Microsoft Touts Surface Pro 7 as 'The Better Choice' Over MacBook Pro in New Ad

[amartinez1660]

Oh yeah my bad haha

For what is worth, that was eons ago... it’s rare to see Apple touting and trashing others so directly like Samsung and (more elegantly at least) Microsoft likes to do for example.

Even with their own branding... take the airpods, AirPods Pro and AirPods Max for example, nothing says it’s Apple, not an icon, logo or text, nothing. Compare to Samsung, JBL or similar earbuds... more often than not they tend to scream their brand on the sides, on the cord, on the front, sometimes on colorful tones. Compare to any gamer laptop/desktop PC, colorful neon lights full of stickers screaming all the numbers, “SUPER”, “XT”, “POWER” texts with chromed uppercase letters/uppercase shadows.

It’s definitely a different type of advertisement. The Mac vs PC, I was a PC lover and a Mac hater (the dumb young days) and even then I found them quite funny at the time.

 

[cwwilson]

This is silly. A Surface and a MacBook Pro are two totally different products aimed at different clientele. If Apple thought having a touch-based desktop OS was where the market was trending then they'd make one themselves but it's obvious it's a very niche segment and probably 98% of people will still prefer keyboard and mouse/trackpad.

As far as performance, I'm almost certain an M1 MBP will run circles around any Surface. If you have to have touchscreen then the iPad Pro is the best in the business and will probably offer more apps as well.

 

[arvinsim]

It's just so horrible to use a lifted touchscreen, unless you really want to train your arm muscles. Why PC makers don't ever understand that.

Damn, my Ipad Pro 12.9 with the Smart Folio is a mistake then!

 

[LiquidJay]

Umm, they are really not.

??? Actually they are. I’m sure you noticed them exploring, keyword ‘exploring’ ARM processors for Surface tablets.

 

[obargy]

Damn, my Ipad Pro 12.9 with the Smart Folio is a mistake then!

Smart Folio is much narrower than a laptop footprint. So I think it's a bit more bearable?
I have used the 1st Gen Smart Keyboard of 12.9 iPad Pro and it felt alright. But it's definitely more tiring than using a trackpad or mouse on a real laptop.

 

[Henry S]

My work computer is a Surface Pro. I have to set it on a flat surface to actually use it on my lap because the easel isn’t stable enough. I curse it every day if it tilts too far forward, and closes on my fingers. I keep asking IT to just give me a conventional reasonably lightweight Dell or HP with an HDMI port.

 

[jonnysods]

With Apple Silicon in full swing, and MS comparing their tablet to a laptop, this ad is a bit of a swing and a miss.

I do like Microsoft hardware products, but this ad is a bit embarrassing.

 

[cr2]

It's just so horrible to use a lifted touchscreen, unless you really want to train your arm muscles. Why PC makers don't ever understand that.

Everyone at work has asked me why do I use a Mac and they show me the touch screen. Once, I had a loaner PC and I found it awkward to use the touch screen. The trackpad was really bad, screen quality was atrocious. The IT guy told me that the price (they pay) for the loaner is between 13" MBP and 16" MBP, only $300 less than 16", i9, 64GB MBP.

Wait, there is more, the PCs don't last as much (2 1/2 year cycle v/s 3 years) and they have a lot of battery swelling issues. I have always wondered why the rest of the folks don't use dual boot or just windows on a Mac. It is just a better financial sense.

 

[Suprimir]

Get the new Surface Pro 7+ instead since it has larger battery, user upgradable SSD and optional WWAN. Hopefully Costco will soon carry it since it's targeted at business and education accounts.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-pro-7-plus

It doesn't matter with that Microsoft crappy software. Read it again!

 

[Ken88]

Good to see Microsoft have a sense of humor😆..everybody I mean everybody knows Apple and MacBooks are the king and it’s going to get more power with M1X chip coming later this year..Microsoft, Samsung, Lenovo or whoever in the technology business must have insomnia lately these days..the only way Microsoft, Samsung, Lenovo can beat Apple is lower their laptops prices to SIGNIFICANTLY cheap to the point it forces consumers to buy their products not Apple’s. Of course those three companies won’t lower too cheap or they won’t make enough profits so they’re in the catch-22 predicament.

btw, Apple fan and long live the Apple🍎👍💪

 

[Solomani]

This is why I don't let a 10 year old tell me what computer to buy.

10 year olds are only good at telling Microstofies what to buy. LOL

 

[Solomani]

Children are so dumb

He was paid (by Microsoft) in FortNite Play vouchers. Don't blame that kid.

 

[GeoStructural]

PCs are not the better purchase - unless you're really on a tight budget. Macs have MUCH better security whereas Windows is a patching nightmare. But the point on games is valid. Apple to this day still doesn't understand gamers, and Metal doesn't exactly cut it when it comes to making up for that. And neither does Apple Arcade. I don't see how it would matter if you were using a Mac or Windows for engineers, developers, etc. There isn't much that Windows can do in that department that the Mac can't.

How can you assure it is a budget issue? My PC is twice as expensive as a MacBook Pro.

