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I have a Surface Pro 7, their oversized tablet, after ditching my ipad pro out of frustration. I wanted something that had a nice pen but still had a real files

I have a Surface Pro 7, their oversized tablet, after ditching my ipad pro out of frustration. I wanted something that had a nice pen but still had a real filesystem and I could easily load comics and movies on, use ssh, and was full featured enough that I wasn't required to lug a laptop with me. And the surface pro is.. fine. Hardware wise it's great even, but my issue is overwhelmingly that Microsoft's default software makes a sad tablet experience. Their screen keyboards are garbage, the store is lackluster and the tablet mode does not play nicely with most apps leading to weird issues like not being able to leave the kindle app once it's fullscreened. If Microsoft invested a bit more in improving the tablet experience, they could really eat some of Apple's marketshare.

gazelle21 7y ago
Interesting. I had the exact opposite issue, I was tired of the buggy and laggy features. I just needed something for media consumption with ssh for my pi's. Ipad has been working flawlessly, but all my other devices are windows/androids so the lack of compatibility is a pain at time.
paulcole 7y ago
Are you considering switching back to the iPad Pro? Or is fine good enough for your use?
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  If the iPad let me stick in a usb drive and copy over comics, and load open source software from outside the Apple store - yes. Since that will never happen in our lifetime, probably not. For what it's worth, the iPad feels great in terms of size and construction, it has a fantastic screen and the overall UX/UI is pleasant. Unfortunately, it's not usable as a short term laptop replacement and basic computer tasks are just not possible, especially not offline.
  - snalty 7y ago
    For what it's worth, you might be able to copy over comics using a USB drive now. You can definitely copy comics over a network share as an alternative, as the Files app supports mounting samba shares. EDIT: of course that doesn't help with the loading of open source software on the device.
    - evilduck 7y ago
      You can even use your USB floppy drive in iOS's Files app now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH8EJutmmT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH8EJutmmT4
    - lstamour 7y ago
      You can also compile your own open source software from outside the Apple App Store, there are some limitations to long-term use that might require a $99/year developer account, but it’s still possible. And the $99/year is not per user but per company, so if you know somebody with a dev account, you can split it with them by starting a company instead. Not to say that the iPad Pro is a Windows tablet replacement, to me they’re still very much distinct products right now. iPad OS isn’t (yet?) a macOS replacement for developers and power users.
  - givinguflac 7y ago
    FWIW since iOS 13 usb drives work fine on iPad. I use mine for work, but most of what I do can be covered with a browser and video editor.
  - dangoor 7y ago
    I haven't tried using USB drives with the iPad, but they have been building out the Files app and there are more ways to work with external storage than before. Loading software from outside the App Store is not going to happen, but they are, slowly but surely, expanding to support other tasks.
  - paulcole 7y ago
    > load open source software from outside the Apple store - yes. Since that will never happen in our lifetime, probably not. If that was non-negotiable why did you even consider an iPad Pro in the first place?
  - awmartin 7y ago
    You can do both. For OSS software though, it would need to be iPadOS apps built with Xcode or some cross-platform framework like Xamarin, but some time ago, Apple enabled anyone to install apps without a developer account.
stinos 7y ago
This. The Surface Pro is a really decent machine and I don't have any complaints on how it functions as a laptop and 'workstation' (or whatever you call laptop+2 monitors+mouse+keyboard), but as far as tablet goes: the hardware is all there but the software is not quite there yet. The only tablet-y thing I do with it is tell it to never switch to tablet mode and then use the pen to draw and take notes. It does that really well btw (was one of the reasons I got it in the first place), but for the rest I don't see me using it as I'd use a 'standard' tablet. Not sure if it's me, I don't use tablest often, but when I try to do so on this thing I end up opening the desktop software anyway to get things done because the alternatives are non-existing or not good. And navigating typical desktop software with just touch isn't really cutting it.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
This is interesting as over in the WinUI thread people are complaining how the tablet features have ruined Windows on the Desktop.
- GekkePrutser 7y ago
  Probably true too though. One of the problems with MS' approach is trying to get a "one UI fits all" approach which just doesn't work, the usecases between tablet and desktop are too different. Even Apple hasn't made this mistake and they're all about simplicity and consistency.
  - deleted 7y ago
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- qzw 7y ago
  Yes, it’s all the more galling that they ruined the desktop experience without providing a good tablet experience. Yes, things are bigger and more tappable, but there’s more to a good tablet UX than that. They have only done the relatively easy part. The hard part requires redesigning behavior and workflow, which will take far more time and effort than just adding some whitespace and increasing widget size.
  - contextfree 7y ago
    Windows 8 was all about redesigning behavior and workflow, those were the aspects that were largely walked back in successive updates. I was a big fan of Win8 (was fine with it on desktop as well) but tablet mode on Win10 was a major downgrade and I only ever use Surface in desktop mode, even on the rare occasions I tuck back or detach the keyboard. I still use touch a lot though, sometimes simultaneously with mouse or trackpad.
NicoJuicy 7y ago
Seems to resonate with me. A tablet by default is a consumption device. While a surface is a production device. Since you can actually do something with it except sending emails.
q92z8oeif 7y ago
