to Sheets becoming sluggish with large quantities of data and years of XLS files floating around). I recall the release of ChromeOS being hailed as a threat to Microsoft in the media but in truth it hasn't dented businesses at all and I cannot ever see any business IT department even considering a switch to ChromeOS (even small businesses). The Chromebook devices look like etch-a-sketch toys compared to even cheap Windows laptops.
The ability to grab data and modify it on the go has been around since the Windows CE / Windows Mobile days. The requirements haven't changed in that time - grab a document, see it, and then attempt to edit it on a mobile device (give up, wait until you're at a normal computer - my experience anyway).
That's an advantage that's being eroded day by day. At some point they have to give up on trying to capitalize on that advantage and compete with those who have been chipping away at their market share.
What's their basis for that? I'd have thought at the very best it'd be about the same speed as a 13" (assuming you're not doing anything that uses much RAM; the 4GB would really cripple it there). I'll be interested to see what CPU it has, exactly, but I'd be surprised if it has the HD540/640 graphics.
The expensive ones use an Iris 640, so are the Kaby Lake incarnation of the chips used in the non-TB 13" Macbook Pros (the touchbar ones use the higher wattage chips with Iris 545). The cheaper ones use HD 620. So, the more expensive models might be comparable to the non-touchbar Macbook Pro; it's unlikely that the cheaper ones will be.
I wonder if the core i5 is actually a Core i5 U-edition or an Y-edition. Didn't Intel say they would start calling Core M3 and Core M5 Core i3 and Core i5? (pre-Kaby Lake).
> I'd have thought at the very best it'd be about the same speed as a 13" […] so are the Kaby Lake incarnation of the chips used in the non-TB 13" Macbook Pros
Yeah they're comparing it to the nTB MBP, it uses 15W Kaby-U, the nTB uses 15W Skylake-U, I assume generational improvements are where they get "faster".
Xiaomi Mi Air 13, i5 8/256 $690. Aluminum unibody, smaller and lighter than MBP 13.
Stop buying overpriced crap and start supporting companies that charge fair prices and maybe MS and Apple will release products that aren't 2-3x as pricey as the competition.
I have this impression in my mind that Gearbest is untrustworthy - this may have come from anecdotes where people were buying smaller ticket items where dishonesty, etc is more common, not sure. Anyways, I'm leery sending $800 to that site.
This is purely personal, but I don't buy laptop solely for its form-factor. What sells the MBP to me is the operating system and frankly that is what keeps me from buying a windows laptop too.
In the end I'm ok with paying a premium for a laptop that just works 90% of the time. MBP usually last very long (I still use a early 2011 machine), so the cost is amortized.
As for me the only thing I admire in the MBP is the form factor and build quality. I dislike OSX and the purely technical specs are nothing to write home about (especially at that price), so the Xiaomi 13 is great for me.
Eh! I meant it needs tinkering once in a while. It is probably more like 99%. Windows and Linux on the other hand require way more work. I just want my dad to browse the internet and not mess with registry or device drivers.
I have a toshiba laptop from 2001 that still boots up and runs fine, abet slowly. I have 2 from 2008 w/ no problems at all. My 2012 230x thinkpad has better specs then what's being currently released (2 256gb ssds, and 16gb of ram - really easy to install aftermarket ram & ssds) and is my main laptop, and will be for the foreseeable future. I don't see how a 2011 machine is all that remarkable.
If we're giving anecdotal evidence, I have about 4 Dell notebooks from 2011 to 2016, all of them are either broken or cannot function normally. So should i go ahead and generalize that all the machines in this period are bad?
I said the price works for me because a 6 year old laptop still chugs along comfortably so the price gets amortized. I was not holding a measuring contest.
Xiaomi Mi Air, plus VAT/duty, ships with Chinese only Windows license, unlicensed for English, without CE marking for Europe, and with minimal Western country warranty to speak of.
By the time you add all that up, it's approximately the same pride as any other similar spec non-Apple/non-Microsoft/non-Dell Win home laptop.
Still it doesn't come close to the price of brand laptops, even non-Apple/non-Microsoft/non-Dell, but with the build quality to match or surpass those. I also don't care about Windows or whatever since I use Linux. It's the perfect machine for me, fits my use case like a charm. I'm sure there's plenty of people with similar needs that would also be satisfied with it.
Realistically, these are the 15W chips, and should only be compared to the non-TB Macbook Pro. The base non-TB MBP uses an Iris 640, so it's more comparable to the $1599 one than anything else ('i5' vs 'i7' in dual core laptops is an almost meaningless term, but there's a vast difference between the HD 620 and Iris 640).
So it's a bit more expensive than the MBP if you care about normal things, or a bit less expensive if the i7 branding is for some reason deeply important to you and you don't care about the GPU. Either way, not great, really, because the 13" MBP is noted for its expensiveness, and generally expected to drop $200 or so soon.
The Surface uses 15W U-series, so they can only be compared with the 13" nTB, the other two use 28W and 45W with dGPU, they're in entirely different classes specs-wise.
> Surface i5, 8/256 $1299, MBP $1499 or $1799 depending on the i5 processor.
1799 is an i7, so no. And the MBP has a graphical edge (50~80% better graphical performances) as it gets an Iris 540 to the Surface's HD 620.
> Surface i7, 8/256 $1599, MBP $2099
1799 (nTB MBP with i7), Surface gets an Iris 640, the direct (and almost identical) successor to the 540.