Regarding not understanding why PCs are better for engineers let me enlighten you. The main reason is the professional software needed which is not available on Mac. There is a lot of modeling software, structural design, finite elements, etc. that are mainstream in the industry and they do not run on Mac.

I tried using virtual machines but the performance hit is so brutal to the point of being unusable.

 

[ChrisA]

blah, blah, blah,... $500 cheaper. ... blah, blah, blah

The above is the argument most people hear and it is a VERY effective argument.

 

[Doomtomb]

 

[Benjamin Nabulsi]

It’s time to have a second ad from PC vs Mac. I’ve expected more from last year appearance.

 

[Constable Odo]

What a waste of effort on Microsoft's part. It's not as though someone already using macOS is going to switch to Windows. At least, I don't think they would. I'm not anti-Windows because I still use Windows 10 on VMWare Fusion Pro on three of my Macs. I like to play around with Windows and I do use some awesome subtitle software that is free on Windows and isn't available for macOS. I know there is no way I would ever trade an M1 MacBook Pro for a Surface Pro 7. That would be a huge step backward in terms of processing power and battery life.

 

[Jonas07]

This ad just put in evidence this community is full of fanatics almost a cult (in a bad way)

 

[shapesinaframe]

I think Surface is a great piece of kit. Pity the Microsoft app and hardware ecosystem is a hot mess.

There are moments when brilliance shines through, but the problem is the MS experience is not consistent. Use Windows 10 long enough and you eventually uncover user interfaces eg: Control Panel that haven’t changed since Windows 95. Can you imagine digging around in macOS settings and being presented System 7 user interfaces!?

I think it will take at least another ten years before MS have anything that will be close to what Apple has today, by which time Apple will still be even further ahead in its quality of hardware/software integration across its existence of products and services.

 

[TechGuy327]

Wouldn't the better comparison be between an iPad Pro and the Surface Pro instead?

 

[Solomani]

Wouldn't the better comparison be between an iPad Pro and the Surface Pro instead?

MS is more jealous of the popularity of the MBP series (and the astounding sales, revenue, profits and cult-status it generates worldwide for Apple).

MS isn't threatened so much by the iPads, which they know is a much smaller sliver of Apple's overall success and revenue and appeal.

 

[Hyperchaotic]

Having used the iPP with a keyboard, I can say that using your finger to scroll on a laptop screen is completely natural. I've caught myself lots of times trying to touch my MBP screen.

It actually makes the illusion of direct manipulation more real...although it's unclear if that's one of Apple's UI goals anymore.

It's not bad that Apple doesn't do it, but their rationale for not doing it is sort of bogus.

More importantly, a touchscreen allows for marking up during a video presentation, which is also surprisingly convenient.

Yes, I agree, I've used Windblows laptops with touchscreens a few times. Keyboard and trackpad/pointer are still main controls but ever so often one just taps or swipes something with a finger. It's a nice added optional convenience, it feels natural and one doesn't constantly sit with arms up in the air but sometimes just use it intuitively.

I find it more natural on smaller laptops, my big gaming laptop doesn't have touchscreen.

 

[bousozoku]

I had a Lenovo Flex 3 touchscreen capable laptop computer and it was interesting that it could be used in tent mode but as a tablet, it was miserably heavy and way too large to be comfortable. The good thing about the touch screen was that it was much better than the track pad.

Some people may like the Surface Pro but I found it to be over priced for what it was. I didn't think that it was worth twice as much as the typical convertible laptop computers.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Well, step by step, Apple has managed to eliminate the usefulness of their computers. Eliminating ports, eliminating magsafe, the useless/obnoxious touchbar, eliminating 32bit support, eliminating windows compatibility by ditching Intel.

Yes yes we can all think of reasons to justify why each of those made sense, and that's all very wonderful. But it leaves a gaping hole in the market that MS is filling with surface. Apple still treats all tablets as mobile devices. MS just created the Surface Pro 7Plus, which comfortably runs full-featured pro design/engineering software, allows for sketching and drawing on screen, programmable touch commands, & ranges from whatever, $800-$2800. To get that basic functionality out of the macbook pro, I've got to string together last years top of the line intel-based MBP16 with enough horsepower to run boot camp through parallels (though parallels breaks wacom's mousing functionality), & screen sharing over to the ipad, for more than double the price, and which is laggy. Otherwise I can plug a Wacom Cintiq in, spend 3x the money, and have a giant hulking beast to cart around. If you're benefitted by working directly on-screen, it's pretty much no contest. As Apple has focused and limited their product line to a very narrow traditional set of use cases, they've left several major gaping holes in the market, one of which MS is now pretty casually filling with the Surface. As soon as you can connect a Surface Pro to an eGPU for more power and a big external display, it's over.

 

[ikramerica]

So MS is proud that they sell a 4/128 model in 2021 that is half as fast the M1 and can price it at $749? But when they equip it with 8/256 and an i5, it’s still slower but only $100 less. And when they deck it out it’s the same price as the decked out M1 at $2299 but has 1TB storage instead of 2TB?
Where is this price advantage? I don’t really see it.