First, you should not be using the store. It is an also-run of an anti-feature. Just ignore it for the bloatware it is. Second, ignore tablet mode. It's one of those things developed by underfunded teams. Just use it as what it is, a portable PC. If you configure windows to have >2px thick borders you will not miss 'tablet mode' or whatever it is. Just enable all settings on the quick side bar thingy to toggle auto-rotate and you are set. And finally, i agree with you on the keyboard. It's sad :( pen writing recognition was supposed to be the saving grace, but it only works minimally OK for japanese and chinese. No hope for english and let alone for other latin languages. and even using with chinese text, the input UI completely kills your ability to use things you would have on a keyboard like shift, shortcuts, arrows, etc.
Analemma_ 7y ago
For all the deserved hate Windows 8 got, the tablet experience was fantastic - the experience of running multiple apps side-by-side in particular was better than what the iPad has to this day. It's mindboggling to me that Microsoft must have the code for that sitting around in a repo history somewhere and yet tablet mode on Windows 10 is still such a mess even after years.
- nxc18 7y ago
  I pulled out my Surface RT yesterday and it is almost exactly what iPad multitasking is. It really is mind boggling that Microsoft fumbled that so bad - great tech but some really user-hostile business decisions cost them dearly.
- deleted 7y ago
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- GekkePrutser 7y ago
  Yes, tablet mode on Win8 was good! The problem was ramming it down the throat of all the desktop users too. I still don't understand how such a big company can make such obviously bad decisions.
  - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    >I still don't understand how such a big company can make such obviously bad decisions. Simple, resume ego driven development from someone who just want to climb ranks.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    But it wasn't a terrible desktop experience: in 8.1 you had a strongly tiling window manager and a lot of apps designed for phone widths or smaller to tile. The tiling was horizontal only, but you could do a lot on a two widescreen monitor setup. It moved a lot of cheese, sure, but it wasn't offering as much an "inferior" desktop usage as people seemed to think it did because they never bothered to learn what it did offer new/different/better.
SkyMarshal 7y ago
> had a real file system Apple’s Files app solves mostly solves that for me. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/files/id1232058109 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/files/id1232058109 > use ssh The Blink app solves that nicely for me. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blink-shell-mosh-ssh-client/id1156707581 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blink-shell-mosh-ssh-client/id... There are also several VNC viewer apps if I need to connect to my Linux workstation for more cpu or graphics intensive work.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  The problem with iOS for these solutions is that iOS is a designed experience and you're always swimming upstream when you deviate from the path. The Microsoft stuff tries to live in both worlds, but the ecosystem around the "modern" side is weak. Everyone is struggling with this stuff, as witnessed by the schitzoid steps to evolve MacOS and Windows.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  “Apple’s Files app solves mostly solves that for me.“ It’s better but it’s still riddled with arbitrary restrictions. For example when I want to watch a MKV video in iCloud I have to copy the file from iCloud to the folder of the player, then delete. Can’t open iCloud files directly with the player and can’t move either. On the bright side I am confident by 2025 in iOS we will have the same functionality we had already thirty years ago... with the exception that every piece of software will be charged with the 30% Apple tax.
  - msh 7y ago
    Using infuse (a video player app) I can open files from icloud directly.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      How?
      - 7y ago
cortesoft 7y ago
Totally agree... got my surface pro for the same reason (wanted a combo laptop/tablet, and was excited for a tablet with a real OS) The tablet mode sucks for anything but basic reading. The touch interface is crappy, the on screen keyboard sucks. It is a really good laptop... as long as I use it on a desk or table. The non-rigid keyboard makes using it without a desk impossible. It is a nice, light, laptop for travel, though... but I still need to bring a tablet.
- stinos 7y ago
  The non-rigid keyboard makes using it without a desk impossible Can you elaborate? Which version? I've been using the Surface Pro 6 and I don't notice a difference with using it on a desk or on my lap.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    I think I have the 6 as well... the keyboard connection to the tablet is not rigid, meaning you need something to support the tablet itself (like the kickstand)... but using the kickstand on your lap is not very convenient, because it does not hold the keyboard at a fixed angle to the computer... and you have to move it up your legs far enough to have the kickstand extend back and still have room on your legs. You can't have the screen be at your knees. Also, you are limited in the angle you can have the screen. With a normal laptop, you can open the hinge very wide (like 150 degrees or so) so that you are looking directly at the screen when looking down at your lap. With the non-rigid keyboard, you have to have it fairly close to perpendicular (close to 90 degrees) which means you are looking at a bad angle to the screen when it is on your lap.
nxc18 7y ago
It might be worth revisiting the Windows 8 interface. It was maligned at the time but it’sa very fluent, intuitive interface now that people are used to iPads. The multitasking is exactly the same as iPad now, only difference being you pull down to close apps instead of up. I pulled out my original Surface RT yesterday and was surprised to find it has aged incredibly well - perhaps better in 2020 than it was in 2012, because it was well ahead of its time.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  The Surface RT was a crappy, closed device. You can put Linux on just about any Baytrail- or Cherrytrail-based device now (used to be a huge pain), and with a decent amount of RAM and GNOME3 on Wayland it's actually a very intuitive and productive tablet experience. Even the windowing UI is just as intuitive as Windows 8 if not more so: you click on an "Activities" overview as opposed to a start button, but the rest is pretty much the same.
  - nxc18 7y ago
    I don’t really see how any of that is relevant. Surface RT was running underpowered Tegra with 2GB ram and still does 60fps on the entire desktop/Start experience. Have you used the Windows 8 multitasking interface recently?
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      Tegra has a good focus on graphics, so it's no surprise that it could do 60fps animations on the Windows 8 start screen. Nice eyecandy, I suppose. And 2GB RAM will still run pretty much anything a Surface RT user might care about, except the modern web of course.
