This... looks nothing like a macbook. It's got a matte metallic frame and a black bezel, but that's about where the similarities end as far as it looks to me.
Aside from the colours/finish, what's the same? Looking at the macbook in front of me and the image here they're totally different: the hinge, the keyboard, the vents, the ports, no touch bar, no speaker grills etc. Everything else is just laptop fundamental design, e.g. it is primarily composed of two slabs and a hinge, with a keyboard and trackpad in ergonomically optimal places.
No, macbooks close flat. This closes into a wedge, with the rear hinge approximately one-half-inch higher than the front when closed, with a gap between screen and keyboard.
In addition, macbooks are bezel-filled and sleek, where this emphasizes straight edges. Horizontal corners are rounded, but vertical edges are square.
Keyboard is also very square, instead of the rounded rects favored by macbooks.
About the only thing that's the same is that they're both aluminum white laptops.
I think what you mean is, "why do so many high end laptops have thin, metal, unibody chassis?"
But, when you ask the question that way, it kind of answers itself. People like metal, because it feels more high end than plastic. Unibody chassis don't need to be fastened together, which is good for manufacturing and looks. People like thin laptops because they are more portable than thick ones.
Unibody helps make it thinner, too. A traditional laptop design had to have both structrual components and outer casing -- unibody designs do both and save space
It's magnesium and not aluminum. Its keyboard is color-matched to the metal. Its screen detaches. Its trackpad doesn't take up the entire space between the keyboard and the edge. Its chamfered edge is the full width of the trackpad so you don't hurt your wrist. It has the Surface Book's signature "fulcrum hinge" and the associated gap. Its display has air vents. Both the base and the display are the same thickness.
But it's a metal laptop that comes in two sizes, so it looks like a MacBook to some people.
> Surface Book 2 brings you a full array of ports, including USB-A, USB-C, and full-size SD card reader which makes it easy to connect other devices, accessories and memory cards without the need for a bag full of dongles.
I find there is a good reason to like it, compared to this:
A better question is, what issues didn't I face? Unlocking randomly wouldn't work, the display driver was crashing when using firefox/chrome consistently, battery life was abysmal, device would bluescreen, etc.
From what I understand they finally patched most of these out after more than a year. No need to go on that roller coaster again.
Yes, from my experience all that eventually got fixed. For the first six months that I owned my surface book, I continued to use my rMBP. But by now, I really do enjoy using it as my primary computer. What I like most about it is using it with two external monitors connected to the expansion dock. I flip the screen around on my suface book and then place it in the middle between the external monitors and hook up a wireless keyboard and mouse. This triple monitor mode is awesome and perfect for doing some sketching or use my programming IDE on the surface book while having the other two monitors available for productivity. I replicated this setup at the office and home and now I can't imagine going back.
I got my unit on initial release, so have had it for roughly 2 years. It was hit or miss for the first 3 months, but various updates solved all the issues.
Laptop manufacturers messed up by not behaving like cell phone manufacturers. without planned obsolescence and scheduled component failures, there just isn't the same demand for iterative improvements.
I use a six year old Thinkpad and it feels like a new machine. This just doesn't look like it's worth ten of my laptop.
I'm super excited. I've really loved my Surface Book (probably the first piece of hardware I've felt that way about), but 512GB was too small, a proper gaming graphics card with VR support will make it so much better, and USB-C is good (though no eGPU support is a disappointment).
I'm actually really glad they have up until now left USB-C out. We're at a point in USB-C's life I'd consider it an anti-feature, and the Surface Book 2's no exception: This particular USB-C port is really only useful for adding a second display. It's more or less fine as an extra port, but anywhere it takes away a Type A port, or even the Mini-DP it replaced is a little sad.
For a mobile device one big plus of USB-C is USB-PD and the ecosystem of fast chargers and power banks it brings/will-bring. You can also use one charger for both your phone and laptop, which is useful even if you can’t charge both at the same time.
Ignore everything else and it’s a nice upgrade just for this.
My Surface Pro charger (the same one that comes with the Surface Book IIRC) has a USB port for charging phones as well, and unlike a USB-C charger, charges both at the same time.
While I lament non-standard implementations, much like Apple's old MagSafe adapter and the Surface connector, sometimes the non-standard version is vastly superior.
Nvidia 1060 and 1050? Nice. I assume it is 4GB and 6GB respectively?
This really makes it incredibly powerful. I run with dual 4k monitors off of a Dell XPS with an Nvidia 1050 with 4GB. Feels like a desktop.
(Does this also support 32GB of RAM? That is required for development these days with multiple containers running locally. My Dell XPS 15" supports 32GB of RAM.)
Many Lenovo Thinkpads and HP ZBooks, the mobile workstation lines, support 64GB of ECC memory when paired with a Xeon. And 64GB of non-ECC when using a Core processor.
Hell even the "ultrabook" workstation from HP, the ZBook Studio supports 32GB of ram [0].
One has to trade capacity for speed. 16GB is such a wall now, it makes me think Intel crippled their latest chips because they are too good.
> Many Lenovo Thinkpads and HP ZBooks, the mobile workstation lines
The SB is not a workstation. It uses 15W U CPUs…
> One has to trade capacity for speed.
DDR4 trades battery for capacity, that's why "ultrabooks" concerned about the balance of weight and battery life are limited to 16GB: intel does not support lpddr4.
Those machines are using regular DDR memory, rather than the low-power LPDDR3 memory that the Surface Book and MBP use. The ZBook Studio G3, for example, gets just over half the battery life of the MBP, while weighing 15% more: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/hp-zbook-studio-g3.
What I want to know is the TDP limits of each of these. I saw that the 13" had a (39?) small power supply, and the 15" had a 95 (?) W power supply. My Alienware 13R3 has a 180W power supply, of which if I am not mistaken fully half goes to that 1060, and 45W goes to the i7-6xxx quad-core CPU.
My guess is that this laptop will have heavy thermal restrictions on the 1060's performance, not to mention a lack of power to actually run it at it's max TDP.
I wonder if they're using nVidia's new technology which underclocks/underpowers the GPUs at (their claim of) only modest cost in performance.
Might still be a configuration option, that just looks like base specs (but also, maybe not)? They're hardcore trying to push the i7 upsell on that page
To be fair, if you're developer, you'll probably also want an i7 (since a lot of compilation tasks are highly parallel and the extra cores will help a lot)
If the quality is there, I welcome it. I'd love to spend over 2000 on an X series ThinkPad that doesn't burn my skin and has a real screen (3:2 or better).
It’s unfortunately the expected thing, as powerful general purpose computers become a specialized niche tool for developers, since regular consumers are being satisfied with phones and tables and inexpensive laptops. The market is no longer growing, it’s shrinking.
That doesn't seem too bad. If you use it daily (240 days a year) and the machine lasts two years, then that's a bit more than $5 / day. I think it's reasonable.
If it’s anything like the first surface book then it’s likely to be pretty bad. I had to carry a mouse with me at all times to be able to properly use the surface book. So far Apple laptops are the only one’s with a trackpad I can actually use all day and not miss having a separate mouse (for work not gaming obviously).
I find the trackpad on the original Surface Book to be good. As good as any MacBook I've used, but I'm not a Mac user, so I don't think I can speak to the more subtle differences.
Most reviews of the original Surface Book concur that it's "nearly" as good as the MacBook's trackpads. Also remember that the display is a touch screen.
While I do love the Mac trackpad, the important part is the amazing gestures built into OS X- things like workspace switching and window management are far easier in OS X as a result. But maybe that makes a more dramatic difference for me because I've always disliked alt+tab.
Improvements along a particular dimension aren't always a given. If they said "Introducing the Apple iPhone 8 Plus, the lightest iPhone ever" they'd be lying. You can't assume that a newer model of something is always going to be more powerful.
Language isn't purely literal. Especially when there's a limited number of words to market to people. You can't write a 10 000 essay. So mentioning a detail isn't just to communicate the literal facts, it's to highlight details, point out significant details. So when someone says "it's the most X ever" they are saying that the improvements are significant enough to make them notable.
If they said "Most powerful LAPTOP ever" that could bring some legal issues on them.
In EU there's a law that forbids using such an unsubstantiated/unverifiable/subjective claim in the advertisements.
EDIT: Recalled one more detail: If you use a claim like that in the commercial then EU regulatory institutions can demand an actual peer reviewed research paper backing it up :)
The pricing is brutal.[1] About $100-$300 more than the 15" Macbook Pro with the same amount of storage. The base model is particularly shameful, with only 8GB of RAM. The base MBP is 16GB for $100 less. You can't configure the RAM amount, so $2,900 is the cheapest 15" model with 16GB.
[1] Or perhaps it's more that the configuration options are really inflexible, with every configuration having the highest-end CPU and GPU.
With that price you get "twice as powerful as the latest MacBook Pro. ...up to 17 hours of video playback. That’s 70% more than the latest MacBook Pro."
Why would it? Just because it's Metal-optimised doesn't mean it'll magically stop running OpenGL/whatever else. I'm pretty sure Unity, GameMaker, SDL et al will add a Metal-optimised backend pretty quickly too.
It makes sense if you think of Apple as the penultimate modern vertically integrated company - they even had branded AA batteries and charger at some point (re-labeled Eneloops).
I've been considering a PC laptop for gaming specifically because of the integrated nvidia chips – the new "max q" design is really thin and has moved these things down from 10 pounds to under 5. It's totally worth the extra $300 for a dedicated 1060 with 6gb of ram – this is a legit gaming machine. Yes, I could get a desktop for cheaper, but I don't have room.
