
The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft - steven
https://backchannel.com/the-bizarre-role-reversal-of-apple-and-microsoft-25d8b391d5b0#.xw7qjxmyh
======
aaron-lebo
> Just check out its striking video for the Surface Studio — it is so
> influenced by Apple’s playbook that I’m surprised there’s no Jony Ive
> narration.

What's happened is that other companies have figured out how to emulate Steve
Jobs's playbook that's now several decades old and there's nobody at Apple to
write new plays.

Jobs always talked about how Microsoft didn't have taste and when you look at
MS products up until around 2005ish in comparison to Apple products, he was
right. At some point a lot of business people realized what was making Apple
successful - they weren't just selling computers, they were selling a
lifestyle, they were selling _cool_. Oh, you are a creative? Well, shouldn't
you have a Mac? It's what Einstein and Gandhi would have used.

Jobs was an absolutely brilliant marketer. Since 2005 other companies have
gotten successively better at emulating Apple's design, experience, and
marketing. They've distilled what Jobs knew intuitively into a formula that
they can iterate on. It's not just MS, it's Dell, it's every medium and high-
end manufacturer, it's Google. Please tell me what the difference between this
[1] Pixel commercial and every Apple commercial made within the last decade is
with the exception of the logo.

It's the Applefication of tech production and marketing and Apple doesn't have
anything to stand out anymore.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCI1tcu8tQw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCI1tcu8tQw)

~~~
rayiner
Microsoft lacked taste and the ability to execute. With the Surface Book, they
absolutely nailed taste. But they still have no ability to execute (the SB
suffered at launch from firmware glitches that took months to iron out:
[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/new-firmware-
finally-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/new-firmware-finally-
fixes-surface-pro-4-surface-book-bugs-but-microsoft-should-do-better)).

~~~
cmelbye
When Cortana was launched on Windows, I went to a Microsoft Store to try it
out. I found a Surface and tapped the Cortana button, and it opened a
"Microphone Calibration Setup Wizard" that looks like it was from Windows XP.

So yeah, taste is one thing, but execution is a different ball game.

~~~
wsinks
Any thoughts about Cisco?

We're literally trying to be the taste and execution. I work for Cisco.
Curious about candid thoughts.

~~~
pavs
ISP Owner here. I wouldn't call their hardware visually appealing. In UI, we
mostly use CLI - so not sure what more can be done in that regard. A visual
way to looking at live traffic info similar to iftop/htop would be nice.

~~~
pavs
I want to add the cisco-IOS is an absolute clusterfuck. There is so much room
for improvement I wouldn't know where to start. Please have a loot at
Mikrotik, they are doing a pretty decent job for a small company. If their
devices were powerful enough to handle our edge router traffic, I would drop
cisco like a brick. I am not kidding.

Someone really needs to fund Mikrotik big time.

------
nicolas_t
The Surface Studio is a major coup for Microsoft not because it'll necessarily
sell well (although I think it has the potential to) but because it's made
Microsoft cool.

I showed the video to my wife and she was so impressed that she looked at all
the videos Microsoft did detailing the development. She's been a mac user for
more than 20 years and tt's the first time she's ever looked at a Microsoft
product.

Apple during the Steve Jobs era had a reputation for taking risks, for coming
up with new products that impressed and that people just wanted.

A lot of people I know were excited by the announcement of new products and
tried to watch the keynotes or follow the live coverage. In the past year,
none of my friends care about them anymore. I only cared about yesterday's
event because I've been waiting to upgrade my macbook pro and the event was
lackluster. For better or worse, by not taking risks and not introducing new
products, Apple seems less cool than it used to be and Microsoft showing off
the Surface studio highlighted this. It's a huge blow for Apple in term of
marketing.

(As an out of topic aside, Apple even sucks at doing boring incremental
improvements, the iMac, Mac Pro and Mac Mini are languishing and the new
macbook pro 15 inch design choices are non-sensical for professionals)