- aarmenaa 7y ago
  It's not like I did any market research, but I recall people liking the Windows 8 interface on phones and tablets. My personal impression from playing with Windows phones in stores was very good. Opinions were (predictably, IMO) less positive for the same interface on desktops and laptops.
partiallypro 7y ago
Microsoft scaled back a lot of their tablet functionality because consumers didn't like it, and of course Apple started to copy Microsoft's tablet functionality shortly thereafter. I think maybe, Windows X will be more touch based instead of them trying to meld them into one OS. Only the core will be the same, but the UIs will be split on the OS level. I think...but who knows, Microsoft often changes directions. All I know is that the Surface hardware is on par, and in many cases better than Apple.
pier25 7y ago
I briefly owned a Surface Book before returning it and I agree. The tablet experience on Windows was horrendous. Eg: something as trivial as adjusting the display brightness required me to go into Windows settings.
- reificator 7y ago
  > something as trivial as adjusting the display brightness required me to go into Windows settings. I've never had a Surface Book but I had the Surface Pro 3 for awhile and I'm pretty sure it predated the book. On the Surface Pro you just slide from off screen to bring up quick settings and then tap the brightness icon. Granted it only had preset values rather than a slider...
  - frosted-flakes 7y ago
    It's had a brightness slider for a long time now. And if you have a Surface, Fn+Delete and Fn+Backspace are hidden shortcuts to Brightness Up and Down.
  - pier25 7y ago
    > Granted it only had preset values rather than a slider... Yeah and that was always either too bright or too dark. I'm glad they added the slider now.
- deleted 7y ago
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- vb6sp6 7y ago
  you swipe from the right and adjust the brightness with the slider at the botton: https://i.imgur.com/sBYNv5z.png https://i.imgur.com/sBYNv5z.png older versions, you had to swipe right, then touch screen icon and slide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFYmwnzRpJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFYmwnzRpJ0
  - pier25 7y ago
    Thanks. That wasn't available when I tried it circa 2016. You had to tap an icon with 25% steps which never resulted in the brightness I wanted.
muststopmyths 7y ago
>Their screen keyboards are garbage, Have you tried the WordFlow (swype or whatever it's called on other platforms) method on the keyboard ? Seems to work as well as Windows Phone did, which is pretty damn good. It's fine as a portable Windows PC to me. Great for travel, does pretty much everything I need, including Visual Studio. iPads are so much more consumption oriented that I can't see myself every needing one in addition to an iPhone. >If Microsoft invested a bit more in improving the tablet experience, they could really eat some of Apple's marketshare. They did with WinRT (not the tablet the API, now called UWP) and it failed because they decided to throw away backward compatibility of APIs. Windows 8 and the Metro design language was my favorite UX by far of the last two decades. This time, I guess they've decided to throw away the user experience in favor of backward compatibility :-)
- hrktb 7y ago
  > swype Swiping seems to be efficient mostly in english. I had a try on android and it was just exhausting while being unforgiving for CJK type input. Just to say, having a decent keyboard is still important to a lot of people. And Apple has effectively made efforts in this regard to have a good keyboard experience on the iPad.
  - muststopmyths 7y ago
    I have very little experience with iPads, but I absolutely hate the iPhone keyboard compared to Windows Phone/Mobile. Windows 10 is unfortunately not in the same league as its mobile predecessors. Haven't used the Windows 10 on-screen keyboard much to be fair. I usually use the Surface keyboard (which has improved a lot circa 2017), but for prolonged work I'll attach a USB keyboard (mostly because I need an ergonomic keyboard to type).
- pnutjam 7y ago
  I have an original surface pro I inherited, it works fine except for the garbage keyboard/cover. Well, it did work fine until some recent firmware update made it so the wifi crashes any router it connects to... It's really a beautiful bug. This only seems to effect windows, I've been using it with OpenSuse with no such issue.
js2 7y ago
I pretty consistently hear that the iPad makes a great tablet and a shitty laptop and vice-versa for the Surface. I’m not sure it’s possible to have the best touch experience and the best keyboard and mouse experience in a single OS. Maybe Apple will let the iPad dual boot iPadOS and macOS someday soon assuming the MacBooks transition to ARM.
- walterbell 7y ago
  > Maybe Apple will let the iPad dual boot iPadOS and macOS someday soon assuming the MacBooks transition to ARM. That would be excellent. iPad needs a local web server capability for development, e.g. to run Jekyll/Ruby or Hugo/golang. Rumor is that upcoming Apple Arm CPU will support hardware virtualization, which could theoretically enable Linux to run in a sandboxed VM. As for UX, the new iPad Magic Keyboard is a game changer that seamlessly blends tablet and laptop. Now we need to address the iOS gaps (e.g. Xcode, non-Safari browser and mail client) and/or allow dual-boot as you suggested.
  - shmoogy 7y ago
    On Pythonista you can run Flask or Django, it's nifty. The apps are coming, there's one for nodejs and react. Would not be surprised to see ruby/go soon.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 7y ago
  People really want a GUIs that are much more dynamic and context-aware. The size of the buttons should change if I attach a mouse or a touchpad. The on-screen-keyboard should completely disable itself if I attach a keyboard. (Did Windows figure this out yet?) If I walk into a dark room, apps (and ideally, websites) should change to dark mode. If I walk into an area with direct sunlight, the contrast should be boosted. The device should behave differently if it's laying flat on a desk, or on a kickstand, or if I'm holding it in my hands. Cell phones are better. They've figured out obvious things like screen rotation, adaptive brightness, bluetooth audio handoffs, and Android has made some headway with things like darkmode and automatically changing settings when you get into a car, but tablets have lagged behind, and I'm sure there are dozens more tiny things that automatically changed based on the device's context.
AsyncAwait 7y ago
