Apple CEO Tim Cook: "Microsoft Surface Book Tries Too Hard To Do Too Much" (hothardware.com) 478
MojoKid writes: Apple CEO Tim Cook isn't making any friends on the PC side of the aisle this week. Cook took to the interview circuit this week to heavily promote the release of the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro and didn't waste any time kicking some dirt in the eyes of PC consumers around the world. When questioned on his thoughts about PCs, Cook wondered, "I think if you're looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?" Many would take issue with those comments. But we'll leave those comments behind, because Cook decided to set his targets on the current darling of the PC community — the Microsoft Surface Book. Even though Cook says that his company's relationship with Microsoft is "really good," he went on to say that the Surface Book "tries too hard to do too much" and that "it's trying to be a tablet and a notebook and it really succeeds at being neither." It will be interesting to see Mr. Cook's reaction as sales figures for the device roll in post holiday shopping season.
He's got his talking points (Score:5, Interesting)
He's trying to defend his design calls of the ipad "pro".
The fact of the matter is that, if it weren't for Windows 10, I'd probably be looking at a surface over the ipad "pro" because it's more versatile and makes more sense. But I don't like where MS seems to be going with Windows 10's spyware and forcing everyone onto updates - So I'm holding off on any purchases for now.
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I saw one in a MS store the other day and while its too rich for my blood, If i had the money to choose between surfacebook and ipad pro, im going surfacebook
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:5, Interesting)
Cook is right, it is neither a perfect laptop nor a perfect tablet, but when she was traveling and going to be gone for about three weeks for a family emergency without reliable Internet access it made for an excellent platform on which to watch movies and TV shows, a good book reader, a good casual simple game computer (ie, emulated card and tile games), and a good computer on which to take notes. It also allowed her to do some work when she could occasionally get Internet access as it ran full versions of productivity programs.
If I want a toy I'll buy something that's only a tablet. If I want a computer to do work on then at a minimum I want something that runs a conventional computer operating system.
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He's trying to defend his design calls of the ipad "pro".
The fact of the matter is that, if it weren't for Windows 10, I'd probably be looking at a surface over the ipad "pro" because it's more versatile and makes more sense. But I don't like where MS seems to be going with Windows 10's spyware and forcing everyone onto updates - So I'm holding off on any purchases for now.
I get your point about the spyware & forced updates.
However, Windows 8 tries to be both a PC OS and a tablet OS, and succeeds in neither. If you try using it as a tablet - as I did w/ my Winbook - it goes into the desktop mode w/ most of your common apps. Unless you were using News, Food & Drink, Health, Travel and those metro apps. Many of which are now discontinued in Windows 10. But in most cases, like if you were using Internet Explorer, it forces you into the desktop. Why?
And if you g
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:5, Insightful)
Adding 100+ domains to your router's firewall is only "trivial to mitigate" for geeks. >99% of Windows 10 users are being spied on, even if they think they turned the settings off.
I wish more people knew this. I wish even more that they cared. Maybe then Microsoft would put an official way to turn off all communications (besides activation) with their servers. The fact that they took away the option is a real dick move. It makes it even worse that they lead people to believe that they have full control.
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a certain irony that the one thing that really puts me off Apple gear, both iOS devices and mainstream OS X computers, is the lack of commitment to long term support. I don't want to buy a device and find the OS isn't even getting security patches within five minutes unless I update to some new version that I might or might not want. I want to buy a device where the software is supported for the working lifetime of the machine and whether to install updates for anything other than security/stability/compatibility is up to me and an independent decision.
Whatever else you can say about Microsoft, until very recently they always made a serious effort to support Windows systems long-term. But then with Windows 10 they've baked in the forced updates, which removes the one thing that almost guaranteed I'd be buying Windows and not OS X machines for the foreseeable future.
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:5, Informative)
I service both operating systems, and I see just as many old Macs by proportion of ownership than old Windows systems - more, in fact, because so many Windows systems are the junky low-end PCs that wear out fast. OS X systems also tend to be updatable more times before the newest accompanying hardware undergoes some major change that prevents the upgrade from running on older systems. Because Windows machines are susceptible to the "snowflake syndrome" - many manufacturers of hardware, each with its own persnickety combination of Windows drivers required - users are much more reluctant to move to a new Windows release because it might not run on their individual snowflake.
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Adding 100+ domains to your router's firewall is only "trivial to mitigate" for geeks. >99% of Windows 10 users are being spied on, even if they think they turned the settings off.