Looks like a proper MacBook Pro replacement HW wise, but the OS is not one I would use for work.. =/ So attached to OSX for the past 6 years and cannot see me using a windows OS for work , but at home only for gaming. The new MacBook Pro has many flaws. Not sure how this compares in real use for it?
I imagine that it can run Linux, right — if not now, soon. I personally much prefer Linux to both macOS & Windows, although obviously tastes differ. I get a tiling WM with no cruft, I can completely control my UI, I can get work done quickly and easily.
On the SB1, IIRC the touch screen worked but the dGPU, bluetooth and camera did not, you needed a patched kernel for hardware buttons and wifi, and hibernation didn't work (and the hardware didn't properly support suspend to ram). Not sure about the "tablet" mode.
Is that ratio really so important? I have a wider ratio X1 Carbon and it has never bothered me, but I guess I wasn't used to anything in particular. The screen quality is really nice though.
Perhaps it's less evident especially if you have a multi-head setup with big monitors. But for almost every laptop now that uses display scaling to make screen content readable, screen estate is precious and the extra vertical space does make coding on a small screen much more enjoyable.
I've been (also) working on Surface machines for a couple of years now, on Ubuntu.
They work OK on stock kernels since around 4.10 (but one must "backport" the linux-firmware package from Ubuntu Artful for having a working Wifi).
For a "non fancy" work usage (no stylus etc.; mostly keyboard and touchpad), the "only" nags are:
- no sleep functionality
- you can't permanently enable the Fn button, and worse, it seems that it disables itself regularly, and even worse, independenly of it being active or not, the light is off (it's not a defect; the light just turns itself off shortly after activation).
With those points in mind (point 2 is much more annoying than it reads), I think Surface machines are poor solutions for Linux users, unless the user needs to have tablet and laptop in a single machine. In fact, I'll buy the next-gen XPS 13 once it's available and mature.
On the other hand, Surface Books are the state of the art of large/work tablets. There's nothing remotely comparable: a 700gr 13.5" tablet is amazing (although the batteries don't last very long), and the fact that there is a 15" model is even more impressive.
I tried to switch to Windows for work (for gaming it's the obvious choice) but I just couldn't.
Windows 10 is IMO the best Windows ever, but I was surprised that the ecosystem was really poor compared to macOS. Most of the software you find online are outdated win32 apps with scaling problems. Even modern software from major companies still has scaling problems such as Adobe CC or even the mighty Photoshop.
I also didn't find worthy replacements for my most used apps such as Alfred. Even something like iStatMenus doesn't have a replacement in Windows, all the alternatives are really poor in comparison.
agreed. I have a gaming PC at home, as well as a separate gaming laptop that I use for events. I've tried coding on it, and it's just not as good. Little things like the apps you mentioned I miss. Soulver, text expander, proper twitter clients, spotlight, brew.
Oddly enough I think mac and windows switched professional users somehow. I don't know a single developer on a windows machine, however most people I know working in 3d, digital illustration or video work all use windows machines now.
Apple lost a lot of the creative market with the trashcan Mac Pro. If I was doing heavy video editing or other work that demanded a high-end workstation I would immediately look at HP or Dell because I don't want to buy hardware that's obsolete out of the gate with no internal expansion support, or at least no STANDARD internal expansion support (proprietary GPU and SSD connections are stupid, why do you do this Apple).
On the other hand, outside of ML it's not like many software developers need to upgrade to a new GPU every (other) year and current processor trends show very little performance uplift between generations to upgrade - once Apple finally gets 32GB of memory in the MBP most developers will be set for many years.
2. Sure, that's a good reason. It had better be spewing out lots of data, though, or again, you might as well process in the cloud.
3. Being able to access your workstation via airport wifi at all is actually a benefit in this case, unless you intend to wheel it around like a suitcase.
> Being able to access your workstation via airport wifi at all is actually a benefit in this case, unless you intend to wheel it around like a suitcase
Did you walk out of a 1980s time warp or something? The workstation in this case carries 1TB of storage and weighs 3.5 lbs. (And it still has wifi in case you need that).
Windows Subsystem for Linux has been huge however. I used to have to run Vagrant or something on Windows to build stuff but WSL makes life super easy as a developer on Windows. I'm still one of the handful of people at a 600 person company though that runs Windows. :/
I'd like to second that. I've been using WSL + Docker on Windows for a long time now for web development (linux backend development) and it's been a breeze. Works flawlessly.
You can do fun things, like tail logs to a file using linux and simultaneously analyze the file using windows tools.
How do you access your files inside the subsystem? Don't you get permission problems (executable files etc)?
I had so many issues with Virtualbox in Windows, I rather just use a Linux desktop distro...
You shouldn't access files in WSL using windows, but the other way around it's absolutely ok.
So if my projects are at C:/Development/Projects/...
Then I just open /mnt/c/Development/Projects/... on WSL
I haven't had any permission problems, not even once.
Same for Docker for Windows. It uses Hyper-V + some network disk sharing magic, which makes directory mounts into docker containers work great. So sometimes, like, when I need to debug a non-cross-platform linux program. (WSL doesn't handle process forking well, so some debuggers, like Go Delve don't work) I just do something like
docker run -v C:/Development/Projects/MyProject:/mnt/MyProject -it ubuntu /bin/bash
This is indeed very odd but true. I understand why developers switched and the reason is probably that most development these days is Web development and OSX is the closest to a Unix os with a polished gui. On the other hand I can't understand why creatives switched to windows.
- The laptop lineup only offers Intel graphics or AMD's weakest mobile GPUs. I suspect that Metal has something to do with why they've pretended Nvidia doesn't exist for the past ~5 years.
- The only non-abandoned[2] machine in the desktop lineup is a non-modular all-in-one.
- Apple ceded the creative-pro software market to Adobe. Final Cut, Logic, used to be industry leaders, and they had companion software products that Apple has either neglected or discontinued. Premiere + After Effects is a far more powerful & widely used toolset than Final Cut + Motion, plus Adobe's software also runs on powerful Windows PCs, eliminating Apple's lock-in.
- Pen-input is iPad exclusive. Apple has no desire to bring touch to the Mac, and while I agree that macOS is not designed for fingers, I'm sure artists would like a convertible MacBook Pro that supported the Apple Pencil.
[1] Obviously this is a generalization
[2] For all intents and purposes, the Mac Pro will still be abandoned until they release the promised new one circa 2018. The current Mac Pro and the Mac mini are terrible, ancient PCs that only sell any units because Apple has neglected giving macOS any good hardware to run on in those form factors or price points.
> however most people I know working in 3d, digital illustration or video work all use windows machines now.
You can stick really fast processors, tons of RAM and one or two Nvidia graphics cards in a very cheap tower. If only Apple sold a cheesegrater-style tower that could do that ;-)
> I don't know a single developer on a windows machine
There's also a fair amount of peer pressure.
I was at a big software company and I choose a Lenovo with Windows instead of a Mac. I was the only one, and the other members of the team constantly tried to get me to switch, and trolled me, as if they were embarrassed with me. Now I'm at another big company, where Windows is more prevalent (legacy), but team members are still shocked that I chose again a Lenovo with Windows and Ubuntu VM on top.
If you were to interview to a startup and the founder coded on a Windows, what would most devs feel about it?
Just to give a counter point - every single device we use at work (biotech R&D) requires windows. All of our equipment (plate readers, flocytometry, purification systems, PCR, fermentors, congutators,etc etc) runs on windows-only software. And these are all several hundred million dollar verticals. Personally, I haven't run into a single piece of equipment that works with MacOS. Except maybe one of our bioreactors, which used a web interface, but that too required a windows tool for other things. Windows is used in a TON of proper manufacturing setups, traditionally only for SCADA/HMI, but more so now on the control side, with PC based automation becoming more prominent.
Which ecosystem is "poor" depends on your own current situation.
Microsoft does an excellent job making Windows run on just about any x86[_64] device (excluding ancient hardware). Windows runs perfectly on a Mac, whether in a VM or via dual boot.
No it is not. It is not officially supported nor there is strong community support. When people like myself want for work, i want something 100% , I cannot explain it to my supervisor:”naaah, my hackintosh required a little bit of maintenance, so that’s why I submitted the paper late”.
Fair enough. Although I’ve had just as many issues running Windows in boot camp.
I do realllly wish Apple would open up and let us officially install on different hardware - especially if they’re only going to update the Mac pros every few years.
Yeah, but I don't know if you can get your system validated, which is a requirement for us, and most people in this field. The HN audience is more aligned towards certain domains, and I merely wanted to present an alternate context. Not that it matters, but I like using OSX :)
But those million win32 applications tend to be really outdated and poor in terms of features compared to the macOS ecosystem. At least that was what I experienced.
Regardless, they're at-least usable and Microsoft cares about backward compat.
Just last week I played a game of Age of Empires II with my cousin, a game which was "released" in 1999 on a Surface with Windows 10. While on my MacBook I have issues because every major OS upgrade breaks something and I have to repurchase newer versions or give up if the dev isn't interested/around anymore.
I agree, Windows is much better at backwards compatibility.
OTOH I've found that it's not such a big deal in practice. In my 10+ years as a mac user I've only hit this problem a couple of times. Likewise in Windows I rarely open old outdated software.
That is of course my anecdotal and personal experience.
It's not a big deal for consumers. It's a huge deal for STEM departments in universities (a software upgrade for a hundred-thousand dollar machine can sometimes be thousands of dollars).
