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One new product line, but lots of variations on current lines, MacBook Air, iPad Air, iPad Pro, looks like 3 sizes of iPhone screens coming, the choice has become harder for the average customer.

I do think with messy product lines choice definitely turns off many customers.

Having clean lines with a few display sizes is ok though. But it does feel messy quite often.
 
Ok. Touche on the answer. BUT I hardly think a single solitary strip above the keyboard is sufficient when compared to an entire desktop or tablet size screen with full 10 point multitouch and ultra high dpi.

If absolutely nothing like touch on a display existed the MacBook Pro would be cutting edge by a wide margin. But not now... Believe me when I say this, I want Apple to prove me wrong on this front, but for now they have lost their edge. They have literally become an ideological equivalent of Microsoft in the late 90's.

The only thing keeping them afloat was sheer volume of vested users and software availability. Many pros would flock to Apple for specific capabilities in Music, Video and Graphic Art.

Now it's literally the other way around.

I for one do not want a touch screen computer. I get bugged by the finger prints on the iPad all the time. I'm constantly cleaning the screen. I've also seen other people's laptops with touch screens covered with finger prints and I'm like "You might be able to see better if you cleaned your screen once in awhile."

But also, when I'm on a desktop/laptop I use a mouse. When I'm on a tablet I use my finger or a stylus (pencil). One of the reasons why I initially went with the surface in the beginning I could use a mouse. That decision has cost me some $$ as now I've switched to the iPad and am much happier with it. The OS is much more stable on the iPad.

But I will agree, Apple has been a little lackluster on their innovation. They really do need a game changer in the Mac OS area. I'm just holding out on replacing my 2011 MacBook Pro for as long as I can. I'll probably switch to a Mac Pro or Mac Mini for home use and the iPad Pro has proven itself to me these past couple months of ownership with my business travel. I can function without taking a laptop with me.

But again, it all boils down the individual and what they want.

One more thing. The touch on the Surface, when using a finger, is NO WHERE near as precise as an iPad with iOS. It was very frustrating if I didn't have the Surface Pen that I had issues with selecting what I wanted at times. Especially when it was with things which were close together. I chalk that one up to the Windows OS. I don't think it was the Surface itself.
 
No it isn't. Just look at the iPAd pro, it has a keyboard, stylus large form factor just like the Surface Pro :)

I think you typed in a smiley face when you meant to type in "/s".
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No, it doesn't

No iPad "Boots" in 3 seconds.

No Windows PC cold boots in that time either.

An iPad can go for days between charges with light to moderate use, and wake/sleep is instantaneous. A Surface gets at best 4 hours of battery life, requiring frequent charging or running on AC power most of the time.
 
I think you typed in a smiley face when you meant to type in "/s".
[doublepost=1491507176][/doublepost]

No Windows PC cold boots in that time either.

An iPad can go for days between charges with light to moderate use, and wake/sleep is instantaneous. A Surface gets at best 4 hours of battery life, requiring frequent charging or running on AC power most of the time.

I've got my PC booting in about 3-5 seconds to desktop from power on with win8 and win10. No special hardware. no customization. just good old fashioned "know how"

use EFI to boot instead of BIOS. saves up to 10 seconds from boot as most BIOS' tend to be the significant load time right now.

my boot drive is a SATA 3 based Samsung EVO 850. i5-4670. Nothing fancy in any of this

on the identical hardware, OSx boot up time is about 25 seconds. (when I had it hackintoshed, unfortunately, adding a 1070 GPU broke my OSx :( )

From the time I press the power switch, to the time I log in and am looking at the desktop, is ~5 seconds.

when I get home from work, I will see if I can record a video
 
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To be fair under Steve Job's watch you had the Apple II (1977), Apple II Plus (1979), Apple II Euro Plus (1979), Apple II J-Plus (1979), Apple IIe (1983), Apple IIc (1984) so lets not pretend it was always one model to rule them all.
Right? So many people go "oh, what was right for Apple when Steve came back (and they were literally on the verge of shutting down) is still right for Apple now (that they're the wealthiest tech company on the planet)." Which is logic that makes very little sense to me.