You don't need to do that, you just need to run one of the many third-party utilities that kill the spyware. Updates may one day add more spyware, of course, but 99% of user install malware willingly anyhow, so it's hardly worse than what their used to - just run some sort of cleanup every so often.
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:4, Informative)
Adding 100+ domains to your router's firewall is only "trivial to mitigate" for geeks. >99% of Windows 10 users are being spied on, even if they think they turned the settings off.
You don't need to do that, you just need to run one of the many third-party utilities that kill the spyware. Updates may one day add more spyware, of course, but 99% of user install malware willingly anyhow, so it's hardly worse than what their used to - just run some sort of cleanup every so often.
Windows 10 bypasses the firewall and hosts file to phone home, so unless that third-party utility is altering your router's settings, then I'm not sure what it's supposed to do. Are they confirmed (via packet sniffing) to actually work?
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wow, bypassing the hosts file is just... wow. Before I read this I would have told you MS was at least being honest on their slow crawl to death.
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Really? I guess Windows 10 really will be the last Windows. See, I have this strange idea that I own my computers and my Internet connection.
I can't remember when I opened an Office app with intent.
W10 won't run my old favorite games.
That flat monochrome UI is a regression to Windows 2.1, and makes long-existing apps look like poop.
My LAN took a vote and they're split down the middle on processors and terabytes between Windows and Linux, and I know who the Androids will support.
My last Windows anchor wa
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You can create a Virtual 32 bit version of XP using virtual box that should be able to run the rest of your software.
DOSBox is another program that is useful for running DOS programs and games.
If there is a will, there is a way.
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:5, Insightful)
How well does MacOS run applications from 1996 (like Civilization II)? Not at all. Apple was still on System 7 back then. Support for classic apps was dropped in 10.5 (2007) and for PowerPC apps in 10.7 (2011).
How well does Linux run applications from 1996? Largely a moot point, since there were relatively few compiled applications in the first place. But the Linux world was only just transitioning off a.out binaries and libc5. Anything written in C++ would be a non-started since we're talking GCC 2.5 or 2.7. Newer applications are potentially even worse, as they might depend on abandoned pieces of the nascent desktop frameworks (e.g. Bonobo, ORBit, DCOP, ARTS, ESound, etc).
That isn't to say it wouldn't be nice to have every older application work out of the box, but Microsoft has still maintained a laudable level of backwards compatibility in their products.
I've actually moved to Windows on my personal machine for the first time after running various flavors of Linux for twenty years. Why? Obviously not for backwards compatibility. Rather, the advent of web applications have largely rendered my desktop needs down to a web browser and a terminal. I can get that anywhere, but right now Windows offers competent HiDPI support, working trackpad gestures, and mature touchscreen support.
I still run Linux on my main work machine, but new releases continue to be plagued by a host of petty annoyances, like the secondary displays on my docking station not being recognized until I open a new window. Or corruption in the text rendering in my window title bars. Given tho problems I see in conventional hardware that is several years old, even on a days old version of Linux, there is no way I will be wasting my time trying to coerce it onto a brand new Surface Pro 4.
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I haven't tried this but here is a way to get the old Civ 2 to play on 64-bit systems allegedly.
Well, I'll try that patcher (for the onlookers, it's a patch for civ 2 gold multiplayer only [civfanatics.com]) and see what happens... yes, it seems to work. There was a lonnnnnng pause before it launched, so long I thought it wasn't going to, and then it kicked off. I didn't copy any additional files from the install media. Maybe it was trying to play an intro. It's not even pinning any of my CPU cores, which is unusual for civ2. Thanks for the heads-up.
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Just run it in VM with connection to the outside world shut off.
I have done this with XP for years so that I don't inadvertently get infested with something.
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a security measure that has been in place since Windows 98. Windows Update always bypasses the hosts file to prevent malware disabling it that way, or even worse redirecting it to another server.
Note that it only affects Windows Update. I have confirmed with a packet sniffer that the telemetry stuff does use the hosts file.
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Windows has been doing this since the Windows 2000 days for certain domains.
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Do tell me how W10 manages to bypass the firewall rules in my router?
It MAY bypass its own firewall, but it's only going to take one exploit for the lawsuits to start rolling in.
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Every time there's a new Windows OS (even back in 95, it seems) there's an uptick in interest in Linux. It dies down in 6 months, generally. I've noticed no greater increase in interest or questions on the various Linux forums from any other release. People just don't care. If I used Windows, I'd probably not care either. Privacy is not why I use Linux. So far, and Microsoft has been collecting information for years, they've been pretty good stewards of that information. Considering the vast amounts of data
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Aren't some of those connections hardcoded to specific IP addresses, so just blocking domains doesn't do the whole job...