> Surface i7, 16/512 $2199, MBP $2499.
2199 (nTB MBP with i7, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD).
So the Surface is slightly lower-priced, at least at the low end, but with the caveat of flexibility: you can get a 16GB RAM or 512GB SSD nTB MBP for 1699, for the Surface it's 2199 or bust, and you can cut the i7 from any nTB configuration at almost no loss[0] to save $300.
They could probably drop the price, but they want OEMs to build their own versions of the machine. If you drop your price too low OEMs will be squeezed out of the market.
That's the big problem Microsoft has with their hardware that Apple doesn't.
$999 would be fine if it had Windows 10 Pro onboard. Then you're talking about a full Macbook Air competitor.
But once you notice Windows 10 S, then the price is unusual. I bet the hardware team is disappointed by that decision for this machine. It doesn't make sense.
Apple took the macbooks up by $200 for little reason. There was an article just a week ago that the surface book line was not doing well.
The obvious reason is because they are overpriced. And now they have made it even worse. This does not make much sense. Hopefully manufacturers like Asus can step up with even better quality Zenbooks and do not join this 'premium' binge.
It seems the 'premium manufacturers' see this as a non-elastic market and want to take the prices to around $2000. But is there enough differentiation in laptops beyond the screen and build quality to justify that premium. Everything else is off the shelf components and these dual core chips just don't seem to be worth this kind of money.
Even 'premium' phones are becoming dramatically more expensive with every refresh that are way out of sync with component prices.
I just can't see anyone inside MS being able to make the case that they should put effort into making their laptops run anything other than Windows. But I agree with you. I tried to set up Linux on my Surface Book, but couldn't get the keyboard to work :/
Sibling comments note that it says you can upgrade to to Windows 10 Pro for $50, or for free until 2018. The free upgrade seems to be possibly linked to this deal (it's referenced in the store page), but the details take you to the Windows S page which notes that upgrading from Windows 10 S to Windows 10 Pro is a normal feature of Windows 10 S (although it notes "affordably", so there is usually a cost).
Microsoft has let you easily change Windows edition for some years now. It was called Windows Anytime Upgrade in 7, it dates back to Vista.
Unusual that the Windows RT-alike supports it, though, but perhaps that's because Windows 8 and Windows RT were mutually exclusive in their hardware support (x86 vs ARM), and this isn't.
I personally do pay for the FOSS tools I make use of, but I bet the majority that find outrageous to pay for OS X or Windows software aren't willing to pay for anything on UNIX FOSS clones.
How aggravating. This is why I left Windows. No marginal cost to them, the functionality is inside but turned off. I really have a hard time with that idea. It seems...well...just plain mean.
The cost is all the users who find the "magical guide to speed up your computer" online that involves registry hacks and such, and end up breaking it instead (and blaming Windows for it).
It seems like the intent is to end up in a similar place to iOS, with the entire system "curated" end to end. Which is not a bad place to be for many (most?) users. The problem with iOS model is that there's no way to escape it for power users, but it looks like it's not the case here - you can run 10 S if you want iOS-like experience, or you can run 10 Pro otherwise.
Even their main windows OS has/had virtualization disabled IIRC without getting their business pro or whatever edition (it's been more than a few years). It was simply a matter of trying to get you to pay more for cool stuff.
If… Big words for a machine no one has used yet. I look forward to the reviews but it doesn't look like a MacBook killer to me. Maybe it competes with the base level MacBook. But it clearly doesn't touch the MacBook Pro.
Does upgrading to ordinary Windows 10 impact the battery life? The touted specs are much better than Mac laptops, but those run a more fully-featured OS.
Well Windows 10 S can be compared to Chrome OS, obviously they both are less battery hungry, upgrading to a "full" Windows 10 version could impact battery life since the HW and the OS have been built as a black box product. (But we'll know for sure once it's officially released).
That is the negative explanation. I think they want to compete on safety and simplicity against Chromebook.
Store apps will not make the laptop slow, they won't have viruses, they will ask the user for permissions, can be uninstalled safely, they will scale well on hi-res screens, etc.
This type of safety is, imo, the most compelling feature of chromebook, and one that Windows Pro doesn't offer.
I would expect this to be a way to pressure software providers to publish to the store. With opt-in model, even if it's free, you can assume that there will be a sizeable chunk of the market that will not opt-in to upgrade to Pro.
Either they get $50 from users and let them go buy/install off-market, or make the money in the long run from paid app developers who are pressured now to put their applications on the store.
> I would expect this to be a way to pressure software providers to publish to the store.
Holy backfiring shit, what a desperate bunch of clueless clowns! This is a nice machine, and there's a opening now that Apple has somewhat fallen out of favor, and they think they are in any position to play stupid games?
> Why don't they just ship it with W10 Pro already installed?
Are you sure they don't? In the past, many Windows edition upgrades (e.g., Home to Pro) were just a matter of enabling features that were already installed.
This is me being pedantic; when you upgrade from Home to Pro it does actually install several missing features. You'll see the this[0], takes about 30 minutes on an SSD.
Not the only downside. Machine looks great but that fabric material in the keyboard looks like it will be easily stained with sweat (a common problem with surface pro keyboards). No USB-C seems like a big missed opportunity as well.
Hmm, I thought the fabric was a nice touch. I've had my surface pro for a few years now and have never even come close to staining the keyboard. I wonder how common this issue really is.