~~~
brazzledazzle
>the new macbook pro 15 inch design choices are non-sensical for professionals

You can't imagine how disappointed I was that they tap out at 16GB of RAM. I
don't use that much memory every day but sometimes it would be really nice to
have. I haven't bothered watching it again but the announcement gave me the
impression that it started at 16 and going to the purchase page was a sad
time.

~~~
kobayashi
I totally can, as I'm in the same boat. And the 240 CAD increase just for an
extra 8GB of RAM - what a ripoff!

------
sumoboy
I don't think it's a role reversal at all, rather everybody has been chasing
Apple for so long the competition has caught up and surpassed in some aspects.
Who doesn't have a laptop that hasn't been modeled after the macbook. Also
remember that everything Apple introduces doesn't turn to gold every time,
they have plenty of product feature failures.

The only innovation I saw yesterday which will be copied really came out of
Microsoft with the Surface Studio and Surface dial. I'm sure microsoft would
really like to see a surge in high-end desktops. The only worthwhile technical
feature Apple did was adding touch id in the touch bar, but even then how
often would I use this? Also seems like the more logical place for touch id is
actually on the mouse where my fingers are a majority of the time.

The only commonality between these two is there marketing departments thinking
people want to spend $3k+ on products, no reversal there.

~~~
rjbwork
>Who doesn't have a laptop that hasn't been modeled after the macbook.

As soon as they can pack the power i'm looking for in my laptops into an apple
style case, i'll be there. Until then i'll be sticking with my boxy black
Clevo.

~~~
bitwize
Surprise: Virtually _all_ laptops are modelled after an Apple machine. The
boxy black ones are PowerBook clones. Apple established the dedign language
used by every laptop manufacturer since, in the early 90s: clamshell case,
hinge at the rear, keyboard towards the back of the lower half with the
trackpad front and center and all that wonderful blank space on either side
usable as wrist rests.

~~~
kbutler
Surprise: Apple wasn't the first with a "clamshell case, hinge at the rear,
keyboard towards the back of the lower half...all that wonderful blank space
on either side usable as wrist rests."

1983:
[http://cosy.com/language/cosyhard/cosyhard.htm](http://cosy.com/language/cosyhard/cosyhard.htm)
\-
[http://cosy.com/language/cosyhard/ampropn.gif](http://cosy.com/language/cosyhard/ampropn.gif)
(note: no trackpad - but then, the original powerbook didn't, either:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_100),
and that round trackball is in just the same position as that round lid
latch...)

Apple does a great job integrating elements that may have existed before, and
is definitely a trendsetter in styling, but they also get credit for creating
a lot of elements that existed before. ("Great artists steal.")

------
jimbokun
I was thinking recently how Bill Gates often said the biggest competitor to
Windows was the previous version of Windows. Alternate OSes didn't have enough
market share or compatible software to really be a threat, but customers
always had the option of just not upgrading.

iPhone seems in a very similar position. Sure, there are some people who will
switch from iPhone to an Android phone. But Apple's biggest challenge seems to
be convincing their current customers they need a new phone at all.

~~~
emp_zealoth
They have a killer feature for that! Glued in batteries you cannot reasonably
replace, unreliable buttons that fail easily, the like

~~~
stouset
You mean batteries that rarely if ever need replacing (this isn't still the
1990s) and now fewer button to fail (the home button hasn't been a problem
anyway for years now anyway)?

Not everything is a conspiracy, FFS.

