Windows will always feel yucky to me. I guess many die-hard Windows users feel the say way about Mac, mostly due to ignorance around the Mac being a true UNIX machine.
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Microsoft Planning Low-Cost Surface Line to Compete With Apple's $329 iPad
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There is no tablet war. Apple won it a long, long time ago. Android tablets are dead (even Google are about to launch Chrome tablets into education) and the Surface line is doing well enough but nowhere near iPad-levels of market share.
Just like Windows won the PC war, leaving Macs as boutique devices for the well-off and niche markets, the Surface line is doing the same in the tablet space.
I'm the only person I know with a Surface Pro. Virtually everyone else I've met has either an iPad or some variant of Kindle Fire. It doesn't matter how versatile a Surface is, the average person cannot tolerate the nonsense of forced updates, virus scanning and drive maintenance on a device that doesn't have any touch-first apps and is meant to be an always-on, consumption-ready device.
As an almost 2 year user of Win10, I don't see those as issues. I set them all to do the update thing from 1-5am and it updates and reboots. Virus scanning runs and just alerts me when it's done in the Action Center. Drive maintenance happens on schedule for TRIM once a week and doesn't bother me. Touch on both the 15" laptop and 12" Surface works well, even in non-touch optimized apps like Chrome. Always on could use some work but resume from sleep isn't that slow and even setting the Surface at 8 hours it still gets decent battery life.
I'm actually surprised how far windows has come in the past few years. I didn't expect to actually really like any of these devices. But I do. Lots of it is what Apple should be doing and with their polish would be a smashing success.
What you're forgetting is that professional software always lags waaaaaaay behind the hardware. Most of the legacy pro applications are going to run like a charm on the low-end 5K iMac because the reality is that they haven't changed that much in the interim in terms of system requirements. It's not like the gaming market where they're always pushing to max out what you need to have for hardware. Pro applications are typically pretty conservative in terms of the spec required. It's really only the heaviest of heavy lifting that needs something beyond the standard iMac lineup now...and then you can just get the iMac Pro for that.
Actually, I like both OS's, for different reasons. Sort of the way I like iPhones and Samsungs for different reasons.
Yeah, Apple took tablets a while ago. Android had some interesting options—I tried the 2013 Note 10 for a few months—but they never got the developer support there either. Think about that for a moment, in an ecosystem as massive as Android, they still struggled to get tablet support from developers. I eventually came to the conclusion that if you want a tablet to use mostly as a tablet, it’s iPad or nothing. UWP is not going to save MS in a tablet environment if Android couldn’t get there either. iPad is touch first, with the ability to use a keyboard when needed. The Surface is a laptop, with the ability to be touch-only, when needed. When I had Surface devices, the type cover was essential, almost to the point of not being willing to detach it. The iPad never has that feel, and the keyboard doesn’t ever feel necessary. I think once the keyboard becomes a near-permanent fixture, the tablet experience is a compromise due to bulk.
Uh, no. Surface is a poor excuse for a computer - not reliable, costly, and Windows.
It does not matter. Windows gives you a full OS, apple gives you a bigger iPhone. Go figure.
I really find this interesting. Now that Apple and Google obviously are into the educational market, Microsoft obviously see’s something that they feel that has potential as well if this rumor proves to be accurate. I know a lot of comments in here are disparaging against Microsoft , but I do think they have an opportunity here to at least bring something entry level and that could be more competition in the educational sector for an affordable price point.
Own one... love it... that's probably why someone would buy one. I replaced a Dell laptop and a Mac with it and quite happy with the experience.
If they are shooting for this lower price point, however, will be interesting to see how its done. I am going to guess it will be via Windows on ARM and the always connected approach.
its a good point. Educational market isn't going to be buying $1000 tablets for students, especially Grade 9-13s. A low cost option is really ideal. It's why Chromebooks have sort of become the defacto standard in educational markets (they also have fantastic centralized management for administrators). Windows platforms too have incredibly powerful centralized management, which educational admins would love. Problem is, affordable options that aren't poor quality in windows space is fairly rare. We've all had experience with $300 windows laptops that are unmitigated pieces of excrement.
If thats your experience then you obviously don't spend enough time on these programmes to have been frustrated with them and have the need for them to be fluid. There isn't an apple product at the moment that there is a completely fluid experience for CC because apple dictates the hardware. These mid range ATI cards even the Vega GPUs...
I bought my father a base 2017 5k iMac for Christmas and its painful to use CC on, just not fast enough. Especially with that 5k display. Its pushing 14 million pixels and trying to run at 60FPS on a 560... making edits in any photographic program is so slow. The hardware just isn't fast enough. Add that to the thermal properties of the 2017 iMac especially the i7... such a waste.