As a teenager I had a sweaty spotty face and armpits and stank, had a chronic hairdo, poor social skills etc. but I do not remember my hands being sweaty.
Were yours?
Thankfully I am past all that now, apart form the chronic hairdo, the spotty face, poor personal hygiene, awful social skills....... etc. etc....
They don't have to be constantly sweaty. repeated friction and skin oil from palm of hands is enough to discolor palm rests in normal laptops. This is an even easier surface to discolor / stain.
It will depend on how much you type, of course, and it will be different for different people but I wish they'd have chosen another material even though this one looks gorgeous.
Sweat is enormously varied in composition. Some guitarists can corrode a brand new set of strings in a matter of hours, while others can play for weeks on the same set. Some people have sweat that's acidic enough to turn a silver flute black or strip the lacquer from a violin.
Yeah, if this laptop were cheaper I could forgive that. But it is 2017, this laptop starts at $1k and quickly rises but only has USB3 and mini display port. Change the mDP to Thunderbolt 3 or USB-C and i'd be sold.
Or drop the proprietary charger and stick another USB-C port on that side and use it for charging.
The proprietary charger is magnetic and makes me less concerned about someone tripping over it. Plugging it in and unplugging it is also much easier imo. This is one of the few occasions where I hope they stick with their proprietary charger, similar to Apple with magsafe.
Its not as bad as it first sounds. You can run full office, you have an ok browser and casual games. Its obviously not made for most of the people on HN but it fits the requirements for a lot of people business and home users. Assuming they release some very cheap laptops / convertibles running it it could work.
Panay also alluded to you being able to upgrade the new Surface Laptop to Windows Pro, if you needed it. They are pushing Win32 apps to go into the store, so app published there that are Win32 will be supported in Windows S.
yeah that sounds like Windows RT but up-gradable if needed. The thing is, for a lot of people just running Office and a browser they'll be happy. What a lot of people won't like is having Edge only as their browser though.
Yup. Same for the Firefox version. Both can do it, but as long as almost everyone on Windows can support the standard Win32 version and a large number can't use the UWP version, it makes no sense to expend a lot of effort on this.
IIRC browsers in Win 8 "Metro" mode had some exceptions, like they could run non-Metro code in the background. This time around they don't seem to be offering this exception.
I wonder if this year at Build or anytime in the near future we will see a version of Visual Studio distributed via the Windows app store? Seems it will have to get there eventually. I wouldn't mind kicking the tires on Windows S but needing VS would keep me on Pro were a new Windows laptop to be in my future.
Being in the app store requires you go through the file dialog to get permission to read/write/create any files outside the app file, so VS will never work.
Microsoft specifically mentioned Chromebooks when they talked about one of the school districts switching away from it to Windows 10 S for simplification.
"New Windows 10 Education PCs will be coming out soon from partners including Asus, Samsung, Dell, and HP, starting at $189."
The Surface Laptop isn't meant to compete with those. Like everything else in the Surface line, it's more of an example to the rest of the industry of what kind of devices they could/should be building for Windows to run on.
I have a cheap Windows 2-in-1 that lists for $180 but I picked up for $100.
I'm reasonably happy with it, except for the touchpad (planning to get a mouse and disable), but for the price it's certainly a fine computer. It's definitely what I'd buy for a kid.
I expect that MS is just encouraging more of those kinds of devices to be made, maybe with slightly better HW.
That's honestly the route Microsoft needs to stop taking.
Microsofts hardware partners have shown time and time again that they will sell extremely low quality hardware just to hit certain price brackets. Many of the complains people have about Windows is often down to poor quality and low performance hardware.
At least HP would rather sell you a piece of crap laptop that can't actually run Windows, than admit that it's not actually possible to deliver at the price point the customer asks for.
Windows 10S is their ChromeOS competitor, and Surface Laptop is the high-end, professional flagship product for that OS, similar to what Google's Chromebook Pixel was when the Pixel launched (though the Pixel wasn't the first Chromebook announced, obviously.)
Windows S is completely backwards. If the Windows Store was actually any good, they should make a version without store apps (win32 only) and let customers pay a premium to use signed, vetted, store apps. (Only half kidding...)
But this way around, store apps will always be viewed as the cheaper, less featured option.
No one uses the Apple app stop on MacOS because apparently it's terrible. I don't see going to a closed/walled garden system as being any type of meaningful advantage. You're trading off some security/sandboxing for reduced flexibility.
If Microsoft wanted something competitive, they'd allow people to add other repositories to their stores, so manufactures could publish their own certs and people could chose to trust them .. remove MS from the middle man, but allow their update system to be more universal.
Afaik quite some of the major apps were leaving it in the last years (Sketch comes to mind), but might just be my filter bubble.. Would be interesting to hear from some Mac OS devs
It's just tricky because of the restrictions, and it's not just the restrictions themselves but the reality that you're limited to them in the future.
Even if your app can run in a sandbox today, are you willing to turn down any future feature requests that would make it so it won't?
We're putting an app on there, but our app is kind of an ideal use case because we don't expect to have to add features that can't work in the sandbox and our app is free. It's a tougher sell if you have to cut features to fit in the sandbox or hand off 30% of your sale to Apple.
Admittedly that 30% isn't unreasonable if you're really just starting out. That does include hosting, purchasing, and billing. But those things can be done at a much cheaper rate than 30% if you can set them up.
Panic is one of my favorite Mac app developers and (just checked) one of their apps (Coda) is distributed outside the App Store [1], while Transmit is distributed on both.