------
gigatexal
Thursday's reveal of new MacBooks was so lackluster I am rethinking my loyalty
to Apple. The Apple platform has always been the most productive platform for
me. But other firms seem to be innovating and iterating on things quicker than
Apple has: rumor has it that Apple will more or less copy the edge-to-edge
display of Chinese handsets or the rounded edges of the S7 Edge, wtf, what
happened to doing really bold things that nobody else has, or can? I guess we
might have just hit peak-phone handset. In any case Apple wants to push into
the enterprise but won't make a surface like device (what the iPad Pro should
have been). Oh well. OS X is still the killer feature for me so I will remain
securely on Apple and I'm not leaving my iPhone for any other handset but this
is still very disconcerting.

~~~
twblalock
> I guess we might have just hit peak-phone handset.

This is what happens in mature product segments. The first iPhone was released
9 years ago, and that was the last real revolution -- a smartphone whose front
was pretty much all screen. Everything Apple and everyone else has done since
then has been incremental -- better screens, larger screens, better cameras,
faster processors, thinner chassis -- but definitely the same paradigm.

The same thing happened to laptops before that. Some of the older laptops had
pretty odd and uncomfortable designs. Sometime in the 90s, everyone
standardized on the clamshell laptop with a 4:3 screen (later moving to
widescreen), a low-profile keyboard, and a central trackpad below that. If you
compare a 20-year-old laptop to a new one, you'll see the same incremental
changes that happened to phones -- larger, better screens, faster processors,
thinner chassis.

I think the bottom line is that the smartphone market has become as mature and
predictable as the laptop market.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Sometime in the 90s, everyone standardized on the clamshell laptop with a
> 4:3 screen (later moving to widescreen)

How did that happen? It used to be that a normal laptop had a 4:3 screen and a
ridiculous, huge laptop had a huge, 16:10 screen. Now both of those are gone,
and normal laptops have even _shorter_ 16:9 (!) screens. It's hard to think of
a more user-hostile progression. I don't want to work in a series of cramped
side-by-side windows. I want a screen that can display more than one paragraph
of text at once.

~~~
Tossrock
Because most people use computers to consume content (ie video), which is
largely produced in widescreen.

~~~
thaumasiotes
You don't lose anything by watching 16:9 video on a 16:10 screen.

Nothing's stopping you from watching it on a 4:3 screen, either, although at
that point you've shrunk the image pretty noticeably.

------
yladiz
The thing is, hardware is important but software is arguably more important
because it's what you interact with every day (yes, you interact with the
hardware too but not directly, besides the keyboard and touch pad). In that
respect, I trust Apple more than either Microsoft or Google. I will not trust
Google with any of my data unless it's necessary and Microsoft isn't so great
in my eyes either due to their ad and data collection policies for the new
Windows OS.

I think Macs are designed very well, even though I do question the decisions
of the new MacBooks, and I would prefer to have a little bit more than 4 USB
ports and thin laptop. I also really like Mac OS, even with it's thorns,
because its design is much better than whatever version of Linux I would use
(not a big fan of Ubuntu's Unity). Most likely, my next laptop purchase will
be either a 2015 MacBook Pro or some nice non-Apple product with Ubuntu
installed.

~~~
tajen
A paid Linux! That's what I said on this comment about "Ask HN – What
innovation would you want to see", which 84 people upvoted:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12570030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12570030)

I wish we would have executed on that wish a year ago, because with the two
Microsoft & Apple events, it's clear there is demand for "a Surface Studio,
but not with Windows 10". Yesterday people effectively said they stay on Macs
because of macOS, but envision switching to PCs because the innovation and
specs are much better. Had we worked on that, we would have released a
credible alternative to Macs, with distrib that would have embraced the
Surface Studio while providing 1. the design, 2. the experience and 3.the
privacy that everyone is looking for in an Apple computer...

As a reminder, the idea of a Paid Linux is to fund the open-source community
with the same flow of money that Apple and Microsoft get from their OS (at
$200/yr), in order to provide the same "red carpet" experience for specific
profiles of users (either 3D workers, either graphists, whatever profile we
target first). At the market level, one great experience for one type of work
would develop adoption for Linux on the desktop. At a more selfish level, the
benefit to paying for Linux instead of MS/A is that the new improvements are
effectively open-source, so we're effectively raising the baseline of what
every other distrib can do. The way to make people pay is by only providing
their upgrades through authenticated PPAs, which means professionals will pay
because it's easier, and hackers will redistribute versions on Torrent, which
we don't mind, because hackers are a benefit for Linux. Besides, even hackers
understand the value of funding open-source, so they might still participate.
A lot of people would rather pay for open-source than closed-source.

