
Microsoft: more people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before - yq
http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/12/13919312/microsoft-surface-sales-mac-switch
======
johnernaut
I'm one of the people that switched from a MacBook Pro to the new Surface
Book.

The ENTIRE experience was dreadful for me.

The day I went into the Microsoft store to purchase it (Black Friday), their
credit card system was down, so I had to wait around for nearly 2 hours until
they finally figured things out. That wouldn't typically upset me, but my
brother-in-law went through something similar just 2 weeks prior. Aside from
that, the reps in the store were constantly trying to up-sell me on different
items and get me to purchase other things throughout the store. This is
something that is extremely irritating to me and something that I appreciated
the reps at the Apple Store not doing.

As far as the actual product goes - I found the trackpad to be lacking. It
just FELT a bit buggy and non-responsive at times. I have yet to find a
trackpad as solid as the ones that Apple ship. This became more apparent of
time after using the product. Aside from the trackpad I don't have too many
complaints, except for things that are of personal preference (I can't say I
like the design / functionality of the snake hinge). I also realized, as
mainly a pro user, that I don't have much use / need for the touch screen or
tablet portion of the device.

Needless to say, I ended up returning the device and buying the new touch-bar
15" MBP a few days ago. Aside from how annoying it is to locate / use the
touch-based Esc key, it's a really solid device.

~~~
fredley
Trackpads are one of the main things that other companies just can't get
right, even on premium devices. Given how long ago Apple 'solved' trackpads,
I'm amazed that the rest of the industry hasn't caught up.

~~~
marrone12
I believe that Apple has patented a lot of what makes their touchpads so
great, which makes it difficult for competitors to make an equivalent.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
I don't think that's the reason why. Track pads are just another part of
Apple's obsession with UX. They invest millions (literally) into track pad
placement, feel, and ability knowing that users care about it and they'll make
it up with volume. It's hard to justify UX spend.

~~~
squeed
Indeed. They purchased FingerWorks[1], a maker of obscure touchpad-based
keyboards, in order to get their touchpad experts.

Most other companies would just integrate Synaptic's reference design and call
it a day.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks)

~~~
wyclif
Yes, these comments are exactly right. The other companies resigned to it
being Good Enough for them, and don't care about making the trackpad
excellent.

------
martijn_himself
I can't believe anyone using macOS for their professional workflow would
consider switching to Windows 10 despite all the criticism leveled at Apple's
hardware (most of which I think is totally justified).

I use Windows professionally (for .NET development) and I think Windows 10 is
still light-years behind, with an unstable, jarring OS experience full of bugs
and niggles and unloved and underdeveloped touch interface. I would _love_ the
opportunity to move to macOS and iOS professionally. Fonts and UI rendering
look awful on Windows compared to macOS, there is just no comparison.

~~~
EasyTiger_
I just installed Windows 10. My start menu by default was full of stuff I will
never ever use. After deleting/uninstalling apps (where it would allow me) the
OS decides to install Candy Crush and other games I never asked for.
Unacceptable.

~~~
UK-AL
"OS decides to install Candy Crush and other games I never asked for.
Unacceptable. " \- I would like more details on this. I don't think I've heard
of that before?

~~~
shimo5037
Not sure if you're being sarcastic (there's the non-Nexus Android experience
after all), but I did a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro on my gaming machine a
while ago. Full retail license and an official .iso downloaded from Microsoft.
There's barely anything installed on that machine, however I was also
surprised to find Candy Crush in my start menu after a while. It's probably
just a shortcut to the store, but it does look quite a bit like it's already
installed.

~~~
bwat48
by default windows 10 will show you 'suggested' apps in your start menu
programs list. This can be disabled in the settings (just open settings and
search for suggestions)

------
jstsch
Just to chime in. Since the displeased are always loud. I got my maxed out
TouchBar MBP 15" about two weeks ago and I'm really happy with it.

It replaces a Mid-2010 MBP 17". It's light, fast and has a gorgeous screen.

After a week, I even prefer the new thin keyboard versus the old. My external
keyboard feels like trudging through mud. No trouble hitting the ESC-key on
the touch bar. The context awareness of it is actually pretty great.

For USB-connectivity I simply bought a few convertors on AliExpress for about
70 cents each. How often do I plug those in? Almost never. Everything is
wireless these days.

Except for those two 5K screens coming soon... but I wish Apple would release
them for € 200 more with a nice alu bezel ;) or 5K iMacs with target display
mode, that'd be fine too.

~~~
TruthSHIFT
I'm glad you're having a good experience with the new MBP.

However, I wouldn't plug a $.70 adapter into a $3000 computer. Maybe you
should splurge and spend $10 on the Apple adapter.

~~~
rcavezza
Although price can sometimes be an indicator of quality, it doesn't
necessarily mean quality. I think this is especially true when the alternative
higher priced product has a lot of "Brand Value" that can be attributed to the
higher price.

~~~
mikestew
In the case of Apple-branded adapters, it has been demonstrated time and again
that they actually put some thought into their adapters so that your device or
house do not catch on fire. Not so much with the $0.70 ones. Maybe, likely
not, but hey, you saved $9.70 that you can apply to your home owners insurance
premium!

~~~
DanBC
Are there any Apple brand adaptors available for $10.40?

~~~
mikestew
I was going to edit my original comment, but then your subtle catch wouldn't
be nearly as humorous. I'll leave it there as a monument to my lack of skill
in ad hoc math.

------
nilkn
I tried to make this switch because I bought into all the online criticism of
the new MBP.

The build quality was very lacking compared to the new MBP.

The screen wobbled like crazy even when just typing on it.

The model I was using had a really horrible display with active ghosting (not
sure if that's the correct term -- it appeared that the refresh rate was just
very low, so moving the cursor around or dragging a window would leave a sort
of "ghost trail" behind). It's possible this was just a defective display.

The trackpad was nowhere near as good as I was led to believe from online
comments. It wasn't horrible, but multitouch gesture recognition felt years
behind Apple's. Leaving a finger resting on the trackpad would break all kinds
of gestures, but Apple's trackpads handle that just fine. I also didn't
realize how nice the Force Touch trackpads are until I went back to a hinge-
based trackpad where you can't even click everywhere.

Windows 10 is a big advance over previous versions, and I use it extensively
on my desktop at home. However, the experience with a touchpad didn't feel
anywhere nearly as polished as on my MacBook. Using trackpad gestures to slide
between virtual desktops for instance had a very janky and obviously buggy
animation.

Windows now has the Ubuntu subsystem, but I immediately ran into serious
dealbreaker issues. I couldn't get Haskell or Elm to run on it because a core
system call hadn't been implemented yet. The team is aware of it and I'm sure
it's slated to be fixed soon, but I still couldn't do my work on the laptop
without firing up a VM or dual booting.

I never used the touch screen and never felt the need to detach the screen and
use it as a tablet. The aspect ratio of the screen also bothered me.

I'm now using the much hated 2016 MBP with Touch Bar and am extremely happy
with the purchase.