Those aren't links to the Mac App Store. The previous poster was talking about major apps that aren't available through Apple's own App Store for the Mac.
Similarly, while you can get Photoshop Elements in the Windows Store, I don't believe you can get the full Photoshop CC on the Windows Store yet.
I use the Mac App Store for many of the apps I use because I trust it more than apps downloaded from random websites, and I like background updates. The problems with the App Store lie on the developer side — sandboxing, restrictive submission guidelines, large 30% revenue cuts, lack of alternative pricing models, etc.
And the macOS store is one of the better ones! I just recently set up a Hackintosh, and have been browsing the app store to discover a couple of neat new apps.
The Windows Store in contrast... most apps seem to be from a Microsoft contest a couple of years ago, where you could win a prize by writing a Metro app. The few decent apps can be counted on a hand and are all made by MS: Office Mobile (really good actually), Skype, Wunderlist/To-Do.
Windows 10 S integrates with OneDrive so files are saved to the cloud, in sync and accessible from your devices. Use compatible apps available from the Windows Store. If you need to use professional tools or would rather run non-Store apps, you can easily and affordably switch to Windows 10 Pro.7
Dead on Arrival for our company.
We only buy Thunderbolt 3 equipped notebooks for compatibility with our Dockingstation-Flexdesk setups.
I would have bought them in a heartbeat over Dell XPS 13s for our Customer Support guys.
It makes me really sad because this points to longer clinging to the Surface Pro 3 Connector, so the next Surface Pro & Surface Book are likely not to ditch it in favor of TB3. I'm still on my Surface Pro 2 and want to upgrade badly, but this makes me look elsewhere. Sadly.
I agree — as someone who hasn't bought a Surface or a Surface Dock, a proprietary version of Thunderbolt 3 or USB-C is a step back, not a step forward.
This seems like a couple years too late. Just from specs alone there are better laptops coming out of China today from Xiamo, Chuwi, etc. Stuff like the Xiaomi Mi book (https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/27/xiaomi-mi-notebook-air-l...) or Chuwi Lapbook (http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-laptops-chuwi-prices...) that are thinner, lighter, have high resolution displays, etc. and that cost significantly less than $999. This just looks like something forgettable that will be lost in a sea of middling Windows ultrabooks.
the surface laptop isn't a chromebook competitor, it's more of a macbook air/pro competitor. the windows 10 S based laptops manufactured by asus, acer, dell, fujitsu, hp, samsung, toshiba are the real chromebook competitors. i think its basically windows 10 S Vs chrome OS.
Often, Apple misses their update estimates because their CPU/chipset vendor can't meet their required thermal specs for that particular model. The MacBook 12" guts fit in a tiny space under the top of the keyboard, near the hinge. All other space has been used for batteries. I expect the MacBook 12" to become an A-series ARM laptop sooner rather than later, so that Apple has full control over the thermal specs of the CPU/chipset.
I haven't seen any info whether the display is detachable or not and if it's compatible with the pen. If not that's a huge missed opportunity, especially if they're targeting the education sector. As other comments already pointed out, other companies are already doing small Windows laptops better and cheaper.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 237 ms ] threadNo thanks :)
On a chromebook-style laptop, expectations might be different.
I personally don't like the walled-garden aspect of app-stores, but I like that there is someone who can effectively respond if malware is reported. Sometimes malware is even proactively removed.
For non-power-users this is definitely an advantage. I hope in a few years I can just tell my parent to only install software from the app store, and they will be fine. Additionally, they don't have to do anything to stay up-to-date.
Even for power users there is a (theoretical) advantage, which is explicit dependency management. Once you know that all your software is distributed through one channel, libraries and versions can effectively be shared. This is what happens in the Free Software version of app stores: All major distros have them, and without them dependency management would be impossible.
So what is the potential gain here? In some version of the future, we might hope that apps don't include hard-copy versions of the libraries they are using, but just tell the app-store which versions they like to use. Security updates can then be pushed by the app-store vendor vs the app vendor.
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It's also not a situation that will likely dissipate. For instance, if in 100 years we're all (I dream) boarding starships, do the engineers really expect the average passenger or crew to understand the intricate workings of the entire vessel? Is this true for airplanes now?
Computers are essentially a vehicle for knowledge. If it's not where one is at one moment, it is where one can arrive. Not everyone who drives a car is an automotive engineer, kinetics or physics expert, or even a mechanic. Most people just want or need to get in and drive. Demanding more of somebody who's true goal is to become an expert in a subject that doesn't involve technical engineering is frankly just stupid. This is one of the things I liked about Steve Jobs, in that he believed this. Of course, that developed into the walled-garden approach but I think that's something else altogether.
It's far more beneficial for the world to have easy access to knowledge than to wish everybody saw computers and other technology the way people like us who spend time on tech forums do.
TL;DR - I agree! But I also think there's much more to be said about that.
But right now all i can see in there are UWP "apps", and those are usually very limited in capabilities vs their Win32 equivalent.
For example, if i want to use a UWP file manager, i have to go through the Win32 file picker to allow the UWP file manager to access anything but the sub-folders of my user's home folder.
I don't think I'll ever understand the weird logic of most Windows users where DRM Online Store A is the best thing ever and a selling point of the platform and DRM Online Store B is an abomination that should never exist.
1. You just bought a laptop, time to install some software
2. Open Edge, search for "spotify", "vlc" maybe even "office".
3. Congratulation, you now have a bing search full of adware and possibly malware.
For average Joe it is impossible to not get infected at this stage.