The iMac pro is again the same issue. The hex core 8600k can be overclocked to 5ghz and keep up with the iMac pro you can even chuck a GTX 1080 in there with it and it will perform almost the same as the base line iMac pro granted you don't get the 5k display but its like £1500 for a comparable system... not 5 grand, you don't need server grade hardware in an iMac these are 9-5 machines not machines where you leave a motion graphics project to render for three days. That 5k display isn't the answer you need some super heavy graphics performance to push those pixels in intensive programs, lightroom runs like SH*T on the iMac pro.
Even in photos in the apple store they have D810 raw files in the demo libraries... try changing the exposure next time your in there. Like watching paint dry.
Mac OS is a windows type OS. What happens when you click on an icon? A new window opens. The two OS's are not so different.
True. Sometimes we are so familiar with a UI that we can forget just how much we take for granted.
I might be mistaken (it's been a while since I bought a new macOS device), but out-of-the-box there is no intuitive way to get access to documents and applications on a macOS device. The first thing I would do for folks was to put an alias to Applications and Documents in their dock.
IT departments will deploy these instead of iPads. It’s MS windows. IT wants an ms shop.
My workplace IT weenies have been trying to get rid of iPads in favour of surface and/or laptops for years. If these new surface tablets have GPS it would be very hard to fight back.
My work tried to get us to shift to windows phone for years, the iPhone/Ipad profile cripples a lot of their functionality.
My workplace IT weenies have been trying to get rid of iPads in favour of surface and/or laptops for years. If these new surface tablets have GPS it would be very hard to fight back.
My work tried to get us to shift to windows phone for years, the iPhone/Ipad profile cripples a lot of their functionality.
How long did Windows 10S last?
Microsoft suffers from "corporate ADD". Not only do they not stick with something and see it through to the end, but they reboot and re-reboot (think, Windows CE, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile Phone, etc.) a platform which erodes what little customer/developer confidence existed.I won't even get into the Zune situation. I LOVED that player and software.
All of my experiences with Microsoft as a customer and an employee (an employee of IBM working with Microsoft on OS/2) have taught me to take Microsoft's products at current face value. Don't believe in what they promise. (Yo Panay, where are all those "blades" you were promising for the Surface?
) Don't believe that things will be fixed. Don't depend on after-sale support. Assume that what you see is what you get... nothing more, but sometimes something less.
Every Surface I've ever used feels cheap and flimsy and the pseudo-touch UI laid on top of the standard Windows UI just makes for a mess of an experience. I find them to be a constant source of frustration, but to each his own.
I know all too well, I had to suffer the ignominy of windows phone’s shortcomings on Nokia hardware until it just became too much when windows phone (mobile) 10 basically bricked my Lumia 930... in fairness 8.1 was pretty solid and polished, just had weird quirks that made using it frustrating and Internet explorer was really, really clunky and often rendered webpages in such a way that they were unusable whereas chrome and safari did it fine...How long did Windows 10S last?
I won't even get into the Zune situation. I LOVED that player and software.
All of my experiences with Microsoft as a customer and an employee (an employee of IBM working with Microsoft on OS/2) have taught me to take Microsoft's products at current face value. Don't believe in what they promise. (Yo Panay, where are all those "blades" you were promising for the Surface?
As far as 10S goes I don’t think it’s all that big a deal in itself, they offered it on a grand total of one device, which had upgrade rights to 10 pro from the start, and if a business has tried to build it’s IT around that system (unlikely due to the aforementioned limited availability) the functionality is still there and can be activated... the problem is more the image due to past form as you say
Interesting as their current prices in the Surface line are Apple-like. Having said that, they offer up to a GTX1060 in the new Surface Book, and it has touch, so I guess there is more call for the markup.
But their current lower-end models are still very expensive. This could be good for many as long as they don't RT this 10S business. I still have the Surface RT, and it is fantastic for what it does, but it is a shame they DoAed that OS. USB C would be good to see on Surface as their proprietary power port is just not quite ideal - it has come a long way since that first Surface for sure though!
But their current lower-end models are still very expensive. This could be good for many as long as they don't RT this 10S business. I still have the Surface RT, and it is fantastic for what it does, but it is a shame they DoAed that OS. USB C would be good to see on Surface as their proprietary power port is just not quite ideal - it has come a long way since that first Surface for sure though!
MacOS out-of-the-box: Left two icons in the Dock:
Finder - access to files (and more).
Launchpad - super easy access to apps.
It doesn't get any more intuitive than that.