A week after introducing the Surface Laptop to the world, he’s sitting in a room in Microsoft’s Building 88 ready to show off his team’s latest creation: the new Surface Pro. At first glance, it looks a lot like 2015’s Surface Pro 4, but it’s part of a bigger lineup of the entire Surface family that Microsoft is now ready to take worldwide.
For the first time in Surface history, Microsoft will start shipping two new products (Surface Pro and Surface Laptop) worldwide at launch. June 15th will see these new products launch, and a big expansion for the Surface Studio all-in-one PC, too. It’s clearly a date that Microsoft has been working toward for quite some time, and as I walked around Microsoft’s secretive Surface building located at its Redmond, Washington, campus, it’s easy to see that the Surface family of devices is now coming to life.
Be honest with yourself: which line of devices feels more innovative and exciting: Surface or Mac?
Easy answer.
Nope. It haz it not. Which is a shame. I’m sure they’re great, but I wouldn’t buy anything new that didn’t have one.
Why not?
They also provide a dongle for it, similar to the competition
Second and third that.!
Goes for all laptops, phones, tablets.
Unless your device requires more than 100W (that’s the max in the USB C PD specs right?) — then you’re just being an obtuse manufacturer — and anti-consumer, anti-environment, pro-waste so-and-so
Be Right.
Come on..!
That’s interesting, because I see the opposite.
My significant other bought a sixth gen i7 laptop with 12GB of RAM for 550€, I swapped the mechanic drive for an SSD and put it on an external enclosure. That computer is a portable beast, and for less than 650€.
If you want the best of the best, you are going to pay for it.
Going for a device that ships with classic USB A ports is pro-waste now, is it? Surely, since you have a library of devices stretching back nearly 20 years, it’s much more “green” to use the older devices, instead of throwing them away. It’s much greener to reuse what already exists, rather than melt it down and make new stuff out of it. Remember, that Toyota Prius released more CO2 in it’s production than a ’57 Bel Air did in it’s whole life (including production)
Would you mind providing a cited source for this assertion? I find it somewhat lacking in credibility.
Sounds fishy, but that was also a 50’s US built car, it probably had a life span of 3 years. The Prius will probably last 15 years. So unless the prius used more than 5 times the co2, its probably still better than the bel air.
using the carbon footprint calcuator http://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=4
a car like the belair had an average mpg of 13.82 mpg.
Over its probable life time of maybe 60 k miles. That would be 36.11 tons co2
The prius at 50 mpg and 180,000 miles would only generate 29.94 Tons co2. 3 times the mileage and still less co2.
Even today with modern non-hybrid cars improved fuel efficiency, it still seems like a better bet to go with hybrid.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/doe…
Note, I being a hypocrite do not drive a hybrid due to the initial cost and internal space requirements, but did help convince a friend to buy a tesla. So that should count for something. Sorry earth.
Fascinating information you provided. It confirms my suspicions about the parent post being totally unsubstantiated.
No, didn’t say that. I did say that not having USB C is a bad idea. I’d like both. A bridge between the past and the future. Is that too much to ask?
I think the happy medium is to have both USB A AND C for the time being, unless it’s a super slim device.
And even though I would ideally like my USB C ports to be of Thunderbolt3 spec, it’s really with regards to charging ports that my comment saying anti-environment was about.
USB A to C or C to A woes (at for mass storage are solved with cheap dongles) but if all phones and laptops came universally with USB C charging ports (and the correct power chips internally) then virtually any USB C charger will do.
Even if phone chargers did barely more than trickle charge a laptop, it’s better than nothing.
Cheap laptops could perhaps (god forbid) even be sold without chargers. Have them be optional extras.
This could save a lot of waste and duplication
Actually, every exciting tech news I read on several areas come from Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft and other small players. No fruits in the horizon.
It’s a new Surface tablet, and a laptop with built-in restrictions from Microsoft. It’s a new tablet, and a laptop (though without built-in software restrictions) from Apple. Ooh, looky, they both have pens for their tablets…
Which one feels more innovative? Neither of them. Then again, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Disruptive change for the sake of disruptive change is a pain in the ass, innovative or otherwise.
Honestly? I’d say neither one is exciting. I don’t need or want a PC tablet with a touch screen, nor do I use OSX.
