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Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air
- InfiniteVortex 2y agoVery interesting developments. I wonder how good X Elite's performance per watt is compared to the M3. Then again, Apple will soon restock all Macs with M4-level processors (reported, take it with a grain of salt). M4 beats the X Elite, but its not really a fair comparison since the X Elite is meant to compete with the M3. It seems like the X Elite is close to M3, but uses much more power [0]. [0]: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-vs-apple-m3 https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-...
- m3kw9 2y agoDo they say that when they developed it or after when they find out they cannot beat the M4 that they are not competing with something they cannot beat?
- viraptor 2y agoThose chips are in the pipeline for years. There's a chance M3 wasn't even out by the time they had the mostly finalised design for this processor. They definitely couldn't aim for any comparison with M4 at any point of that process.
- napierzaza 2y ago[dead]
- ghostly_s 2y agoIf these numbers are representative, they seem to show apple silicon's efficiency advantage is now pretty minor.
- wtallis 2y agoThe power efficiency numbers in that link do not appear to be derived from anything; definitely not actual measurements. The score out of 100 is almost certainly complete bullshit, and the site as a whole probably is worthless.
- gumby 2y ago> Then again, Apple will soon restock all Macs with M4-level processors Probably not soon. They just refreshed the macs with M3s, and put the M4s in the ipads pro, I assume due to TSMC yield issues with a bleeding edge process (yes, ipads outsell macs, but not the ipads pro, which is a low volume "halo" product).
- dmitrygr 2y agoSo the new pro-level laptop from MS+QCOM (they are bragging of the specs of the one with Snapdragon X Elite chip which starts at $1,500) and ships in a month beats last year's entry-level mac, which starts at $999 and has been shipping for a year?
- iknowstuff 2y agowhile using more power ;)
- hinkley 2y agoIf they ship on time they might get four months before Apple has a faster machine. And the last six weeks to two months of that, people will likely wait and see (if they consider anything from MS at all that is).
- Espressosaurus 2y agoIs anybody swapping ecosystems based on one-off specifications? That seems incredibly foolhardy. Platforms are sticky.
- hinkley 2y agoFirst rule of marketing is people buy a story, not a product. If people are bailing it could be the new competition is that compelling, or it could be that your customers have been looking to jump ship and this product was compelling enough to tip them over.
- dmitrygr 2y agoApple already has much faster machines - the pro line...
- D13Fd 2y agoMuch as I love to bash MS, in this instance the M3 MacBook was announced March 4, so it’s not last year’s product.
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- chris_wot 2y agoWhat concerns me the most is the repairability. We make extensive use of Macbook Air M1 and M2 units, and we have a support contract for repairing the devices onsite. We also have a support contract for repair of Surface Pro units, and when these die they get sent away to Microsoft and a replacement eventually arrives. From what I can tell, they have dreadful repairability.
- ghostly_s 2y agoWho offers on-site repair for your Macs? All my employers have sent us to the Apple store.
- chris_wot 2y agoCompNow. We have thousands of Macs (we are a school). Many private schools in Sydney have paid for on-site repairs.
- hnburnsy 2y agoMS is trying to improve Surface repairability, no idea how it is going... https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/surface-it-pro-blog/surface-delivers-on-simplified-device-repair/ba-p/4111451 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/surface-it-pro-blog/s...
- hnburnsy 2y agoSurface for Business service and repair... >Built with integrity by design, many Microsoft Surface devices are now easier to repair1 and maintain, providing commercial customers with greater flexibility while extending the use of devices. >Commercial customers can obtain service for Surface for Business devices in several ways. You can get service directly from Microsoft or use a third party Authorized Service Provider. Or with skilled technicians, you can repair2 devices yourself following the applicable Surface Service Guide or article. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/surface-service-and-repair https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/surface-service-an...
- martinky24 2y agoFaster doesn't tell the whole story. For example, I'll take 80% as fast with 8 hours of battery life over 100% speed at 2 hours.
- freddie_mercury 2y agoIf you read more than just the headline you'd find that the third sentence of the article talks about battery life.