For me it feels like you want to tweak Windows to be a clone of your OSX setup. Hint: it will never happen, same way you cant ever make OSX really like Windows. For example I could never find a good replacement for Paint.NET on OSX.
I dunno why people say that one or the other is superior for work (except if you work with some special software that exists only for one OS). Both of them are equally good, since everything is moving to the cloud, for most non-specialized tasks you need one app - a browser. If you look at other fields like programming, graphics work, 3D,.. they are the same again (except for special cases like C# or Swift development).
And things like iStatMenus is not something that is used for work, its a widget that you like. Perhaps you simply like the look and feel of OSX more?
> For me it feels like you want to tweak Windows to be a clone of your OSX setup
Not really. The features I want could be easily developed in Windows, or Linux, but for some reason this isn't the case.
A good example of this are launchers. Once you start using a launcher you wonder how you could have lived without it.
MacOS offers Spotlight which is very limited but there are 3 very good third party options: Alfred, Launchbar, and Quicksilver. These offer a lot more than simply opening files and applications.
There are launchers for Windows too (launchy, Wox, etc) but the functionality is very limited compared to the macOS options. I suspect this may be cultural. Maybe there are no good commercial solutions like in macOS because there is no market.
I have found this same problem with other types of applications. For some reason the macOS options are simply better. And again, this is completely unrelated to the OS. It seems there is simply no interest in the Windows world for these types of things.
For example macOS has Karabiner which allows to configure you keyboard in a myriad of ways. Terminals like iTerm are also better in macOS, maybe because of the *Nix tradition. Monitors like iStatMenus which offer you one click access to deep information on hardware, network, etc, are non existent. BetterTouchTool which allows to deeply configure gestures on your trackpad, again, nothing on Windows like it. I could go on, but you get the idea.
I recently left my macbook with the TSA after a frantic sprint through security. I was stuck with a windows 7 PC for the week.
Armed with Putty and a browser, I only missed the touchpad of my macbook. I do most of my work in Jupyter and in vim. It's rather liberating to realize you are not tied to one ecosystem. My point is I thought I would never be productive without my mac but that simply wasn't true.
I suppose I am an edge case though as most of my work is performed on my headless linux workstation.
For those wondering, TSA held on to my macbook which I retrieved over the weekend.
That seems to depend on the task. The highest end CPU available, even the 15", is the i7-8650U which is a 1.9Ghz @ 15W part. This is also how they pull off 17hr battery life, they are putting an ultrabook processor in a 15" laptop. Current 15" MBP can be had with a i7-7920HQ, 3.1Ghz @ 45W which I would expect to be quite a bit faster for multi-core workloads.
i7-8650U is rated at 2.1Ghz @ 25W in it's TDP up config, so running it at 20W may get you 2.0Ghz instead of 1.9Ghz. But this doesn't tell the entire story either. Modern processors are constantly adjusting their frequencies across all cores to hit their power targets. e.g. if the thermal management can't sustain 20W in perpetuity in may actually run slower than it's rated speed. Unfortunately this isn't something that is easy to determine from most benchmarking tools. Things like geekbench will only tell you the system could maintain certain performance for the length of the test, which is usually only a couple minutes, you may find that doing longer running work will cause throttling.
If you really want to know how it'll perform under heavy workloads, you probably want to hit it with prime95 or blender for 30+ minutes and monitor core frequencies to see where it ends up running at.
Do they really? Wow...fuck Apple. I have been using Mac for years but I don't want to pay that much for severely handicapped hardware. Especially when it's just in pursuit of thinness and aesthetics.
I assume that MikusR was talking about the i7-8650U. Apple doesn't down-TDP the processors in the MBP. I don't know where this idea even came from and it's trivial to prove it false.
This doesn't appear to be true. I tested my i7-6920HQ MBP with Intel Power Gadget and it reports 45-46 watts under load when on AC power, and 40 watts on battery. Reported speed is 3.1 GHz (official specs are 2.9).
One HUGE Issue Hardware. While the build quality is awesome the muscle power of most Macs graphically is just abysmal. Also the lack of a native Right Click!
There are plenty of Mac OS games and people don't play them.
> right-click out of the box. You can configure it from the System Settings -> Mouse / Trackpad
That's not out of the box :) But an Apple Mouse can not have right click added it physically has one button but it does it in software and it doesn't work or it button bounces whenever I have tried.
95% of all Mac I have ever seen or used have Official Mice.
> I hope that in about two years the whole eGPU situation is sorted out so that I can have a MacBook Pro with a good CPU as my only computer.
The primary issue for gaming on OSX is and has always been drivers. You can generally get 80~100% better framerates by running the same game on Windows (via Bootcamp).
- Microsoft: Gaming has been a first class citizen at Microsoft for a while and I'm not sure if we can say the same about Apple. They just put tons of money into it because they have this competitive advantage. It's not only the games they bought/publish (Minecraft, Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, etc), but the platform itself (Xbox, DirectX, etc). Windows 10 also has a "Gaming Mode" as part of the OS for performance improvement which some games might have it turned on automatically.
- Hardware: PC Gamers usually customize hardware to have pretty decent power (GPU, CPU, Memory, etc) for relatively cheap when compared to Mac. In PC market, there's hardware competition for literally every single part of the hardware. For games that require extra power, you would need a powerful machine and, while they do exist in newer generations of iMacs, it's just damn expensive. Which brings me to my next point: market.
- Market: Although Mac users grew significantly, I'd say it's still pretty small when compared to PC. If you are a game developer, especially an indie game dev, you may find how depressing it can be to publish a cross platform game. It's not super hard given the popularity of game engines such as Unity and UE4. But the issue, in my opinion, is if your game has multiplayer, for example, you're probably going to have a bad time dealing with platform differences. Aside from that, you're going to have to deal with other platform differences in a lot of different levels. At some point, you're going to ask the question: is it really worth the extra investment? You are going to delay publishing your game for probably little gain. Developing for the larger market first might make more sense. Not only for indie devs but for AAA games too.
Valve was skeptical about Microsoft turning Windows into a walled garden when they announced DX12 only for Windows Store exclusive games, that is when they started pushing their efforts into SteamOS, moreover a stable runtime (based on Ubuntu LTS) for Linux games, which has helped _a lot_ for linux gaming.
You don't have to use UWP to use DX12, and you don't have to use DX12 in Windows Store games. DX12 does require WDDM 2, but that's a different bucket of worms.
Xbox Game DVR predates Game Mode; you can enable/disable them independently.
Also, you don't even have to use the Windows Store to install UWP games. Windows 10 allows sideloading by default (since the November Update two years ago, though shortly after Valve made their stink) and since the Anniversary Update (1611) last year this time, there is a nice little installer that pops up if you double click a (signed) UWP APPX package.
So even if DX12 was restricted to UWP apps (which, reminder, it isn't) UWP apps are not restricted to the Store either, and Steam could install UWP apps, too.
I reckon it has something to do with the graphics stack. Have you tried running anything graphic intensive on the Mac? Every same program no matter how well-written runs faster on Windows. To be fair I haven't tried any Metal games (if they even exist?), but I guess it is somehow harder to write games that are performant on the Mac?
I've been trying Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and it's a great idea, I can see my self moving to windows (from Linux) in the next months when they fix the slow IO.
The combination would work great for me, a terminal with Linux tools + a nice windows 10 experience (nice fonts, devices support) .
I was a Linux diehard for years but I'm very happy with my Surface Book. With "Ubuntu on Windows" you can run the usual unix command line tools; if anything it's more comfortable than OSX since you get up-to-date GNU versions rather than older GNU tools.
I am also most comfortable with my OpenSUSE but Windows 10 is great and I have OpenSUSE Bash for Windows installed. It really is nice and it is case sensitive! Why is Mac OS OPTIONAL case sensitivity?
A relic from HFS of old, there's some notable applications that still fail hard on case-sensitive HFS+/APFS volumes so the default is insensitive (hey, Adobe, I'm looking at you - OS X/macOS 10 has been out for a decade and a half, get your shit together).
I do contract work for Video/Audio production (Usually fix the crappy audio that they recorded UGH) I ran into that one a few times. Once all my work was over written because I capitalized the fixed files. The other time is we joined all our work into a pool and that crashed every Adobe application working on the job.
I've been saying this about every model of XPS then I'd buy one and suffer through constant driver issues. The build quality is definitely there which was lacking before but the quality of drivers make me run for hills.
It certainly feels like Mac OS is stuck in in-between land with iOS and OS X and it just feels a mess if your on a desktop with no track pad. The scroll bars are not mouse friendly. Windows 10 seems so much more stable and modern to Mac OS for the last two years. One job I use a Macbook and the OS just drives me nuts. The lack of decent short cuts drives is mind boggling.
You can use the Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad. Not sure what you mean by "last of decent short cuts," OS X is pretty keyboard friendly. Maybe just unfamiliarity?
Go to Desktop (This is stupid it is Fn + F11 OR Command F3 based on what keyboard you have) Also Win - D makes a lot more sense! It is a default motion on a track pad.
File Manager - Windows (Win - E) Mac OS NOTHING
I have never seen why Mac OS gets a pass by so many people when there are clear paper cuts in its interface and it gets worse and worse over the past 10 years.
That damn Windows key drives me nuts - press it accidentally during a game and it kicks you out!
Anyways my usual way of going to the desktop is to just command-tab to Finder, and then command N to create a new Finder window, or any of the shortcuts in the Go menu.
Nobody is claiming that the Mac UI is perfect, but it's been way more stable and unified than Windows. Of course there was Windows 8, but even Windows 10 still has things like both the new Settings and old Control Panel, and the old start menu next to the god-awful, ad-ridden Live Tiles. I recently tried to enable automatic login on my Windows 10 laptop and was told to run "netplwiz" in the Run dialog command line. It's a mess.