Even right now, a search for Game of Thrones has the first result of a $2.99 app that promises the first season. Published by "ViWi Corp" that has broken HTTP links _in the store_ (that is the privacy policy etc don't link). Same publisher has tons of other crap apps.
The Windows Store is a joke.
I own a Chromebook precisely because it's limited in the software it can run. Other people own it because it's simple to own and use. Restricting to the Windows Store is a good move for security, but I'm not sure the different groups of customers will take away the same message.
Some people will see it as a move to water it down or take away features while others will see it as a positive step toward improved security.
I'm not envious of the tightrope Microsoft has to walk to set the right expectations from their customers. If they're smart, they're going to make simplicity and enhanced security the key features. If they're not so smart, they'll be emphasizing the "one windows" message they were pushing a few years back.
Then again, I've been wrong before.
(This seems to be a clear case where Microsoft is trying to separate itself from the iOS/Chromebook pack. For now you can't graduate and turn an iOS device into a macOS device. With a lot of work you might be able to graduate a Chromebook to Linux or Windows, but certainly not the ease of a $50 purchase from the Windows Store, or a free button click with an existing education site license for Windows 10 Pro.)
(Meanwhile, some of us are still hoping for that next ARM SKU, too.)
It can't be any worse than downloading random exe files off the web. Most people are scared to install software on their computers at this point.
This is the drug dealer play book, Hook the kids early, so that when they are adults they go with what they know, instead of being critical thinkers and evaluating the available products to pick the best technical solution for the needs at hand.
this is why small to mid-sized companies are struggling with MS server products, and are locked into this merry-go-round licensing fees. Other products that could alleviate are ignored because of F.U.D. Thus giving us Camps of Pro Apple, Pro Microsoft, anti open source, pro open source.
We should be teaching kids at a young age about all platforms, what they are good for, what they are not. So that we can educate the next generation of workers about computers in general. while not trying to indoctrinate them into a particular platform.
So educators and decision makers please take heed, and realize life is about choice., We should be teaching about choices, and then evaluating the choices once made. Then regardless of the choices we make, we learn from the outcome. If you make a poor choice, you are free to make a different choice the next time around.
What exactly do you think Apple (iPads) and Google (Chromebooks) are doing by encouraging the use of their devices in the classroom?
"We should be teaching kids at a young age about all platforms,"
Most schools don't have the budget to purchase a sampling of all the major products/platforms. You also can't train a staff on all platforms. Lastly, that's not the point of bringing these devices into the classroom - it's not "pick a future computing platform 101" These are tools and teachers want to give them to, and teach their students how to use them to accomplish their goals.
Teachers should be taught the principles of connecting to Wi-Fi, just like the students. How to figure things out on your own is more or less the whole point of computers in schools. Maybe I just like the directed chaos of Montessori.
What the school loses in simplicity, they gain in budget flexibility. What the student loses in familiarity, they gain in resiliency. Change and diversity cannot be stopped or squashed. Open source does take a bit of work, but it pays for itself, partly in lowered risk, especially for large non-profit or low-budget organizations.
The downside? "Windows 10 S", which only runs apps from the Windows Store. The upside over Windows RT from the Windows 8 era? You can port Win32 apps to the Store today, don't think you could back then.
Edit: You can upgrade Windows 10 S to ordinary Windows 10 Pro for $50. Laptops that run Windows S from other manufacturers will start at $189.
Also, did you see the performance demo? 10s was significantly faster than 10 Pro.
Not sure about the $999 for the cheapest model however. Does it include an Office 365 subscription?
Except that giving kids unfettered access to their computers allows them to flourish. See: BBC Micro, Raspberry Pi, Apple ][, the list goes on.
I agree that great things can happen when kids can truly explore their computer and take away the 'magic', but just handing all kids a laptop and having them go wild is not the way to do it. I don't what is, to be fair.
If they brick it, they have to work out how to fix it.
As one of the kids who was lucky enough to get a BBC Micro, I had zero support. No-one else in my family even knew how to turn it on. No teacher at my school could support me because none of them knew how it worked either. If I broke it, I had to fix it. And no Stack Overflow, so no code to copy-paste. I had to go back to first principles every time and work out what went wrong and how I could make it go right.
Best education you can give anyone.
But they still won't know or care how their computer works, or how to program.
If I - as a teacher - can do an immediate 'restore to neutral state' with core educational files and programs retained then by all means open them up.
Otherwise, I have to be curmudgeon and say that the existence of the computer in the classroom is to more effectively complete educational tasks. If having an open system gets in the way of that then the system should not be open.
What is this weird obsession that we have with making children do everything the hard way? I understand that we want them to apply critical thinking and for them to grow into self-sufficiency, but why do we suggest these archaic hazing rituals?
We've made strides in many areas of technology. We have the power to troubleshoot a non-working laptop, unsuccessfully diagnose, and then re-image it to a saved state in less than a school day. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be consequences, but I think we can put Timmy's time to better use.
> we teach them basic math
Keyword here is teach. We do not give them a math book and tell them to figure out what 8 * 7 means. We break down the concept of multiplication into its constituent parts. In that same vein, we should enable the child to learn how to troubleshoot the system.
Like I said: I think we can put Timmy's time to better use.
Well, life is an archaic hazing ritual.
We had laptops at my high school 10 years ago, some of us learned how they worked inside and out, most did not.
