Well, about the Surface Pro 3...
I have a number of problems with it. Some of these won't be of any concern.
1. Battery life.
You guys are talking about battery life. Whatever you get versus what you expect... it's still max 8 hours or so. That's not really good. 8 hours assuming you're doing web-browsing *using modern apps*. Never mind actual usage. With actual usage, you'll get a lot less battery out of it. Another reason that the Air trumps SP3. Though, it might have something to do with the OS. When running Windows, my battery life is about 7-9 hours. OS X reports about 12, sometimes more.
2. Sacrifices
Microsoft sacrificed important things like cooling just to make the device thinner. A lot of people have complained that their 'laptop replacement' would begin throttling after 20-30 minutes playing Minecraft, for example. There's even some videos by cbutters, if I recall. It's a bit ridiculous for Microsoft to say it replaces a laptop when it can't handle things that the Air does. The cooling on this is great. It goes back to room temperature about 5 minutes or so after quitting the intensive game/application.
3. Windows
This last point isn't me talking about OS X / Windows. It's more about Windows 8.1 in general. First of all, let's talk about Windows Apps in general. Modern apps are not good.. I dug out my Surface RT today. Some of the things that annoyed me while I was browsing the tech news in Appy Geek: Constant refreshing every time I swiped to a new article. It would instantly refresh even though the article was cached. Not necessarily a Windows problem.. but it's like that on most apps. I think it might be the API, but I haven't done enough Windows programming. It's even like that on Internet Explorer. You swipe back a page, and it goes dark and blurry and then refreshes. That's annoying and not a great experience.
That was a trifle matter to pick on, but it's just one of the many annoyances I have. Windows is frustrating to use.
Let's talk Apps. There are almost no apps... Yes, there are apps. But most of them are junk. They suck! Microsoft pays more attention to other platforms than its own. iPad got dedicated office apps before Windows did. A ported version to RT was not acceptable, "touch mode" or not. It's just called lazy.
There are more things I want to say but I'm tired. Goodnight
I remember hearing plenty of people complain that their MacBook Air would over heat as well. Poor design just to make the computer thinner? Probably.
I don't play games on my SP3 and just use it mainly for internet, iTunes (syncing iPhone and iPad), monitoring and two forums I run and using Photoshop occasionally in the design of those websites and everyday stuff like outlook, word and a few other things.
I am surprised at how well Windows 8.1 runs these days. I have not experienced one crash in the three weeks of owning this and sometimes I forget that this is a full Windows computer in that I can run anything that I want on it and install anything from anywhere.
I am getting 8+ hours of usage in this thing in actual usage and that is pretty impressive.
I hardly ever want to use my Mac Mini anymore because my SP3 is just so much faster at doing things. Sure most of that is due to the fact the the SP3 has an SSD installed whereas my Mini doesn't but my SP3 is now my go to computer when I want to do 90% of the things I want to do. The Mini gets used only as an iTunes server and when converting MKV files to whatever format that iFlicks converts to while importing to iTunes. It does that job fast. If there was an iFlicks for Windows, I would use that.
I have nothing but good things to say about this computer. It was hard spending $1100 on this thing including the keyboard and I figured that I could always return it if I wasn't happy but I don't see that happening. I still have another month to thing about it due to BestBuys extended return for the holidays but again, I doubt I will return it.
Can't wait to see what the SP4 will be like. I can see myself buying it too instead of a Mac. I don't know how anything Apple fits into my future but I can see Windows computers there.
I grew up using Windows computers and if it had not been for that iPhone in 2007, I would have continued using them. I was using Windows computers since 1994.
The touchscreen experience on this is top notch. Adobe even updated Photoshop so that the touch screen experience is amazing.