I didn't execute on that wish, because I'm not an OS-level person, and I don't
have the UX design background necessary for this endeavour. Nor the marketing
know-how to execute at a high level. But I really wish someone would do it.

~~~
linguae
I feel the exact same way. I've been a Mac user for over ten years largely
because of OS X, but I've been disappointed in Apple's direction for the past
few years, and yesterday's MacBook Pro announcement was the last straw for me.

Linux is a wonderful server OS, and in fact I do most of my development inside
of a VirtualBox VM running Debian, but in order for me to move to a full Linux
workflow, I need to use some proprietary software packages like Microsoft
Office and Apple Keynote (while I find LibreOffice Writer to be a suitable
replacement for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel fits my needs better than
Calc, and Impress is behind both PowerPoint and Keynote).

In line with a paid, polished Linux experience, another thing that would be
nice for me and other disgruntled Mac users is a Wine-like compatibility layer
that allows Linux users to run Cocoa programs. There's already a project
called Darling
([http://www.darlinghq.org/introduction/](http://www.darlinghq.org/introduction/))
that has some of the basic functionality implemented. If this project had more
contributors, then it could develop into a working solution for running my Mac
programs.

My dream OS would have a Unix-like foundation (like Linux or FreeBSD) with an
interface similar to Mac OS 8/9 (with various features from OS X added like
Spotlight, Expose, and the Dock) and with Don Norman's UI advice
([http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/apples_products_are.html](http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/apples_products_are.html))
taken seriously.

I'm actually interested in contributing to such efforts toward an alternative
OS for disgruntled Mac users; I have experience with systems and kernel
programming. If there is enough interest, maybe an alternative OS will
materialize.

~~~
otisfunkmeyer
I actually think that this is likely to happen over the next 2-3 years. Every
single one of these companies is now going in the wrong direction in a
specific way--which opens up a real desire for a real alternative.

We all used to love Mac, we all see that Apple has lost its way and seems to
be heading more and more confidently in the wrong direction, and that may be
just the push the community needs to actually build something.

And what an amazing achievement it would be--an actually open alternative that
runs on lots of (powerful) hardware with the beauty of Mac OS (before Lion
lol).

I really think it's going to happen because I think a very large percentage of
the community now realizes that there is no existing private company heading
in the right direction. So we now have to take the steering of the ship into
our own hands.

Abracadabra.

~~~
linguae
I agree. In my opinion Snow Leopard was the high water mark of Mac OS X
(although there are some features of later versions I like such as the auto-
save feature of open documents between reboots). From a UI standpoint each
subsequent version of OS X has been a deviation from the ideal user interface.

A fully open community "Mac" operating system that runs on any x86-64 hardware
would be an excellent thing. I believe the best way of getting there is
contributing to the GNUstep and Darling projects so that the underpinnings are
fully functioning, as well as working on a Snow Leopard-esque interface.

I have some free time over the next week or so; I'm going to start developing
a plan for making this idea a reality!

------
pavs
I don't use apple products because of the shiny, sexy hardware. It doesn't
hurt to have a visually nice looking device to look at when you are spending
most of your day on it. I use apple computers (don't use iPhone), specifically
because of the OS. I just can't see myself working on Windows ever (unless it
makes some major leap of improvement).

MacOS has its problems, but its still many time better than the POS Windows
OS. The only other option is Linux/Ubuntu, which is nice but wouldn't be my
first choice, but definitely a second choice.

You can't cover a shitty OS with a Shiny dress and fool most people who have
been burned by it. They can copy all they want, at the end of the day it still
has windows installed...