I like that the Mac uses the Super key for common shortcuts, which frees the control key for Emacs-style keybindings. It seems that besides i3, no other popular desktop environments allows a similar setup. I am a Mac convert after I start writing code seriously and as much as I still like Windows, I can't go back because of this.
As much as I also love Linux (I know, I love all 3 major OS for different reasons), I cannot use it as my full time desktop OS for obvious reasons. MacOS currently represents a perfect trade-off for me.
I'm the same. I'm not at all interested in the new Macbook Pros with the touch bar and crappy keyboard, and the Surface Book 2 looks amazing. I don't even actually like macOS that much any more. And Windows has the Linux subsystem!
But. I need to do iOS development from time to time. At the very least, I need to be able to test web pages in Mac browsers. I can run a Windows VM on a Mac very easily, but I can't run a Mac VM inside Windows very easily. Sigh.
My windows workflow involves a Virtualbox VM, with ~/ in the guest mounted as Z: on the windows host.
Use gvim installed direct on windows (so long as you don't need super complex plugins which shell out to utilities) to edit files in Z: which exist on the host, with PuTTy and tmux as your terminal. Done.
The thing holding windows back right now is a terminal emulator to sit ontop of WSL, and WSL's ability to run background processes properly without closing them all when i close a terminal (and to have things autostart on boot).
There are workarounds right now to solve this, though.
I used Microsoft OS from MS-Dos v3.3 right up until they launched Vista. I have to go back every now and again for work, and it is still horrible for me. The current work machine I have requires a reboot sometimes 3 times a day for updates. Surely this can not be the norm?
Anyway, I agree with you. I have a pro at work, but recently got a plain macbook, and it is awesome. Great for even iPhone dev work.
Why do no pics show the USB-A side of the system clearly? It's like they only want to talk about USB-C.
Also I can't tell if it does USB-C Power Delivery or not? Or would I still need a separate charger for this? Would be really nice to only carry one charger for phone and laptop...
aaah.. at the end:
"Users can also recharge the Surface Book 2 with a USB Type-C charger as long as it is powerful enough. Devices can be charged from the Surface Book 2, such as a phone using USB Type-C."
I have a Nexus 5X, my wife has a Nexus 6P, and my computer is a Dell XPS 13. We charge all three with a USB-C charger, which means less cords and adapters around the house and in the car.
USB-C is pretty standard on Android now. Most newer Android phones have moved to USB-C, including Samsung's S8 and Note 8. All of Google's own branded phones have used USB-C for a coupe of years now.
Any experiences with dual booting in to Linux on the Surface Book? I can imagine some things, like detaching not working optimally, but does it work at all?
Not a duel boot, but I regularly use the Windows Subsystem for Linux on my Surface Book for work and personal development, I've had no problems whatsoever. Works like a dream, and if you stick an X server on your computer, X applications pretty much just _work._ If you haven't yet, it's worth looking into.
I've used Linux on a Surface 3 so I imagine it'll be a similar story for the Book: many things won't play as nice as they would under Windows (sleeping when closing it, WiFi), things like the touch screen might not play ball, and the graphics drivers might not work.
Linux 4.9 aimed to make the Surface usable, but I haven't found a distro that played with the Wifi drivers nicely (would work for a few minutes, then would shut off, become unresponsive, and required a hard reboot to get working again). There is a Fedora Surface image that many suggest works really well on Surfaces, but I couldn't get it to boot.
Now I just prefer using a Virtualbox image to do all my Linux stuff. It's easier to set up and requires far less rebooting.
I am not sure how well it would work to even get Linux on it. I thought they had a fairly locked down boot loader. And no way there is a good driver for the screen release.
On the other hand, I have never even contemplated dual booting it because WSL does everything I need Linux for. It is actually pretty good.
Now I want a 3:2 MacBook Pro 15'', the display ratio that Mac notebook used to have(PowerBook G4). 3:2 is much more comfortable working with, enough vertical space for reading code and no sacrifice for horizontal space.
16:9 can't be equated to and is significantly worse than 16:10, which is worse than 3:2, which is worse than 4:3 (which is coming back on tablets). There were even 5:4 displays at one point (early days of desktop LCD, I still have my 1280x1024 19" ViewSonic VP191b).
Assuming 15" diagonals on all of them:
* a 16:9 display is 96 sq in and 7.4" high
* a 16:10 display is 101 sq in and 7.9" high
* a 3:2 display is 104 sq in and 8.3" high
* a 4:3 display is 108 sq in and 9" high
* a 5:4 display is 110 sq in and 9.4" high
As you can see, 16:10 -> 16:9 is actually the largest loss in surface area and second-largest loss of height (largest being 4:3 -> 3:2).
However if you're watching a movie, the 16:9 has 100% coverage for 16:9 and 75% coverage for Cinemascope, every other format gets lower in both relative and absolute coverage, down to 70% (77 sq in) and 53% (58 sq in) for a 5:4.
> How the hell did people think it was a good idea?
Black bars on movies, better view angles in FPS, and cheaper.
Interesting. Does anyone here actually use the dial, or know someone that does? Otherwise, it doesn't look like a compelling upgrade to my Surface Book (1) though. Even though I paid an arm a leg for it, I've grown to love it over time. Glad they are providing both 13" and 15" options though.
The one on my MBP 2014 is definitely superior, but I don't mind it. Gets the job done, and I found it precise enough to work on corporate presentations, a place where neurotic detail reigns.
Yes, and there isn't a great history with getting surface's to work well with linux - though I think things are much better now. Still, probably much easier than getting linux on it than a macbook pro.
You could, but not without sacrificing many of the features that make the Surface Book unique. The pen support in Windows 7 is significantly worse, and face authentication wouldn't work. Windows 7 isn't very usable on a tablet. To use the GPU when you reattached the tablet you'd likely have to reboot the machine, also a much slower operation on Windows 7.
If you don't want the above features, you could get a machine that runs Windows 7 well with good hardware specs for less money.
This is a good example of how Microsoft often does marketing poorly. The text reads like a script for an in-person product launch. On the page it doesn't even make sense "When you think about Microsoft and you hear our mission – to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more – it’s powerful." What?
And then after all of that, you click through to the store and there's no pricing information whatsoever and no pre-order date on the store page (there is a date buried in all the text in the announcement), just an unfriendly "Not available" broken button... no price, no date, and I don't even remember what was supposed to be interesting about the thing. Something about having more pixels than a Mac. Whatever interest I had in the product evaporated a long time ago, but the lack of concrete info on price makes me forget about it entirely.
Edited to add:
Oh cool, I just went back to the page and noticed the "Microsoft Band", a product that was officially discontinued over a year ago, is prominently featured in the navigation bar across the top of the page. Good work, team!
* https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book... has the actual stuff you want, with a detailed specs breakdown and the price of every configuration although even there are incoherences (Tech Specs states the 15" has 16GB RAM, but "Configure" lists an 8GB 15" configuration)
Most creative professionals would disagree that ntrig is anywhere near parity. I work in the field and everyone uses Wacoms of some sort.
There was initial excitement when the 1st generation launched with actual Wacom technology, as a lot of us do work in Windows, but it quickly fizzled when Microsoft cheaped out and went with less performant ntrig digitizers.
It's a tradeoff. The old SP1s and SP2s with Wacom digitizers get funky at the edges because of how Wacom's technology works. IIRC it's a big array of sensors behind the screen, and they have to extend past the edges of the sensing area to keep accuracy workable across the surface. If you're out at the edge of the grid it can't measure the pen's position accurately.
With Wacom's Intuos tablets you've probably noticed they have a really big bezel. Maybe 2-3 inches around every side. It's not just a physical design decision, they need that in order to work. MS couldn't accommodate that on the surface, so the accuracy at the edges dropped off. And this being Windows with a lot of software not designed for touchscreens, that meant you were trying to poke at tiny toolbar buttons in the least accurate region of the digitizer.
Ntrig solves that, it's let them at least be consistent across the whole surface, even as bezels got smaller and smaller. But like you said, the peak accuracy of Wacom in the middle of the screen probably beats it.
I sold my SP3 to buy a 9.7" iPad Pro when those came out, mainly because I got annoyed with the digitizer. If you draw a line slowly you can see it get visibly pulled back and forth along the digitizer grid. To get smooth lines you have to do fast sweeping strokes, which I really didn't like.
In an AMA on reddit the Surface team attributed some of the pen performance issues to "capacitive coupling" making the pen not detected as accurately if you let the tip touch a ruler, so those are drawn freehand. Even so, you can clearly see the lines get pulled into the pattern of the ntrig grid.
Where did you hear this? From my personal experience and watching some youtube reviews from concept artists/illustrators, the Pencil beats Wacom hands down.
Indeed, I switched from Wacom Cintiq to iPad Pro when it came out. So far it's the best drawing experience I've ever had on a digital device.
I also had one of the Surface Pros with ntrig digitizer. It was near impossible to draw properly. Quick sketching is fine, but slow and precise lines were impossible. Cursor just jumped around and was unusable.
I’m an illustrator, have an iPad Pro and a high-end Wacom. Work with a lot of people in the animation industry. No one is regularly using iPads for anything besides sketching/toying with ideas.
If Apple made a big push to improve their hardware, get full blown Photoshop with Adobe’s brush engine, this could conceivably change. Everything’s too piecemeal right now though. File management is still terrible, Photoshop brushes are only available in Adobe’s terrible apps, lots of Bluetooth buginess from app to app, inconsistent UI patterns etc. The newest Procreate update and Affinity designer are pretty cool, but it’s still not there yet.
