Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Microsoft Surface Studio Reviews: Apple Fans Might Be 'Tempted to Switch Camps', Despite High Price
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
This thing is frickin' amazing, this is something Apple would have developed under Steve Jobs. But under Tim Cook it's all about iteration for the sake of profit, with a top executive team that is too secure and ridiculously overpaid. Once this thing has a real desktop class CPU and GPU I would consider it as my daily PC over my 2010 Mac Pro. I would love a new Mac Pro, but Apple hasn't updated that thing in over 3 years and, well, Apple is just sad.
can't understand what you say, new Macbok Pro, best macbook yet, fantastic and slimer and softer than ever has a brand new super usefull tool , touchbar, which you can use to adjust your volume and magical stuff like that.
behold the future of the computer!!!
[doublepost=1479573708][/doublepost]
Apple is just a money juice squeeze company, and is the best at this.
they did a price cut out for adapters and all media makes eco of that. impressive
Beautiful hardware. Apple is a hardware company and Microsoft is a software company, and for the first time Apple is behind Microsoft in this arena. I hope it sends the message to Jony and the rest of the design team.
Apple fans might be tempted to switch camps "Despite high Price"? What high price? The new MacBook Pro is $2800, with 15" display and the Surface Studio with its gorgeous 28" display is $3000, and the differences don't stop there. What a misleading statement is that.
Apple fans might be tempted to switch camps "Despite high Price"? What high price? The new MacBook Pro is $2800, with 15" display and the Surface Studio with its gorgeous 28" display is $3000, and the differences don't stop there. What a misleading statement is that.
Last edited:
can't compare a laptop with a desktop computer.
but yes, for the price of an iMac and a 2800USD Cintiq 27" you get a surface pro 28" (add another 800USD for a decent 4K 27" screen to the surface pro set up to compare prices)
No. Wrong.
You don't understand. You're actually TRYING to not understand, because you just like to pick on Apple fans.
Touchscreen is not a good idea on a desktop. A touch pad and touch bar is the right way to go. Apple is right.
Waterproofing is always a good idea. Apple is late to the party.
Large screens? The iPhone was the first large screen phone. Apple users got used to the large screen, and thought it was silly how ginormous screens got. Most Apple users still want smaller screens. Some want larger humongous screens, and Apple was not catering to those people, but now they do.
Stylus on a tablet is not a gimmick, but a niche thing only certain people need. Fingers are better for most tasks. Again, Apple didn't cater to those who wanted styluses, but now they do.
Sorry, I meant Surface Studio but I mistakenly wrote Surface Pro. I'm comparing the new MacBook Pro 15" with a price tag of $2800 vs Surface Studio for $3000.
[doublepost=1479587151][/doublepost]
If Microsoft wanted to double their sales, they could "unofficially" make the Surface Studio Hackintoshable (I may have invented a new word).
Although, macOS would never be able to utilize the touch screen, unless someone invented another hack for the Apple Pencil to work with that screen.
Last edited:
I rarely ever post on forums, but after reading that a few people were champing at the bit to get one of these new Surface systems, I felt compelled to offer my experience. I am a designer, and I purchased a Surface Book to work mobile. I debated the decision for a long time, but I gave in and went with a Surface book. I got the high-end model with a 3k price tag. I couldn’t regret the decision more. I am on my third replacement system. The first failed and wouldn’t restart; the second was experiencing phantom input and after hours on the phone with tech support they sent a replacement. The third device that I’m using now has also experienced intermittent phantom input problems and blue screens about once a week. The phantom input problem is well documented and affects many surface devices including the Surface Book and Surface Pro tablets. There are a number of threads dedicated to the problem with thousands of posts. In my case, the mouse begins to rapidly click in the upper left corner of the screen. The phantom input makes it impossible to use the device because the focus is always being change to the desktop. Its like there is an invisible finger tapping the screen constantly in the upper left corner. The system frequently fails, offering blue screen errors and sometimes often after sleep it will not connect to networks or Bluetooth devices until restarted. It would seem that some of these issues are related to device architecture because they occur across the Surface product line. I would be careful adopting this system. If it is the same architecture as the other Surface products, it may be prone to the type of failures I have cited. I am a lifetime Mac user, and I have never had such profound hardware problems with any Mac device. And in instances where problems arose, fixes were rapidly deployed. So those that complain that Apple products are too expensive, consider that you are paying for design, innovation, and solid performance.
Thanks for posting this. It is good to know and a similar story to my friend [who is a surface obsessive]. I am cautious about the Studio and hesitant on the surface book [an MacBook Pro and iPad Pro work well enough together for me, but would be nice just to have one device].
I guess we can wait and see. The studio would certainly add productivity to my workflows, and I may purchase as a second device with an iMac, to dip my toe so to speak. I am happy with using win 10 so non issue there - more just the hardware. I will note I got a Surface Pro 3 for work and it ended up on the shelf after a week once I compared it to the Ipadpro 12". Not a great tablet or notebook experience but somewhere in between with funky scaling issues.
I had big hopes for the surface book as more a notebook with the benefit of the tablet if needed however too many reports put me off.
My experience with the 1st gen Surface Pro was mostly positive, but I did have to get mine replaced because it kept crashing. When I called MS they were completely useless, but when I went to a physical store near where I worked, they were AWESOME. I was in and out fast.
If you live near a MS store it might be fine. If not? Maybe not. Either way, I haven't had any issues with my first gen pro (other than the front bezel not being 100% flush with the case -sigh-), since. We have a bunch of surface pro 3s at work and I've never really heard much in the way about those either, except the people that have them haven't bothered to upgrade to newer dell laptops. Heheh.
