Microsoft Says New Surface Pro is Faster Than 15" M3 MacBook Air

[Velli]

Apple surely doesn’t look competitive anymore and are losing market share on all fronts. Almost every brand has copied Apple’s famous vertical integration by now. The thing that used to set Apple apart from the competition. Some better than others. I hope wwdc will bring some big changes soon. Otherwise I think Apple will become the next Nokia although in a slower space. Name one Apple product that sits apart head and shoulders above the competition. I can’t think of one, you?

By which measure?

Regardless of your answer: iPad.

And, your comment that “every brand” has copied Apple’s vertical integration is ridiculous. Name one brand that supplies hardware and OS for a phone and a computer. Technically Google, but that is a stretch.

Otherwise, you need to expand on what you mean by “vertical integration”.

 

[Velli]

Absolutely nothing Apple makes anymore is class-leading, and that is objectively true and sad.

I will repeat myself: By which measure, and: iPad.

 

[Abazigal]

Apple surely doesn’t look competitive anymore and are losing market share on all fronts. Almost every brand has copied Apple’s famous vertical integration by now. The thing that used to set Apple apart from the competition. Some better than others. I hope wwdc will bring some big changes soon. Otherwise I think Apple will become the next Nokia although in a slower space. Name one Apple product that sits apart head and shoulders above the competition. I can’t think of one, you?

I will turn this question around on its head.

What exactly are the products that either are, or will lead people to abandon their Apple products in droves? Because so far, I haven’t quite seen any, nor can I really think of any.

Sure, we have seen tons of companies come out with self-proclaimed “Apple product killers”, and then you realise that they all tell to fall short in one way or another.

So yeah, let’s hear a few examples.

 

[Velli]

You have to add the ridiculously expansive "magic" keyboard on top!

On top of the one he already added??

 

[Steve686]

If your focus is gaming then you have been starving yourself using a Mac which are not gaming rigs. One thing to note is there is virtually no resale market for self-built gaming PC's or for that matter any PC. $1000 new PC would be lucky to get $200 in 5 years. The Mac Studio will have significant resale value 5 years from now. I am not criticizing, but it is worth noting when comparing the two.

I have used and sold/traded in a lot of Macs for my company and friends/family. I sold a 2011 MacBook Air for $250 (original cost $1299) and traded in my 2018 MBP in January for $700 (original cost: $3000). Those are ridiculous residual values that PC's could only dream of. Same for iPhones and iPads.

Of course your goal is gaming and you made the right choice for you.

If you understood a little better, I said I built the PC mainly for VR gaming,,, and knowing full well it could handle a Nikon Z8's files, both video and photo. 45megaipixel photos, and 4k Pro Res video are the upper specs of the Z8.

But as the days and months went on, I realized the PC was a pretty hardcore editing suite NEXT to my Mac Studio Ultra. So having seen this, that's where the Mac doesn't get turned on very much anymore.

And this is the whole point of my post, which is to say PC's have actually started rival what Apple is putting out there in terms of editing machines.

The other side of the coin is you can upgrade and upgrade a PC while Apple has adopted a try and buy system where you will be pretty much chained to what you pick up or is delivered to you. No upgrades available even though a Samsung 990PRO SSD will run as fast as the on board storage on the Mac.

I've sold and upgraded countless Macs over the years because I generally don't keep them more than 2-3 years, but that isn't the point. The point is the reason you sell Macs is because you have no upgrade options as far as logic board, memory, processor, GPU, ram, and so on. And you are so wrong on the front that PC has no resell value. If you look online, you will see countless parts for sale because there is always someone that wants to save a buck. That's the problem with Macs. They are tied to their original configuration and you can't just swap most of the on board components to make the machine more in line with current specs like you can a PC.

I don't say this lightly because I really thought I would retire down the road with nothing but Macs in my home.