And you can only 'defer' updates for so long.
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:5, Informative)
99% of Windows 10 users are being spied on, even if they think they turned the settings off.
You have hard evidence of that claim, right?
By the way, are you that naive to think the sainted Tim Cook and his Apples are not "spying" on you? Wake up numbnutz.
Hard evidence: look at the view counts of all the pages on the Internet that list all of the 100+ domains you need to block from your router to turn off the Windows 10 spying. Even if *every single view* was an individual person that went ahead and followed the directions religiously, that would still be less than 1% of all Windows 10 rollouts.
Don't get me wrong, I am no Apple fan. I proselytize for Linux. But if the choice is either Windows 10 or OS X, I would advocate for the latter, because the spying in OS X can be turned off without fighting the OS tooth and nail.
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:4, Insightful)
OSX is not within a "walled garden", but I suppose there's no need to let facts like that get in the way of a good story.
OSX beats windows. Apple hardware lacks upgradeability. I can't see how either position can be argued against, unless you've really got a thing about minesweeper.
Oh. Wait. [google.com]
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:5, Informative)
iOS is a walled garden. OS X is not. It's basically an adapted BSD under the hood with Apple's custom OS X GUI and other services on top, and it has no more trouble installing third party software, accessing the underlying filesystems, or communicating with remote systems than a Windows system.
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it has no more trouble installing third party software, accessing the underlying filesystems, or communicating with remote systems than a Windows system.
YET!
Have you tried creating a local account on Windows 10? Microsoft has made it damn near impossible and then nag you to death about the advantages of one of their shiny Microsoft online accounts. Microsoft tried to create the walled garden with RT and it failed so now they are using the slowly bring the water to a boil method of gently getting users used to requiring an account. Since Apple is the king of walled garden systems you can bet they are watching this experiment closely and will soon "invent"
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I don't run Windows 10, either at home or on my work machines, for much the same reasons many here are posting. But even with the various issues over privacy, forced updates and the like, I still don't think it's reasonable or useful to call it a walled garden today.
Of course, with forced updates, you have no guarantee they won't turn it into one over time. Did I mention I don't run Windows 10? :-)
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft has made it damn near impossible
Damn near impossible?
At the Microsoft Account sign in page, you click Create New Account, then at the bottom of the new account form click "Sign in without a microsoft account."
I concede its slightly unintuitive, and definitely treated as a second class option... but if you don't already have a microsoft account, you are going to end up on the form to create one, with the option to sign in without one... so you can't actually even miss it if you read.
It's not remotely "damn near impossible"?
And i don't know what you are going on about with "Apple *watching* this experiment"; you do know that by default OSX has you signing into your computer with an apple cloud account now too right? And you have to do pretty much the same gymnastics you do with Windows to opt out of it. And this has been true for the last 2 or 3 releases of OSX already.
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Hint: OS X != iOS.
You can install anything you want on OS X, right down to downloading source code and compiling yourself. There are whole package managers that port Linux utilities to run on OS X, and a complete X11 system for compatibility with those ports. Get a clue before spouting false statements.
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:5, Funny)
FWIW, I could really do without this malware that pops up a window fairly frequently on my Windows 7 laptop that tries to get me to "upgrade" to Windows 10.
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Or, you can change a registry setting, disable a couple of services, and be done with it.
http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-disable-telemetry-and-data-collection-in-windows-10/
I love the crapple/linux fanbois on slashdot...
This is great. If someone gave you these "simple" instructions for linux, you would be launching into a tirade about how this is why linux will never win on the desktop
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows is easy, Linux is hard. In Linux, sometimes you have to use a package manager. In Windows, all you need to do is, turn off one drive, log out of your microsoft account, ensure one drive isn't active, disable cortana, add one hundred entries to hosts, add them to windows firewall, add them to an external firewall because Windows ignores hosts and windows firewall, disable and remove seven services, remove several entries from a task scheduler, change several group policies, and spam over twenty wusa uninstall commands from the command line.
Simple.
That's not everything though. It may be close.
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Re:He's got his talking points (Score:5, Insightful)
> Or, you can change a registry setting, disable a couple of services, and be done with it.
> http://winaero.com/blog/how-to... [winaero.com]
Ah, I see you are playing one of my favorite forum games- you are trying to tell people how to disable the Microsoft spying!
