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Microsoft Says New Surface Pro is Faster Than 15" M3 MacBook Air
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I feel that right now, we are still missing critical information and context regarding Microsoft's claims. And from past experience with Windows laptops, I have learnt to halve any battery life claims they make, while also boosting Apple's claims by about 10%.
Even if these claims hold up to scrutiny, you are comparing laptops with fans to the fan-less MBA. In addition, Apple also sells computers with the M3 pro and M3 max chips, a comparison Microsoft has been very conscious to avoid drawing comparisons with. Of course, one cannot forget the M4 chip recently unveiled by Apple, which should eventually make its way into their Macs (I am guessing the MBA will be the next beneficiary). So the comparisons may already be outdated even before those ARM windows laptops are released.
Microsoft and their OEM partners are not going to be winning any users back from Apple based on this keynote alone. It's all about them trying to stop enterprise partners from switching to Apple Silicon Macs.
That's really my takeaway from the entire presentation. For an event that was supposedly all about Microsoft, it seemed to end being all about Apple more than anything else. Imagine that - the entire PC market is unable to escape the shadow of a company with single digit market share in PC computing.
I would personally be more worried for the shareholders of Intel and AMD (I don't understand why their representatives were even present here). But sell your Apple stock by all means. It's your loss at the end of the day, not anyone else's.
Microsoft, though more of a stretch than Google. At one point they did make all of those. They've ditched their phone OS but they do still make a phone. That said, they make some excellent phone apps. I use their launcher and keyboard on Android, there's nothing better out there.
That said, both Microsoft and Google are in the business of licensing an OS, so they won't ever vertically integrate to the point of shutting down third party hardware running their software via license. If they were being built today as computer and phone companies (not what either started as), that might be a goal. Look at what Elon Musk is doing with Tesla, making batteries as well as the cars. That's certainly following in Apple's footsteps of vertical integration. Then you have Walmart and Amazon, building their own shipping and distribution networks and even manufacturing products. That's certainly vertical integration, and just a few examples off the top of my head. I'm certain there are others in other industries.
It’s a 2 in 1 laptop technically. With full Windows software. The iPad is a tablet with a gimped mobile os. The comparisons seen here aren’t really comparable. It’s like starting a discussion about a MacBook Pro vs a Windows server. What it excels at is a fast, lightweight, power sipping Windows machine if you NEED Windows. If you don’t need Windows, yea M chips and Apple software all day. If you work in a Windows corporate environment, or a Windows dev shop these machine are game changers, just as M chips were for Apple.
I’ve been running windows 11 through UTM in a virtual machine on the Mac m2 and it runs absolutely brilliantly. You’ll be pleasantly surprised!
I have run WoA under UTM and it was good, I think Parallels excels in its method of making Windows apps run as "native" which is cool. But Parallels price per year is a bit much considering I have a Windows box anyway. I'd buy it for that but annual payments.....nah thanks.
Microsofts phone is literally the opposite of vertical integration… I don’t really care what other segments are doing, nog sure why that is relevant to the discussion.
All of my work is done on unix based/like systems meaning I am used to and need the tools provided on such systems and access them through a terminal emulator. MacOS does all this natively and expands on that with the package manager brew. Windows on the other hand can't even establish a ssh connection. It merely offers to install the third party OpenSSH software and that option is hidden somewhere in settings. I recently tried installing a python video converting script that I really wanted to run on a powerful windows workstation. It first kept failing on the current stable windows python release and after googling a while and going through threads of others with the same problem the solution was to use an older python release. However the script still threw random errors and after wasting plenty of time I decided to cut my losses and ran the same thing on MacOS where it worked on the first try without having to jump through any hoops. Presumably because the script was never tested on Windows and some prerequisite packages just weren't 1:1 the same.
Yeah sure all the usual stuff for music, e-mail and so on works just fine on Windows and Lightroom too. But I can do all of that literally on my iPhone, it even runs a usable Lightroom version and I could connect it to a USB-C display if I wanted to. I obviously do that on an iPad and not on the iPhone but it shows how little desire I have to do anything on Windows. Except gaming, it's obviously great for that.
So I do have a gaming pc with Windows 11 and it's fine for that but I dislike everything else. Starts when I boot it up and I see my background image is interrupted by 2 desktop.ini files that are always shown there because I have hidden files shown in Explorer. I don't want these desktop.ini files there as if it was Windows 95 but if I delete them they just come back. Why can't I see hidden files in Explorer without being forced to have that useless trash on the desktop?