 

[H_D]

The upgradeability of Winter has never really worked, imo, except for HDD and maybe RAM. New motherboards or CPU always demanded new components and basically I had to get new workstations every 3-4 years. Resale factor basically nil, except for some parts like RAID cards.
The iMacs I am currently selling are from 2013/14, were upgradeable (RAM and SSD) and served us very well for 10 years (and still would of it were not for the boostAS brought to Desktop computing). For most tasks these are still great machines and they still look great, which I cannot say of any Wintel I ever used 😇
And no external or internal SSD I know runs as fast as the one in my Studio/MBP so far at 7K and more.

 

[9081094]

I will turn this question around on its head.

What exactly are the products that either are, or will lead people to abandon their Apple products in droves? Because so far, I haven’t quite seen any, nor can I really think of any.

Sure, we have seen tons of companies come out with self-proclaimed “Apple product killers”, and then you realise that they all tell to fall short in one way or another.

So yeah, let’s hear a few examples.

Why turn the question around? Can’t you name any? Look at the market share numbers. They speak for themselves.

 

[Abazigal]

Why turn the question around? Can’t you name any? Look at the market share numbers. They speak for themselves.

I would have thought that the whole "the competition is winning in terms of profitless market share" argument would have been beaten to death by now. Not least because Apple continues to command the lion's share of profits in the respective markets they compete in, despite having minority market share.

This works because while something like 20% worldwide smartphone market share sounds like a rather small number, it's still a very number in an absolute sense (Apple has well over a 1 billion active iPhone users at this point, for example). Enough to sustain its own thriving ecosystem.

I also ask because I really am not seeing anything the competition is offering that would make me remotely tempted to throw my existing Apple setup out of the window and switch over entirely. I am all-in on the Apple ecosystem and it's working great for me.

First is the iPhone (I am currently using the 13 pro max), with its great battery life, good screen, and the wide ecosystem of apps (people often hype up Android's ability to sideload, but remain quiet when I point out that you can't sideload an app that simply doesn't exist for Android, like 1password, Ivory, Overcast, Notability, Things, Play, Infuse and Fantastical (there used to be more, but a couple have gone under since then).

Second is the iPad, which I have using to teach in the classroom for 12 years now. Windows tablets simply do not come close to replacing the iPad for me because of the way I use it (I do not want a desktop OS running on it), while android tablets continue to lack apps such as notability, and they only just recently got lumafusion.

Next is my M1 MBA which is still going strong. Long battery life, excellent performance, no noise or heat, and macOS comes with quite a bit of notability out of the box (till this day, I don't understand why I have to open a pdf in Microsoft Edge in order to annotate on it, instead of a dedicated pdf management app).

Rounding out the Apple ecosystem are the Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, AirTags and Apple TV. I sync my photos and back up my devices using iCloud. I toss files around with airdrop. Continuity lets me receive and make calls on my other devices. I save articles to reading list. People often make light of Apple's services, but they do go a long way towards making the Apple experience more cohesive.

My 2017 5k iMac no longer receives updates, but my dad still uses it to watch movies and for light productivity. One thing I notice about windows is that they simply do not make any decent AIO PCs (though to be fair, neither does Apple of late). 😕

I don't exactly game either (have a Switch that's gathering dust somewhere), so I am not missing out by not getting a costly and bulky gaming PC either.

So yeah, what exactly is the competition doing to compete against all of this? I ask because I am honestly not seeing it.

 

[okkibs]

This new surface pro actually looks decent and there is only one major flaw I can see: As it's running Windows why would anyone buy what's the least reliable line of devices on the market when there is a wide variety of Windows devices to choose from?

From https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-surface-idUSKBN1AQ1EP/

Altogether, the reliability issues made Microsoft a statistical outlier compared with other brands. Apple Inc had the most reliable devices, Beilinson said.

If I am looking to buy a Windows device and have the choice between a Surface that isn't even running a Windows version fully supported by all apps (ARM Windows) and something reliable like a Thinkpad then I'd just get that.