Yeah, Microsoft is not unique in being unable to sucessfully integrate Wacom tech. And Wacom's own portables leave a lot to be desired as computing devices. It's a hard problem.
You can see some slight vertical jogs, but nothing to the degree of what the Surface has. I've never noticed it in actual use on the iPad. On my SP3 I definitely did.
I don't actually know how the technology in Apple's Pencil works compared to Wacom and ntrig, but my assumption is that it's more similar to ntrig with having the detection hardware up front in the display/glass assembly instead of behind it. It uses an active stylus w/ battery (similar to ntrig), while Wacom's stylus is a passive batteryless device.
In terms of accuracy, iPad and Wacom seemed similar to me. Never used a Cintiq (just the screenless pads) so I can't make a fair comparison. I've heard that the Cintiq has more visible lag with your stroke catching up to the pen, but that's much harder to notice when you're drawing on your desk while watching a separate screen.
The iPad is my favorite, hands down. It feels very natural to use.
I understand why Microsoft made the tradeoff - they chose to cater to a note-taking enterprise set over figuring out a design solution that would allow them to integrate Wacom tech. That makes sense from a business perspective - the majority of Surface customers aren't going to notice/care. Apple is a little bit closer to professional grade with the iPad Pro tech, but its still not there and the app ecosystem for this kind of stuff is still underwhelming.
I didn't say WACOM equivalent; I said WACOM-level.
Whether or not it is equivalent is a subjective judgement on the part of the user.
Personally, the current stylus input supported by ntrig is sufficient for my particular needs.
The ntrig technology Microsoft acquired has been significantly improved since its first implementation, so I think your judgements are perhaps somewhat obsolete?
No, I've been to the Microsoft store and tested out all their new devices. None are on par with even Wacom's Intuos offerings. The Surface Studio seemed especially bad.
I'm sure their digitizers work great for the average user, but Wacoms are primarily devices for pros. None of the Surface stuff is at that "level," unless you're comparing them to other (IMO bad) PC integrations.
So in terms of hardware competition, I've never had a problem going with Microsoft - Surface Pro can't be beat as a stylus-wielding note-taking beast. In classes, meetups, and hackathons as a whiteboarding tool, unbeatable.
But when it comes to actually coding, it's much less "easy" than on a MBP. Some people swear by powershell but I just did not jive with having to do that when everyone else is using bash - so I'm using WSL, which has... difficulties. Random stuff doesn't work - SSHFS for example. Obviously anything than needs a GUI, though if you config just right you can get a display server ported through to windows through some sort of godless black magic.
I know they're still working on WSL, and if they can lock that down, I think Windows machines will be fantastic all-around dev tools, especially for a very visual developer like me (I just can't get over how great it is to whiteboard on the surface pro).
But when it comes to actually coding, it's much less "easy" than on a MBP. Some people swear by powershell but I just did not jive with having to do that when everyone else is using bash - so I'm using WSL, which has... difficulties.
I tried that, then went back to using VirtualBox in seamless mode with Lubuntu. I was very disappointed. I'm still more productive on my 2012 Macbook Pro than I am on my 2017 Windows laptop.
If your development is terminal heavy, then you can have PuTTY on the other screen. It also works if you need to have a browser up as a part of your development. Where I get a bit tripped up, is if I need more than one screen for WebStorm or an application like that.
Just speaking as someone that's tried both the book, pro, and laptop, I found the pro to be the most versatile of this weird "kind of tablet" line microsoft has going. You don't gotta push a button to take the screen off (that only works kinda sometimes and can lag), it's smaller/lighter, still just as powerful.
Neither of those product pages has a photo of the keyboard. I know they are trying to sell it as a surface device with other great input methods, but come one, people still want to type on their notebooks.
This page not only shows a perpetual loading icon and an un-dismissable cookie notification on my phone, it also traps me on the page and requires not one, not two, but three presses of the back button (quickly, before it notices!) for me to escape the page on both mobile and desktop.
This does not exactly inspire faith in the product.
I feel like the surface book marketing has been horrible like this for a while. I recently had someone ask me if they could get a Surface Book, so I tried researching it. There was no way to tell that there were multiple models, just one labelled "Surface Book with Performance Base." What the fuck is a performance base? Is this the second revision of the Surface Book? They never mentioned that the first revision was discontinued either. I had to call the Microsoft store to figure all this crap out.
Why would I be surprised though, their entire website is a giant clusterfuck and always has been.
Thanks! Was going wtf at the lack of technical specs in the release. No 32GB model is a bit of a shame, however it's great to see Coffee Lake now giving quad core power to ultrabooks.
I'm hanging for the X1 Carbon with this line of CPU myself; currently on the 1st gen X1C with i7 cpu, and the main issue I have is probably the battery life aside from the 8gb memory. That was the top spec back in 2011, glad I didn't penny pinch. The ultrabook still looks new; love the Lenovo keyboard and trackpoint.
Yeah, that guy who does the Surface keynotes is too good for them. His jokes are hilarious and but the audience never gets it, and his more ad-lib salesman-type pitches are very strong. But when he has to read the scripts and work in Microsoft's phrases it feels awkward. I hope he finds more fulfilling work.
As a former advertising executive, I can tell you what the problem is here. The writer and his boss who approved the copy aren't addressing the customer, they're addressing the boss's boss. In a dysfunctional organization like Microsoft, communicating up rather than out is how you get promoted. It's a rare Microsoft employee who moves up the ladder by thinking about the customer.
“addressing the boss's boss” isn’t referring to writing for high-level decision makers at other organizations, it means writing for people within Microsoft.
The difference is they are demonstrating fantasies or idealizations that much of their customer base have or aspire to themselves. Truck commercials are made that way with a large part of their customer base keenly in mind.
This might be one of the best explanations I have seen for MS ad copy and marketing in general. Thanks for the insight.
I never actually considered it from an "internal customer" (i.e. the boss) perspective. I just always saw them as painfully out of touch, but it isn't an "out of touch" issue; it is a focus issue.
I've suspected this is the case at a LOT of companies. So many marketing and advertising decisions are made this way. As long as they sell enough units it looks like a success, no matter how much potential was thrown away.
This is what made Jobs so great. Most of the criticisms about him are surely correct, but he was a boss who tried to understand the customer, and succeeded at it frequently.
And that's the problem. Messaging is something that's always been an issue with MS. Why would you leak/release details about a new product on a blog entry?
Yeah, the whole text feels bizarre. It seems like they're trying to drum up excitement before the release, but a wall of text is definitely un-inviting from a purely marketing standpoint. IMHO, they could have done well with a simple teaser product shot with a few sentences highlighting something other than "intel made a new CPU". But then again, what do I know, I've never sold anything :)
...and trying to visit the page on an Iphone 5 is almost impossible. Half the page is blocked by a cookie banner of which the "I agree" button does not function.
Just the quality of the writing is poor overall. It's not exactly grammatically incorrect, just seems like it was done because someone asked them to do it and not because they were really excited about the product.
At one point, the blog entry says: "In product making, we believe every detail matters. ". Those of the type of things Steve Jobs would never let Apple push out as PR.
It's dumb when Apple does it too but it's less dumb because:
- There's more than one previous iPhone
- It's a broader statement. There are multiple variants so the new one isn't guaranteed to be more powerful (e.g. iPhone 5C is the same power as iPhone 5)
This HN post is linked to a blog post, that's also why you see topics like the Band. Perhaps try the actual Surface marketing site which includes pricing and pre-ordering (which starts on nov/9): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...
> "When you think about Microsoft and you hear our mission – to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more – it’s powerful." What?
What is the main reason behind the 17 hour battery life, mainly in comparison to a MacBook Pro? Does this come mainly from the battery size, power management in the OS or components?
Given that the only battery life number they quote is for video playback (with no specs about the video format, bitrate, resolution, full-screen state, etc), I suspect that number just happens to be extra high when you choose the optimal video in the optimal format and play it full screen (so the OS can stop spending cycles on UI rendering). Note that Apple specifies 10 hours of "iTunes Movie playback" for the 15-inch Macbook Pro. It's probably possible to improve on that with some other format. Apple also gives a quote for "wireless web" usage (the same 10 hours). The 15-inch Surface Book 2 is also significantly thicker and about 5% heavier than a 15-inch Macbook Pro. So I'm sure more battery plays a role as well.
They advertised 13.5 video playback for the sp2017 and I'm getting 7-10 real world usage. But people have said to actually use their sb's for 13 hours, so it'll probably be 11-16 hours of real world usage.
They use core i7-8650U which is a 15W while the MBP uses HQ model which is 47W. And the low power idle mode difference is even larger 5W vs 20, not entirely sure about the 20.
Looks not too bad, but I'm kinda interested in a Ryzen based laptop. And for that .. there's basically nothing yet (a Lenovo that is based on ~outdated~ tech just came out, a HP is announced and seems limited in its RAM options/potentially limited to single-channel and crippling the APU and a monster of a gaming laptop with desktop CPUs that is basically not usable if you ever want to carry it or use it without a power supply).
I like the design, but the price is far too high - for me - and I'm neither a fan of Intel nor NVidia.
Lenovo A475[1] is using a mobile version afaict. Unfortunately .. it's based on Bristol.
HP Envy x360 [2] seems to come out ~soon~ based on Raven, but the outlets/the community seems concerned that they'll limit those to single-channel. Which according to reviews in the past severely cripples the whole setup. That said, details aren't out so maybe HP does the right thing..