~~~
drvdevd
I can agree with that and felt the same way until I realized (or was forced to
admit repeatedly) that 90% of my time using Windows or OS X is now spent
either in an SSH session, a web browser, or a virtual machine. Frankly all of
these releases, from both companies, come off as rather boring to me. I think
all the most interesting innovation, from my perspective, is happening in
software now and less "flashy" embedded systems.

------
CuGi
I feel like Apple is trying to force innovation with their latest offerings.

I'm not against change, but change for the sake of change is annoying.

The idea well must be running pretty dry at Cupertino

~~~
threeseed
20 years Apple released the iMac which did away with SCSI, ADB, RJ232 etc in
favour of USB.

What they have done now with the MacBook Pro is exactly the same thing. They
are trying to establish USB-C as the one port to rule them all just like they
successful did with USB-A.

Yes change can be hard and some people like yourself clearly struggle more
than others. But change is needed sometimes to push the industry forward.

~~~
GVIrish
Unifying to one standard port is kind of cool, except for the fact that not
even Apple's other devices use that type of connection and users will have to
buy dongles for almost everything. That represents a concrete step backwards
in user experience.

There is a time to be bold and throw your weight behind a better standard, but
there's also a time when doing so makes things inconvenient with little to no
benefit.

That wouldn't be so bad if the Macbook were significantly more powerful but
here we have a machine with the same max RAM as the Macbook they sold 4 years
ago while PC laptops are shipping with 4 times as much.

It just seems like Apple is focusing on making a sleek and visually pleasing
device, rather than a device that will be most useful to those who want to
work on MacOS.

~~~
sahaj
The next iPhone will likely have a USB-C port. They couldn't have changed the
lightening port on the iPhone after only being on the iPhone for a single
generation.

~~~
dpark
You think they're going to ditch lightning after everyone buys a bunch of
accessories? They could, but I doubt it. What would switching to USB C do for
Apple?

~~~
troygoode
"They could, but I doubt it." – you mean exactly like they did with the switch
to Lightning already?

~~~
JBReefer
If you're going to piss people off by removing the headphone jack, you don't
do it again by changing ports next year. You tear the bandage off in one go.

------
lowbloodsugar
Cutting edge Macbook _Pro_ : 16GB RAM "because battery". o_0

My 2011 MBP has 16GB.

------
bradleybuda
I'll keep buying Apple hardware (even if the latest rev isn't great) since
macOS is the only usable operating system. Windows is (still/increasingly?) a
tire fire that's only useful if you're a gamer, and Linux is for programmer-
masochists.

~~~
nathas
Why do you think Windows is a tire fire and OSX is usable?

I used my first OSX machine ever earlier this year. I wanted to add some extra
keyboard commands, so I had to download a 3rd party program that had to unlock
accessibility controls and essentially take full control of the machine.
That's absurd to me.

I also hit tons of external display problems. Things wouldn't connect or sync
right, desktops not correctly moving to the right screens, no window snapping
even though it's a high res screen, etc.

I hit way more beach balls/lags than I do with my modern Windows machines.

Windows 7 was solid, Windows 8 was a bit of a mess (as has been every 1st
iteration of Windows [98, 2000, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10]), but Win 10 is
really enjoyable.

It's unfortunate that the BSODs caused largely by shitty drivers in Windows
98/XP has hounded the Windows ecosystem for over a decade, even though the
driver verifier has fixed the vast majority of those.

~~~
makecheck
You can customize a _almost_ everything using the Keyboard panel of System
Preferences. Yes, 3rd party tools like Karabiner are needed for control of
_absolutely_ everything but that is pretty rare.

Also note that accessibility must be “unlocked” because it fundamentally adds
a security risk: processes that can inspect inputs in arbitrary unknown
applications have a lot of power. What macOS does is actually a feature and it
prevents one of the “tire fires” in Windows.