- ghostly_s 2y agoYes but you'll note MS has made no specific claims about battery life and performance.
- makeitdouble 2y agoYou can't have both. With the current M3 you also won't get 20h on battery while running an hadoop cluster on it.
- ghostly_s 2y agoPerformance-per-watt leagues ahead of the competition is the key metric Apple is selling their silicon on. The whole reason these chips are getting so much acclaim is they do have both.
- dmix 2y ago> As for battery life, Copilot+ PCs support up to 15 hours of web browsing or 22 hours of local video playback. The MacBook Air models offer the same 15 hours of wireless web browsing, but only 18 hours of local video playback. This is so underrated. I got a new macbook air as a temp while my m1 max gets repaired and it blows my mind how I had it unplugged for 2 days over the weekend and the battery is still going. It's like range anxiety in cars, not worrying about hunting down my usb-c charger I left in some random room is nice
- binkHN 2y agoI don't know how it compares, but my recent AMD ThinkPad uses about 1% of the battery per hour while in "modern standby." I figure I have at least three and up to 4 days of being unplugged before it's forced to shut down.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y agoI assume they meant unplugged and in regular use, not unplugged and hibernating the whole time.
- binkHN 2y agoThe system wasn't hibernating, it was just sleeping.
- toomanydoubts 2y agoThat doesn't change much, I guess. Still very little power usage compared to an actual turned on machine.
- masklinn 2y agoPretty sure GP was using their MacBook over the weekend. The MBA is supposed to last something like 30 days in sleep. Yours is the sort of things I got with my Linux work laptop, and it’s miserable: a few years down the line battery degradation means after a 3 days weekend you have even odds the laptop will have slept itself to shutdown.
- perryizgr8 2y agoDo they sleep/wake properly though? If not, it's going to be absolutely useless for me.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoCan’t believe it’s 2024 and Microsoft has not sorted this out yet. I switched to MacBooks 15 years ago because I liked being able to close the lid at any moment and stuff it into my laptop and go. Got burned one too many times trying to sleep/hibernate HP business laptops by closing the lid and they stayed on and got hot. Not once has that happened with a MacBook.
- perryizgr8 2y agoExactly. I wonder if they actually use their own laptops for work. I had one HP laptop literally melt its own plastic after being left inside my bag for a night. Made it a point to always keep it on a desk overnight.
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- albertopv 2y agoIt's Windows Modern Standby, one of the stupidest choice Microsoft ever made. Basically the laptop stays on to connect to the Internet to still receive mail and notifications.
- binkHN 2y ago> As for battery life, Copilot+ PCs support up to 15 hours of web browsing or 22 hours of local video playback. The MacBook Air models offer the same 15 hours of wireless web browsing, but only 18 hours of local video playback. I don't know how good the Linux support for this hardware is, but, if it works well, the reason of buying Macs for their battery life gets blown out of the water.
- eastbound 2y agoThe track record is important: PCs have a track record of reducing the battery life to 15 minutes within 2 years through simple Windows updates; It’s probable that it will take 15 years to overcome people’s assumptions.
- bubblyal 2y agoVery excited to see this. Microsoft Windows was always a bottleneck for us when it came to ad content delivery to Windows users. With this incredible performance of Surface Pro, we will deliver ads to those users at a speed they have never see before. By the time you close one ad, 3 others are already open. Thank you Satya for making this happen.
- inDigiNeous 2y agoHehe spot on. 58% faster ad delivery, in 58% more random places than you would have expected!
- EarthLaunch 2y agoHow does the memory bandwidth compare? Based on my usage, that's key in responsiveness between Mac and PC now. Also for LLMs in memory. I compare the current top Surface Pro with the current Macbook Airs. 51-83 GB/s for current Surface Pro 9 with Intel Core i7-1265U (3200-5200 MT/s). [0] 100 GB/s for current Macbook Air 13/15" M2/M3. [1] 0: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/226258/intel-core-i71265u-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-80-ghz/specifications.html#specs-1-0-3 https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/226258/... 1: https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/
- wmf 2y agoQualcomm is a little ahead of the M4 (8400 vs. 7500) but they're behind the M3/M4 Pro/Max/Ultra.