The four quadrant matrix made sense in 1997 because they needed to simplify or die. At this point, I'd almost rather have more options, considering the computer that works for me won't necessarily work for the guy sitting next to me, but we might both still want Macs.

Or iPads. Or whatever.
 
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That doesn't explain how sales have slumped for 5 years

The iPad's peak years (2013 & 2014) were inflated because it was an untapped market - there was room for a new device in between a phone and a laptop. But people don’t need to keep buying new iPads. Their replacement cycle is more like that of laptops than that of phones. Additionally, iPhones have gotten a lot bigger while MacBooks have gotten thinner and lighter, so the space between phones and laptops has shrunk considerably. With the availability of bigger iPhones and super thin/light MacBooks, the iPad category doesn't stand out like it used to.

Despite all this, iPads remain hugely profitable for Apple and owners continue to love theirs.
 
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Since Windows 8, UEFI and SSD's Windows PCs have been booting extremely fast from an off state. My PC at home takes around 4 and a half seconds from an off state to get into the login screen.
Not going to argue that Windows doesn't boot really fast. It's one of the recent Windows features I've massively appreciative of. However, comparing boot-to-login between an iPad and a Surface seems a little odd to me, since after login Windows will still be loading stuff (depending on what your startup software list looks like) while the iPad is ready to go as soon as the login is presented (assuming there's a passcode set up).

So you should probably be comparing boot-to-loaded-desktop against what's happening on the iPad. Let's assume we're logging straight into the default user on the Windows machine and there's no passcode on the iPad.

The PC probably still wins that, as long as there aren't a ton of startup programs involved, but it's going to be closer.
 
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The update process is tweaked to work around your usage schedule in the new Creators Update that will be released next week. I admit this was a massive PITA for me too.
It uh... Are you talking about active hours? Because that's already there, and the way it's implemented is incredibly frustrating to me. As I understand it all they've done for the Creators Update was extend the maximum number of active hours from 8 to 12. Which is better, but what I want is for the updates to download in the background, the computer to tell me when it's ready to update, and then me to tell it when to update. No automatic restarting allowed.
 
Productivity and end user choice be damned.

Doctors get a fair amount of choice on what they want to use in a hospital setting since they bring in the cash. Since they have a better experience using EMR and other tools on Surface Pros they prefer them over the iPad and MacBooks. Guess they have spoken about what their choice is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Can't do much work from the login screen.

And then you log in? You are trying pretty hard at this, I find it pretty amusing how hard this article and our posts are rustling your jimmies.

I'm just sick of people telling me why I should hate my Apple products.

This is probably the best post you made in this article because it displays an incredible amount of irony. Maybe some self reflection is in order.

[doublepost=1491508727][/doublepost]
Not going to argue that Windows doesn't boot really fast. It's one of the recent Windows features I've massively appreciative of. However, comparing boot-to-login between an iPad and a Surface seems a little odd to me, since after login Windows will still be loading stuff (depending on what your startup software list looks like) while the iPad is ready to go as soon as the login is presented (assuming there's a passcode set up).

So you should probably be comparing boot-to-loaded-desktop against what's happening on the iPad. Let's assume we're logging straight into the default user on the Windows machine and there's no passcode on the iPad.

The PC probably still wins that, as long as there aren't a ton of startup programs involved, but it's going to be closer.

I wasn't the original person who asked for it, just replying to someone who said that Windows didn't boot that fast.
 
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I don't post here much, but I'm always taken aback by how much resent there is for Apple here. I see more anti-Apple, pro-anything-not-Apple here than basically any other forum out there. Honest question: Why do some of you still come here if you think Apple can do no right?
 