I've put Arch Linux with GNOME on my SP7 and it's been great. There are a few tweaks I needed to make, but nothing too drastic and I really think the hardware is word-class, I love the tablet form-factor, but iPad OS is way too limiting. SP solves that, so I hope MS will keep making them.
- kyoji 7y ago
  Does the pen still work? What about multi-touch and pressure sensitivity?
  - AsyncAwait 7y ago
    The pen doesn't currently work, I have an older iPad Pro for when I need pen input so not a big issue for me. I primarily like it for the form-factor & build quality, which in my opinion matches Apple level, but I seldom use it as a "tablet". It's more a super-portable laptop for me that can also serve as a convenient way to kick back and consume content. I, weirdly enough, also like the type cover over standard laptop keyboards. Maybe it's because it's not part of the tablet itself that I find the keys less stiff and as a result more comfortable than on most laptops.
tzs 7y ago
I made a similar decision when the increasing bloat of the web made my 3rd gen iPad inadequate. I considered the new iPad Pro, but decided on a Surface Pro 4 instead. Except for me it wasn't a real filesystem I wanted. It was a virtual memory system that didn't make programs discard data when multitasking. On the iPad, opening a couple more browser tabs and then coming back to the original tab might cause the page on the original tab to reload. This could be very frustrating on sites like HN or Reddit. I might start typing a comment, and in the middle of that need to look up some things to fact check myself or get some references. Do that, go back to the comment--and the damn page reloads, wiping out what I'd typed so far. Anticipating this, I could "select all" on my comment and copy it, then go do the research, and then come back. If the page reloads then I could just paste the comment back. If I needed to copy and paste something from the other page it was usually safe to do at that point. Just switching between two already loaded pages usually would not trigger a reload. I never ran into anything like that on SP4. I could pause writing an HN comment and research in other tabs as much as I wanted, and never had the partial comment gone when I switched back. I don't know if this is because Windows will use a pagefile and/or swapfile when there is not enough physical RAM for everything, or because the SP4 had 16 times as much RAM as my 3rd gen iPad so I simply never got it low enough on RAM, but for whatever the reason browsing worked a lot better the SP4. Since then I also got a 6th gen iPad (not Pro). It's much better than my old 3rd gen was about this, but still does occasionally force a refresh when witching among tabs.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  Current mobile OS's (iOS and Android) do run without a pagefile, in order to cope with the crappiness of inbuilt eMMC storage which would quickly wear out as the pagefile got rewritten. Theoretically, well-behaved applications are supposed to checkpoint their own internal state when signaled by the OS to do so, since this ought to be more space-efficient than the use of a pagefile; in practice, almost no applications actually do this properly. For what it's worth, Linux is a lot more parsimonious in its use of swap space than Windows, given very similar hardware and use cases.
  - pmjordan 7y ago
derefr 7y ago
> had a real filesystem and I could easily load comics and movies on Apps might not expose the iPadOS filesystem well (since they've gradually accreted a UX paradigm over the last 10 filesystem-less years), but it actually does work perfectly well to open files from your iPadOS home directory [the thing the Files app exposes] in any app that can handle that file type. You can open video files from Files into VLC; you can open CBRs/CBZs into https://chunkyreader.com/ https://chunkyreader.com/ ; etc. For getting the files in/out of the iPad, Files can access external disks just fine (I've been using a Samsung USB-C T5 SSD); and Safari (don't know about other browsers) now allows you to save arbitrary files, putting your downloads in a regular Downloads folder within the Files-visible homedir. I'm sure there are other methods as well (e.g. copying files to the iPad's local storage from a storage provider, e.g. iCloud Drive, or Dropbox, or an SFTP/S3 client's host profile; or using a BitTorrent client to download whatever.) Of course, apps can't access your homedir arbitrarily if they don't have the relevant capability, but that's just good sandboxing—if an app only works with particular files, it should only be receiving capabilities on individual files (through e.g. the Share/Open With action), not capabilities on your filesystem as a whole. The only reason desktop OSes aren't already mostly this way is the inertia of legacy apps. (There's also nothing stopping a local POSIX terminal emulator app from creating a shared container that other apps like IDEs can write into, if you're wondering. Nobody's bothered yet, but that's because everyone wants to own your eyeballs with fully-integrated single-app solutions, not because it's not technically possible. You could totally build the equivalent of Termux for iPadOS. The only limitation would be that the package ecosystem would have to use the App Store as its package manager, with packages containing executables being distributed as Apple-signed extension "apps." Sort of like how iMessage's sticker-pack "apps" work, or how Photos.app's filter-pack "apps" work; or how Safari's content-blocker "apps" work. Or, come to think of it, exactly like how XCode.app attaches its POSIX tooling into the [read-only] macOS rootfs.)
- thekyle 7y ago
  > BitTorrent client to download whatever AFAIK Apple doesn't allow BitTorrent clients to run on iOS devices
loyukfai 7y ago
>Their screen keyboards are garbage This coming from the company who bought SwiftKey is indeed baffling.
DHPersonal 7y ago
In some of the fullscreen apps like the Kindle app, the Close icon is hidden behind a swipe gesture. Swiping up/down at the very top of the screen makes the top toolbar appear, usually either as a full title bar or a small gesture bar that can be activated with a swipe.
superzadeh 7y ago
I share the same feeling, even though didn't own an iPad before (I knew I needed something with less limitations). The new tablet mode they did is better (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2019/08/29/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-18970/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2019/08/29/annou...), however the biggest deal breaker for me _is_ the on-screen keyboard. Try using Slack in tablet mode, it's impossible: every time you go to a channel, the on screen keyboard pops-up, the animation to open/close takes 2-3 seconds each time: it's frustrating to the point I just plug the keyboard back on and use the surface in laptop mode.