~~~
KirinDave
> The screen wobbled like crazy even when just typing on it.

It sounds to me like you had a somewhat defective model. That said, the
surface book is not the best physical laptop computer and will always be less
stable than a standard hinge laptop.

> Windows now has the Ubuntu subsystem, but I immediately ran into serious
> dealbreaker issues. I couldn't get Haskell or Elm to run on it because a
> core system call hadn't been implemented yet. The team is aware of it and
> I'm sure it's slated to be fixed soon, but I still couldn't do my work on
> the laptop without firing up a VM or dual booting.

Why not just use Powershell and the windows builds? They work fine. Powershell
isn't going to kill you.

But it's also weird, because I got GHC to compile just fine.

------
kemiller2002
I'd be curious to see the real numbers:

Again, Microsoft refuses to provide numbers but vaguely claims “our trade-in
program for MacBooks was our best ever.”

If you go from 5 trade ins to 7, you can site your best year ever. It doesn't
mean you've made a dent. I can see that people are disappointed in the new
MacBook, but there are very few I know that would just say "screw it, I'm
switching platforms." Admittedly, my friends are mostly designers and
developers, so it's a biased sample, but I'm a little skeptical about the
numbers.

~~~
Cthulhu_
It's definitely reminiscent of Apple's marketing language, calling everything
the best ever. Which isn't technically wrong, but still.

~~~
econnors
I always chuckle at "Our most advanced iPhone ever."

One would certainly hope so!

~~~
timthorn
No - their most advanced /yet/ maybe, but not ever...

------
emehrkay
I played with the Surface Studio yesterday and it was a BEAUTIFUL machine. The
screen was a lot thinner than I imagined, it was super sturdy, and just felt
good in the hand. My experience fell apart with using the pen/my finger to
navigate windows. I felt like I was double/triple clicking icons because I
wasnt sure if my action registered or not. But once into photoshop (it was
right on the desktop) the pen worked well. If I were to leave macOS as the os
on my development machine, it definitely wouldn't be for Windows. I've heard
people still have problems with *nix symlinks in their VM shared folders --
that is very minor, but it could cripple certain projects.

~~~
actsasbuffoon
Yeah, the stylus isn't very good. I bought a Surface Pro 4 tablet with a ~$500
discount which made it attractive. The device has some nice points, but
compared to my Wacom Cintiq or even my Apple Pencil/iPad Pro combo, the stylus
on the Surface is sub-par. The pressure sensitivity is weak, there's no tilt
capability, and it frequently fails to capture clicks/strokes.

The Surface type cover is definitely nicer than the keyboard cover for the
iPad Pro though. MS did a nice job with that.

------
artursapek
I believe it. I just abandoned Apple after years of loyalty. I looked hard at
Surfaces and after considering them for a while I decided they weren't ready
to be my main dev machine, so I went with a Thinkpad. But Microsoft is doing
great stuff with its hardware lately.

~~~
erokar
I've been using Macs since 2008. My next machine will probably be a Thinkpad
or a Dell. Apple has dropped the ball too many times now, both hardware and
software vice. And somehow everything Apple does now feels stale and off mark.

~~~
astrodust
No OS license key. No "Patch Tuesday". No finger pointing between hardware
vendor and OS vendor. No third party drivers necessary to clean boot.

Built-in backup system, both to "cloud" if desired or external hard disk if
preferred. Application signing that serves to protect users rather than nag
them into unquestioningly running anything and everything as administrator.

Fantastic, fully native support for the wealth of open-source software
available for UNIX/BSD.

Apple hasn't dropped the ball. You'll realize this once you end up in the
Windows world frustrated and trying to do the same things you take for granted
now.

~~~
lmm
> No OS license key

Not something you see as a user, at least on the Surface.

> No "Patch Tuesday"

Because Apple leaves you running vulnerable software for months at a time.
(Remember the zlib double free?)

> No finger pointing between hardware vendor and OS vendor. No third party
> drivers necessary to clean boot.

Not an issue with Surface.

> Fantastic, fully native support for the wealth of open-source software
> available for UNIX/BSD.

"Linux on Windows" may theoretically be non-native but it's a better
experience than mac - real apt-get, install anything that works on Ubuntu
without having to compile anything yourself. And has OSX figured out how to
display any OSS GUIs yet?

~~~
astrodust
The double-free thing dates from 2002. I'm sure there's better examples than
that.

The Surface is a big step forward in terms of eliminating a lot of nuisances
from the Windows experience but it also proves that the biggest nuisance of
all is OEMs. Eliminating them also cuts out a lot of reasons for using Windows
in the first place, like low-cost equipment. I agree it's a great product, but
it's also great because of the tight integration you get with a unified
hardware/OS vendor. Dell, HP and others don't have this luxury, so their
experience is always second-rate.

Also "Linux on Windows" is a huge step forwards, but sheesh, it's still
atrocious compared to proper native support. It's like a slick version of
Cygwin. Remarkable but not a drop-in replacement for Linux.

You can compile GUI apps on macOS, but I've never needed to. The one app that
depended on that was Wireshark, but I found a way to use tcpdump instead. It's
mostly a non-issue.

~~~
lmm
> Also "Linux on Windows" is a huge step forwards, but sheesh, it's still
> atrocious compared to proper native support. It's like a slick version of
> Cygwin. Remarkable but not a drop-in replacement for Linux.

What's the practical distinction you're making? I develop a program that has
Linux as its primary platform there. It gives you a closer-to-Linux experience
than OSX does.

------
shiftpgdn
I am a Surface convert after Apple discontinued OS support and updates for my
still powerful, healthy, relatively new Macbook.

Surface is much more flexible and provides a greater degree of customization.
It is the perfect hybrid between and tablet and a laptop device. I'm just as
comfortable using it as a consumption device on the couch as I am using it as
a production device on a desk.

It really feels like Apple has become more and more hostile to the
"production" crowd as a means of catering to the consumption crowd. I love
their hardware but the company and it's attitude towards customers can take a
hike.

~~~
eddieroger
Which MacBook are you using that you consider "relatively new," but Apple
stopped supporting? In my experiences with Apple, support has gone on for
years, and in the case of my original iBook, a full decade. It has gotten
shorter over the last few years, but Sierra officially supports computers from
2009, which after 7 years I don't consider new any more.

~~~
slantyyz
AFAIK, the 2011 MBPs are no longer supported for hardware repairs (although
they will run the latest OS). Maybe that's what the parent is referring to?

FWIW, the 15" 2011 MBPs with the i7 quad cores, GPU issues aside, are still
pretty fast when compared to the latest Macs using the ultrabook CPUs.