You have missed TONS of thing, even with that link. I will list just one thing that the thing doesn't do: it doesn't turn off the "Customer Experience Improvement Program", which is normally disabled under task scheduler. This continues to leak tons of data if not disabled.
In practice, the steps to getting Windows 10 to a state that is assumed to be not talky, are massive and generally incomplete. I could list many many more things that the winaero link doesn't deal with, and if you just scroll down to the comments section you'll see people listing massive strings of commands that MIGHT make the OS do what they want.
If Linux had anything like this, you'd be laughing your ass off. Because it's Windows and you're some AC Windows fanfuck, you bury your head in the sand.
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If you have to make your argument by calling someone 'numbnutz' you need to really do some soul searching, bud.
Re: He's got his talking points (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not making his argument BY calling names. He is making an argument, and THEN calling names.
There is a huge difference. The former is born out of ignorance. The latter is born out of the frustration from needing to make said argument yet again.
In my view, conflating the two is a sure sign of the former which will likely prompt others to more of the latter.
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It would be phenomenally stupid for Apple to spy on their users. If they lost even a tiny percentage of users over it they would lose more money than they could make. Now of course Microsoft's current spying is phenomenally stupid as well in the long term.
Apple is too smart for it, but the windows division of Microsoft is currently run by a bunch of incompetent chucklefucks. Maybe they should bring in whoever is running their cloud services division.
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Did you read that article? Microsoft isn't doing anything bizarre or unheard of. It's the same stuff that's been happening for over a decade.
Misrepresenting the situation is not helping anyone.
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Sure sign of a troll -- posting a link that has nothing to do with the topic
You had to check the link before realizing that it was a troll post?
Re:Care to share the list of the '100+ domains'? (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't 100 of them, but it's 57 known domains that need to be blocked.
vortex.data.microsoft.com
vortex-win.data.microsoft.com
telecommand.telemetry.microsoft.com
telecommand.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
oca.telemetry.microsoft.com
oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
sqm.telemetry.microsoft.com
sqm.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
watson.telemetry.microsoft.com
watson.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
redir.metaservices.microsoft.com
choice.microsoft.com
choice.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
df.telemetry.microsoft.com
reports.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
services.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
sqm.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
telemetry.microsoft.com
watson.ppe.telemetry.microsoft.com
telemetry.appex.bing.net
telemetry.urs.microsoft.com
telemetry.appex.bing.net:443
settings-sandbox.data.microsoft.com
vortex-sandbox.data.microsoft.com
survey.watson.microsoft.com
watson.live.com
watson.microsoft.com
statsfe2.ws.microsoft.com
corpext.msitadfs.glbdns2.microsoft.com
compatexchange.cloudapp.net
cs1.wpc.v0cdn.net
a-0001.a-msedge.net
statsfe2.update.microsoft.com.akadns.net
sls.update.microsoft.com.akadns.net
fe2.update.microsoft.com.akadns.net
diagnostics.support.microsoft.com
corp.sts.microsoft.com
statsfe1.ws.microsoft.com
pre.footprintpredict.com
i1.services.social.microsoft.com
i1.services.social.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
feedback.windows.com
feedback.microsoft-hohm.com
feedback.search.microsoft.com
rad.msn.com
preview.msn.com
ad.doubleclick.net
ads.msn.com
ads1.msads.net
ads1.msn.com
a.ads1.msn.com
a.ads2.msn.com
adnexus.net
adnxs.com
az361816.vo.msecnd.net
az512334.vo.msecnd.net
Re:Care to share the list of the '100+ domains'? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Care to share the list of the '100+ domains'? (Score:4, Insightful)
Doubleclick is owned by Google, I doubt they have anything to do with Microsoft other than perhaps serving ads for them.
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> trivial to mitigate
Would you like to play a game?
Step 1- You tell me how to mitigate the spying.
Step 2- I tell you a thing you missed.
If I can't find anything else, or I stop responding, you win.
If you stop responding, or can't find the solution, I win. If you post a link, I win.
Note: Even if you win, you'll probably have to backtrack on your "trivial to mitigate".
Right now I'm winning, because you haven't told how to turn off a single piece of telemetry or update. Go ahead, post your guide.
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Shh don't get to the keylogger service and stuff until later. You have to play the game slowly. Don't jump to the end.
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Citation needed. I'll accept anything similar to a wireshark printout side-screened with a video of the OS in action, preferably with the task manager open.
