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

[SoldOnApple]

Funny because Jobs and Wozniak stole their original Mac ideas and the concept of a mouse from Xerox...

Well they didn't steal it, they paid to look at it. The price they paid was incredibly undervalued, that visit should really have cost many millions and involved some kind of licensing/royalty scheme. The Xerox engineers were apparently fuming, they were really the only ones that understood what was happening other than Apple and MS themselves.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Funny because Jobs and Wozniak stole their original Mac ideas and the concept of a mouse from Xerox...

Incorrect. Folks who post such comments (and also those folks who like on such posts) should do basic homework before posting lies. The fact is that Xerox PARC had the GUI idea but did know what to do with it (surprising because at the time Xerox largely owned the word processing space). Woz/Jobs toured PARC, recognized the value of the GUI, and bought the GUI from Xerox. What the value of the Apple stock that Xerox received might be worth today boggles the mind.

MS after buying DOS (for ~$50k IIRC) later appropriated (I will not say stole like you did about Apple; folks can read the court documents) the GUI from Apple. Gates through his born-with-silver-spoon connections and very good business acumen then got IBM to use the DOS MS bought, and MS was on its way to #1 despite doing things like missing the internet. This second para added because the kinds of folks who think Woz/Jobs stole GUI also often think Gates was some kind of great tech oracle who invented MS-DOS, which he did not do.

 

[mprime_17]

That's nice and all but where are the passively cooled devices?

 

[@Brett]

Price wise yes. But windows is now bloated Ad riddled mess. If I didn’t have to use it for work I would not use it at all.

 

[Tozovac]

I have a Surface as a work laptop. Never use the touchscreen. Never.

 

[btrach144]

And it ships with a usable and powerful OS to boot. Lolz at iPadOS

 

[Unregistered 4U]

And even figured out how to do facial recognition in that small of a space! Microsoft must be poaching Apple engineers - they figured out what Apple can't - how to fit a camera in a small space without notching the display. Amazing space age technology!

That’s easy, too. As long as you decrease the security of it by not requiring a 3D scan, just an image that can be tricked by a photograph, then using an 1080p camera for facial recognition is also possible. Microsoft is just showing what things look like with different corners are cut (removing screen, removing 3D FaceID).

 

[Unregistered 4U]

competition is good.

If they compete. As it is, next year Apple will be taking the crown for most efficient/performant processor from themselves again for a whole lot of years running.

 

[DownUnderDan]

The biggest takeaway of the new Surface for me is they are pitching this against the Macbook Air which is a more expensive computer, but base memory in all these new machines Microsoft launched is 16GB. Apple is going to have to move up to 16GB RAM in Air to win the comparison test in the box stores. They have no choice now.

 

[Analog Kid]

That's exactly what happened. Nonsense like the Apple Car and new emojis

I'm at the point now where I can't tell who's trying to be funny anymore...

 

[witchcult]

sounds pretty great for the price considering apple is incapable of putting macos on the iPad. Mac OS is just getting buggier by the year these days. I started on Panther.

 

[bousozoku]

If this turns out to be true, it is time for Apple to stop sleeping on the couch and compete.

Apple Silicon's heyday is over, Apple needs to start innovating again instead of doing minor spec bumps.

Yes, I will still buy a Mac and many others will too because of the software, but for those who need hardware, it might be a good buy for them.

I'm not sure where you've been, but the whole industry has been doing minor spec bumps until a whole new architecture is available.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Begun, the ARM-based OS wars have.

Not. Cares, seriously who?

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

2, maybe 3, issues with anything based on this combo. One, it's Windows, with all the telemetry, tracking, and ads you can stand, and two, graphics drivers are a serious concern--Adreno has never been great in that regard. The third could be thermals, but that's a wait n see moment.

 

[dgdosen]

I read somewhere that MS has an exclusive license to the chip - but I can't wait for a Linux distro on these things.

 

[Jacob1447]

what level of performance increase offsets the fact that you have to use windows? for me would have to maybe be around 4x the speed.

 

[gatorvet96]

That's exactly what happened. Nonsense like the Apple Car and new emojis

New emojis has little to do with Apple. It is cross platform By Unicode

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

The biggest takeaway of the new Surface for me is they are pitching this against the Macbook Air which is a more expensive computer, but base memory in all these new machines Microsoft launched is 16GB. Apple is going to have to move up to 16GB RAM in Air to win the comparison test in the box stores. They have no choice now.

Yeah, I noticed this too. You kinda need 16GB on Windows 11. It will soak up 6GB+ just sitting there after a boot with nothing open. I do hope Apple has no choice but to bump to 16GB this next round, but we'll see.

Ultimately, I don't know how much worry there should be. With ARM Windows, you lose a lot of legacy app (pre 64bit) support, and you might run into legacy hardware issues for anything that looks for x86. So, just like the AMR Mac Pros can't do anything with dedicated GPUs, ARM Windows will have the same problem, and IMO, it's a much bigger problem. It reduces WoA machines to this hardware set only, and all the issues they might bring. Look how long it's taking Intel to make decent GPUs with proper driver support. Do we really think Qualcomm has more resources and experience to do the same? They'll make for maybe decent laptops, but that's it.

 

[wigby]

Happens on both platforms if you don't adjust the auto update settings right.

Mac users don’t even know about auto update settings. And they don’t need to which kind of proves their point.

 

[smulji]

So many people mostly interact with web apps now.

For mainstream users, vast majority of their interaction with the web happens via the browser or smartphone apps.

 

[Yamcha]

Looks beautiful

 

[KPOM]

Who should be more embarrassed Intel or Apple (for losing the silicon talent that went on to form Nuvia)?

Non compete agreements are worthless in California. Apple didn’t want to meet their demands.

 

[MacDownunder]

I have Win 11 Arm running on my M1 Air via Fusion and performance is fine of what I need, so I can do both if I want no choice to make ;-)

Having said that competition is great for the consumer, the ground breaking step of M Series is over and now with the Surface et al looking to Arm now looks like we are back into CPU manufacturers leapfrogging each other again.

 

[wigby]

Apple’s worry isn’t the hardware, they’ve got that covered. It’s the lack of AI integration in macOS and iOS. They’re beyond late to the party. AI will revolutionise the industry, and Apple will be left behind.

IMO, Jobs would have seen this coming years ago and skated to where the puck will be, rather than where it is like Cook has done.

How can Apple be late to the AI OS integration party? Who has even released anything more than a handful of integrated features. macOS already has that and iOS has apps like open ai which are much more advanced than anything Microsoft currently offers. Maybe we should wait a few weeks until after WWDC to see how they all compare?

 

[Macalway]

Kind of a letdown. I was hoping for a newly designed Go. But this looks a lot like the department is in transition or something. Same old Pro 10 design?

A new Go I would buy. But there will be others, lots.

The big winner here is Qualcomm. As usual.