~~~
djrogers
> AFAIK, the 2011 MBPs are no longer supported for hardware repairs (although
> they will run the latest OS). Maybe that's what the parent is referring to?

The GGP specifically stated that "Apple discontinued OS support and updates".
This is either incorrect, or the GGP has a very different definition of
"relatively new" than I do - with 7 year old hardware being supported on
Sierra, he'd have to be talking about something 8+ years old...

------
akulbe
I tried to like it. I have my Surface Book sitting here next to me.

Windows 10 is much better than previous versions, and I like the direction MS
seems to be moving. That said, I feel like in spite of how nice a machine the
Surface Book is, QA is still sorely lacking on Windows 10.

"Sleep of Death" (google it) and working in *nix 99.99% of the time is what
killed it for me. Trying to make the workflow work, it's just too painful,
compared to working from my MBP.

New MBP touch on order. Should get here next week.

~~~
bitmapbrother
Did they ever solve that "very hard computer science problem" with power
management on the Surface Book? I don't think I've ever heard of a more
condescending excuse to give to your customers than that.

~~~
mikesickler
Just my experience, but a relatively recent (late summer?) OS update must have
fixed it. Since then, I haven't had any problems with my SP4 not waking from
sleep.

~~~
akulbe
I'm _religious_ about keeping this thing up to date.

I've had the "sleep of death" issue occur multiple times, in spite of keeping
my SB current on updates.

I've been to the MS Store and talked to support multiple times. It's a well-
documented and reoccurring issue that MS has not fixed yet. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
jsjohnst
Users switching from macOS to Surface last year: 100

Users switching from macOS to Surface this year: 150

"Best year ever!"

\--

When companies say things like this and refuse to give actual sell through
numbers, the above is what I think. I'm sure I'm not alone.

------
bobjordan
I've been on Macbook pros since 2010, had a few of them by now, my latest is a
retina 2013 with an i7, 8gb ram, 500GB hard drive. When surface book came out
last year I bought one, with i7, 16GB ram, dedicated video card, 500GB hard
drive. I really fell in love with drawing on my surface book with sketchbook
pro, also great is fact that solidworks runs well on it, and finally windows
10 is much improved. Throw in the new linux subsystem on Windows 10 and
general opensource embrace these days, altogether it is really more
interesting to use my Surfacebook vs my MBP. It certainly feels like Microsoft
is on the rise while Apple is on the decline. Further, I'm honestly excited to
read about the upcoming Windows 10 phones that can run full desktop programs.

~~~
mattlevan
If anything, it sure is nice to see that Microsoft might actually begin to
become a real Apple competitor again. Competition is good!

------
dak1
Without numbers to put this into context it's a fairly meaningless claim.

~~~
zawaideh
Exactly. Record numbers could mean 100 people.

------
TYPE_FASTER
Win10 is ok, but there are two things that have turned me off:

1\. The "Start" menu (tiles) have ads in them by default. I do not like this.
2\. Connected Standby is still in development. To view advanced power
management settings, set
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\CSEnabled to 0. If
you are having connectivity issues on a Surface device, make this reg change,
then reboot and uncheck "Allow the operating system to turn off" under the
"Power Management" tab in the Marvell wifi adapter.

------
jetti
I just can't get behind either the Surface or Macbook Pro. I had a Macbook
that my wife has taken over and I'm currently rockin' an Asus ultrabook that
has a 15" screen. I love the bigger screens and 13" is just way to small for
me. For the price of a Surface Book I could get a Dell/HP/Lenovo with a 15"
screen, 32GB of memory and a large SSD.

~~~
vidarh
15" is way too small for me. Basically it boils down to differences in usage
patterns.

For my part I have a 17" laptop that is almost exclusively for home office
use, a 11" chromebook for meetings or light work away from home, and an 8"
tablet for entertainment and the odd emergency ssh session (I _can_ fix
servers over ssh from my phone too, but it's not exactly a fun experience).

The way I see it, there's no single form-factor that'll keep me happy, so I'd
rather go for multiple.

I don't think people will ever agree on a single screen size or what other
specs actually matters (e.g. I do have an SSD in my laptop, but quickly
realises it doesn't really matter what type of storage I have, because I boot,
I start Chrome and a bunch of terminals + ssh sessions, and then I rarely
touch disk again; meanwhile other people load and store massive files
regularly)

~~~
lmm
That's very similar to what I used to have pre-Surface Book. But I found that
the Surface Book was small and light enough to replace the 11", but powerful
enough to replace the 17" (I have a Surface Dock for the "home office" part -
leave stuff connected to the dock (which could include a big screen, though I
haven't found the need yet - the 13.5" screen is high-resolution and very
clear, so it ends up being more readable than the larger screen it replaced),
but take the laptop itself travelling when need be). The tablet form is a bit
clunky, but close enough that the convenience of a single device outweighs
having a lighter dedicated tablet (in fairness I was on a 10" tablet, and I
have a 6"\+ phone that probably displaces some 8" use cases).

I don't think we'll ever see a single form factor dominate as such, but a
single device that can shift between form factors simplifies things a lot, I
think that's the future.

~~~
vidarh
For my part, I just can't work on a smaller screen. I certainly get what you
mean regarding getting away with smaller screens with a higher quality and/or
higher resolution screen - I'll never go back to less than full HD for my
phones, for example, - but the distance of my laptop screen is largely
dictated by the attachment to the keyboard (if someone offers a hinged display
that can be lifted up closer to the face, perhaps) and I've found not being
forced to lean in towards the screen while working is essential to my physical
comfort, but I want to be able to largely fill my field of view.

My current laptop "only" has a full hd screen, but it was well over half the
cost of my not-at-all-cheap custom build laptop when I bought it, and I expect
to spend a similar proportion of the cost of my next laptop on an above
average screen (edit: which will mean at a "4K" 17" screen, most likely)

I'm all for a single computing device, but not a single screen size. I don't
think we'll ever settle on a single screen-type until/unless we have good
enough head mountable screen replacements.

------
daenney
So according to Microsoft, based on their numbers, which they won't release,
more people are trading in Macs for Surfaces than before. There's also no way
of knowing if this claimed increase is in any way significant.

I'm rather puzzled that even with this complete lack of data, which The Verge
seems also skeptical about, they still decided to write an article about it.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
Maybe the focus on fake news about politics in the popular press will get
people to wake up and realize that the problem has been worse, for longer, in
the tech press?

------
delegate
I've resuscitated an older Windows PC, after years of exclusive OSX.. I've
changed the CPU cooler (Intel Q9550), added an SSD drive - and my old PC is
back up, with the SSD it has enough juice to do the tasks I need it for - run
Visual Studio 2015, browsing ... plus I can also play some (older) games on
it, which is a lot of fun.