This makes zero difference to how my apps work but there's dozens upon dozens of such tiny things that make me not want to use Windows. I dislike how the taskbar works and keeps changing the entire screen when I accidentally touch the tiny preview window, I can go on and on.
Not to mention how unreliable the Surfaces are, they break down more often than other well known brands. Even if that thing ran MacOS and had twice the performance and battery of a Macbook I still wouldn't want it.
What does the naming matter, when the Microsoft device is cheaper than a MacBook Air? 🧐
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Because they are comparing a Pro version product to a customer grade product. That's what matters. And a more premium product for the extra price (opinion, but widely expected). Just like you can get a the Mustang Mach 1 for much cheaper than a entry level BMW 3 series, and while it is be faster, your comparing a "Pro" product, with an entry level product, Ford's Best, vs BMW's starter.
I'm sorry, but in this instance you clearly invented this pro/consumer laptop divide in your mind.
An operating system is software. Trust me, I've written plenty of software to know what I'm talking about.
I mean, by that logic, even a netbook is capable of performing tasks an iPad cannot, by virtue of it running a desktop OS. It still doesn't mean I will get one, and it didn't stop the netbook from tanking as a product category at the end of the day.
A more apt analogy might be - You think you are lapping everyone else in the race, and then you look around you and realise that you are all alone and everyone else is competing in an entirely different race from you. At the end of the day, I am not buying one of those convertible laptops to replace both my MBA and iPad Pro. I continue to use both, I select whichever is best for the current given situation, and I find I am better off for it.
Are you trolling, or did you forget the /s tag? Windows of course is software, not silicon...
Also the [unvalidated] MS comparison claim was of course only against the lowest end of M-series silicon.
If you know any artists (which I do - including my sister), many prefer the quality of the iPad screen (not matched by any Surface tablet), the quality and tactical feel of the Apple Pencil (also not matched by the Surface tablets), and the overall simplicity of the iPad than any flexibility benefits the Surface might provide.
As for the AirPods Pro, perhaps I wasn't clear, but as an overall package, they are class leading in many ways. While some competitors do have better sound quality or better noise cancellation, none match all that the AirPods Pro provide - in both quality and ease of use. And that ease of use extends beyond the simplicity of pairing, but to the fact that once it's paired with one device, all devices connected to your iCloud account automatically are paired to the AirPods. Switching b/w devices is a piece of cake, and more often than not the switching happens automatically. Add the Find My integration, and the overall package that is the AirPods/AirPods Pro can't be beat.
Speaking of Find My, that's another product (or in this case I guess service) from Apple that is definitely class leading. There isn't a single other item tracking network like it. Tile and Google have something similar, but neither network is nearly as robust or powerful as Find My. I truly can't speak highly enough about how good the Find My network is. If it wasn't for an AirTag I would never have recovered my stolen eScooter (something I posted about on these very forums). I know other people who have recovered their stolen vehicles, found lost luggage and car keys, all because of an AirTag and the Find My network.
Yeah UTM is great - but it doesn't have 3d video acceleration. It you don't need that, use UTM for free.
However, Parallels' 3d video acceleration is good enough to run 3d apps pretty well including a lot of 3d games inside the VM.
Why would I run a slightly better integrated VM when MacOS can do my workflows natively? I am not looking to boot a linux vm in Windows. It's a perfect example of why I don't use Windows, it would just be jumping through hoops and even if I get 90% of the functionality in the end, a Mac gives me 100% of it straight out of the box.
Keep in mind I am not currently deciding which system I would like to use going forward, I have established workflows that really 'just work' at this point. I am a MacOS user since OSX Leopard though back then Windows was still my preferred platform until I got a much better Mac with OSX Mountain Lion (which was at the time one of the most problem free systems I used, I never much cared for Windows 7 and Windows 10 which I liked better wasn't out yet, I even used Windows 8 and didn't mind it but it wasn't better than Windows 7). After over a decade of running my own business and making my money exclusively with Apple hardware Windows would have to give me a serious benefit over MacOS for me to consider switching. The Qualcomm Elite certainly isn't that.