But, that’s just me …
It’s not just you.
I’d pick up one old enough to have a good Linux driver story if I had the budget.
I still love working inside OSX. That’s what sells me on Macs.
The hardware is lovely, stable, solid. I’m not sure what they really need to do to innovate. Sometimes I think it might be nice to have a tablet with a nice drawing screen, but honestly, the Surface isn’t quite it. A Cintiq drawing monitor would be the way to go, hooked up to my mac.
There are sayings that get at the cost of getting both a laptop/workstation and a Cintiq – always get more tool than you need, because you can always grow into it, or use the right tool for the job, etc.
An iPad isn’t a tool that I use, and I switched to Android a couple of years ago, so I’m no locked in Apple fanboy – but I still think the very mature MacBook Pro is a solid piece of hardware which can last for years, and frankly doesn’t need much innovation. The Mac Pro does need to get some kind of reasonable plan, but it sounds like they are pivoting. The iMac is a gorgeous workstation device, and actually cost effective if you try to spec out a similar PC with a 5K monitor of comparable quality.
The Surface line is also quite lovely with solid looking build quality – but the specs are underpowered (screen too small – GPU limitations, etc.), the pen is too laggy, which is a big reason to have a touch screen on those devices at all. But most importantly, they run Windows – who wants to run Windows?
The one appeal those devices have might be as a consumer device – basically a giant iPad. But outside of developing apps, I hardly even use my iPad, so I’m not sure what the need is.
Edited 2017-05-26 22:13 UTC
Honestly? I just see the price of computers slowly increasing adopting the same form over function design where Apple exceeded for some years now.
This will just tend to increase the sales of smartphones and tablets, or so corporations hope for.
At least Microsoft appears to still be interested in multiple form factors while Apple was being honest that their main focus has shifted to mobile for some time now.
On one hand you have a new input medium. (i.e Touchbar), 4 USB-C port, and one block aluminium chassis, on the other hand we have a device with a $800+ price tag which doesn’t come with a USB-C or Thunderbolt port, and use Alcantara (a.k.a carpet in the bathroom) on top of the keyboard.
Neither is particularly innovative and/or exciting but I know which one I would buy.
I did actually.
Meh, one has semi-exciting hardware but runs an operating system I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, while the other runs a semi-tolerable operating system but comes with overpriced, underpowered hardware.
Pretty much this. I’ve been exclusively Linux for the home since about ’98, but work offers a choice between Dell, HP, and Apple, so I go Apple. It’s the only choice with a decent keyboard.
So I landed an MS-funded grant that gave all the participants a Surface Pro 4. And the hardware is great: nice display, great port selection, and a genuinely solid keyboard/trackpad combo — a far sight better than most laptops. On (at least) that last point it runs circles around the iPad Pro.
But holy hell is the software intolerable. Display scaling problems everywhere you look. Software updates take literal hours, and every piece has its own daemon and update system. UI consistency is like Linux in the early ’00s. Sometimes there’s a menu, sometimes a menu button, sometimes a ribbon, and none of them are searchable.
And basic stuff — marking up PDFs — requires third party software (keep in mind this is a tablet that comes with a stylus). It’s bizarre. I can’t make sense of the difference between the hardware and software quality.
I see Microsoft playing 30+ years of catch-up in mobile manufacturing. Not that exciting.
Surface’s look really nice. Finally. What is this, version 4?
Let’s throw one in your bag and move around with it 24/7 for 3 years and see if it holds up as good as the average mac book.
There is that. My Macbook Air (and iPad) have been put through the ringer for several years now, and look it. But darned if they don’t work as well as the day I bought them. I’ve yet to see any other laptops last as long, save perhaps Toughbooks (and I really don’t want to carry them around).
MS kept out of the hardware business because of antitrust laws. Otherwise they would have completely wiped out Apple (and quite a few OEMs) at least 20 years ago.
Surface devices have one major problem – inappropriate operating system. Probably OK for content consumers, but useless for, let’s say, developers, unless you develop for that inappropriate operating system.
i think you are missing the point of those devices.
surface devices are mostly for artists and designers. i would definitely buy the big one (whatever if was called) in a heartbeat if it wasn’t so expensive.
They are consumer devices. You buy a conventional Windows laptop or ultrabook if you want to do work.