When the curriculum depends on having a functional laptop, teachers wont want to wait around for kids to figure out how to fix their laptops. 90+% will go go the tech. Little Johnny who's already struggling with math class will not be helped by having a non-functional laptop. Not everyone needs to know how computers work.
EDIT: Probably you are like me and many people on here who found the HS curriculum easy and boring and stimulated yourself by hacking around with computers instead. This is not everyone's experience of HS, some kids legitimately struggle.
Still, that BBC Basic manual and copies of Micro User were mighty helpful - the manual was excellent! I am sure you agree.
...and a minute fraction will play on the football field or perform in the school theater.
They'll just use the browser for porn, no need to install third-party software.
Games are now a rich part of our culture. They can tell great stories, and are not "better" or "worse" then a book per se. If you enjoy them in moderation, and go outside enough, games are a great thing. And LAN parties were a great pastime.
Malware, hacking tools, warez were one gateway for me into serious programming. I downloaded Visual Basic or Visual Studio and proceeded to write a trojan, to make friends' CD tray open and close on LAN parties.
And porn? Grown ups and parents don't like to hear it, but as a teen I of course enjoyed that there was porn on the internet. It didn't hurt me, and I've had healthy, normal relationships in my life.
Without games, there wouldn't have been any point to dig deeper than word processing.
Unless you actively try to stimulate the smarter kids and give them something to sink their teeth into, it's extremely difficult to tell the difference between kids who are bored and miserable because the material is below their level and kids who just don't give a shit about learning. In both cases, they'll be goofing off, not paying attention, and possibly disrupting class, but one group can flourish under the right conditions, and the other group is a lost cause.
Learning to avoid malware is an important skill for kids to learn. Shielding those kids will just create a bunch of adults that get infected.
The target market is students, not schools. They want kids to get a windows computer instead of a mac before they head off to college
I am genuinely curious - ideas?
[0] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj612867(v=ws.11...
It's a full fledged laptop.
Edit: Looking at this picture https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/surfa... and there's even substantial space around the type A receptacle. I honestly don't understand how it can be thinner than the MBP. I look forwards to seeing one in person.
The smaller MBP is 0.59" thick. The Surface Laptop is 0.57" at the thickest point (0.39" at the thinnest). Either one can easily accommodate any USB port.
If you look at a Macbook Pro sitting on a table, you'll see there's a considerable gap between the table and the side of the computer. That's because the MBP is thicker in the middle than at the sides, which makes it appear thinner than it is.
It becomes a lot easier to see it when you look at this.
I think this (the Mac) is Photoshopped 'deceptively'. Look at how the top of the shell and the base don't have concrete edges but are faded into white, too.
https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/ - look at most of the photography, not shot side on, so it looks like just the vertical edge of the MBP is the entirety of it's "depth", which is not accurate.
Note that in U-series now covers both 15W and 28W chips, so that leaves a fair amount of room.
Considering the iGP (620 and 640) they're using 15W parts, so it's comparable to an nTB 13".
There's also a 'native' HTML+JS stack for UWP/Win10.
But why not?
The singular issue with electron is how fucking huge the simplest of apps have to be. I see desktop HTML/JS as a RUNTIME being a very near-future standard.
I'm sure electron has thought about it. It couldn't possibly be any bigger of a hassle than the java runtime.
I don't think it is "sexy" to most developers right now because there are still a lot of developers that still cling to ancient "native" control toolkits, ancient ideas that web platform is already the main UI platform for the majority of user these days, and for whatever reasons dislike HTML and JS for application development. You see a lot of the complaints here on HN every time Electron or Cordova are brought up.
I'm sure Microsoft knows they don't get a lot of enthusiasm from a lot of developers for the native Windows 10 web stack, so I'm not surprised they underplay it at conferences. Those of us that do care know we can follow the Edge team blogs and know that UWP API enhancements benefit all three main stacks.
Slack in the Windows Store is packaged by that. It packages the Win32 executable, so it only runs on Desktop environments.
If your codebase is adaptable enough, you can often run directly on the Windows 10 Native HTML+JS stack and cross-compile to that, either directly or maybe through Cordova if you want mobile platform reach.
(I'm wishing there were more convergence between the Electron and Cordova stacks, but writing portable code that mostly runs on both isn't terribly difficult. Every now and then it would be great to have a Cordova plugin in Electron or vice versa.)
And Microsoft is willing -- eager! -- to drain their moat and move to a world where they're just one in a sea of fully interchangeable app stores. It's baffling.
MSFT commoditized your business and sucked all the profits out of your eco-system until your net margins were 2%, forcing you to cut R&D, Design, etc, and compete in a brutal price war without much hope of unique differentiating features or value.
Now MSFT is directly competing with you by so lavishly spending on design that they are years away from making money on their Surface line.
Source?
AFAIK they made over $10 billion in revenue on Surface.
The thing that really doomed the PC market was not that the easy margins went away, it's that OEM's responded by making their products worse. They cut hardware quality, they bundled crapware. The PC experience got worse year after year. Truthfully, windows 8 did not help, but I still think that if the OEM's had just bundled touch screens across the board it would not have been such an outright disaster. The reduced quality forced people off the platform, to macs at the high end, and to chromebooks at the low end. Granted, mobile would have always caused PC sales to decline, but not as much as they did. It is only recently that the OEM's have started investing again in quality hardware with a pure windows experience, and unsurprisingly last quarter PC sales went up YoY for the first time in five years.