Productivity and end user choice be damned.


http://www.cio.com/article/3133945/hardware/ibm-says-macs-save-up-to-543-per-user.html

I always love reading about IBMs experiences with their switching to Macs for some. I wonder if this may ever catch on and more companies decide to start a switch to Macs?
I don't post here much, but I'm always taken aback by how much resent there is for Apple here. I see more anti-Apple, pro-anything-not-Apple here than basically any other forum out there. Honest question: Why do some of you still come here if you think Apple can do no right?

Awesome question! I read the forums more than post. Today is a rarity for me! But yeah, I ask this to myself all the time when I'm reading the forums.
 
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Doctors get a fair amount of choice on what they want to use in a hospital setting since they bring in the cash. Since they have a better experience using EMR and other tools on Surface Pros they prefer them over the iPad and MacBooks. Guess they have spoken about what their choice is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Interesting. I work in healthcare and have seen the exact opposite with physicians. Majority of them use Macs and iOS with their EMR. Actually some nice options for the iOS side of their EMR, where they can take photos (of a rash for example) in a secure manner using an iOS device and send them directly to the patient's chart for record keeping. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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Fingerprints?! These have been on Windows machines as an optional integrated solution from every major manufacturer since Windows 2000 LOL

That's like saying Microsoft had smartphones and tablets before Apple. What matters is not who was first but who got it right.
 
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I actually managed part of an IT department for several years. Near the end, I got involved in hardware procurement. We had been using only Dells and then shifted slowly toward Thinkpads for everyone. Windows 7 days and they always worked well. But when I got involved, I found that we were spending more money purchasing & supporting Blackberry devices as well as Thinkpads compared to what iPhones and MacBook Airs would cost. We were spending close to $2000/unit on Thinkpads. I tried to slowly bring in some MacBook Airs and actually save money, and the higher ups lost their collective sh*t when I suggested it. Did slowly change many people to iPhones. Significant cost savings there.
 
As owner of both a Dell tablet (Surface Pro knock-off) and a 9.7 iPad Pro, I rarely use my Dell tablet for anything I can't already do on a laptop. I get that everyone has different use case scenarios but for me, I still prefer using my iPad over a Windows tablet any day.
 
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Fingerprints?! These have been on Windows machines as an optional integrated solution from every major manufacturer since Windows 2000 LOL

LOL I remember many of those "integrated solutions". I think I would rather swipe my finger across razor blades then use the trash that was passed for fingerprint solutions on those laptops.
 
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Interesting. I work in healthcare and have seen the exact opposite with physicians. Majority of them use Macs and iOS with their EMR. Actually some nice options for the iOS side of their EMR, where they can take photos (of a rash for example) in a secure manner using an iOS device and send them directly to the patient's chart for record keeping. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We use an iOS charting viewer on Physician iphones but none of them seemed keen on using a touchscreen keyboard to do order entry or any notation/documentation in EMR. So they lead them to using laptops and the big groups were quick to move onto Surface Pros when they could to avoid having to carry around heavy HP business laptops.
 
We use an iOS charting viewer on Physician iphones but none of them seemed keen on using a touchscreen keyboard to do order entry or any notation/documentation in EMR. So they lead them to using laptops and the big groups were quick to move onto Surface Pros when they could to avoid having to carry around heavy HP business laptops.

Could they have used MacBooks as well?

Across our clinics we have 21" iMacs with SSDs. Coming up on 6 years old soon and they still run extremely fast.
 
Ok. Touche on the answer. BUT I hardly think a single solitary strip above the keyboard is sufficient when compared to an entire desktop or tablet size screen with full 10 point multitouch and ultra high dpi.

If absolutely nothing like touch on a display existed the MacBook Pro would be cutting edge by a wide margin. But not now... Believe me when I say this, I want Apple to prove me wrong on this front, but for now they have lost their edge. They have literally become an ideological equivalent of Microsoft in the late 90's.


Ergonomically, a vertical display is terrible for touch. Any extended use would lead to fatigue, and it's inefficient to constantly move your fingers between a tabletop keyboard and trackpad up to a screen. More importantly, macOS's interface is designed for use with a mouse/tackpad pointer. Buttons are too small for touch, and making them bigger would impose iOS-like limitations on macOS app design.