I miss the old days of being able to play with the hardware, buy new video or
sound cards, overclock the CPU and so on.

Years ago when I was using Windows 7 it seemed the best OS Microsoft has put
out so far (and I think since).

But after years of working on a mac, I have to say that Windows feels like a
huge hack in comparison. There are countless UIs you have to access in order
to configure the OS, all kinds of voodoo utilities, registry editor hacks and
so on.

Should I also mention the daily blue screen of death ? Probably my fault
somehow, but still..

Yes yes, I remember.. this used to be the Windows experience - I used to liked
that.. It was what made me an 'experienced' user.

But I don't anymore. I'm not sure what the Windows experience is today, but
I'm not eager to spend a lot of money to find that out...

Of course I'm curious about the Surface hardware - but not as much as to
accept an inferior OS experience.

After all, these little things, the details, the polish, the smoothness ...
they trickle down into the creative work that I do, they do influence me
subconsciously.. all the time.

~~~
canuckintime
You're comparing apples to oranges. Your old 'revived' PC doesn't not
represent the Surface signature experience which Microsoft designed to appeal
to Mac users.

Curious though: Who was the OEM for your PC and how much did you spend on it?
How much was your Mac?

------
JustSomeNobody
Why is this on HN? There are NO NUMBERS to back up such a click-baity claim.

~~~
st3v3r
Cause lots of people like to hate on Apple.

~~~
wnevets
like the people at 9to5mac.com?

------
xiaoma
It's amazing. I used to _hate_ Microsoft. I wasn't a programmer or even that
technical but I still kept trying to use linux in college, I jumped on the
reboot of Netscape/Firebird/Firefox, and I wrote a long essay comparing Bill
Gates to a Robber Baron.

But this past couple of years they've just improved their offerings,
particularly those for devs, incessantly. I was kind of on the fence about VSC
vs Atom a year and a half ago. Now it's not only far faster but also a
significant boost in productivity. Ubuntu tools are available from inside
Windows. Office, the very program I most used to love to hate, is _killing
it_.

I still have a macbook, but it's been gathering dust. The iMac 27" was my
favorite computer I've owned but the Surface Studio has leapfrogged beyond it.
Especially as a creative dev, it's hard to justify staying with Apple at this
point.

------
anjc
I switched from an MBP to an SP3 and I could never ever switch back. It's the
best tech purchase I've ever made. It has its quirks for sure, but using my
MBP now feels almost claustrophobic due to the limitations (evidenced by the
fingerprints on its screen).

What made me switch was the realisation that using my iPad for productivity
reasons would've been useful - even just for typing a document with a keyboard
- but actually trying to use it was like a sick joke perpetuated by Apple.

So I got an SP3 to fill that gap, and within a week my iPad, MBP and desktop
were all useless to me.

------
xenihn
I was set on getting a new 15" MBP to replace my late 2013 model, and I put
aside just over $2k for one. Sadly, after prices came out, I would have been
spending $3k minimum after taxes for what I wanted. I looked into buying a
used 2014 or 2015 instead.

When I looked into the actual spec difference, the biggest upgrade for me
would have been going from 8GB to 16GB of RAM, since the integrated GPU (Iris
Pro) is the same, and the CPU performance upgrade is minimal. The idea of
spending $1100ish on a used MBP and then having to sell my current laptop
(probably spending $500-600 total) just to upgrade my RAM was so offputting,
so I held off.

I ended up building a mini-ITX hackintosh instead. It turned out great -- the
new UEFI method is so much better than the old way, since you can update with
no risk of breaking your drivers, and upgrade without a full reinstall. I also
just found out we're all getting loaded 2016 15" MBPs at work, so I'm glad I
didn't go through with either of my first two considerations.

------
sulam
Until I see actual numbers I take any advertising material like this with a
hefty grain (nugget?) of salt. As far as we know they went from 1000 people
using the trade-in program last year to 5000 using it this year. Yes, a big
uptick, but not necessarily meaningful until we get to larger numbers.

I've seen/used the Surface and honestly it's a lot like the iPad Pro in that
it feels like the sort of computer I'd happily hand to someone who doesn't
actually need a PC, but I'd hate to have it be my development experience. The
Surface is a bit more full-featured due to it having less of a sandboxed app
model, but it's underpowered for the stuff I do with a computer. On the other
hand the new MBP is pretty good. It has some annoyances (USB-C annoys me once
every couple weeks so far, and the keyboard takes getting used to), but it's
fast, light, and has a beautiful display. And I can run everything on it that
I need to.

------
chx
Odd. Isn't the biggest complaint against the new Macbook Pro the lack of
memory? There's no Surface with 32GB at this moment, is there? There are
rumors of a Surface Book 2 next year with 4K and 32GB but nothing more than
that.

------
hesdeadjim
I'm stuck working in Windows 10 right now due to VR only being supported by
it. I spent around 8 hours getting AutoHotkey set up so that most of my
shortcuts are back to Mac versions (I use mac keyboard, just can't beat it).
The last missing link was Linux Subsystem for Windows. I now use my standard
Vim setup and besides being limited to 16 colors (ugh), everything mostly just
works.

I'd switch back to Mac given the choice, but the embarrassingly bad hardware
specs make it a complete no-go for game development.

Edit: I also use Cmder to give me a very capable console window.

~~~
mikewhy
Care to share your AHK script? Here's mine:
[https://gist.github.com/mikew/18a0e5c6f6bdbf1bb3be0a9cfa3b5d...](https://gist.github.com/mikew/18a0e5c6f6bdbf1bb3be0a9cfa3b5df8)

~~~
hesdeadjim
Of course, here's mine:

[https://gist.github.com/justonia/caf8c8a794d5252e8dbc149d457...](https://gist.github.com/justonia/caf8c8a794d5252e8dbc149d4578631d)

I also added a .reg file that lets me right click on an .ahk file and get a
menu item to run as administrator.

------
uncletaco
I bought a Surface Book recently and it has been a mixed bag.

On one hand there's Windows' horrid display scaling issues. Hooking the
Surface Book into an external HD monitor means dealing with blurry fonts and
inconsistant scaling on some apps. Not entirely Microsoft's fault but its
still a concern.

On the other, I really like marking up documents and drawing sketches on the
screen. The machine is fairly solid and a joy to type on and use on a day-to-
day basis.

Like others have said, the trackpad has taken some getting used to. It feels
less "solid" than my 2011 MBP's, and it's definitely more limited than the
MBP's. It doesn't handle palm rejection as well as I'd like, and the swipe to
go back gesture is inconsistent across applications.

There are other issues too. Flux fucks with things; when I use it things get
sluggish as the screen begins to warm. I've recently gone ahead and
uninstalled it. Sometimes when I press the Windows key to bring up the Start
search the search bar doesn't register the keyboard. Detaching and reattaching
sometimes confuses the machine and it doesn't know whether to drop into tablet
mode or return to desktop mode.

Despite that, if someone reads this in the future, I will say I overall enjoy
the machine. I really like what Microsoft is trying to do in terms of bridging
the gap between devices like tablets and traditional PCs. My girlfriend and I
both like doodling on it, it plays older games good enough with its dGPU, and
it's battery life is superb. So I'd recommend it as a great prosumer device.