 

[9081094]

I would have thought that the whole "the competition is winning in terms of profitless market share" argument would have been beaten to death by now. Not least because Apple continues to command the lion's share of profits in the respective markets they compete in, despite having minority market share.

This works because while something like 20% worldwide smartphone market share sounds like a rather small number, it's still a very number in an absolute sense (Apple has well over a 1 billion active iPhone users at this point, for example). Enough to sustain its own thriving ecosystem.

I also ask because I really am not seeing anything the competition is offering that would make me remotely tempted to throw my existing Apple setup out of the window and switch over entirely. I am all-in on the Apple ecosystem and it's working great for me.

First is the iPhone (I am currently using the 13 pro max), with its great battery life, good screen, and the wide ecosystem of apps (people often hype up Android's ability to sideload, but remain quiet when I point out that you can't sideload an app that simply doesn't exist for Android, like 1password, Ivory, Overcast, Notability, Things, Play, Infuse and Fantastical (there used to be more, but a couple have gone under since then).

Second is the iPad, which I have using to teach in the classroom for 12 years now. Windows tablets simply do not come close to replacing the iPad for me because of the way I use it (I do not want a desktop OS running on it), while android tablets continue to lack apps such as notability, and they only just recently got lumafusion.

Next is my M1 MBA which is still going strong. Long battery life, excellent performance, no noise or heat, and macOS comes with quite a bit of notability out of the box (till this day, I don't understand why I have to open a pdf in Microsoft Edge in order to annotate on it, instead of a dedicated pdf management app).

Rounding out the Apple ecosystem are the Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, AirTags and Apple TV. I sync my photos and back up my devices using iCloud. I toss files around with airdrop. Continuity lets me receive and make calls on my other devices. I save articles to reading list. People often make light of Apple's services, but they do go a long way towards making the Apple experience more cohesive.

My 2017 5k iMac no longer receives updates, but my dad still uses it to watch movies and for light productivity. One thing I notice about windows is that they simply do not make any decent AIO PCs (though to be fair, neither does Apple of late). 😕

I don't exactly game either (have a Switch that's gathering dust somewhere), so I am not missing out by not getting a costly and bulky gaming PC either.

So yeah, what exactly is the competition doing to compete against all of this? I ask because I am honestly not seeing it.

Good for you. But again you’re not giving any answer to the question. Just a pro Apple rant of ancient products.

 

[Abazigal]

Good for you. But again you’re not giving any answer to the question. Just a pro Apple rant of ancient products.

What kind of answer are you looking for then? I really do not see any meaningful competition arising from the other side, and I don’t see any threat to Apple’s current business model.

 

[9081094]

What kind of answer are you looking for then? I really do not see any meaningful competition arising from the other side, and I don’t see any threat to Apple’s current business model.

See my first post where you tried to reverse the question.

 

[mrmod]

I hope that the surface pro is even better than what Microsoft claims. Maybe it will light a fire under Apple. Apple SSD and RAM "upgrade" prices are completely ridiculous.

 

[9081094]

I hope that the surface pro is even better than what Microsoft claims. Maybe it will light a fire under Apple. Apple SSD and RAM "upgrade" prices are completely ridiculous.

At least they could offer 16 gb ram and 512 mb ssd as a bare minimum to start with.

 

[xaanaax]

It seems like lots of people here are saying it's a shame it's still Windows OS and that they buy Mac's because of the macOS.

I just googled current global market share and it's 73% Windows and 14% macOS.

Personally I'm a Windows user but I've just ordered Macbook Air M2 because I love the M2's performance and efficiency, although I'd stick to Windows if this was an option, W11 works great for me as a Web Dev, it's stable, my PC runs constantly for months without a need for a restart, there's some great apps I love on Windows that aren't available on macOS like IrfanView, FileOptimizer, File Converter, instant eyedropper, that's just some of them... Not to mention things like when copying files macOS doesn't show time left to complete, etc...