Why? 'Cause I don't use Windows and not even *I* expect they've jumped the shark this bad and I'm pretty sure you're full of shit given the many, many articles on the subject.
It's only a half dozen or so, not 100. ;-) It's something like 60 of 'em total but they're not all going to be invoked by opening the calculator.
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I am glad the debate is currently between those claiming the number of stealth domains contacted is over a hundred, and those claiming it is merely dozens.
The sad fact is, we don't really understand ("we" meaning anyone not on the Microsoft team, and it is possible that no one person there has a handle on it) what the hell is going on.
Here is what we do know: with default settings, the amount of drama is hard to qualify. It absolutely pushes stuff to bing when you try to type calc.exe, cortana gets update
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Try it yourself.
I did. Windows 10 Pro, installed from the official ISO in a VM, all updates to date. Packet sniffer on the host machine. Turns out, you are full of shit.
When opening Windows Calculator with the default settings after installation I got hits on five domains. Not 100, just five, and three of those where when I opened the start menu and typed in "calc" (because it searches Bing by default).
Then I disabled all the telemetry etc. Opening the calculator now contacts exactly one domain. Not over 100, not the origi
Re: He's got his talking points (Score:5, Informative)
Re: He's got his talking points (Score:4, Insightful)
While I was saying this a little while ago, at this point I don't believe that even Enterprise truly turns off the spying- it just lets you pick the "no telemetry" option, but still leaks some data. It's certainly a lot better than Pro (or the free Home), which don't even give you the option to turn it off.
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While I was saying this a little while ago, at this point I don't believe that even Enterprise truly turns off the spying- it just lets you pick the "no telemetry" option, but still leaks some data. It's certainly a lot better than Pro (or the free Home), which don't even give you the option to turn it off.
Thanks for the heads up on that.
Win 10 enterprise does *NOT* turn off spying (Score:5, Informative)
I can almost be certain that Win 10 Enterprise does not turn off spying
3 of my business offices - one in Singapore, one in the States and one in Africa - we are running parallel experiments on Win 10
We have workstations running Win 10 Enterprises, turning off all the spying option - including the updates - and in the meantime we turned on the sniffers
For the past few months we have encountered _some_ abnormalities - even with all the spying options turned off, Win 10 Enterprise still 'phoned home' - and the data we captured so far are found to be encrypted, so we can't say for sure what kind of data Win 10 enterprise is sending back to its mothership
Re:He's got his talking points (Score:4, Insightful)
We know that Microsoft is spying on things I don't want spied on. You say you think Apple does as much spying without actually providing any evidence for your argument. Apple and Microsoft are two different companies, and operate in different ways. Most of Microsoft's revenue is from software licensing, and most of Apple's is from selling Macs and iDevices.
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Google makes nearly all its money from facilitating targeted advertising. Apple makes most of its money from hardware sales, and has no sort of monopoly in anything. Microsoft makes most of its money from software licensing, and has a monopoly, in the sense that hundreds of millions of computers are going to have their software on it pretty much no matter what they do. This results in different behavior among the companies. Apple has nothing going for it except user experience, and isn't going to mess
"Tries too hard to do too much" (Score:5, Insightful)
nonetheless, it is plausible that Tim Cook's assertions about the Microsoft product are possibly not completely unbiased.
Re:"Tries too hard to do too much" (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly, you could do worse...
I've been using a Surface 3 for a while now, which might still be relevant to the new stuff:
* It's a perfectly good lightweight touchscreen Windows laptop, solidly built it a bit pricey for the specs.
* It's a poor tablet for normal home tablet use without the keyboard, because Windows software especially games just expects a keyboard, and the onscreen keyboard lacks important keys like "Escape". (Plus there's not a single consistent right-click gesture.)
* It's great tablet for special cases like taking notes with the stylus, or anything that there's actually an app store app for (for me, Kindle and Audible are important, and it's just fine there).
So, if I think of it as a lightweight laptop, also usable as a table for a few specific needs, I think it's great. But I won't be sitting on the couch playing games with it.
Re:"Tries too hard to do too much" (Score:4, Informative)
* Only if you don't include the weight and battery life among those specs. As a computer, it's overpriced. As a *portable* computer, it's just about smack in the middle of the pack for its class, price-wise.
* Switch the touch keyboard to the "Standard" or full layout. It has the meta keys you are looking for. You may need to enable it. In Win10, the setting is at Settings -> Devices -> Typing -> "Add the standard keyboard layout as a touch keyboard option".