~~~
mafuyu
Yeah, Windows 10 is a huge improvement but there are still some hairy parts.

I've run into the search issue as well, and resolved it by tweaking some
options in "Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows". I believe it
was the "Animations in the taskbar" option, but I'm not 100%.

Flux also destroys your framerate when it transitions. I tend to just launch
it when I need it and set it to always be tinted.

The touch and pen support is fantastic, though, and has become second nature
to me for web browsing and note taking.

I've also more or less been able to recreate a Linux-like development workflow
with Windawesome[0], cmder[1], chocolatey[2], and qutebrowser[3]. Msys in
cmder gives me the unix-like terminal I need while still being able to run
Windows-native utilities, and things I install from chocolatey like git, ag,
and vim are added to the cmder PATH and just work. Bash for Windows has been
quite nice as well.

[0] [https://windawesome.codeplex.com/](https://windawesome.codeplex.com/) [1]
[http://cmder.net/](http://cmder.net/) [2]
[https://chocolatey.org/](https://chocolatey.org/) [3]
[https://qutebrowser.org](https://qutebrowser.org)

------
bluedino
At the local mall if you go to the Microsoft store you might find 15 people in
there, very empty feeling. Meanwhile, there are probably 3-400 in the Apple
store.

>> More people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before. Our trade-
in program for MacBooks was our best ever

You could trade-up with up to $650 credit for your working MacBook Pro or Air.
I'm assuming they were giving similar values as you would with Gazelle or
another service.

~~~
dmalvarado
The thing with that though is that you can buy a Surfacebook in a lot of
different places. Macbook is mostly the Apple Store, or at least that is the
perception. Ever notice how unbusy the Apple section at Best Buy is?

~~~
matt_wulfeck
Maybe it's my own experience, but I've only ever see a surfacebook at the MS
flagship store.

~~~
lmm
I bought mine at John Lewis, FWIW.

------
nickbauman
I would consider a Surface if I could install Linux on it and it worked as
well as a my System76. In fact I'm asking: is anyone out there doing this?

~~~
AlbertoGP
I'm writing this on a Surface Pro 3, and I've commented on it before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300927)

I've been compiling the kernel since I got it, later figured out how to
compile only the drivers I needed (specially the keyboard/touchpad) which was
reduced over time as more and more drivers were built in.

There was finally a guy that set up an Ubuntu PPA [1] repository from where
you can install the whole package, and it was fine until last October when I
decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 16.10.

[1]
[https://launchpad.net/~tigerite/+archive/ubuntu/kernel](https://launchpad.net/~tigerite/+archive/ubuntu/kernel)

For that version there is no PPA, and the kernel patches I had been using for
the type cover did not work any more (they compile, just do not work). Then I
re-installed 16.04 from scratch, but now the tigerite kernel does not boot
because of some BTRFS crash (divide by zero) and the standard one only
supports the Type Cover 3 keyboard: I have both the v3 and v4, and the later
is much better and was working with both my patches and the tigerite kernel.

There are ways to get the Type Cover v3 touchpad working by configuring xorg,
but the patches are better because they work with the multitouch driver.

The result is that right now I'm typing on a Lenovo Thinkpad Compact USB
keyboard. :-\

In general I like this computer a lot, and nowadays almost everything works
out of the box (including volume keys and both cameras) except the most
crucial part, the type cover. The stylus and touchscreen worked fine from the
first day. Suspend never worked, although it kind of did for a few months and
now it's broken again. Hybernate should work but I did not do it because I
would need to work around the encrypted swap.

I had pledged for the Eve V tablet computer [2], a crowd-funded version which
has a few interesting improvements, but I think I'll back down before the
deadline because they said they can not support Linux, and I will not have
time in the coming months to experiment with it.

[2] [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/eve-v-the-first-ever-
crow...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/eve-v-the-first-ever-crowd-
developed-computer-laptop-tablet#/)

This is quite a disorganized answer but I hope it'll be of use to you. I like
the Surface Pro, but I'm tired of this back-and-forth getting the basics to
work with Linux. At this point the v3 is not a cutting-edge computer any more,
and it should be effortless to use it with Linux.

~~~
nickbauman
Dude! Thank you for your "disorganized" response! I'm kinda married to the 16
release of Ubuntu right now and it does not seem worth it yet for the Surface
3 Pro. I hope I will never have to run / use Windows again. Not enough hours
in my life to make it worth ever going back.

------
youdontknowtho
One high price computer for another...

Just kidding. I want a Surface Studio so bad its crazy. Just can't bring
myself to spend the scratch, though.

------
coldtea
They were 100.000.

Now they are 200.000.

100% increase -- record rates. But totally inconsequential.

(Numbers out of my ass, but without specifics, they are as good as the claim).

------
chasing
'Microsoft still isn’t providing sales numbers, but the company claims “more
people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before.”'

Maybe this article would be improved with a little journalism to maybe make an
educated guess as to what these numbers might be? Something besides just
retyping Microsoft's marketing press release?

------
shmerl
In my experience, quite a lot of MacOS refugees who are upset with its
stagnation are switching to Linux.