At the very best these Surfaces or rather their hardware would come close to my Macbook and even that is wishful thinking, I find most expensive Windows laptops to feel like cheap toys in comparison and I bet this Surface won't be any different. (The Thinkpad X1 Carbon would be about what I am aiming for here although even that looks more generic than ever, not too much left of the original Thinkpad design language...)
So these new Surfaces not even being close to being on par with my 14" MBP let alone surpassing them makes them very uninteresting. Performance is being compared to the M3 base SoC at a time where M4 Max MBPs are just around the corner. The moment they receive the 1000 nits tandem OLED panels that's going to be my next upgrade.
Once the Surfaces have caught up with that they'll just need to be better and of course ship with MacOS. But they won't even catch up in the hardware department. And I honestly wish they did because real competition would benefit me as an almost Apple-exclusive user as well, but they never do. There is always something that's worse, whether it's battery life or display brightness or excessive fan noise or performance or build quality or usually? All of those things combined. Windows is just the foul cherry on top of it all.
I actually used Fireflys, Elitebooks, Latitudes, and Thinkpads and did repairs on some of them, so I am not making this up, I am speaking from actual experience. I once had an Elitebook (might have been a Probook, not sure) where I wanted to replace a rattling fan just one year into its life (yeah it had a 1 year warranty that wasn't upgraded) and realized I had to remove the keyboard just for that. It was held in by clips so strongly I gave up in the end. When I later tried to replace the preinstalled M.2 drive I found that screw came stripped from the factory. Needless to say I recommend against anything HP nowadays. I even had one of the early gen Surfaces but it didn't go better than my HP experiences.
I'm happy with the current performance of the M series processor w/MacOS and no amount of benchmark superiority will get me back to Windows for my personal devices. Whether the new Snapdragon X w/Win 11 is marginally better or worse is irrelevant. *But* I am quite excited that I may finally see the same improvements I saw when I switched my Intel Mac to M1 for my office PCs (assuming our IT allow them). Crossing fingers.
This!!!
i don't get the Apple hardcore fans. They get so blinded by a single company, they assume everything else is bad. I use Windows, MacOs, Linux and Android on a daily basis. I have an Ipad Pro M1 and there is a lot wrong with the OS for sure, but it has a few apps I use a lot. I have a Macbook pro and have Windows for arm on it, it works great. I also have a Galaxy S24 Ultra, because I prefer it to Apples phones which I have had many. I have a Linux mini PC i have been using recently for Music, because I can actually run Windows VSTs apps on it through Wine. Which is amazing.
People complain that windows is bloated and they are correct, it is. It is a fully featured OS that supports multiple CPUs, Graphics Cards, Motherboards, external devices and many many more use cases. MacOS is not. If I want to run Linux on Windows, I can do that. If I want a laptop with dual screens - I can have that with Windows. If I want a an ARM PC, I can have that also with Windows. If I want a PC that fits in my pocket, that I just plug into a monitor and full desktop experience, i can have that. If I want a handheld gaming device to run PC games and then use Office whilst on a plane, I can have that. If I want a laptop designed to withstand -60 degrees C in the south pole, well i can have that too and so on. You have complete freedom to have any type of device you want.
Apple is simplified, they have great apps and appeal to mostly the creative market and that's great. I am one of those people and it works for my use case, which is why have a Macbook and an Ipad. If MacOS had to support everything Windows does and cater for all the differing peoples needs, then it too would be bloated. Apple is not perfect at all in the hardware department either, I have had issues with build quality in the past with bent Ipads and iphones.
But to say Windows is the worst is just plain wrong. Its a bloody amazing OS that can do a whole lot of things, I find the UI nicer than MacOS by a long way, just looking at the setting app is clearer, easy to navigate than Apples long list approach and very poor search. The taskbar is better again, the fact that I can just search immediately without having to click on an app etc.
I hate Safari and have no choice but to keep it on my Ipad. Apple go out of their way to MAKE you have it.
So in essence, Apple's products are only world-class when you buy a lot of them so they can all work together. Taken by themselves they are not class-leading.
Sure they are. Show us a more capable fanless laptop out there.
I've yet to find any laptop that "checks all the boxes" in a cohesive unit like Macbooks do. You may find a machine with a brilliant screen, but other compromises were made. You can get more powerful laptops, but they're heavy, bulky, and as soon as you unplug them to run off battery they lose 40+% of their speed.
I've yet to see anything come close to the full overall package of a Mac in the Windows world.