* In desktop apps (i.e. non-Store apps), tap-and-hold is always right-click. In Win8.x Windows Store apps, right-clicking brings up the app bar; you can also achieve this by swiping in to the screen from above or below.
* I generally avoid the app store stuff - for me, its limitations aren't worth it, even in a touch environment, and that's without even getting into the fact that it's a DRM system.
Re:"Tries too hard to do too much" (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember a time... (Score:4, Informative)
I've got a Surface Pro 3 - it's a great laptop replacement and the tablet form factor is handy for some situations and the fact that it runs standard Windows software makes it a great device. Unless your work consists of surfing the web and sending the odd email, why would anyone want an iPad Pro ?
Re:I remember a time... (Score:5, Insightful)
when Apple just got on with it a made good products. Now they need to spread FUD about a competing product ?
There was never a time when Apple refrained from spreading FUD. Their iconic 1984 super bowl ad was an attack on IBM, and said nothing about the features or benefits of their own products. Steve Jobs regularly made ad hominem insults against Bill Gates, John Scully, etc.
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> why would anyone want an iPad Pro ?
You don't have to deal with Microsoft, plays all or almost all your ios games, has a great stylus that appears to be suitable for professional work (I can't speak to this personally, but the artist forums are abuzz for damned sure), and syncs up with all your Apple Drama, assuming you roll that way.
The surface has some serious weight behind it to, and anyone might prefer to deal with Microsoft over dealing with Apple- it's not crapware, and Cook is obviously shit talk
Re:I remember a time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple was always about FUD or making ridiculous marketing claims. I recall how in 1998, when they came up with the G3 PowerPC based computers, they were making the ridiculous claim that 233MHz G3 in an iMac was faster than 400MHz Pentium II, even though the claims were not based on some real world usage experience or benchmarks like spec int, but on some obscure Photoshop based benchmark if I recall that correctly. By the time Apple started using the G4 processors, claiming to be faster than Intel was not enough. Now they claimed that G4 is a supercomputer processor. Then couple of years later they announce the switch-over to Intel.. surprise surprise.
Granted, in the more recent times Apple hardware has usually been top notch, but companies will always have a need to spread marketing FUD against the competitor products..
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This post, to an old timer like me is absolutely excellent source of entertainment. Do you know the origin of the term FUD? I'd like to refer you to wikipedia, which has it more or less right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
As for the G3,G4 and even G5, they were faster, in some case more than twice as fast even on Intel's own benchmark than contemporary Intel chips. But they were expensive and the economy of scale was in favor of Intel. If Apple wanted to ever compete on cost with comparable high end Win
Re:I remember a time... (Score:4, Interesting)
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You're mistaken about the G3 and G4 processors. This is going back a bit, so there may be some errors. Back when the G3 was very, very new, the company I was working for got a new IBM workstation running off a G3, I think or perhaps some very closely related version of PowerPC. Holy crap that thing was *FAST*.
To set the scene:
Bear in mind this company made CFD software which is one of those applications for which no CPU will ever be fast enough. However much computing power you have, you can always shrink t
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SPARC processors of the day were much faster than PowerPC
We're talking at a time here whwn things were changing very, VERY fast---the late 1990s. The MHz was just heating up and PCs were just becoming fast enough (and had a "good enough" OS---NT 4) to begin to supplant UNIX workstations. What was true one month would have changed by the next.
SPARC was much later to the party with OoO execution compared to PPC, and I'm fairly sure the G3 had it.
Bear in mind this was a *long* time ago and I might be a year or
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And my favorite from the 90s: http://farm1.static.flickr.com... [flickr.com]
The "Mac Addict" looks suspiciously like Seinfeld.
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An i7 with 16GB is "underpowered and worthless for 'work'"?
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The Surface Pro 4 configured with an i7 and 16GB is $1799. And you can get the Surface Book with an i7 and 16GB (plus a dGPU w/ 1GB GDDR5) for $2499. That's well within the ballpark people pay for a well-equipped MacBook.
For more modest budgets, the midrange models provide plenty of performance. I'm typing this on the $1299 model, which has "only" the i5, 8GB and 256GB SSD.
Re: I remember a time... (Score:2, Insightful)
I do full 3d Unity game development on my Surface 3. It's a fucking incredible piece of hardware, as good as my 3 year old desktop.
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Well, PCs have been well overpowered for most "work" for well over a decade, since most of the "work" done on an average computer is office apps. The past two decades of home computer progress have been mostly for aesthetics (you have to do a lot of computation to get computers to feel responsive and look pretty) and video gaming. Now that the improvements on those fronts are yielding rapidly diminishing returns, and battery technology is picking up, it only makes sense to go for portability.