gazelle21 7y ago

Interesting. I had the exact opposite issue, I was tired of the buggy and laggy features. I just needed something for media consumption with ssh for my pi's. Ipad has been working flawlessly, but all my other devices are windows/androids so the lack of compatibility is a pain at time.

paulcole 7y ago

Are you considering switching back to the iPad Pro? Or is fine good enough for your use?

vorpalhex 7y ago
If the iPad let me stick in a usb drive and copy over comics, and load open source software from outside the Apple store - yes. Since that will never happen in our lifetime, probably not. For what it's worth, the iPad feels great in terms of size and construction, it has a fantastic screen and the overall UX/UI is pleasant. Unfortunately, it's not usable as a short term laptop replacement and basic computer tasks are just not possible, especially not offline.
- snalty 7y ago
  For what it's worth, you might be able to copy over comics using a USB drive now. You can definitely copy comics over a network share as an alternative, as the Files app supports mounting samba shares. EDIT: of course that doesn't help with the loading of open source software on the device.
  - evilduck 7y ago
    You can even use your USB floppy drive in iOS's Files app now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH8EJutmmT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH8EJutmmT4
  - lstamour 7y ago
    You can also compile your own open source software from outside the Apple App Store, there are some limitations to long-term use that might require a $99/year developer account, but it’s still possible. And the $99/year is not per user but per company, so if you know somebody with a dev account, you can split it with them by starting a company instead. Not to say that the iPad Pro is a Windows tablet replacement, to me they’re still very much distinct products right now. iPad OS isn’t (yet?) a macOS replacement for developers and power users.
- givinguflac 7y ago
  FWIW since iOS 13 usb drives work fine on iPad. I use mine for work, but most of what I do can be covered with a browser and video editor.
- dangoor 7y ago
  I haven't tried using USB drives with the iPad, but they have been building out the Files app and there are more ways to work with external storage than before. Loading software from outside the App Store is not going to happen, but they are, slowly but surely, expanding to support other tasks.
- paulcole 7y ago
  > load open source software from outside the Apple store - yes. Since that will never happen in our lifetime, probably not. If that was non-negotiable why did you even consider an iPad Pro in the first place?
- awmartin 7y ago
  You can do both. For OSS software though, it would need to be iPadOS apps built with Xcode or some cross-platform framework like Xamarin, but some time ago, Apple enabled anyone to install apps without a developer account.

stinos 7y ago

This. The Surface Pro is a really decent machine and I don't have any complaints on how it functions as a laptop and 'workstation' (or whatever you call laptop+2 monitors+mouse+keyboard), but as far as tablet goes: the hardware is all there but the software is not quite there yet. The only tablet-y thing I do with it is tell it to never switch to tablet mode and then use the pen to draw and take notes. It does that really well btw (was one of the reasons I got it in the first place), but for the rest I don't see me using it as I'd use a 'standard' tablet. Not sure if it's me, I don't use tablest often, but when I try to do so on this thing I end up opening the desktop software anyway to get things done because the alternatives are non-existing or not good. And navigating typical desktop software with just touch isn't really cutting it.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago

This is interesting as over in the WinUI thread people are complaining how the tablet features have ruined Windows on the Desktop.

GekkePrutser 7y ago
Probably true too though. One of the problems with MS' approach is trying to get a "one UI fits all" approach which just doesn't work, the usecases between tablet and desktop are too different. Even Apple hasn't made this mistake and they're all about simplicity and consistency.
- deleted 7y ago
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qzw 7y ago
Yes, it’s all the more galling that they ruined the desktop experience without providing a good tablet experience. Yes, things are bigger and more tappable, but there’s more to a good tablet UX than that. They have only done the relatively easy part. The hard part requires redesigning behavior and workflow, which will take far more time and effort than just adding some whitespace and increasing widget size.
- contextfree 7y ago
  Windows 8 was all about redesigning behavior and workflow, those were the aspects that were largely walked back in successive updates. I was a big fan of Win8 (was fine with it on desktop as well) but tablet mode on Win10 was a major downgrade and I only ever use Surface in desktop mode, even on the rare occasions I tuck back or detach the keyboard. I still use touch a lot though, sometimes simultaneously with mouse or trackpad.

NicoJuicy 7y ago

Seems to resonate with me. A tablet by default is a consumption device. While a surface is a production device. Since you can actually do something with it except sending emails.

q92z8oeif 7y ago

First, you should not be using the store. It is an also-run of an anti-feature. Just ignore it for the bloatware it is. Second, ignore tablet mode. It's one of those things developed by underfunded teams. Just use it as what it is, a portable PC. If you configure windows to have >2px thick borders you will not miss 'tablet mode' or whatever it is. Just enable all settings on the quick side bar thingy to toggle auto-rotate and you are set. And finally, i agree with you on the keyboard. It's sad :( pen writing recognition was supposed to be the saving grace, but it only works minimally OK for japanese and chinese. No hope for english and let alone for other latin languages. and even using with chinese text, the input UI completely kills your ability to use things you would have on a keyboard like shift, shortcuts, arrows, etc.