~~~
krob
Not sure I've read anything about this, it always seems to be going on year
round, especially when toolsets become increasing difficult to work with
exclusively on mac. vmware fusion on mac is pretty piss poor, amount of ram on
a mac laptop is usually the biggest concern I'd have for doing virtualization
or setting up a bunch of vm's for simulating deployments, 16gb vs say 32 &
64gb ram configurations on newer laptops is a huge deal in my opinion towards
migrating away from macos.

~~~
shmerl
Well, MacOS was experiencing bit rot for quite a while already, especially in
areas where Apple simply completely abandoned it. Having a paranoid control
from Apple in combination with its indifference bit MacOS users hard.

Example:
[https://www.winehq.org/wwn/404#Direct3D%2011%20development](https://www.winehq.org/wwn/404#Direct3D%2011%20development)

 _> An open issue with anything newer than Direct3D9 is that wined3d still
depends on legacy OpenGL 2 features and many drivers do not expose some
features necessary for d3d10/11 in legacy contexts. With the MaxVersionGL key
set wined3d will request a core context, but certain blitting corner cases are
still broken. Mesa and the Nvidia binary driver mostly work. On MacOS you are
most likely out of luck._

------
bitmapbrother
If they really are switching to the Surface at "Record Rates" then why don't
they provide the numbers to back up their claim instead of using superfluous
headlines to prop up their ailing product? It's reminiscent of Apple's tired
old line of Android users switching to iPhones in record numbers yet the
smartphone OS market share reports never really seem to reflect that. I
switched from Windows to a Mac about a year ago and found macOS to be a
refreshing change from Windows in terms of UI, polish, usability, privacy, app
quality and security. Those people switching, that have never experienced
Windows, better prepare themselves for the world of hurt that awaits them.

------
amerkhalid
This might be right place to ask; has anyone been using SP4 (not Surface Book)
as their main dev machine?

I am debating between 13 inch MBP or SP4. I can get SP4 with same specs as MBP
for significantly cheaper. But of course, it may not be as productive as MBP.

------
mark_l_watson
I bought a very inexpensive HP Stream 11 a few years ago to experiment with
Windows 10, and I think Microsoft has generally improved the environment a
lot. After a few months of experimenting with Windows 10, I put Ubuntu on this
laptop, and I use it while traveling.

That said, I had to buy a new laptop last month and after almost getting a
Surface Pro + keyboard, I ended up with a MacBook. I decided that I didn't
want to change my workflow (writing, programming in Haskell, Java, various
Lisps).

However, I will carefully evaluate Microsoft laptops (purchased from
Microsoft: signature editions don't have crap-ware on them) in a few years
when I need another laptop.

------
dandare
I for one am very excited about PR articles like this. It is not worth much
but it may be that proverbial drop in a full glass to persuade Apple to
release new upgrade to MBP much sooner than it otherwise would.

~~~
TruthSHIFT
Apple would love to release an upgraded MBP. Unfortunately, Intel's lack of
support for low-power RAM is holding them back:

[https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/21/phil-schiller-again-breaks-
do...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/21/phil-schiller-again-breaks-down-why-new-
macbook-pro-is-limited-to-16gb-ram-citing-battery-logic-board-design/)

------
thearn4
I have been looking at making the switch to another kind of laptop too (I'm
still running a 2012 MBA as a personal machine, 2013 MBP at work, and a Win10
desktop for gaming).

I've test driven a few, but still haven't committed to something. For now, my
macbooks are still doing pretty well (though the MBA is feeling low on RAM
these days). I know I'll find it tough to give up their trackpads, assuming
another vendor has not successfully copied their feel within the next year or
two.

------
tluyben2
How is the battery life on the Surface book/pro? All I about it sounds pretty
horrible. Especially compared to the 2011 X220s I use all the time, which have
15+ hours I wonder what people really get from these MS things. I don't really
care about the OS, but the last Macbook Pro's I bought had crap battery life;
the best was the Air 11 inch for me but they don't make that anymore...

------
jimbokun
No numbers, so no way to evaluate how significant this is.

For the record, just played with the TouchBar in the Apple Store, and think
it's super cool. Also love the humongous track pad, and believe USB-C support
will explode in the near future.

So I'm curious to see sales numbers for Surface vs. the new MacBook Pros.
Might be more "switchers" to Surface, but also a big increase in MacBook Pro
sales overall.

~~~
pdimitar
As a guy who uses the top bar of keys a lot, I wouldn't buy the new MBPs even
for $500.

IMO that was a foolhardy decision; Macs are (were?) very popular amongst
designers and programmers, why limit the accessibility of the keyboard? Do you
realize how many strokes on the Esc key a VIM-using dev does per day?

It's as if Apple doesn't care about the professional audience anymore.

They should've offered a "touch bar" and "normal bar" variants for their
laptops IMO.

~~~
jimbokun
How much of Apple's sales do you think go to vim users?

And they do have a normal bar variant of the 13", although that might go away
when prices come down.

Lastly, your argument sounds similar to me to the people who vowed they would
never give up their physical phone keyboards. I don't think they made much
impact on Apple's iPhone sales.

Seems your top priority is preserving what you are comfortable with. My gut
feeling is potential for better interfaces no one has even thought of yet for
Touch Bar is immense.

~~~
pdimitar
As a matter of fact, I do miss physical keyboards on phones but frankly they
don't make sense because they're nowhere near the level of comfort of my
mechanical keyboard. My answer to this has been to stop spending on
smartphones. I'll be buying the next iPad Pro and will settle for a midrange
Android and an iPhone 7 / 7s / 8 and will just call it quits for 3-4 years.

I am not "vowing" anything. There are changes that do make sense and others
who don't -- and that's subjective, of course. For me the real physical
feedback when typing is irreplaceable.

And don't give me that talk that I am a grumpy old fart. Until we have
computers able to react on voice like the Star Trek computers do, full
physical keyboards are not going anywhere. It's about convenience and speed of
the interaction, not about trends.

------
mikekij
Misleading title. Any rate >0 may be a record rate.

------
ocdtrekkie
One of the things I've noticed that's pretty huge is that a lot of Mac-
exclusive apps like Affinity and Tower have recently made full native Windows
versions in the last few months. Developers who felt their customer base
resided entirely or primarily on Mac seem to feel there's a market on Windows
for artists and developers that there hadn't been before.

------
iuguy
> Microsoft still isn’t providing sales numbers, but the company claims “more
> people are switching from Macs to Surface than ever before.”

How bad does journalism have to get before it's indistinguishable from fake
news? Surely MS knows how many people are switching from Macs to surface
compared to a previous period? Surely a journalist can push for figures?

------
regularfry
Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

------
jlebrech
the surface studio looks great. i'd love them to come up with an IDE that
takes advantage of touch.

my proposal is: the basic structure of code is represented visually via an
AST, i.e the folders,files,classes,method and public variables and public
variables and constants. and they could tie in tests and have test show up
within that space.

------
rch
I borrowed an i7 Surface Book to work on a project, and couldn't imagine
making it my primary laptop. The worst part was having friends constantly
share tips for making Windows approximate a *nix environment... I'd need to
rethink everything from a Windows click-menu-checkbox perspective to make it
work.

------
iwritestuff
I know it's popular on HN and Reddit to bash the MBP, but could be just me.. I
love my new 2016 MBP 15". Haven't experienced any issues with battery life.
Use it to program on and have been very satisfied with it.

------
wila
>Microsoft refuses to provide numbers but vaguely claims “our trade-in program
for MacBooks was our best ever.”

But wasn't it the first time they ever offered a trade-in for Macbooks? I just
googled it and was not able to find old offers.

------
ebbv
Uhh it's a new product record rates doesn't really mean anything.

------
edko
I switched from a MacBook Pro to a Dell XPS 13 (Kaby Lake i7). From a hardware
point of view, it is an excellent machine, and I do not miss Apple at all.
What I do miss terribly is macOS.

------
swingbridge
"Record rates" just means "more than before" but it can be, and likely is,
still just a small number that's mostly noise in the data so far as Apple is
concerned.

------
JoeAltmaier
If the market is growing, then every part of it may be growing including
trade-ins. They may still be shrinking in market fraction. How would we know?
We need numbers.

------
outworlder
Interestingly, the Surface Book does not have USB-C. I excluded it from my
search because of that.

Currently, the choice at that price point is either full USB-C or no USB-C.