Numerical compu
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Re:I remember a time... (Score:4, Informative)
underpowered? I bet that the Surface Pro pisses all over my laptop.
My laptop:
Dual core 1.6GHz AMD with dual core Radeon HD on die
8GB RAM
500GB HDD storage + 3xUSB 2.0 + DVDRAM
15.4" 1366x768 panel
2MP camera
Not bad for £339 back in March 2011.
Surface Pro 4 (to meet spec):
quad core 4GHz Skylake i7
2736x1824 12.3" touchscreen
16GB RAM
1TB SSD
8MP camera
Miniport + USB 3.0
I don't know if the £1800 asking price is worth it, though. I could get a beast of a desktop system for about that.
Asus Crosshair 990FX motherboard with 5GHz AMD Piledriver 8-core and 16GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3: £515
(that's 14 USB 3.0 and 4 USB 2.0 ports for anyone who's counting)
CIT Black Edition 1KW PSU at I think my last one cost £60. That's one thousand Watts certified continuous output.
Samsung 850 Evo 1TB SSD @£322
XFX Radeon R9 390X 8GB £374
CIT Venom case: £19
Coolermaster T4 CPU cooler: £22
Noctua Vortex 120mm case fan x3 @£13 (these things are brilliant: whisper quiet and they shift a LOAD of air)
Pioneer Blu-Ray/DVDRW £61
That's £1412 give or take. I have change there for another TB SSD! Or I might spoil myself and go for a £305 24" 4k UHD monitor.
(anyone know what happened to Firewire? Finding a "modern" system with Firewire is like hunting unicorns these days... oh, wait, found a card on Amazon for £16.)
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I am about 50% on the belief that there are still shills active on slashdot, but the real reason shills are rarer here than, say, certain tech subreddits, is because of the large amount of user accountability- shills tend to get downvoted and usually have to post AC, meaning that a typical user won't see the shills as easily as can be forced on the "democracy" types of sites where upvotes or likes or whatever will give the shill enough of a platform. There's also a lot of people to call out shills here, so
To Quote Gandhi (Score:4, Insightful)
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
Maybe we'll see Apple come up with a iPad Duo Dock [wikipedia.org] at some point. "It's not the same thing, though..."
Artists, musicians, etc (Score:5, Insightful)
To run ProTools with all the plugins?
Am I the only one who remembers when Apple made machines for creative people? An iPad Pro is useless for them, except for being able to write an email to your parents asking for more money.
Creative people tend to be broke (Score:3)
Re:Creative people tend to be broke (Score:4, Informative)
I learned something today [wikipedia.org]. Thank you!
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> An iPad Pro is useless for them, except for being able to write an email to your parents asking for more money
While time will tell on this, a lot of people are excited about apple pencil, and I'm pretty sure there are artists that are planning on using it with their current app set (Adobe, Procreate, etc.). I doubt you could compile on it, but I bet you can draw.
It's still speculation, but that seems to be what people are saying... so far.
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Yes but none of the adobe software runs on the ipad except for some crippled drawing sofware, so you will need a 'real' computer to do anything with what you create with it. The surface pro has pressure sensitive stylus and can run the full version of photoshop.
Re:Artists, musicians, etc (Score:4, Informative)
Inferior machines? My middle of the road MacBook is far faster than anything I had when I was a musician and we charted quite a bit on machines that are obsolete. Years ago, I was a hobbiest PC builder -- we could afford to buy machines prebuilt, but I loved trying to get just a little more processor time out of the box. From a music perspective, I ended up having the fastest spec'd machine for one of the bigger softsynth companies (Native Instuments) and after benchmarking it, the company asked to borrow the machine for a week so they could check the benchmarks themselves.
At the time, it was said we'd never need more. Again, I have a middle of the road macbook...it puts my custom built machine to shame. I have the full line of Native Instruments Komplete running on it without any issue. I have Premier on my machine. It works far better than anything I had in the past when I was a creative professional.
What is the point? Apple sold 6 million of these inferior machines in the last quarter that are far better than anything I'll ever need to be creative. I have a few PCs in my rackmount still, but I don't even bother anymore because my laptop is good enough. For the record, one of my rackmounts in a hackintosh -- I wanted all the PCI type slots and everything else I was use to in older machine. The fact is, I never use anything inside. I just plug in with either Thunderbolt or USB3. USB3 is good enough for 90% of what I do.