Analemma_ 7y ago

For all the deserved hate Windows 8 got, the tablet experience was fantastic - the experience of running multiple apps side-by-side in particular was better than what the iPad has to this day. It's mindboggling to me that Microsoft must have the code for that sitting around in a repo history somewhere and yet tablet mode on Windows 10 is still such a mess even after years.

nxc18 7y ago
I pulled out my Surface RT yesterday and it is almost exactly what iPad multitasking is. It really is mind boggling that Microsoft fumbled that so bad - great tech but some really user-hostile business decisions cost them dearly.
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GekkePrutser 7y ago
Yes, tablet mode on Win8 was good! The problem was ramming it down the throat of all the desktop users too. I still don't understand how such a big company can make such obviously bad decisions.
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  >I still don't understand how such a big company can make such obviously bad decisions. Simple, resume ego driven development from someone who just want to climb ranks.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  But it wasn't a terrible desktop experience: in 8.1 you had a strongly tiling window manager and a lot of apps designed for phone widths or smaller to tile. The tiling was horizontal only, but you could do a lot on a two widescreen monitor setup. It moved a lot of cheese, sure, but it wasn't offering as much an "inferior" desktop usage as people seemed to think it did because they never bothered to learn what it did offer new/different/better.

SkyMarshal 7y ago

> had a real file system Apple’s Files app solves mostly solves that for me. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/files/id1232058109 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/files/id1232058109 > use ssh The Blink app solves that nicely for me. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blink-shell-mosh-ssh-client/id1156707581 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blink-shell-mosh-ssh-client/id... There are also several VNC viewer apps if I need to connect to my Linux workstation for more cpu or graphics intensive work.

Spooky23 7y ago
The problem with iOS for these solutions is that iOS is a designed experience and you're always swimming upstream when you deviate from the path. The Microsoft stuff tries to live in both worlds, but the ecosystem around the "modern" side is weak. Everyone is struggling with this stuff, as witnessed by the schitzoid steps to evolve MacOS and Windows.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
“Apple’s Files app solves mostly solves that for me.“ It’s better but it’s still riddled with arbitrary restrictions. For example when I want to watch a MKV video in iCloud I have to copy the file from iCloud to the folder of the player, then delete. Can’t open iCloud files directly with the player and can’t move either. On the bright side I am confident by 2025 in iOS we will have the same functionality we had already thirty years ago... with the exception that every piece of software will be charged with the 30% Apple tax.
- msh 7y ago
  Using infuse (a video player app) I can open files from icloud directly.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    How?
    - 7y ago

cortesoft 7y ago

Totally agree... got my surface pro for the same reason (wanted a combo laptop/tablet, and was excited for a tablet with a real OS) The tablet mode sucks for anything but basic reading. The touch interface is crappy, the on screen keyboard sucks. It is a really good laptop... as long as I use it on a desk or table. The non-rigid keyboard makes using it without a desk impossible. It is a nice, light, laptop for travel, though... but I still need to bring a tablet.

stinos 7y ago
The non-rigid keyboard makes using it without a desk impossible Can you elaborate? Which version? I've been using the Surface Pro 6 and I don't notice a difference with using it on a desk or on my lap.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  I think I have the 6 as well... the keyboard connection to the tablet is not rigid, meaning you need something to support the tablet itself (like the kickstand)... but using the kickstand on your lap is not very convenient, because it does not hold the keyboard at a fixed angle to the computer... and you have to move it up your legs far enough to have the kickstand extend back and still have room on your legs. You can't have the screen be at your knees. Also, you are limited in the angle you can have the screen. With a normal laptop, you can open the hinge very wide (like 150 degrees or so) so that you are looking directly at the screen when looking down at your lap. With the non-rigid keyboard, you have to have it fairly close to perpendicular (close to 90 degrees) which means you are looking at a bad angle to the screen when it is on your lap.

nxc18 7y ago

It might be worth revisiting the Windows 8 interface. It was maligned at the time but it’sa very fluent, intuitive interface now that people are used to iPads. The multitasking is exactly the same as iPad now, only difference being you pull down to close apps instead of up. I pulled out my original Surface RT yesterday and was surprised to find it has aged incredibly well - perhaps better in 2020 than it was in 2012, because it was well ahead of its time.

zozbot234 7y ago
The Surface RT was a crappy, closed device. You can put Linux on just about any Baytrail- or Cherrytrail-based device now (used to be a huge pain), and with a decent amount of RAM and GNOME3 on Wayland it's actually a very intuitive and productive tablet experience. Even the windowing UI is just as intuitive as Windows 8 if not more so: you click on an "Activities" overview as opposed to a start button, but the rest is pretty much the same.
- nxc18 7y ago
  I don’t really see how any of that is relevant. Surface RT was running underpowered Tegra with 2GB ram and still does 60fps on the entire desktop/Start experience. Have you used the Windows 8 multitasking interface recently?
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    Tegra has a good focus on graphics, so it's no surprise that it could do 60fps animations on the Windows 8 start screen. Nice eyecandy, I suppose. And 2GB RAM will still run pretty much anything a Surface RT user might care about, except the modern web of course.
aarmenaa 7y ago
It's not like I did any market research, but I recall people liking the Windows 8 interface on phones and tablets. My personal impression from playing with Windows phones in stores was very good. Opinions were (predictably, IMO) less positive for the same interface on desktops and laptops.