The Macs definitely offer a better experience though!
I just switched to Windows 10 desktop PC as my main workstation. There are a few things I miss from Mac, but I honestly now think Windows 10 is a more modern and maybe even overall better OS. Many of you who say "but it has Windows!!!" are seriously behind times and just stubborn. Roles have reversed.
Speaking of this Surface Studio - definitely sign me up for generation 2.
Speaking of this Surface Studio - definitely sign me up for generation 2.
Not at our studio for animation. StoryBoard Pro has become the industry standard for the most part. But Harmony is still loathed by many, many artists and studios. It's cost prohibitive and the user base is incredibly small. That is compared to Adobe's offerings even with their move to a subscription model. It's still king for cartoons. Flash (now known as Animate) is still quite strong for production use (not for web ads and the like - but character animation in production). After Effects for compositing and Premiere now for editorial.
[doublepost=1479673042][/doublepost]
LOL! My GF is an acupuncturist. I've got it covered!
I certainly would never go back, I do not miss the registry system and all the damn drivers that windows needs to perform optimally. Mac just works.
It really isn't, its a half step and concession to the fact that people find touch useful on a computer but obviously they've missed the boat and spent far to long crowing about how nobody cares.
I'm am/was huge admirer of Steve Jobs but they have been prone to these sweeping statements about certain products/features/product categories as far back as his time in charge. I remember Jobs declaring that nobody would buy big phones, in response to the iPhone 4 antenna problems if I remember correctly.
The touchbar, although useful for some, is going to be a bit redundant to anybody who touch types. The truth is they dont want to rewrite OS X for touch support (why bother with an product category you care so little about eh?) they don't want to cannabalise iPad sales any further.
I came close to getting Storyboard Pro but found it a bit convoluted as well as TB Studio. I used Sketchbook Pro for the storyboarding process and then imported it over to InDesign for the text/dialogue. I have an iPad Pro and a Wacom Intuos4 (old school) and they both get the job done for me. Manga Studio is my de facto program on my desktop while Procreate, Adobe Draw/Sketch, and Concepts work for me. Forge and Pixelmator, even. For heavy Photoshop CS5 work, I use the desktop for that reason when I need to work on larger files for print.
Good thing I avoided Harmony because I noticed their pricing structure, now subscription based, is about the same as Adobe's or higher.
Agree but wish I could say the same about never going back, Apple is forcing some of us back to Windows
Unless, maybe, you radically re-design the desktop the way MS has with the Surface Studio.
Well, they did make the rather bizzarre decision of - instead of making an original-sized iPhone and a "phablet" iPhone - making a "phablet" and "phablet+" model. Personally, I'd go for phablet because I mainly use my phone for web, maps, email etc. but the smaller, 1-hand-compatible form makes sense if you're primarily making calls or texting.
...yeah. It would be a bit less niche if Apple had made the pencil snap magnetically to the new smart connector on the phone so it was there on the side of the phone, not in your bag, when you wanted to use it...
Interesting. I was trying a surface book in the shop and was put off by the way I had to really clench my fist and extend just one finger (no, not like that) to get a "left" click: get another finger anywhere near the touch bar and it registered a 2-finger "right" click. Maybe that was the problem.
The Surface Book and Surface Studio are really interesting - far more so than Apple's new offerings - but I'm not sure they're quite there yet.
I think at this point windows and Mac OS are both stable enough that beyond preference. Both are great.
If you're a creative professional you use the Adobe apps, which are identical on Mac and Windows. So for the most part of the actual creative work you do, it would be familiar. What I hate about Windows is the rest, the way the shortcuts work (or don't work), such as accidentally pressing any of the two Alt or the two Windows keys instantly taking away keyboard focus, and the unresponsive and incredibly clunky user experience of the OS, the way Windows needs to be reinstalled every 6 months, the Registry, MSconfig, and the other apps that for some reason have much better designed Mac counterparts.
The hardware on this seems amazing though, and pen integration is not something Apple does. For that you also need a crappy plastic Wacom Cintiq that costs about the same as this machine.
The hardware on this seems amazing though, and pen integration is not something Apple does. For that you also need a crappy plastic Wacom Cintiq that costs about the same as this machine.
My Windows 7 partition was installed shortly after it was released and has not been reinstalled since.
Other than that I use macs but find them incredibly unintuitive. Ymmv.
This isn't definitely not necessary. I've had a Windows 7 install go for at least two years before I upgraded to Windows 10. Never had to reinstall Windows.
It's sad to see the state of the mac. Apple literally is giving it minimal effort and it shows.
Designs with obvious flaws and now lags significantly behind the competition in hardware and windows is pretty good now.
Apple needs to re-dedicate itself to the computing world. Phones can be fickle, what happens if the iPhone has an problem like exploding batteries and Samsung? Their #'s would drop like an rock
Now reports from the MacBook Pro and problems with wifi and USB-c, add to that the graphics chip problem?
Yeah Apple needs to do better. Seems like they are phoning it in.
Where is the Mac Pro update? Mac mini update?
State of affairs demands customers start considering the alternate options
Designs with obvious flaws and now lags significantly behind the competition in hardware and windows is pretty good now.
Apple needs to re-dedicate itself to the computing world. Phones can be fickle, what happens if the iPhone has an problem like exploding batteries and Samsung? Their #'s would drop like an rock
Now reports from the MacBook Pro and problems with wifi and USB-c, add to that the graphics chip problem?
Yeah Apple needs to do better. Seems like they are phoning it in.
Where is the Mac Pro update? Mac mini update?
State of affairs demands customers start considering the alternate options