Beach balls in my experience are usually produced by problems in drivers, or
programs that are unnecessarily complex (like the ones that are 400 MB
installs with entire virtualization layers instead of being all native code).
The OS can only do so much.

External displays: yes, definitely buggy on Macs these days, and with some
obscure settings. Something to try: with at least 3 desktops/Spaces defined
(need to use "+" in Mission Control), you can right-click on the Dock icon of
an application to specify the default space to use for windows in that app.
These menu commands are _not_ available with less than 3 Spaces created.

~~~
DHowett
> These menu commands are _not_ available with less than 3 Spaces created.

Well, discoverability certainly _has_ been a problem with Apple software
lately.

Take Force Touch as an example. Perhaps the menu items will show up with fewer
than three Spaces created if you just press it harder?

------
doodpants
"A day later, Apple ended the long wait for laptop users yearning for an
upgrade by unveiling a new line of MacBook Pros."

Meanwhile, they did nothing to end the long wait for _desktop_ users yearning
for an upgrade. I was expecting at least a cursory spec bump for their Mac
Mini and iMac lines. I was hoping to replace my 6-year old Mac Mini sometime
soon, but I don't want to do so with a 1-2 year old product.

------
kilroy123
I keep reading about how unhappy people are with Apples latest reveal. I feel
the same way. No way am I upgrading my 2015 Mac Book Pro with the new one.

Still, Apple will not change a thing unless people actually vote with their
wallets. If you're really so upset, do NOT buy this damn computer!

If this latest line sees very little sells, they'll get the idea.

~~~
pjlegato
Suppose you need a new computer for work. Your other options are Windows or a
Linux desktop experience, both of which are vastly worse in other ways. (No, I
don't want to dork around with spending days compiling kernel patches and
installing soundcard drivers before I can use the computer.)

I'd gladly buy any other laptop that was simple and _just worked_ out of the
box in the sense that a Mac does. But there aren't any.

~~~
58
> No, I don't want to dork around with spending days compiling kernel patches
> and installing soundcard drivers before I can use the computer.

You are badly misrepresenting the current state of mainstream Linux
distributions. I've done probably 20 Linux installs, and by and large it
always just works. If there is some necessary proprietary driver, it's almost
always as simple as Menu --> Administration --> Driver Manager and then
clicking once or twice.

Kernel patches? I wouldn't know how the hell to do that, but somehow I've been
using Linux happily for a decade.

~~~
lqdc13
I am using Linux distros on both laptops and a desktop as the only OS and you
are definitely misrepresenting the current state of things. It takes a lot of
work.

For the laptops, the clickpads never work well. You have to mess with
synaptics settings a lot and eventually you get a slightly worse config than
the default on Windows and a lot worse than OSX clickpad. This is coming from
someone who looked into hardware compatibility and bought a laptop that didn't
seem to have any problems.

For Desktops (and laptops * 10), you have a lot of issues if you want to

A) Use CUDA in general for neural networks.

B) Resize VM encrypted hard drive after creation.

C) Dual boot with Windows (things like updating windows or reinstalling a
Linux distro after digging yourself into a hole with CUDA drivers mentioned
above can wipe grub in a way that wouldn't let you boot).

D) Allow hibernation in a dual monitor setup with proprietary drivers.

E) Use a tablet for drawing on a system with multi-monitor setup and
proprietary drivers.

F) Mess with Compiz settings too much when you have proprietary drivers.

G) Dual booting with one hard drive with Linux full disk encryption and non-
default partitions and another hard drive regular Windows.

H) Dual boot from one disk and encrypt Linux partition with luks and forgo
swap partition.

Having said all this:

I would still use ubuntu/linux because almost all non-.NET/Java tools are
easier to use on Linux. Lets you customize your system and code without VM
overhead and inconveniences.