When Apple started kicking butt in laptops by using sealed batteries with substantially more capacity, PC makers were locked out from doing same for years because it required battery conditioning software drivers, which MSFT didn't provide.
Commoditization took time, early PC market didn't have the direct model. And the race to the bottom in PCs isn't the fault of the manufacturers. It's an effect of the business model, and customer decisions. If a large segment paid up for better PCs and local support that model would still work, instead they predominantly choose to save a few bucks on the purchase price by buying the cheapest ones with crapware.
It's insane.
I do agree its risky, but they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. They're watching mobile change everything and the WIMP/x86/W32 ecosystem that has sustained them for decades needs to catch up.
That said, its inexcusable all these consumer-oriented features like Candy Crush, Cortana, cloud sourced start menu items, ads, etc are either tough or impossible to disable on the Pro version of Windows 10. MS should have geared LTSB as the 'business friendly' version of Win10 and gone bonkers on the consumer side.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/uwp/porting/desktop...
Regarding mobile changing everything, I am not so sure that it is. I still see people using Office over Google Docs (due to Sheets becoming sluggish with large quantities of data and years of XLS files floating around). I recall the release of ChromeOS being hailed as a threat to Microsoft in the media but in truth it hasn't dented businesses at all and I cannot ever see any business IT department even considering a switch to ChromeOS (even small businesses). The Chromebook devices look like etch-a-sketch toys compared to even cheap Windows laptops.
The ability to grab data and modify it on the go has been around since the Windows CE / Windows Mobile days. The requirements haven't changed in that time - grab a document, see it, and then attempt to edit it on a mobile device (give up, wait until you're at a normal computer - my experience anyway).
Much as I dislike the idea (I make a living from selling Win32 apps) I can see why they want to do it.
What's their basis for that? I'd have thought at the very best it'd be about the same speed as a 13" (assuming you're not doing anything that uses much RAM; the 4GB would really cripple it there). I'll be interested to see what CPU it has, exactly, but I'd be surprised if it has the HD540/640 graphics.
EDIT: Specs here: https://i.imgur.com/Kc1fQ52.png
The expensive ones use an Iris 640, so are the Kaby Lake incarnation of the chips used in the non-TB 13" Macbook Pros (the touchbar ones use the higher wattage chips with Iris 545). The cheaper ones use HD 620. So, the more expensive models might be comparable to the non-touchbar Macbook Pro; it's unlikely that the cheaper ones will be.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-lapt...
Also the MBP Touch Bar has a TDP that is much higher than the Surface Laptop, only the low end MBP has the same TDP of all the SL.
So, no, the Microsoft product is MUCH SLOWER.
Yeah they're comparing it to the nTB MBP, it uses 15W Kaby-U, the nTB uses 15W Skylake-U, I assume generational improvements are where they get "faster".
Surface i5, 8/256 $1299, MBP $1499 or $1799 depending on the i5 processor.
Surface i7, 8/256 $1599, MBP $2099
Surface i7, 16/512 $2199, MBP $2499.
So not sure how you're saying this is on the expensive end.
Stop buying overpriced crap and start supporting companies that charge fair prices and maybe MS and Apple will release products that aren't 2-3x as pricey as the competition.
That sounds horrible...
I said the price works for me because a 6 year old laptop still chugs along comfortably so the price gets amortized. I was not holding a measuring contest.
By the time you add all that up, it's approximately the same pride as any other similar spec non-Apple/non-Microsoft/non-Dell Win home laptop.
So it's a bit more expensive than the MBP if you care about normal things, or a bit less expensive if the i7 branding is for some reason deeply important to you and you don't care about the GPU. Either way, not great, really, because the 13" MBP is noted for its expensiveness, and generally expected to drop $200 or so soon.
The Surface uses 15W U-series, so they can only be compared with the 13" nTB, the other two use 28W and 45W with dGPU, they're in entirely different classes specs-wise.
> Surface i5, 8/256 $1299, MBP $1499 or $1799 depending on the i5 processor.
1799 is an i7, so no. And the MBP has a graphical edge (50~80% better graphical performances) as it gets an Iris 540 to the Surface's HD 620.
> Surface i7, 8/256 $1599, MBP $2099
1799 (nTB MBP with i7), Surface gets an Iris 640, the direct (and almost identical) successor to the 540.
> Surface i7, 16/512 $2199, MBP $2499.
2199 (nTB MBP with i7, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD).
So the Surface is slightly lower-priced, at least at the low end, but with the caveat of flexibility: you can get a 16GB RAM or 512GB SSD nTB MBP for 1699, for the Surface it's 2199 or bust, and you can cut the i7 from any nTB configuration at almost no loss[0] to save $300.
[0] https://ark.intel.com/compare/91156,91169 the only difference is 400MHz base frequency, 300MHz maximum turbo
That's the big problem Microsoft has with their hardware that Apple doesn't.
But once you notice Windows 10 S, then the price is unusual. I bet the hardware team is disappointed by that decision for this machine. It doesn't make sense.
And free updates until 2018 doesn't help tbh.
The obvious reason is because they are overpriced. And now they have made it even worse. This does not make much sense. Hopefully manufacturers like Asus can step up with even better quality Zenbooks and do not join this 'premium' binge.
It seems the 'premium manufacturers' see this as a non-elastic market and want to take the prices to around $2000. But is there enough differentiation in laptops beyond the screen and build quality to justify that premium. Everything else is off the shelf components and these dual core chips just don't seem to be worth this kind of money.