partiallypro 7y ago

Microsoft scaled back a lot of their tablet functionality because consumers didn't like it, and of course Apple started to copy Microsoft's tablet functionality shortly thereafter. I think maybe, Windows X will be more touch based instead of them trying to meld them into one OS. Only the core will be the same, but the UIs will be split on the OS level. I think...but who knows, Microsoft often changes directions. All I know is that the Surface hardware is on par, and in many cases better than Apple.

pier25 7y ago

I briefly owned a Surface Book before returning it and I agree. The tablet experience on Windows was horrendous. Eg: something as trivial as adjusting the display brightness required me to go into Windows settings.

reificator 7y ago
> something as trivial as adjusting the display brightness required me to go into Windows settings. I've never had a Surface Book but I had the Surface Pro 3 for awhile and I'm pretty sure it predated the book. On the Surface Pro you just slide from off screen to bring up quick settings and then tap the brightness icon. Granted it only had preset values rather than a slider...
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  It's had a brightness slider for a long time now. And if you have a Surface, Fn+Delete and Fn+Backspace are hidden shortcuts to Brightness Up and Down.
- pier25 7y ago
  > Granted it only had preset values rather than a slider... Yeah and that was always either too bright or too dark. I'm glad they added the slider now.
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vb6sp6 7y ago
you swipe from the right and adjust the brightness with the slider at the botton: https://i.imgur.com/sBYNv5z.png https://i.imgur.com/sBYNv5z.png older versions, you had to swipe right, then touch screen icon and slide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFYmwnzRpJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFYmwnzRpJ0
- pier25 7y ago
  Thanks. That wasn't available when I tried it circa 2016. You had to tap an icon with 25% steps which never resulted in the brightness I wanted.

muststopmyths 7y ago

>Their screen keyboards are garbage, Have you tried the WordFlow (swype or whatever it's called on other platforms) method on the keyboard ? Seems to work as well as Windows Phone did, which is pretty damn good. It's fine as a portable Windows PC to me. Great for travel, does pretty much everything I need, including Visual Studio. iPads are so much more consumption oriented that I can't see myself every needing one in addition to an iPhone. >If Microsoft invested a bit more in improving the tablet experience, they could really eat some of Apple's marketshare. They did with WinRT (not the tablet the API, now called UWP) and it failed because they decided to throw away backward compatibility of APIs. Windows 8 and the Metro design language was my favorite UX by far of the last two decades. This time, I guess they've decided to throw away the user experience in favor of backward compatibility :-)

hrktb 7y ago
> swype Swiping seems to be efficient mostly in english. I had a try on android and it was just exhausting while being unforgiving for CJK type input. Just to say, having a decent keyboard is still important to a lot of people. And Apple has effectively made efforts in this regard to have a good keyboard experience on the iPad.
- muststopmyths 7y ago
  I have very little experience with iPads, but I absolutely hate the iPhone keyboard compared to Windows Phone/Mobile. Windows 10 is unfortunately not in the same league as its mobile predecessors. Haven't used the Windows 10 on-screen keyboard much to be fair. I usually use the Surface keyboard (which has improved a lot circa 2017), but for prolonged work I'll attach a USB keyboard (mostly because I need an ergonomic keyboard to type).
pnutjam 7y ago
I have an original surface pro I inherited, it works fine except for the garbage keyboard/cover. Well, it did work fine until some recent firmware update made it so the wifi crashes any router it connects to... It's really a beautiful bug. This only seems to effect windows, I've been using it with OpenSuse with no such issue.

js2 7y ago

I pretty consistently hear that the iPad makes a great tablet and a shitty laptop and vice-versa for the Surface. I’m not sure it’s possible to have the best touch experience and the best keyboard and mouse experience in a single OS. Maybe Apple will let the iPad dual boot iPadOS and macOS someday soon assuming the MacBooks transition to ARM.

walterbell 7y ago
> Maybe Apple will let the iPad dual boot iPadOS and macOS someday soon assuming the MacBooks transition to ARM. That would be excellent. iPad needs a local web server capability for development, e.g. to run Jekyll/Ruby or Hugo/golang. Rumor is that upcoming Apple Arm CPU will support hardware virtualization, which could theoretically enable Linux to run in a sandboxed VM. As for UX, the new iPad Magic Keyboard is a game changer that seamlessly blends tablet and laptop. Now we need to address the iOS gaps (e.g. Xcode, non-Safari browser and mail client) and/or allow dual-boot as you suggested.
- shmoogy 7y ago
  On Pythonista you can run Flask or Django, it's nifty. The apps are coming, there's one for nodejs and react. Would not be surprised to see ruby/go soon.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 7y ago
People really want a GUIs that are much more dynamic and context-aware. The size of the buttons should change if I attach a mouse or a touchpad. The on-screen-keyboard should completely disable itself if I attach a keyboard. (Did Windows figure this out yet?) If I walk into a dark room, apps (and ideally, websites) should change to dark mode. If I walk into an area with direct sunlight, the contrast should be boosted. The device should behave differently if it's laying flat on a desk, or on a kickstand, or if I'm holding it in my hands. Cell phones are better. They've figured out obvious things like screen rotation, adaptive brightness, bluetooth audio handoffs, and Android has made some headway with things like darkmode and automatically changing settings when you get into a car, but tablets have lagged behind, and I'm sure there are dozens more tiny things that automatically changed based on the device's context.