The system doesn't get slower over time and nothing unexpected randomly
happens (except after updates to graphics drivers).

~~~
58
Most of your list is either a specialized requirement, or something that
probably wouldn't be that much easier on Windows / MacOS. I meant that simple
things like browsing the Internet, video chatting, and playing music (the
needs of 99% of computer users) work out of the box. GP was saying that you
literally can't install Linux without kernel patching and command line
wizardry, which is totally false, and the only point I was refuting.

I'll add one to your list -- dealing with Linux audio. I have a stable music
production setup now, but it took me a long time to iron everthing out.

------
chadcmulligan
People talk about games/3d hardware for MS products, but I do a lot of work in
2d graphics, animation and Typography and the amount of work apple puts into
these compared to MS is superior imho. Even more when you come to
compatibility with these in MS land compared to apple, Apple just works, and
works beautifully, MS is a mire of API's that perform adequately. 2d is the
interface that most people see and really the focus on this is the reason that
'creatives' flock to apple imho.

------
partycoder
Apple focused on creating a specific experience.

To achieve that, they started by only targeting specific hardware. Android
supports various hardware and so does Windows. Does iOS and macOS do the same?
no. Because it would compromise the experience, which is tied directly to the
value of their brand, which is ultimately what allows them to price their
products the way they do.

Apple focused on creating products people want to buy. I am not from a wealthy
country, and I have seen people who have put basic needs aside to purchase an
iPhone. For a much lower price you could purchase an Android phone, but they
did not care. This is the power of a consistent, pleasant experience,
something that Microsoft and Google seek to now obtain through the Surface and
Pixel respectively. Let's see what happens.

------
MaggieL
Bizarre role reversal? I still remember MSFT and IBM doing the same thing in
the 90's.

------
nikolay
Microsoft was always more innovative than Apple - just Steve Jobs did a great
job at marketing, borrowing Porsche design, etc. Let's face it - Jony Ive is
now boring, Jobs was really inspiring people. I miss Jobs, Ive is no match.

It's so funny how Apple doesn't release a dual-mode touchscreen laptop because
they are afraid their iPad sales will tank. So cowardly - unlike Jobs' Apple!

------
orionblastar
Apple should have had touch screen Macs a few years ago with a pressure
sensitive pen and other devices. They should have given the iMac a touch
screen, and given the Macbook series a touch screen as well.

Microsoft got artists with the Surface Pro tablets and pressure sensitive
pens, etc.

------
olalonde
> A day later, Apple ended the long wait for laptop users yearning for an
> upgrade by unveiling a new line of MacBook Pros.

Was this a coincidence? I'm guessing not but no idea really.

------
kalefranz
I was actually fine with Apple's "courage" to take away my headphone jack on
my phone. But the courage to take away my Esc key crosses the line for me.

------
nilkn
[deleted]

~~~
basch
>a developer who needs a Unix-based OS.

Windows 10 includes binary compatibility. bit-for-bit, checksum-for-checksum
Ubuntu ELF binaries running directly in Windows. all of Ubuntu user space.

a full copy of ubuntu built in. Windows not working as a unix-like os for
developers isnt reality anymore.

~~~
nilkn
I have Windows 10 on my desktop machine, so I'll try it out. However, all that
means (assuming it works perfectly, as you seem to suggest) is that Windows is
usable to me. That's not enough of a reason for me to get a Surface Book.

I'm less than thrilled with Windows right now because just the other day the
built-in Mail app started crashing within a few seconds of opening; it's now
unable to connect to my Exchange account. After spending 10+ hours trying to
diagnose and fix the problem, I've accepted that nothing short of a complete
wipe of the machine will fix the problem.

~~~
nxc18
My MBP periodically crashes any app that tries to invoke an open/save dialog.
Its great when I try to download a file, accidentally make preview think I
edited something, or try to save a document.

You can pick individual bugs to complain about all day. Every OS has plenty.
Sorry to hear about your issues with the mail app though.