~~~
lmm
There are options with a bit of both - I think some of the HP Envy line?

------
mf2hd
I moved to OSX a couple of years ago. I was really surprised that the extra
buttons on my Logitech mouse doesn't work at all, ok, I bought SteerMouse, now
it works.

I use every app in full size window, sometimes two apps side-by-side. On
windows it was really easy, on Mac it's painful. So I bought an app for that,
Cinch.

I want a tiny calendar in the corner with the weeknumber in it, I had to
download Itsycal (which is at least free).

The bar can be a real mess so I bought Bartender, worked fine, I could even
hide the spotlight icon. Then I upgraded to El Capitan, and guess what, you
can't hide the spotlight anymore, so I had to buy Bartender 2 because they
claimed you can hide icons without disabling SIP
([https://www.macbartender.com/system-item-
setup/](https://www.macbartender.com/system-item-setup/)). But it turned out
it's not working for spotlight... Thanks Bartender!

Ah, the mess when you plugin an external display, how fckd up is that! My
carefully fullsized windows are all resized and moved around to some random
position. No worries, there is an app for that! It's called Stay, it can save
the position of the windows, but you have to do it for every possible screen
combination. If you have one external display, you have to save the window
positions three times: internal display only, external only, both. If you
happen to using the same MacBook with two external displays (at work and at
home), now you have to do this a total 6 times. And it stores the window
position on per app basis, so usually I open everything and save them all. On
Windows this whole problem just doesn't exists.

I can't turn off the internal display, there is no way to just do a windows+p
and chose external display only like on windows. I have to close the lid (so
now I can't use the keyboard) and wake it up because now it's sleeping. Great.

I always turn off every animation, doing this on windows is easy, but it's
really painful on OSX, and every time you upgrade you have to do it again, and
sometimes the same terminal commands just doesn't work, thanks Apple. And you
can't turn off everything, basically this is why I don't use the fullscreen
functionality and multiple desktops.

Every time I use my desktop pc, I feel like when I was a kid and we upgraded
our old 300 mhz computer to a 1 ghz one with a 3d card.

After mountain lion I regret every single upgrade. So for me El Capitan is the
last, my next computer will be an Alienware 13 with 32 GB ram and GTX 1060 and
an OLED screen and it will be still cheaper than a MacBook Pro.

------
gregmorton
Microsoft means "than before Surface exists".

------
satysin
A three paragraph "article" from Tom Warren at The Verge which sources a
Microsoft blog post with zero numbers to back up their PR fluff.

------
gavi
Apple should realize that most of its cash cow (iPhone) is due to Mac and
developers are key to long term success.

~~~
hodder
"most of its cash cow (iPhone) is due to Mac"

Almost certainly untrue. Most iphone users are still Windows PC users. Yes the
developer community is important to the iOS app lead, but most of that is due
to the self selecting group of people who purchase iphones - people willing to
pay for things.

~~~
mishac
It's more indirect than that: the apps exist because of Mac using developers.
Without the developers having access to Xcode/Swift/etc the quality and number
of apps would decline in favor of android.

------
mei0Iesh
It feels like Apple the PC is neglected for Apple the phone/tablet. If I'm
looking for a mobile device, I'm looking at Apple. But for laptop and desktop,
their offerings don't seem as great.

The cloud approach is making it less necessary to keep the PC within the Apple
ecosystem. iOS devices already don't have expandable storage, and most data
ends up being on iCloud or other internet services.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
If you're doing full-cloud then a chromebook is the best value.

------
Learn2win
How to install Linux on a Surface was the first thing popped in my mind

------
adrianlmm
Good for MS, Surface is really a wonderful device.

------
pmarreck
Insecurity: Look at this handful of people moving from my competitor's highly-
regarded product to my promising but flawed one! It's more than ever before!

------
mythz
I decided to get a Surface Pro 4 instead of upgrading my Macbook Air for my
casual/portable computing device as I thought the combined Keyboard/Tablet
mode would be more useful than an Air. My initial impressions after the first
few days use:

\- The Surface tablet Hardware has a nice build quality, but the Touch Pen
doesn't register touches when it touches the screen you need to press down a
little (unlike Apple's pencil). The Type Cover keyboard is wobbly when it's
folded up so when I'm at a desk/flat surface I leave it completely flat as
it's more sturdy. The touchpad is really small but I find myself using the
touchscreen more so I don't notice it much. Otherwise the Type cover is
usable, not as productive as a laptop keyboard, but more productive than a
virtual keyboard.

\- It's pretty fast, especially for its small profile

\- The display is gorgeous, screen's a little small but it makes the device
ultra portable.

\- User Account management is atrocious, I bought the Surface Pro as secondary
ultra portable for my Wife and so creating a new User Account is one of the
first things I tried to do but couldn't at all, it kept failing with the
useless generic "Something went wrong" dialog. You're meant to sign in with
your Hotmail and I couldn't add another Local or Internet account for my wife
for over 36 hours! it kept failing with "Something went wrong". I really hate
needing to use an Internet account or requiring an Internet connection to
create User Accounts, I'd prefer to completely disable any notion of
Internet/hotmail accounts for Windows 10, it "just works" in Chrome OS but is
highly infuriating and unstable in Windows 10. It still didn't let me add any
Users after a complete reset, I had to wait 36 hours for that luxury.

\- They have this "Hello" face recognition where it's able to log you in
without entering a password which was a nice surprise and works pretty well.

\- You now get annoying ads on your Lock Screen

\- You also get nagged trying to keep you using Edge when trying to switch
default browser to Chrome

\- The AppStore is also unreliable, I couldn't install 2/4 Apps on the App
Store Home Page (Halo and Planner 5D). Just failed with "Error, see details"
with details being an empty dialog saying "Something went wrong". The Netflix
App stopped loading after a 2nd restart (just an empty black screen) even
after completely killing/restarting the App multiple times, only a full OS
restart could get it working again. This experience falls way short of any of
Apple's App Stores which "just work".

\- Win 10 Apps aren't that great, the Facebook App is fairly polished but
lacks feature parity with Website, Twitter's App is worse than its website,
Netflix is the only Win 10 App I'm using over their website

\- Win 10 isn't a great OS for touch, the icons are too small, took me a few
goes trying to open a folder in VS which VS thought I wanted to move the
folder, so you'll try using the touchscreen first than if it fails fallback to
using the small touchpad.