So potentially two options I'm aware of, one flawed and one potentially flawed.
The only other one I found was a (gaming) monster from ASUS that is not a laptop in my world..
That reminds me. I got kinda burned by AMDs laptop APUs a while back. This because the laptop i have seems to route the external screen through the iGPU, and AMD discontinued support for it quite early because it was a variant of their older GPU models.
Thus i am stuck using their older driver pack, and ever so often i have to beat back Windows trying to auto-update the driver...
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 322 ms ] threadI want anybody who doesn't believe me to google up a picture of one next to the other.
In addition, macbooks are bezel-filled and sleek, where this emphasizes straight edges. Horizontal corners are rounded, but vertical edges are square.
Keyboard is also very square, instead of the rounded rects favored by macbooks.
About the only thing that's the same is that they're both aluminum white laptops.
But, when you ask the question that way, it kind of answers itself. People like metal, because it feels more high end than plastic. Unibody chassis don't need to be fastened together, which is good for manufacturing and looks. People like thin laptops because they are more portable than thick ones.
But it's a metal laptop that comes in two sizes, so it looks like a MacBook to some people.
> Surface Book 2 brings you a full array of ports, including USB-A, USB-C, and full-size SD card reader which makes it easy to connect other devices, accessories and memory cards without the need for a bag full of dongles.
I find there is a good reason to like it, compared to this:
https://marco.org/2017/10/14/impossible-dream-of-usb-c
From what I understand they finally patched most of these out after more than a year. No need to go on that roller coaster again.
It's been running like champ ever since.
I use a six year old Thinkpad and it feels like a new machine. This just doesn't look like it's worth ten of my laptop.
Marco Arment posted this a couple days ago, and it sums up... some of... the issues with USB-C: https://marco.org/2017/10/14/impossible-dream-of-usb-c
My take (it's not positive): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15474131
It certainly has its quirks and limitations.
Ignore everything else and it’s a nice upgrade just for this.
While I lament non-standard implementations, much like Apple's old MagSafe adapter and the Surface connector, sometimes the non-standard version is vastly superior.
Still a USB charging port on a regular charges seems mighty convenient and I’m certainly jealous!
This really makes it incredibly powerful. I run with dual 4k monitors off of a Dell XPS with an Nvidia 1050 with 4GB. Feels like a desktop.
(Does this also support 32GB of RAM? That is required for development these days with multiple containers running locally. My Dell XPS 15" supports 32GB of RAM.)
Hell even the "ultrabook" workstation from HP, the ZBook Studio supports 32GB of ram [0].
One has to trade capacity for speed. 16GB is such a wall now, it makes me think Intel crippled their latest chips because they are too good.
[0] http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04832209.pdf?ver=1...
The SB is not a workstation. It uses 15W U CPUs…
> One has to trade capacity for speed.
DDR4 trades battery for capacity, that's why "ultrabooks" concerned about the balance of weight and battery life are limited to 16GB: intel does not support lpddr4.
Look around the web, if you can keep the surface cool enough, they never PL (power limit) throttle unlike most other Intel -U based devices.
6 and 2. The 1050/2GB is for the 13", the 1060/6GB for the 15".
> Does this also support 32GB of RAM?
No, since Intel still only supports LPDDR3.
My guess is that this laptop will have heavy thermal restrictions on the 1060's performance, not to mention a lack of power to actually run it at it's max TDP.
I wonder if they're using nVidia's new technology which underclocks/underpowers the GPUs at (their claim of) only modest cost in performance.
Being a developer, 8 GB seems tight these days! 15-inch 16 GB variant comes with i7 but the price is a little too steep (starts from 2500 USD)
Most reviews of the original Surface Book concur that it's "nearly" as good as the MacBook's trackpads. Also remember that the display is a touch screen.
"Introducing Surface Book 2, the most powerful Surface Book ever"
Out of the two of them so far?
Improvements along a particular dimension aren't always a given. If they said "Introducing the Apple iPhone 8 Plus, the lightest iPhone ever" they'd be lying. You can't assume that a newer model of something is always going to be more powerful.
Language isn't purely literal. Especially when there's a limited number of words to market to people. You can't write a 10 000 essay. So mentioning a detail isn't just to communicate the literal facts, it's to highlight details, point out significant details. So when someone says "it's the most X ever" they are saying that the improvements are significant enough to make them notable.
In EU there's a law that forbids using such an unsubstantiated/unverifiable/subjective claim in the advertisements.
EDIT: Recalled one more detail: If you use a claim like that in the commercial then EU regulatory institutions can demand an actual peer reviewed research paper backing it up :)
[1] Or perhaps it's more that the configuration options are really inflexible, with every configuration having the highest-end CPU and GPU.
https://ark.intel.com/products/124968/Intel-Core-i7-8650U-Pr...
see, that argument goes both ways.
I just wish Apple will make their own Metal GPU for Mac. At least then I know the GPU will be best at something Apple designed to do.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/23/apple-power-vr-imaginati...
"The A11 Bionic chip inside Apple's new iPhone 8 series and upcoming iPhone X is the company's first-ever self-designed GPU."
I should imagine it's only a matter of time.
This hurts my brain for some reason. Metal is a API to access the GPU and you want them to make a new GPU for that....API. Huh ?!?
And detachable tablet, and digitiser?
Currently I'm buying a old X61s and going to convert it to X62: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-X62-Laptop-Review.21159...
They work OK on stock kernels since around 4.10 (but one must "backport" the linux-firmware package from Ubuntu Artful for having a working Wifi).
For a "non fancy" work usage (no stylus etc.; mostly keyboard and touchpad), the "only" nags are:
With those points in mind (point 2 is much more annoying than it reads), I think Surface machines are poor solutions for Linux users, unless the user needs to have tablet and laptop in a single machine. In fact, I'll buy the next-gen XPS 13 once it's available and mature.On the other hand, Surface Books are the state of the art of large/work tablets. There's nothing remotely comparable: a 700gr 13.5" tablet is amazing (although the batteries don't last very long), and the fact that there is a 15" model is even more impressive.
Windows 10 is IMO the best Windows ever, but I was surprised that the ecosystem was really poor compared to macOS. Most of the software you find online are outdated win32 apps with scaling problems. Even modern software from major companies still has scaling problems such as Adobe CC or even the mighty Photoshop.
I also didn't find worthy replacements for my most used apps such as Alfred. Even something like iStatMenus doesn't have a replacement in Windows, all the alternatives are really poor in comparison.
On the other hand, outside of ML it's not like many software developers need to upgrade to a new GPU every (other) year and current processor trends show very little performance uplift between generations to upgrade - once Apple finally gets 32GB of memory in the MBP most developers will be set for many years.
Even though you don't need lots of power, there's plenty of solid and valid reasons why others might.
Moreover
1. latency is low enough that people are playing triple AAA video games on AWS for a $1/hr.
https://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised-and-much-faster-run-your-ow...
2. Sure, that's a good reason. It had better be spewing out lots of data, though, or again, you might as well process in the cloud.
3. Being able to access your workstation via airport wifi at all is actually a benefit in this case, unless you intend to wheel it around like a suitcase.
Did you walk out of a 1980s time warp or something? The workstation in this case carries 1TB of storage and weighs 3.5 lbs. (And it still has wifi in case you need that).
Regarding your number 3. For a lot of this, we are talking about devices like the MacBook Pro line. Not huge workstations.
Exactly.
I wrote this last year criticising the current state of Mac hardware.
https://medium.com/@Pier/the-problem-of-osx-hardware-in-2016...
You can do fun things, like tail logs to a file using linux and simultaneously analyze the file using windows tools.
You shouldn't access files in WSL using windows, but the other way around it's absolutely ok.
So if my projects are at C:/Development/Projects/...
Then I just open /mnt/c/Development/Projects/... on WSL
I haven't had any permission problems, not even once.
Same for Docker for Windows. It uses Hyper-V + some network disk sharing magic, which makes directory mounts into docker containers work great. So sometimes, like, when I need to debug a non-cross-platform linux program. (WSL doesn't handle process forking well, so some debuggers, like Go Delve don't work) I just do something like
docker run -v C:/Development/Projects/MyProject:/mnt/MyProject -it ubuntu /bin/bash
Apple's neglect.
Elaborating on it, Custom hardware (esp. GPU) support. DX 11 over Metal. Apple chose not to upgrade OpenGL or implement Vulkan.
- The laptop lineup only offers Intel graphics or AMD's weakest mobile GPUs. I suspect that Metal has something to do with why they've pretended Nvidia doesn't exist for the past ~5 years.
- The only non-abandoned[2] machine in the desktop lineup is a non-modular all-in-one.
- Apple ceded the creative-pro software market to Adobe. Final Cut, Logic, used to be industry leaders, and they had companion software products that Apple has either neglected or discontinued. Premiere + After Effects is a far more powerful & widely used toolset than Final Cut + Motion, plus Adobe's software also runs on powerful Windows PCs, eliminating Apple's lock-in.
- Pen-input is iPad exclusive. Apple has no desire to bring touch to the Mac, and while I agree that macOS is not designed for fingers, I'm sure artists would like a convertible MacBook Pro that supported the Apple Pencil.
[1] Obviously this is a generalization
[2] For all intents and purposes, the Mac Pro will still be abandoned until they release the promised new one circa 2018. The current Mac Pro and the Mac mini are terrible, ancient PCs that only sell any units because Apple has neglected giving macOS any good hardware to run on in those form factors or price points.