Designers at work complain the same about Adobe software crashing (InDesign, Photoshop) as the ones using Windows...

I'm still looking forward to using my new macbook, I'm just a bit surprised about people preferring macOS instead of Windows so much...

 

[Delivered]

Great perspective. I totally agree. Great to have competition, and others have options.

I have a MacBook Air bc the iPad Pro is limited and sometimes I just want a super light device that isn’t going to limit me. I have an iPad Pro bc I want to use a stylus and a lot Of creative apps I use are iPad only. Apple suckered me into getting two devices. Have only just recently started addressing these issues but doing so over many years.

I think if Microsoft can move faster and offer a better tablet mode on windows they could convince me to save ALOT of money by going all in on surface. The only thing holding me back is software like audiohijack, Logic Pro, Xcode. Otherwise Microsoft has equivalents for everything else and if I let go of my Apple attachment I have no need for Xcode and I can learn flstudio/abelton. I don’t need this chip to beat m1-m4 in perf/watt. I just need it to get within a few hours and have better software compatibility with older games. I was about to buy an m4 iPad Pro and now I’m really thinking I could abrogate two devices and use just one for both. That software ecosystem is much more flexible than apples too so I’d never have to put up with a bad surface pro bc I can just hope over to Samsung and never miss a beat.

 

[Homy]

It's funny that they mention a couple of benchmarks and forget about the rest. Here is a long review by Ryan Shrout showing that MBA has better thermal performance and is faster in many tests despite having only 4 P-cores and 4 E-cores compared with Elite X 12 P-cores.

MBA M3 is faster in GB 6 single thread test (+15%), Cinebench single thread test (+17%), Chrome browser test with Speedometer (+40%) and JetStream (+27%), Excel and Powerpoint (+6%, +16%), 3DMark Steel Nomad (+35%), 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Unlimited (+31%), 3DMark Solar Bay Unlimited (+29%) and Blender (+17%).

 

[GuruZac]

I

I have a MacBook Air bc the iPad Pro is limited and sometimes I just want a super light device that isn’t going to limit me. I have an iPad Pro bc I want to use a stylus and a lot Of creative apps I use are iPad only. Apple suckered me into getting two devices. Have only just recently started addressing these issues but doing so over many years.

I think if Microsoft can move faster and offer a better tablet mode on windows they could convince me to save ALOT of money by going all in on surface. The only thing holding me back is software like audiohijack, Logic Pro, Xcode. Otherwise Microsoft has equivalents for everything else and if I let go of my Apple attachment I have no need for Xcode and I can learn flstudio/abelton. I don’t need this chip to beat m1-m4 in perf/watt. I just need it to get within a few hours and have better software compatibility with older games. I was about to buy an m4 iPad Pro and now I’m really thinking I could abrogate two devices and use just one for both. That software ecosystem is much more flexible than apples too so I’d never have to put up with a bad surface pro bc I can just hope over to Samsung and never miss a beat.

I can make do with an iPad Pro for the most part. I do love what MS is doing as it’s certainly an improvement. But I don’t think I could support MS knowing I’m enriching Bill Gates.

 

[lindros2]

I will turn this question around on its head.

What exactly are the products that either are, or will lead people to abandon their Apple products in droves? Because so far, I haven’t quite seen any, nor can I really think of any.

Sure, we have seen tons of companies come out with self-proclaimed “Apple product killers”, and then you realise that they all tell to fall short in one way or another.

So yeah, let’s hear a few examples.

Apple has created a very reliable, desirable walled garden.
Each of the hardware, software, and services products increases the overall value.

Windows doesn't have that. So much as Microsoft has tried, they've layered more and more crap on top.
Sure, I subscribe to O365/M365 and Xbox GamePass.

But it's far less valuable to me than my Apple ecosystem.

 

[Delivered]

I

I can make do with an iPad Pro for the most part. I do love what MS is doing as it’s certainly an improvement. But I don’t think I could support MS knowing I’m enriching Bill Gates.