The point is that if you can't be creative with these inferior machines, you are doing something wrong. And fucking shit...I don't care if it is Mac or Windows or Linux...the operative systems and software and hardware are all good enough that the only people that complain that they can't be creative are idiots that shouldn't be in the industry, or probably just not as creative or smart as they think they are.
Re:Artists, musicians, etc (Score:4, Insightful)
because they realised the real power is in software rather than hardware, so they reduced the hardware overhead by switching architecture to the x64 and rewrote most of their code. These days Mac laptops and their HTPC-type systems are fabricated by Dell in Ireland, same as they've always been, only this time round the only real divergence is when it comes to mounting the boards in the cases.
Flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
That was the Surface Pro 3, not the new Surface Pro 4, and Microsoft largely addressed his issues in their firmware update last October: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/11/01/surface-3-update [penny-arcade.com]
The new model is significantly more powerful, with no noticeable parallax or lag, and a greatly improved display: http://gizmodo.com/the-surface-pro-4-has-the-most-accurate-tablet-display-1738801322 [gizmodo.com]
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Yeah, I looked at the SP3, since they still have them on display in the store, but the difference in price with the current discounts isn't nearly large enough to justify foregoing the new model. The display improvements are very apparent and the cooling improvements keep the SP4 comfortable to hold even when the fans kick in.
I gotta ask while I'm here (Score:2)
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They are certainly moving into that space. They actually acquired the pen and digitizer tech from N-Trig, rather than simply licensing it, and have been hinting that the capabilities will continue to evolve. (The latest firmware update included an update to the Pen driver that "adds support for future functionality".)
I'd like to hear from content creators (Score:2)
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Since Apple moved to Intel chips, the Mac/PC divide has become mostly about branding.
The important thing about graphics/video/audio that these are among the most complex workflows that exist, and become exponentially more cumbersome without a full keyboard and multi-button mouse. A touchscreen by itself is a regression in HID capability... that's why people don't find and paste the link into the conversation from their phone, they apologize for not being able to do so instead.
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There's a giant wad of stuff that doesn't have OS X versions (or Linux versions). Games are the biggest offenders, but so are the one-off tools that many people require. There's stuff that goes the other way too, but I'm of the opinion that each of these big OSes offers a workflow that is not entirely compatible with the others.
Who runs PC"s (Score:2)
Well there are two in my house and two laptops. Both desktops get constant use and one is used by me to do everything computer wise, run and play my game server, do graphics work, work on my shops websites, browse the internet you know the regular things you do. When I play my game and chat with others on iRC there's TONS of you 14+ year old to 60+ using PC's My kids who is 16 spends most of his time on his with two monitors playing games on one and having the internet on the other screen.
Me thinks that com
Why would I buy a PC? (Score:3)
Cause I have work to do
iPad needs to add BT mouse pairing (Score:3)
I've owned all the iPhones between 3G and 6 Plus, iPad 1 and 3. And I own a Surface Pro 2 which I use as my daily laptop for work.
I think the iPad would gain greatly in broader use cases if they would just allow bluetooth mice pairing.
I begrudgingly accept at least one likely "altruistic" reason why they didn't, because they thought it would pollute the touch screen UI. I'm sure there were more mercenary concerns that it might undercut the sales of some Macbooks, too.
IMHO, the iPad has been a great tablet for uses where a traditional laptop is just too much computer. Couch surfing, lying in bed, airplanes, all places where extreme simplicity and smaller form factor is beneficial.
But I think the touch-only user interface has limits on usability. I have some drawing apps and while the developers seem to have gone out of their way to make it useful with a touch screen, it seems to lend itself to MORE UI complexity with only touch than it would if you had a higher precision pointing system. Then there's uses like as an RDP client where you're interfacing with a mouse-centric UI like Windows where touch is just awkward.
Maybe they're still stuck on ideology or maybe it's all about commerce, but I think one of the reason iPad sales may be flagging somewhat is that whatever the reason, without a mouse there's only so much you can do with it.
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In fairness, touching Apple products absolutely makes you smug. They are very shiny.
Apple isn't a hardware company (Score:3)
I think you have it somewhat backwards. Apple is a software company. Start to finish. They sell chunks of silicon and and aluminum, but that's not what their business is - it's Operating Systems and User Experience. They sell an easy-to use iOS and a full fledged OSX. They re-sell all the software and content that goes on them (to the extent they can) as well so that they can curate the OS/UX system. They sell hardware to run their OSes, too. In fact, in order to make sure that their OS experience is as con