You can stick really fast processors, tons of RAM and one or two Nvidia graphics cards in a very cheap tower. If only Apple sold a cheesegrater-style tower that could do that ;-)
Thee are even some Windows laptops that do the job now. Wirecutter picked the Dell XPS 15 as The Best 15-Inch Laptop for Photo and Video Editing https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-15-inch-laptops-for-p...
There's also a fair amount of peer pressure.
I was at a big software company and I choose a Lenovo with Windows instead of a Mac. I was the only one, and the other members of the team constantly tried to get me to switch, and trolled me, as if they were embarrassed with me. Now I'm at another big company, where Windows is more prevalent (legacy), but team members are still shocked that I chose again a Lenovo with Windows and Ubuntu VM on top.
If you were to interview to a startup and the founder coded on a Windows, what would most devs feel about it?
Which ecosystem is "poor" depends on your own current situation.
Sure you can. I've gotten macos installed in a vm and even ran a hackintosh for a while which was remarkably easy these days.
I do realllly wish Apple would open up and let us officially install on different hardware - especially if they’re only going to update the Mac pros every few years.
Indeed, I was speaking from my personal experience.
The ecosystem on windows 10 is poor but then again I just download from one of the million win32 applications. I just don't use "apps" from store.
Just last week I played a game of Age of Empires II with my cousin, a game which was "released" in 1999 on a Surface with Windows 10. While on my MacBook I have issues because every major OS upgrade breaks something and I have to repurchase newer versions or give up if the dev isn't interested/around anymore.
OTOH I've found that it's not such a big deal in practice. In my 10+ years as a mac user I've only hit this problem a couple of times. Likewise in Windows I rarely open old outdated software.
That is of course my anecdotal and personal experience.
I dunno why people say that one or the other is superior for work (except if you work with some special software that exists only for one OS). Both of them are equally good, since everything is moving to the cloud, for most non-specialized tasks you need one app - a browser. If you look at other fields like programming, graphics work, 3D,.. they are the same again (except for special cases like C# or Swift development).
And things like iStatMenus is not something that is used for work, its a widget that you like. Perhaps you simply like the look and feel of OSX more?
Not really. The features I want could be easily developed in Windows, or Linux, but for some reason this isn't the case.
A good example of this are launchers. Once you start using a launcher you wonder how you could have lived without it.
MacOS offers Spotlight which is very limited but there are 3 very good third party options: Alfred, Launchbar, and Quicksilver. These offer a lot more than simply opening files and applications.
There are launchers for Windows too (launchy, Wox, etc) but the functionality is very limited compared to the macOS options. I suspect this may be cultural. Maybe there are no good commercial solutions like in macOS because there is no market.
Even Linux has better free launchers than Windows. For example: https://github.com/qdore/Mutate
I have found this same problem with other types of applications. For some reason the macOS options are simply better. And again, this is completely unrelated to the OS. It seems there is simply no interest in the Windows world for these types of things.
For example macOS has Karabiner which allows to configure you keyboard in a myriad of ways. Terminals like iTerm are also better in macOS, maybe because of the *Nix tradition. Monitors like iStatMenus which offer you one click access to deep information on hardware, network, etc, are non existent. BetterTouchTool which allows to deeply configure gestures on your trackpad, again, nothing on Windows like it. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Armed with Putty and a browser, I only missed the touchpad of my macbook. I do most of my work in Jupyter and in vim. It's rather liberating to realize you are not tied to one ecosystem. My point is I thought I would never be productive without my mac but that simply wasn't true.
I suppose I am an edge case though as most of my work is performed on my headless linux workstation.
For those wondering, TSA held on to my macbook which I retrieved over the weekend.
Care to elaborate more on what really happened?
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/top-20-airports-tsa-theft/stor...
If you really want to know how it'll perform under heavy workloads, you probably want to hit it with prime95 or blender for 30+ minutes and monitor core frequencies to see where it ends up running at.
Why do they continue to ignore Gamers on the Mac Platform.
There are plenty of Mac OS games and people don't play them.
Also the laptops are also single click.
That's not out of the box :) But an Apple Mouse can not have right click added it physically has one button but it does it in software and it doesn't work or it button bounces whenever I have tried.
95% of all Mac I have ever seen or used have Official Mice.
Every pointing device they've made for well over a decade has had multiple clicks.
Until then, maintaining a desktop gaming PC and buying the base MacBook Pro model every now and then seems to be more cost effective.
The primary issue for gaming on OSX is and has always been drivers. You can generally get 80~100% better framerates by running the same game on Windows (via Bootcamp).
- Hardware: PC Gamers usually customize hardware to have pretty decent power (GPU, CPU, Memory, etc) for relatively cheap when compared to Mac. In PC market, there's hardware competition for literally every single part of the hardware. For games that require extra power, you would need a powerful machine and, while they do exist in newer generations of iMacs, it's just damn expensive. Which brings me to my next point: market.
- Market: Although Mac users grew significantly, I'd say it's still pretty small when compared to PC. If you are a game developer, especially an indie game dev, you may find how depressing it can be to publish a cross platform game. It's not super hard given the popularity of game engines such as Unity and UE4. But the issue, in my opinion, is if your game has multiplayer, for example, you're probably going to have a bad time dealing with platform differences. Aside from that, you're going to have to deal with other platform differences in a lot of different levels. At some point, you're going to ask the question: is it really worth the extra investment? You are going to delay publishing your game for probably little gain. Developing for the larger market first might make more sense. Not only for indie devs but for AAA games too.
This is changing fast if not changed already. Xbox One, DX12 lock in on Universal Windows Platform and finally,
> Windows 10 also has a "Gaming Mode" as part of the OS for performance improvement which some games might have it turned on automatically.
https://www.vg247.com/2016/10/14/dota-2-windows-10-anniversa...
Valve was skeptical about Microsoft turning Windows into a walled garden when they announced DX12 only for Windows Store exclusive games, that is when they started pushing their efforts into SteamOS, moreover a stable runtime (based on Ubuntu LTS) for Linux games, which has helped _a lot_ for linux gaming.
Xbox Game DVR predates Game Mode; you can enable/disable them independently.
So even if DX12 was restricted to UWP apps (which, reminder, it isn't) UWP apps are not restricted to the Store either, and Steam could install UWP apps, too.
A relic from HFS of old, there's some notable applications that still fail hard on case-sensitive HFS+/APFS volumes so the default is insensitive (hey, Adobe, I'm looking at you - OS X/macOS 10 has been out for a decade and a half, get your shit together).
1. By and large, OSX ships the BSD userland not GNU
2. You can trivially add up-to-date GNU tools to OSX: install homebrew, install whichever GNU stuff you want
Go to Desktop (This is stupid it is Fn + F11 OR Command F3 based on what keyboard you have) Also Win - D makes a lot more sense! It is a default motion on a track pad.
File Manager - Windows (Win - E) Mac OS NOTHING
I have never seen why Mac OS gets a pass by so many people when there are clear paper cuts in its interface and it gets worse and worse over the past 10 years.
Anyways my usual way of going to the desktop is to just command-tab to Finder, and then command N to create a new Finder window, or any of the shortcuts in the Go menu.
Nobody is claiming that the Mac UI is perfect, but it's been way more stable and unified than Windows. Of course there was Windows 8, but even Windows 10 still has things like both the new Settings and old Control Panel, and the old start menu next to the god-awful, ad-ridden Live Tiles. I recently tried to enable automatic login on my Windows 10 laptop and was told to run "netplwiz" in the Run dialog command line. It's a mess.
I like that the Mac uses the Super key for common shortcuts, which frees the control key for Emacs-style keybindings. It seems that besides i3, no other popular desktop environments allows a similar setup. I am a Mac convert after I start writing code seriously and as much as I still like Windows, I can't go back because of this.
As much as I also love Linux (I know, I love all 3 major OS for different reasons), I cannot use it as my full time desktop OS for obvious reasons. MacOS currently represents a perfect trade-off for me.
But. I need to do iOS development from time to time. At the very least, I need to be able to test web pages in Mac browsers. I can run a Windows VM on a Mac very easily, but I can't run a Mac VM inside Windows very easily. Sigh.
My windows workflow involves a Virtualbox VM, with ~/ in the guest mounted as Z: on the windows host.
Use gvim installed direct on windows (so long as you don't need super complex plugins which shell out to utilities) to edit files in Z: which exist on the host, with PuTTy and tmux as your terminal. Done.
The thing holding windows back right now is a terminal emulator to sit ontop of WSL, and WSL's ability to run background processes properly without closing them all when i close a terminal (and to have things autostart on boot).
There are workarounds right now to solve this, though.
Anyway, I agree with you. I have a pro at work, but recently got a plain macbook, and it is awesome. Great for even iPhone dev work.
Also I can't tell if it does USB-C Power Delivery or not? Or would I still need a separate charger for this? Would be really nice to only carry one charger for phone and laptop...
From here: https://www.windowscentral.com/surface-book-2-tech-specs "Microsoft is still using its proprietary Surface Connect for power and the optional Surface Dock."
aaah.. at the end: "Users can also recharge the Surface Book 2 with a USB Type-C charger as long as it is powerful enough. Devices can be charged from the Surface Book 2, such as a phone using USB Type-C."
https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?chkUSBC=selected
Almost every new phone.
Linux 4.9 aimed to make the Surface usable, but I haven't found a distro that played with the Wifi drivers nicely (would work for a few minutes, then would shut off, become unresponsive, and required a hard reboot to get working again). There is a Fedora Surface image that many suggest works really well on Surfaces, but I couldn't get it to boot.