- shanghaikid 2y agoif they have better trackpad, I will buy one.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40417828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40417828
- EarthLaunch 2y agoThat story is not about speed, it's about Copilot. To be fair, everything is called Copilot now, so maybe fast Surface Pros will be called Copilots too.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoThe discussion about the speed and surface specs are all in the announcement and that's where the threads were merged to. That's where the discussion is.
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- chupchap 2y agoI think hours of video call with five other people need to be a metric for devices now.
- viraptor 2y agoPossibly, but it would have to be way better specified. You have dimensions like the OS, conference service, camera quality, browser, etc. that all affect it.
- gnicholas 2y agoDoes battery drain depend on how many people are on a call?
- praseodym 2y agoYes, every person in the call has a video feed that must be decoded and rendered.
- gnicholas 2y agoSo does it take more battery to render several small video feeds versus one large one? If I'm on a call with a bunch of people, does "speaker mode" take less battery than "gallery mode"? Somehow I doubt it would be noticeable, if the effect exists at all.
- inDigiNeous 2y agoThe hardware looks and sounds great. Too bad it's running Windows 11.
- bpbp-mango 2y agoCan you run Windows 10 on these? Not interested in 11
- Dalewyn 2y agoProbably not considering Qualcomm ARM CPUs and GPUs will require new drivers Windows 10 never had. Even the Intel and AMD machines coming later down the line will require Windows 11 to be utilized to their full potential. Intel Thread Director being an easy one to point out; Alder Lake onwards all run suboptimally on Windows 10 due to lack of support and awareness. Also new drivers for the NPUs, for whatever good they will serve.
- seam_carver 2y agoHopefully it forces apple to up the base ram or storage. Competition is good!
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- threeseed 2y agoThere is no need to. 95% of users are never going to need to more than the base. Desktop apps are increasingly moving to the web not the other way around.
- EcommerceFlow 2y agoYet it runs Windows which automatically negates any hardware advantage. Surfaces and other windows laptops have always had "good" hardware, but the software is just garbage.
- dagmx 2y agoPartially copying my comment from the Copilot+ thread They do some sleight of hand when doing the comparisons during the release today. The Surface Laptop is physically a competitor to the actively cooled MacBook Pro (in fact it’s thicker). Their performance and battery metrics are against the slimmer and passively cooled MacBook Air. Their performance comparison is between the M3 and the Snapdragon X Elite when the M3 has throttled (their wording is sustained performance). The Elite is a significantly higher TDP product line than the M3 and its own sibling. Their battery comparison is between the M3 and the Snapdragon X Plus. This is the lower wattage SoC, paired with a thicker body that likely has a larger capacity battery as a result. It’s very unlikely that the device has both stronger performance AND longer battery life, because those are handled by different SKUs. Likely you will choose whichever metric matters more to you. Still a strong showing, but take the “benchmarks” with a heavy grain of salt.
- akmittal 2y agoIt's clear that elite x is not better than M3 in everything. But considering how far behind ARM on windows was, even having 5-10% slower chip is also a great improvement. Hope Qualcomm manage to make 15-20 jump with each generation like Apple.
- dagmx 2y agoSure, that’s why I end my comment with saying that it’s a strong showing. I’m looking forward to more aarch64 support everywhere. I just wish companies were more straightforward about what’s being presented. Though I believe that perf per watt will end up being closer to an M2 than an M3. If you take the battery size of an M2 MacBook Pro it also claims similar battery life as the Snapdragon X Plus here.
- Espressosaurus 2y agoUntil I can see some real benchmarks it's all bullshit. I watched their presentation and the lack of specificity is a glaring red flag. I'll happily eat my hat if the claimed performance is replicated across more than some rather targeted benchmarks.