Even 'premium' phones are becoming dramatically more expensive with every refresh that are way out of sync with component prices.
Personally I prefer this over a vm, dual boot or running Linux exclusively
Unusual that the Windows RT-alike supports it, though, but perhaps that's because Windows 8 and Windows RT were mutually exclusive in their hardware support (x86 vs ARM), and this isn't.
If you stay with windows you get more of this kind of thing, if you jump ship then you never have to worry again.
It seems like the intent is to end up in a similar place to iOS, with the entire system "curated" end to end. Which is not a bad place to be for many (most?) users. The problem with iOS model is that there's no way to escape it for power users, but it looks like it's not the case here - you can run 10 S if you want iOS-like experience, or you can run 10 Pro otherwise.
Well, I didn't.
Promising for sure.
While the Home to Pro upgrade costs double that? Strange.
[0] https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/product...
Are there hardware issues, or do they hope a percentage of the population will pay for the upgrade in 2018?
Store apps will not make the laptop slow, they won't have viruses, they will ask the user for permissions, can be uninstalled safely, they will scale well on hi-res screens, etc.
This type of safety is, imo, the most compelling feature of chromebook, and one that Windows Pro doesn't offer.
Either they get $50 from users and let them go buy/install off-market, or make the money in the long run from paid app developers who are pressured now to put their applications on the store.
Holy backfiring shit, what a desperate bunch of clueless clowns! This is a nice machine, and there's a opening now that Apple has somewhat fallen out of favor, and they think they are in any position to play stupid games?
Are you sure they don't? In the past, many Windows edition upgrades (e.g., Home to Pro) were just a matter of enabling features that were already installed.
[0] https://www.technorms.com/assets/20151012_133129.jpg
Hmm, I thought the fabric was a nice touch. I've had my surface pro for a few years now and have never even come close to staining the keyboard. I wonder how common this issue really is.
Were yours?
Thankfully I am past all that now, apart form the chronic hairdo, the spotty face, poor personal hygiene, awful social skills....... etc. etc....
It will depend on how much you type, of course, and it will be different for different people but I wish they'd have chosen another material even though this one looks gorgeous.
Or drop the proprietary charger and stick another USB-C port on that side and use it for charging.
Edit: ninja
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bridges/deskto...
The Surface Laptop isn't meant to compete with those. Like everything else in the Surface line, it's more of an example to the rest of the industry of what kind of devices they could/should be building for Windows to run on.
I'm reasonably happy with it, except for the touchpad (planning to get a mouse and disable), but for the price it's certainly a fine computer. It's definitely what I'd buy for a kid.
I expect that MS is just encouraging more of those kinds of devices to be made, maybe with slightly better HW.
Microsofts hardware partners have shown time and time again that they will sell extremely low quality hardware just to hit certain price brackets. Many of the complains people have about Windows is often down to poor quality and low performance hardware.
At least HP would rather sell you a piece of crap laptop that can't actually run Windows, than admit that it's not actually possible to deliver at the price point the customer asks for.
But this way around, store apps will always be viewed as the cheaper, less featured option.
If Microsoft wanted something competitive, they'd allow people to add other repositories to their stores, so manufactures could publish their own certs and people could chose to trust them .. remove MS from the middle man, but allow their update system to be more universal.
AFAIK, most major apps are on the macOS app store.
Even if your app can run in a sandbox today, are you willing to turn down any future feature requests that would make it so it won't?
We're putting an app on there, but our app is kind of an ideal use case because we don't expect to have to add features that can't work in the sandbox and our app is free. It's a tougher sell if you have to cut features to fit in the sandbox or hand off 30% of your sale to Apple.
Admittedly that 30% isn't unreasonable if you're really just starting out. That does include hosting, purchasing, and billing. But those things can be done at a much cheaper rate than 30% if you can set them up.
Panic is one of my favorite Mac app developers and (just checked) one of their apps (Coda) is distributed outside the App Store [1], while Transmit is distributed on both.
[1] https://panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/
Office for Mac - https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Office-...
Adobe Acrobat Reader for Mac - https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/install-reader-dc-mac-os....
What's CC?
Similarly, while you can get Photoshop Elements in the Windows Store, I don't believe you can get the full Photoshop CC on the Windows Store yet.
The Windows Store in contrast... most apps seem to be from a Microsoft contest a couple of years ago, where you could win a prize by writing a Metro app. The few decent apps can be counted on a hand and are all made by MS: Office Mobile (really good actually), Skype, Wunderlist/To-Do.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-s
Windows 10 S integrates with OneDrive so files are saved to the cloud, in sync and accessible from your devices. Use compatible apps available from the Windows Store. If you need to use professional tools or would rather run non-Store apps, you can easily and affordably switch to Windows 10 Pro.7
I would have bought them in a heartbeat over Dell XPS 13s for our Customer Support guys.
It makes me really sad because this points to longer clinging to the Surface Pro 3 Connector, so the next Surface Pro & Surface Book are likely not to ditch it in favor of TB3. I'm still on my Surface Pro 2 and want to upgrade badly, but this makes me look elsewhere. Sadly.
It's not for professionals, it's for students.
Not that Intel is bad, and its gotten better on mobile, but still, legitimate choice would be nice.
Edit : missed the part which says, you can upgrade to 10.
can't you get a VX5 for that price? or chromebook + gaming rig.