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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

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.

mi100hael 10y ago
Same, I bailed for a Dell Precision this year, though I'm running Fedora, not Windows. Apple has steadily lost direction over the past 5 or so years and it shows. There's no way I'd buy a new laptop with nothing but USB-C, a headphone jack, and a million dongles.
- H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
  But one TB3 port can run a dock with more ports than previous MacBooks.
  - trome 10y ago
    Sure, that is great, but even with prior generations of MacBooks dongles were a hinderance. I'd end up at the end of a conference with at least a couple mini-Displayport to VGA adapters from people who were presenting but forgot them for one reason or another, and I'd usually only be able to get 2/3rds of said dongles back to their rightful owners. With USB C at least for now, this will be a constant source of fustration for users who don't own a Google Pixel and have to deal with legacy hardware (everything else out on the market). That being said, USB C itself is great, Apple should adopt it on the iPhone.
mgkimsal 10y ago
I looked at a surface book last month, decided to stick one more cycle with the new MBP, but I was moderately tempted. Hardware looks and felt pretty good. Biggest drawback was window 10 itself - too many colleagues and clients still have daily issues with it (mostly unscheduled updates and downtime) - I don't want to deal with that right now. But if it shakes out and stabilizes in the next couple years, a Surface might be my day to day machine then.
emilsedgh 10y ago
Mind if I ask what Thinkpad? And are you happy with it?
- artursapek 10y ago
  Highest end X1 Carbon, and yeah I absolutely love it.
  - jjgreen 10y ago
    Fantastic machines, even better Linuxed-up :-)
    - artursapek 10y ago
      That's what I ended up doing! Latest Ubuntu. I sometimes still boot into Windows, but do all my development in Ubuntu.
toyg 10y ago
I hope my MBPr doesn't die on me for another year and in the meantime Cook will see some sense. I have to say I'm not in love with the Surface either, but their trajectory seems opposite to the Apple one: MS now "gets" what developers want, even non-MS ones. The change of CEO did wonders for them, whereas it seems to have sent Cupertino on the path of being Yet Another Consumer Electronics Company.
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
Microsoft is doing excellent stuff with hardware. It's a pity that it comes at the price of being bundled with their user-hostile nightmare of an operating system.
- rocky1138 10y ago
  I've been saying this about Apple for years. It's amazing how the tables have turned.
erokar 10y ago
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.
- H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
  But they really haven't dropped the ball in terms of pricing or privacy, which is enough to scare me away from Windows.
- astrodust 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    > 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 10y ago
      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.

mi100hael 10y ago

Same, I bailed for a Dell Precision this year, though I'm running Fedora, not Windows. Apple has steadily lost direction over the past 5 or so years and it shows. There's no way I'd buy a new laptop with nothing but USB-C, a headphone jack, and a million dongles.

H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
But one TB3 port can run a dock with more ports than previous MacBooks.
- trome 10y ago
  Sure, that is great, but even with prior generations of MacBooks dongles were a hinderance. I'd end up at the end of a conference with at least a couple mini-Displayport to VGA adapters from people who were presenting but forgot them for one reason or another, and I'd usually only be able to get 2/3rds of said dongles back to their rightful owners. With USB C at least for now, this will be a constant source of fustration for users who don't own a Google Pixel and have to deal with legacy hardware (everything else out on the market). That being said, USB C itself is great, Apple should adopt it on the iPhone.

mgkimsal 10y ago

I looked at a surface book last month, decided to stick one more cycle with the new MBP, but I was moderately tempted. Hardware looks and felt pretty good. Biggest drawback was window 10 itself - too many colleagues and clients still have daily issues with it (mostly unscheduled updates and downtime) - I don't want to deal with that right now. But if it shakes out and stabilizes in the next couple years, a Surface might be my day to day machine then.

emilsedgh 10y ago

Mind if I ask what Thinkpad? And are you happy with it?

artursapek 10y ago
Highest end X1 Carbon, and yeah I absolutely love it.
- jjgreen 10y ago
  Fantastic machines, even better Linuxed-up :-)
  - artursapek 10y ago
    That's what I ended up doing! Latest Ubuntu. I sometimes still boot into Windows, but do all my development in Ubuntu.

toyg 10y ago

I hope my MBPr doesn't die on me for another year and in the meantime Cook will see some sense. I have to say I'm not in love with the Surface either, but their trajectory seems opposite to the Apple one: MS now "gets" what developers want, even non-MS ones. The change of CEO did wonders for them, whereas it seems to have sent Cupertino on the path of being Yet Another Consumer Electronics Company.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

Microsoft is doing excellent stuff with hardware. It's a pity that it comes at the price of being bundled with their user-hostile nightmare of an operating system.

rocky1138 10y ago
I've been saying this about Apple for years. It's amazing how the tables have turned.

erokar 10y ago

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.

H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
But they really haven't dropped the ball in terms of pricing or privacy, which is enough to scare me away from Windows.
astrodust 10y ago
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 10y ago
  > 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 10y ago
    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.