\- Within 3 hours of a new install I got by first BSOD, I installed VS 2017
beta with Docker + Hyper V. Docker for Windows refused to install the first
time and crashes on Startup, I also couldn't run an empty .NET Core + Docker
template, hand a number of build errors saying it couldn't find "System"
namespace. The empty .NET Core Web App worked. In the end I uninstalled VS2017
beta, I'll try again in the next release.

These software issues happened after installing all Window updates. It was
surprisingly buggy, I'd expect a hardware/software controlled device to be
rock solid but the Surface was the most unreliable computing device I've
owned.

In summary the Surface Pro4 tablet hardware is nice, quite thin for being able
to run full Windows but also gets noticeably hot after a while (unlike iPad),
has great display, Touch Pen isn't as solid as an Apple Pencil also its
unproductive switching between Finger Touch and Touch Pen but the finger
registration is good so I'm only using the Touch Pen for drawing apps.

Overall it's not as productive as a Macbook or as useful as a tablet than an
iPad, so definitely not a Macbook or iPad killer, but has a useful niche as a
secondary portable Windows 10 device. It's software unreliability issues and
stupid User account management means I could never recommend it as on option
to my parents who love and spend most of their time on their iPads and use
iMac + Chrome OS for more heavy duty tasks - which are automatically backed up
and have both been virus free for years which we're both happy about.

~~~
eqhorse
That just about mirrors my experience with SP3, I got it not long after launch
(It came with 8.1, not 10). Fails as a laptop because of the hardware (i.e.,
can't actually use it in your lap), fails as a tablet because of the software.

My SP3 pretty much lives in the docking station at home these days. My Google
Pixel XL is pretty much a tablet, and my work laptop (XPS 15) covers me for my
computing power needs when traveling. I don't even bring the Surface anymore.

I'm thinking my next desktop for home (to replace the Surface) will be some
sort of Linux machine. The Surface was my first personal Windows computer. I'm
realizing now that Ubuntu fills all my current needs, especially now that I
can run some form of Visual Studio on it.

------
jaxn
I am one of them.

~~~
marrone12
Yeah, recently bought my first windows laptop in about 15 years. Not a surface
but one of the Lenovo yogas. It's a neat little device and I enjoy the touch
screen, but everything feels just slightly jankier than my macbook, especially
scrolling / touchpad.

------
FlyingSnake
These PR pieces are getting funnier each day.

Do people really want to switch from a rock-solid, sandboxed Unix to an
inferior OS like Windows? Did people already forget the crazy days of regedit,
zero app sandboxing, inconsistent installers, anti-viruses etc?

I wish more people jumped ship to Linux instead of the Apple/Windows duopoly,
but if wishes were horses...

~~~
II2II
Windows of today is not the Windows of 10 years ago, and the Apple of today is
not the Apple of 10 years ago.

Windows has improved considerably over the past decade, while Apple has
shifted away from the professional market. It is realistic to believe that at
least some people would switch platforms.

~~~
slantyyz
>> It is realistic to believe that at least some people would switch
platforms.

I know "Post-PC" is the more popular buzzword, but "Post-OS" is probably a
good one to use.

So much stuff is in the cloud these days that a lot of non-developers and non-
creatives can probably use any OS these days without too much pain.

I switched to Windows from Mac a couple of years ago, and honestly, I don't
miss it much. I did have to write off a pile of Mac software purchases, but I
found reasonably priced alternatives that work as well.

If I get sick of Windows, I can easily transition to something else. Outside
of some platform specific games, I can do just about everything I do now on
another OS.

------
lazarus101
good ol' Microsoft FUD if they had numbers I see no reason why the wouldn't
make them public

------
droithomme
I recently went back to Windows from macOS. Now I have many USB ports, a DVD
burner, an ethernet port, an SD card slot, an HDMI output, a decent graphics
card, expandability and compatibility. All things I'm not allowed to have on
Macs any more.

Mac fanboys tell me "You idiot, you don't need any of that stuff." Actually I
do. They tell me "No you are wrong." No, that's not correct. They don't
actually know more about my requirements than I do. The real question is what
bedevils the fanatics to insist they know more than the real experts such as
myself? They make their claims with no knowledge or information with the
insistence and loudness of a fundamentalist religious fanatic. Exploring this
strange phenomenon is even more interesting I think than wondering what laptop
one should get.

~~~
jimbokun
Yeah, soldered RAM and SSD is criminal.

As far as I can tell, only Mac allowing for RAM upgrades is iMac 5k and and
MacPro. And iMac 5k doesn't allow disk upgrades.

------
agumonkey
Apple is losing ground, and this time it's not Steve's fault. I'll be sure to
follow Apple when it will fall just so I can see the third coming of Christ.
This time Steve will have to revolutionize resurrection; it's been 2000 years
since the last innovation in that field.

------
folch
I wouldn't be surprised, considering I was a die-hard Apple user for 15+ years
until about three years ago.

After owning virtually every Mac from the iMac G3 to the last iMac, with the
exception of the new MacPro and the eMac (lol), I will never purchase another
Apple product for myself. That said, I am in charge of purchasing computers
for an Architectural firm which insists on buying these computers - they claim
clients expect to see Apple products during visits to display the company as
"avant-garde", which, to me, just confirms the snobbery behind it.

I now use my Windows desktop for heavy work, carry a laptop with Fedora,
Android Tablet for meetings, and have an old MacPro which I'm 'forced' to use
for Sketch; I would argue that if it wasn't for the popularity of Mac-only
design software like Principle and Sketch, there would be no reason to use OSX
anymore outside of the GUI.

To be fair, Apple computers are still a good choice for teenagers, senior
citizens and/or Interaction Designers, but I can't think of any reason a
professional outside of Video Editing or Design would opt for a Mac.

------
iLoch
My Mac just went belly up - a software corruption in my encrypted partition
has rendered Mac OSX unusable. I took it to Apple, they spent over an hour
throwing every piece of software they had at it. Their own diagnostic tools
were freezing up from this issue. The tests that did run indicated no problem
with the physical hardware, and indeed Windows runs flawlessly.

So their totally shit software destroyed itself and they don't have the tools
to fix it. Now they're recommending forensic recovery and of course they won't
pay the $500-1000 for that.

I think I'll be sticking with Windows from now on.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
It's nice that they spent a hour trying to recover your software. How much did
they charge for that? Now see what happens when you encounter a similar issue
with another manufacturer. I'm sure they'll have people dedicated to fixing it
for free.

Backups in OSX are extremely easy. The easiest I've ever seen. I can reinstall
from my encrypted USB hard drive with just a few clicks. It comes online
exactly how it was when the backup was taken! And I can choose from daily
snapshots going back more than a year!