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- gigel82 2y agoPeople that want gaming choose Windows, people that want productivity choose Mac. I don't see where this new product fits. You can't game with the paltry "arm companion" GPU and you can't be productive with tons of ads (product placement, "notifications" and tips, as well as the literal "hot singles near you" variety included). Maybe this is some kind of corporate devices for the old-school enterprises that rock Teams and Office and all that jazz. It's a shame because if the hardware is as good as they make it sound, it might've been a great productivity device, but they need serious slimming down work in Windows, or an unlocked bootloader for Linux.
- dagmx 2y agoIt’s a fairly competent and competitive GPU for a low end SoC. Allegedly roughly comparable to an AMD 780M. https://videocardz.com/newz/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-adreno-gpu-performance-matches-amd-radeon-780m-in-gaming https://videocardz.com/newz/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-adre... That said, Microsoft’s comparisons should tell you who this is for: people who might otherwise buy a MacBook Air. That’s the segment that’s largely not doing creative work or gaming, but needs something for business use, or productivity on the go.
- lispm 2y agoI wonder how much performance will be used to run all the advanced Microsoft telemetry software (which collects & reports user data for Microsoft and which can't be disabled) and all that ad software they force on users. I still wonder how it is legal to use Microsoft software in the EU in government surroundings. The German authorities publish tons of papers on how to use Windows&related ( https://www.bsi.bund.de/SiteGlobals/Forms/Suche/EN/Servicesuche_Formular.html?nn=907774&resourceId=149134&input_=907774&pageLocale=en&templateQueryString=windows&submit.x=0&submit.y=0 https://www.bsi.bund.de/SiteGlobals/Forms/Suche/EN/Servicesu... ) , instead of simply disallowing to use Microsoft software. With the data collection for "AI" it only gets worse.
- qnleigh 2y agoWindows battery benchmarks have always been wildly overoptimistic on Surface products. Factor of 2 to 4 in my experience. Various bugs and bloat cause them to run hot when idling, or in the case of my most recent purchase, when sleeping! In both cases the device had these problems from day one. As for performance benchmarks, I don't care what numbers they get if it takes a full 8 seconds to open a context menu when I right click something. I'm even less enthusiastic if I'm forced to use Windows 11 and put up with ads. Surface hardware is amazing, but if Windows doesn't lose all of this bloat then I am done with it.
- petesergeant 2y ago> battery benchmarks have always been wildly overoptimistic Assuming that’s accurate, isn’t that just straight consumer fraud?
- Rinzler89 2y agoThat's why battery claims are always UP TO not AT LEAST.
- brokenmachine 2y agoIt still fraud (in my opinion) if you can never reach those numbers under any circumstances. It's not "up to a million hours usage", because it's impossible to use it for a million hours.
- Rinzler89 2y ago>It still fraud (in my opinion) if you can never reach those numbers under any circumstances. Who said they never reach those numbers? All manufacturers have disclaimers that the "UP TO numbers" have been achieved in their labs in their own controlled environment, and some even specify some the conditions: Pass Mark, wifi, power-mode screen brightness, etc. Your car also specifies some very optimistic MPG/range specs that most owners will never reach but they were reached in a lab somewhere running on a dyno.
- whatever1 2y agoIs intel dead at this point?
- moi2388 2y agoHashtag doubt. They don’t mention how many hours of ads in your start menu it supports, nor how much telemetry it can send
- floppiplopp 2y agoWho cares about performance minutia? It ships with windows. That information should be enough for any sensible buyer.
- wodenokoto 2y agoSo snapdragon believes they’ve built a faster and more energy efficient chip than Apples M-series. I thought the general consensus was that Apple was years ahead of the competition. What breakthrough did Snapdragon come up with?
- mmaniac 2y agoBuying TSMC silicon just like Apple and AMD.
- cjblomqvist 2y agoThe same as Apple. Qualcomm bought Nuvia, which was started by engineers working at Apple on their CPUs.
- ashildr 2y agoDo I have to pay extra for no ads?
- multimoon 2y agoCompetition is good but somehow I just know this won’t actually come close to competing. Between Microsoft and Qualcomm I don’t trust a single metric quoted until it’s actually in consumers hands.
- yellowapple 2y agoYou'd think they'd compare Pro models v. Pro models.