Now I just prefer using a Virtualbox image to do all my Linux stuff. It's easier to set up and requires far less rebooting.
On the other hand, I have never even contemplated dual booting it because WSL does everything I need Linux for. It is actually pretty good.
16:9 can't be equated to and is significantly worse than 16:10, which is worse than 3:2, which is worse than 4:3 (which is coming back on tablets). There were even 5:4 displays at one point (early days of desktop LCD, I still have my 1280x1024 19" ViewSonic VP191b).
Assuming 15" diagonals on all of them:
* a 16:9 display is 96 sq in and 7.4" high
* a 16:10 display is 101 sq in and 7.9" high
* a 3:2 display is 104 sq in and 8.3" high
* a 4:3 display is 108 sq in and 9" high
* a 5:4 display is 110 sq in and 9.4" high
As you can see, 16:10 -> 16:9 is actually the largest loss in surface area and second-largest loss of height (largest being 4:3 -> 3:2).
However if you're watching a movie, the 16:9 has 100% coverage for 16:9 and 75% coverage for Cinemascope, every other format gets lower in both relative and absolute coverage, down to 70% (77 sq in) and 53% (58 sq in) for a 5:4.
> How the hell did people think it was a good idea?
Black bars on movies, better view angles in FPS, and cheaper.
Issues will need to be tinkered with and fixed.
If you don't want the above features, you could get a machine that runs Windows 7 well with good hardware specs for less money.
And then after all of that, you click through to the store and there's no pricing information whatsoever and no pre-order date on the store page (there is a date buried in all the text in the announcement), just an unfriendly "Not available" broken button... no price, no date, and I don't even remember what was supposed to be interesting about the thing. Something about having more pixels than a Mac. Whatever interest I had in the product evaporated a long time ago, but the lack of concrete info on price makes me forget about it entirely.
Edited to add: Oh cool, I just went back to the page and noticed the "Microsoft Band", a product that was officially discontinued over a year ago, is prominently featured in the navigation bar across the top of the page. Good work, team!
* this page is an ad copy with very little of interest
* the store page (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/surface-book-2/8MCPZ...) has no date, no price and only hints at specs (you can pick a model but have no idea that e.g. the 13.5" i5 is iGP and the i7 is dGPU)
* https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book... has the actual stuff you want, with a detailed specs breakdown and the price of every configuration although even there are incoherences (Tech Specs states the 15" has 16GB RAM, but "Configure" lists an 8GB 15" configuration)
There was initial excitement when the 1st generation launched with actual Wacom technology, as a lot of us do work in Windows, but it quickly fizzled when Microsoft cheaped out and went with less performant ntrig digitizers.
With Wacom's Intuos tablets you've probably noticed they have a really big bezel. Maybe 2-3 inches around every side. It's not just a physical design decision, they need that in order to work. MS couldn't accommodate that on the surface, so the accuracy at the edges dropped off. And this being Windows with a lot of software not designed for touchscreens, that meant you were trying to poke at tiny toolbar buttons in the least accurate region of the digitizer.
Ntrig solves that, it's let them at least be consistent across the whole surface, even as bezels got smaller and smaller. But like you said, the peak accuracy of Wacom in the middle of the screen probably beats it.
I sold my SP3 to buy a 9.7" iPad Pro when those came out, mainly because I got annoyed with the digitizer. If you draw a line slowly you can see it get visibly pulled back and forth along the digitizer grid. To get smooth lines you have to do fast sweeping strokes, which I really didn't like.
For reference, lines drawn on a SP3 in OneNote: http://i.imgur.com/bxpnPSv.png
In an AMA on reddit the Surface team attributed some of the pen performance issues to "capacitive coupling" making the pen not detected as accurately if you let the tip touch a ruler, so those are drawn freehand. Even so, you can clearly see the lines get pulled into the pattern of the ntrig grid.
I also had one of the Surface Pros with ntrig digitizer. It was near impossible to draw properly. Quick sketching is fine, but slow and precise lines were impossible. Cursor just jumped around and was unusable.
If Apple made a big push to improve their hardware, get full blown Photoshop with Adobe’s brush engine, this could conceivably change. Everything’s too piecemeal right now though. File management is still terrible, Photoshop brushes are only available in Adobe’s terrible apps, lots of Bluetooth buginess from app to app, inconsistent UI patterns etc. The newest Procreate update and Affinity designer are pretty cool, but it’s still not there yet.
Disclosure: Microsoft employee, so arguably biased toward the Surface.
You can see some slight vertical jogs, but nothing to the degree of what the Surface has. I've never noticed it in actual use on the iPad. On my SP3 I definitely did.
I don't actually know how the technology in Apple's Pencil works compared to Wacom and ntrig, but my assumption is that it's more similar to ntrig with having the detection hardware up front in the display/glass assembly instead of behind it. It uses an active stylus w/ battery (similar to ntrig), while Wacom's stylus is a passive batteryless device.
In terms of accuracy, iPad and Wacom seemed similar to me. Never used a Cintiq (just the screenless pads) so I can't make a fair comparison. I've heard that the Cintiq has more visible lag with your stroke catching up to the pen, but that's much harder to notice when you're drawing on your desk while watching a separate screen.
The iPad is my favorite, hands down. It feels very natural to use.
Whether or not it is equivalent is a subjective judgement on the part of the user.
Personally, the current stylus input supported by ntrig is sufficient for my particular needs.
The ntrig technology Microsoft acquired has been significantly improved since its first implementation, so I think your judgements are perhaps somewhat obsolete?
I'm sure their digitizers work great for the average user, but Wacoms are primarily devices for pros. None of the Surface stuff is at that "level," unless you're comparing them to other (IMO bad) PC integrations.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2016/10/26/the-surfac...
But when it comes to actually coding, it's much less "easy" than on a MBP. Some people swear by powershell but I just did not jive with having to do that when everyone else is using bash - so I'm using WSL, which has... difficulties. Random stuff doesn't work - SSHFS for example. Obviously anything than needs a GUI, though if you config just right you can get a display server ported through to windows through some sort of godless black magic.
I know they're still working on WSL, and if they can lock that down, I think Windows machines will be fantastic all-around dev tools, especially for a very visual developer like me (I just can't get over how great it is to whiteboard on the surface pro).
I tried that, then went back to using VirtualBox in seamless mode with Lubuntu. I was very disappointed. I'm still more productive on my 2012 Macbook Pro than I am on my 2017 Windows laptop.
I switched to a surface book about 4 months ago, and will probably be upgrading to this when the $ is in my budget.
Just speaking as someone that's tried both the book, pro, and laptop, I found the pro to be the most versatile of this weird "kind of tablet" line microsoft has going. You don't gotta push a button to take the screen off (that only works kinda sometimes and can lag), it's smaller/lighter, still just as powerful.
This does not exactly inspire faith in the product.
Does that link work for you? It's the best image of the keyboard on that page.
Who wrote that line, a Rackspace support bot?
Why would I be surprised though, their entire website is a giant clusterfuck and always has been.
I'm hanging for the X1 Carbon with this line of CPU myself; currently on the 1st gen X1C with i7 cpu, and the main issue I have is probably the battery life aside from the 8gb memory. That was the top spec back in 2011, glad I didn't penny pinch. The ultrabook still looks new; love the Lenovo keyboard and trackpoint.
It's not Coffee Lake, it's Kaby R.
I wonder about that with truck commercials.
I feel like every truck commercial is a sort of "See this is how we want our customers to act!"
I never actually considered it from an "internal customer" (i.e. the boss) perspective. I just always saw them as painfully out of touch, but it isn't an "out of touch" issue; it is a focus issue.
This is what made Jobs so great. Most of the criticisms about him are surely correct, but he was a boss who tried to understand the customer, and succeeded at it frequently.
I just clicked the blgopost and was surprised by its quality even after having read these comments. I expect large companies to display good grammar.
Relatedly, it seems like Microsoft has a million blogs on different domains, it's hard to keep track of what's what.
"When you think about Microsoft and you hear our mission, it’s powerful."
At one point, the blog entry says: "In product making, we believe every detail matters. ". Those of the type of things Steve Jobs would never let Apple push out as PR.
No-one needs to be told that the Surface Book 2 is going to be faster than the Surface Book 1.
- There's more than one previous iPhone
- It's a broader statement. There are multiple variants so the new one isn't guaranteed to be more powerful (e.g. iPhone 5C is the same power as iPhone 5)
This is the actual launch page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...
They're 'starting with why' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4
TL;DW: a marketing consultant suggested replacing "We make computers to empower people" with "We empower people; we just happen to make computers"
I like the design, but the price is far too high - for me - and I'm neither a fan of Intel nor NVidia.
HP Envy x360 [2] seems to come out ~soon~ based on Raven, but the outlets/the community seems concerned that they'll limit those to single-channel. Which according to reviews in the past severely cripples the whole setup. That said, details aren't out so maybe HP does the right thing..
So potentially two options I'm aware of, one flawed and one potentially flawed.
The only other one I found was a (gaming) monster from ASUS that is not a laptop in my world..
1: HK link, sorry for that: https://www3.lenovo.com/hk/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-a-se...
2: German link, sorry for that: https://www.computerbase.de/2017-10/raven-ridge-hp-notebook-...
Thus i am stuck using their older driver pack, and ever so often i have to beat back Windows trying to auto-update the driver...
Looks like HP will have a ryzen-based laptop, though there's no telling how the chip will compare to the desktop variant
Lenovo seems to have an offer available today - for about a month now. With .. other issues.
That sounds like a horrible way to convince me I want this.