Which is worse than supporting Tim Cook? I don’t get it. When you are Bill Gates rich you just get rich off the system working. He’s probably got Apple stock. 😂🤣

 

[Frantisekj]

Be careful with the ISA’s. M4 “may” be adherent to the v9 ISA, but it’s not just an Arm designed chip.

In this I trust Gary. Not many YouTubers has such knowledge. And sure Apple goes beyond ordinary Arm design. But instructions and features match v9.

 

[noraa]

Absolutely nothing Apple makes anymore is class-leading, and that is objectively true and sad.

That's complete bull and you know it. The M-series chips are still class leading (despite what MS is claiming here). The Snapdragon X is a.) actively cooled, and b.) being compared to the lowest-end M3 in a passively cooled system, and NOT to the just released M4.

The Vision Pro, while extremely niche and incredibly expensive, has been praised for it's class-leading image quality when compared to other headsets.

While some people look at the iPad as a toy (and since we're apparently bandying around terms incorrectly, is objectively wrong), the are countless others, especially artists, who see it as incredibly powerful and flexible tablet and content creation machine. Combined with the Apple Pencil, there is simply nothing on the market that is comparable.

The AirPods, especially the AirPods Pro, are widely considered some of the best true wireless earbuds on the market. There are some that may have a bit better sound quality or a bit better noise cancellation or cost less, but none have the level of easy pairing and integration within the Apple ecosystem as the AirPods do.

The iPhone still has, by a very large margin, the fastest SOC in any handheld device out there. Even the latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 can hold a candle to the A-series of chips.

So, what you have just said is objectively UNtrue and sad.

 

[brofkand]

That's complete bull and you know it. The M-series chips are still class leading (despite what MS is claiming here). The Snapdragon X is a.) actively cooled, and b.) being compared to the lowest-end M3 in a passively cooled system, and NOT to the just released M4.

The Vision Pro, while extremely niche and incredibly expensive, has been praised for it's class-leading image quality when compared to other headsets.

While some people look at the iPad as a toy (and since we're apparently bandying around terms incorrectly, is objectively wrong), the are countless others, especially artists, who see it as incredibly powerful and flexible tablet and content creation machine. Combined with the Apple Pencil, there is simply nothing on the market that is comparable.

The AirPods, especially the AirPods Pro, are widely considered some of the best true wireless earbuds on the market. There are some that may have a bit better sound quality or a bit better noise cancellation or cost less, but none have the level of easy pairing and integration within the Apple ecosystem as the AirPods do.

The iPhone still has, by a very large margin, the fastest SOC in any handheld device out there. Even the latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 can hold a candle to the A-series of chips.

So, what you have just said is objectively UNtrue and sad.

The iPad Pro is a good art machine but only in a vacuum. When you consider you can run a full OS (which means full Photoshop, Illustrator, etc) on a Surface - the appeal of the iPad Pro is somewhat less appealing, especially now with the new platform that Microsoft just announced.

You say the Airpods are the best - but then say that others are better at things that people actually buy headphones for, like noise cancellation or sound quality. So I am confused there? The only thing that you seem to think makes AirPods the best is that they pair when you open the lid next to an iPhone? Give me a break.

The speed of the Apple Silicon is indeed excellent, so I suppose I should alter my statement and say that none of Apple's finished goods are class-leading anymore. Their silicon is class leading. But their products have worse features, or cost more, or do less, or have limitations, that their compeition does not have. In every single case.

 

[dba415]

So Apple had what, a few years of silicon supremacy and now it's over as Windows is catching up. I would sell Apple stock all of their advantages are falling.

 

[venom600]

So Apple had what, a few years of silicon supremacy and now it's over as Windows is catching up. I would sell Apple stock all of their advantages are falling.

Really? Do you actually own stock in Apple? It doesn’t sound like you do. If so you’re selling it because of… competition? Oh brother…