AsyncAwait 7y ago

I've put Arch Linux with GNOME on my SP7 and it's been great. There are a few tweaks I needed to make, but nothing too drastic and I really think the hardware is word-class, I love the tablet form-factor, but iPad OS is way too limiting. SP solves that, so I hope MS will keep making them.

kyoji 7y ago
Does the pen still work? What about multi-touch and pressure sensitivity?
- AsyncAwait 7y ago
  The pen doesn't currently work, I have an older iPad Pro for when I need pen input so not a big issue for me. I primarily like it for the form-factor & build quality, which in my opinion matches Apple level, but I seldom use it as a "tablet". It's more a super-portable laptop for me that can also serve as a convenient way to kick back and consume content. I, weirdly enough, also like the type cover over standard laptop keyboards. Maybe it's because it's not part of the tablet itself that I find the keys less stiff and as a result more comfortable than on most laptops.

tzs 7y ago

I made a similar decision when the increasing bloat of the web made my 3rd gen iPad inadequate. I considered the new iPad Pro, but decided on a Surface Pro 4 instead. Except for me it wasn't a real filesystem I wanted. It was a virtual memory system that didn't make programs discard data when multitasking. On the iPad, opening a couple more browser tabs and then coming back to the original tab might cause the page on the original tab to reload. This could be very frustrating on sites like HN or Reddit. I might start typing a comment, and in the middle of that need to look up some things to fact check myself or get some references. Do that, go back to the comment--and the damn page reloads, wiping out what I'd typed so far. Anticipating this, I could "select all" on my comment and copy it, then go do the research, and then come back. If the page reloads then I could just paste the comment back. If I needed to copy and paste something from the other page it was usually safe to do at that point. Just switching between two already loaded pages usually would not trigger a reload. I never ran into anything like that on SP4. I could pause writing an HN comment and research in other tabs as much as I wanted, and never had the partial comment gone when I switched back. I don't know if this is because Windows will use a pagefile and/or swapfile when there is not enough physical RAM for everything, or because the SP4 had 16 times as much RAM as my 3rd gen iPad so I simply never got it low enough on RAM, but for whatever the reason browsing worked a lot better the SP4. Since then I also got a 6th gen iPad (not Pro). It's much better than my old 3rd gen was about this, but still does occasionally force a refresh when witching among tabs.

zozbot234 7y ago
Current mobile OS's (iOS and Android) do run without a pagefile, in order to cope with the crappiness of inbuilt eMMC storage which would quickly wear out as the pagefile got rewritten. Theoretically, well-behaved applications are supposed to checkpoint their own internal state when signaled by the OS to do so, since this ought to be more space-efficient than the use of a pagefile; in practice, almost no applications actually do this properly. For what it's worth, Linux is a lot more parsimonious in its use of swap space than Windows, given very similar hardware and use cases.
- pmjordan 7y ago

derefr 7y ago

> had a real filesystem and I could easily load comics and movies on Apps might not expose the iPadOS filesystem well (since they've gradually accreted a UX paradigm over the last 10 filesystem-less years), but it actually does work perfectly well to open files from your iPadOS home directory [the thing the Files app exposes] in any app that can handle that file type. You can open video files from Files into VLC; you can open CBRs/CBZs into https://chunkyreader.com/ https://chunkyreader.com/ ; etc. For getting the files in/out of the iPad, Files can access external disks just fine (I've been using a Samsung USB-C T5 SSD); and Safari (don't know about other browsers) now allows you to save arbitrary files, putting your downloads in a regular Downloads folder within the Files-visible homedir. I'm sure there are other methods as well (e.g. copying files to the iPad's local storage from a storage provider, e.g. iCloud Drive, or Dropbox, or an SFTP/S3 client's host profile; or using a BitTorrent client to download whatever.) Of course, apps can't access your homedir arbitrarily if they don't have the relevant capability, but that's just good sandboxing—if an app only works with particular files, it should only be receiving capabilities on individual files (through e.g. the Share/Open With action), not capabilities on your filesystem as a whole. The only reason desktop OSes aren't already mostly this way is the inertia of legacy apps. (There's also nothing stopping a local POSIX terminal emulator app from creating a shared container that other apps like IDEs can write into, if you're wondering. Nobody's bothered yet, but that's because everyone wants to own your eyeballs with fully-integrated single-app solutions, not because it's not technically possible. You could totally build the equivalent of Termux for iPadOS. The only limitation would be that the package ecosystem would have to use the App Store as its package manager, with packages containing executables being distributed as Apple-signed extension "apps." Sort of like how iMessage's sticker-pack "apps" work, or how Photos.app's filter-pack "apps" work; or how Safari's content-blocker "apps" work. Or, come to think of it, exactly like how XCode.app attaches its POSIX tooling into the [read-only] macOS rootfs.)

thekyle 7y ago
> BitTorrent client to download whatever AFAIK Apple doesn't allow BitTorrent clients to run on iOS devices

loyukfai 7y ago

>Their screen keyboards are garbage This coming from the company who bought SwiftKey is indeed baffling.

DHPersonal 7y ago

In some of the fullscreen apps like the Kindle app, the Close icon is hidden behind a swipe gesture. Swiping up/down at the very top of the screen makes the top toolbar appear, usually either as a full title bar or a small gesture bar that can be activated with a swipe.

superzadeh 7y ago

I share the same feeling, even though didn't own an iPad before (I knew I needed something with less limitations). The new tablet mode they did is better (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2019/08/29/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-18970/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2019/08/29/annou...), however the biggest deal breaker for me _is_ the on-screen keyboard. Try using Slack in tablet mode, it's impossible: every time you go to a channel, the on screen keyboard pops-up, the animation to open/close takes 2-3 seconds each time: it's frustrating to the point I just plug the keyboard back on and use the surface in laptop mode.