Apple are repeatedly asked this question, and they've repeatedly replied that internal usability testing has shown it makes no sense.

In short, it makes no sense and it's never gonna happen on the Mac.
 
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As someone who just switched to iPad Pro 12.9 from Windows 10 tablet I would have to say, nope, not so in my opinion.

It is nice to run a full desktop but it doesn't work right switching between desktop and tablet modes. Also it slows down horribly over time as Windows tends to do as it gets more and more bloated. Some models have really noisy fans that turn on. The iPad pro does not have a fan. I was in a meeting with someone who was using one and the fan turned on. It was difficult to hear in the meeting from time to time because of the fan. It was a serious distraction.

Yes, having a desktop and tablet combined is nice, however the drawbacks is Windows 10. It's a hot mess.

Well when it comes to my dealings with them, and this is coming from someone who actually used a Mac before an iPod, much less an iPhone and have used desktop Macs, laptop Macs, iPods iPhones iPads Apple TV and despised windows and got my whole family to switch..... Anything Apple just can't compare to the Surface line up. You can say it runs windows so no, it's trying to be to many things and not perfect at one, etc etc... but there isn't one single product Apple has that has anywhere the power vs versatility the Surface lineup has. The iPad Pro, is a good tablet and while better then the iPads before it is still just a blown up iPhone. Yes it has an attachable keyboard, but can I hook it up to my monitor, plug my external HD in it, do something as simple as put an SD card in it? The MacBook Pro, well prior to new ones lol, is a good laptop but can I detach the keyboard when I want and just use it as a tablet in bed, can I write my hand written notes into it? One runs iOS and while can do some productivity is still really just a consumption OS at the bottom of it. Windows, which btw is far far different and better than the old days, runs a full OS. I can consume any content I want on it, run pretty much any desktop app, and one of my favs is running desktop games on it and being able to plug in an Xbox controller to play. It basically becomes a portable Xbox. And if I start running out of space I just buy an SD card for more storage or plug in an external HD. And I waited to mention this.... No Mac has touch screen support which is crazy to me because Apple is the company that made this technology mainstream and ingrained in people's minds but is the only one not to brace it. As for loud fans as you say; When I had my Surface Pro 3 I did here the fans kick in a lil bit but it was by no means louder than any laptop I have had. With my Surface Pro 4, I might have heard it less times then I can count on one hand. People need to drop this perception that the Surface is a tablet that's not as thin as Apple's. It's a laptop that can turn into a tablet and can also be docked and hooked up to a monitor with external keyboard and mouse and replace some people's desktops too. No Apple product comes anywhere close. And what you here about poor battery life is normally people who but their brightness at full and have 50 chrome tabs running in the background because with normal usage I avg 8 hrs on my i5 Surface Pro, gotten way more dimming the brightness more and when I'm using it heavily I easily get 4 and a half to 5 hrs. Also one of the best things to happen to me is Windows Hello. I can't thing of the last time I had to type my pin or password to log in my computer, look at the screen and instantly logs in.
 
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Use EFI to boot instead of BIOS. saves up to 10 seconds from boot as most BIOS' tend to be the significant load time right now.

In other words, you've hacked your PC to skip key essential system diagnostics when booting up.
 
This strong competition from Microsoft is great. It should inspire Apple to improve their products. They have had little motivation for too long.

Agree, just very stupid of Apple, now they have to put double effort in order to get customers back on the iPad.
 
Doctors get a fair amount of choice on what they want to use in a hospital setting since they bring in the cash. Since they have a better experience using EMR and other tools on Surface Pros they prefer them over the iPad and MacBooks.

Who chose the hospital's EMR software? Do they offer a Mac client app with feature parity to their Windows app?

Some specialized software isn't made for Mac, so if your job requires such software, that's artificially limiting your choice of computer.
 
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