Apple resists MacBook, iPad Pro convergence as Microsoft struggles with Surface Windows 10 hybrids

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  • Reply 121 of 399
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by hungover View Post

     

     

    I didn't say that she doesn't use a keyboard or the trackpad. I was pooh-poohing the suggestion that you can't use the Surface Pro without the stylus.

     

    Personally I don't own either a Surface or an iPad. That said, I would always rather use a physical QWERTY keyboard whenever possible AND one that supports keyboard shortcuts. Once one is using a keyboard- having to reach out to the screen to use your finger is an ergonomic nightmare, and thus (if using a keyboard) I would rather have a mouse as well (personally I prefer them to trackpads, as an aside the trackpad on my GF's SP2 is horrible). 

     

    My GF's use of her SP2 is very narrow. Email/word/excel/browsing, and printing to her dymo label printer. At the time of purchase neither word, excel or dymo were options on an ipad (the USB dymo printer still isn't available on the ipad).


    Given her use case, sounds like the iPad Pro may be a much better option for her.

  • Reply 122 of 399
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,309member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hungover View Post

     

     

    I didn't say that she doesn't use a keyboard or the trackpad. I was pooh-poohing the suggestion that you can't use the Surface Pro without the stylus.

     

    Personally I don't own either a Surface or an iPad. That said, I would always rather use a physical QWERTY keyboard whenever possible AND one that supports keyboard shortcuts. Once one is using a keyboard- having to reach out to the screen to use your finger is an ergonomic nightmare, and thus (if using a keyboard) I would rather have a mouse as well (personally I prefer them to trackpads, as an aside the trackpad on my GF's SP2 is horrible). 

     

    My GF's use of her SP2 is very narrow. Email/word/excel/browsing, and printing to her dymo label printer. At the time of purchase neither word, excel or dymo were options on an ipad (the USB dymo printer still isn't available on the ipad).


    I have an Epson LW-600P label printer (1/4 to 1 inch wide continuous with auto cut) that connects via bluetooth from iOS devices;

     

    http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Product.do?sku=C51CD69010&UseCookie=yes

     

    Better variety of label tape than Dymo, which I also have.

  • Reply 123 of 399
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by OMGOMG1 View Post



    And the Panic Button has been pressed...



    I think Microsoft is starting to get it right and Apple "Die Hards" don't like competition or see Bloggers for once actually agree that Microsoft has become the new innovator of devices.



    This article only solidifies an outsiders perspective of that when you refer to Microsofts long lost Monopoly. If anything Apple is the Monopoly in every aspect. Or that Bloggers are selling out because for once they are actually praising Microsoft for its new devices, which was something Microsoft felt was necessary to create a laptop that could go head to head with the MacBook Pro to rejuvenate the slumping PC market.



    All Apple has really been doing over the past few years isn't really innovative at all and people are starting to see that. Take "Force Touch" for example and how all they did was upgrade the trackpad on a MacBook & integrated it into the screen for the Apple Watch. Or 3D Touch which is just force touch plain & simple nothing really new.



    And that's why it's easy to see that people are getting a little less excited with every new upgraded devices Apple unveils every year. You can say that my statement is wrong by posting all the sales figures you want, but it's easy to see that haven't gone down & only continue to grow. But that growth mainly is due to lack of a serious contender that has created devices that only try to copy or chase Apple design features, but Microsoft has been working to change that when it came out with the original Surface. They didn't give in when it failed to catch the publics attention, but that all changed with Surface Pro 3 and now you see that it's Microsoft, not Apple, that people are seeing as new & innovative when it comes to devices.



    Talk about drinking the cool aid.  What new and innovative is coming out of Microsoft?  They're trying to sell touch screen laptops, but not really designing their software, other than the start screen, to be touch usable.  And why is 

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by melgross View Post





    But touch screen notebooks have not sold well. For the windows user, they're simply too expensive. Another problem that Surface cheerleaders fail to recognize, is that there is virtually no software for Windows that is made for touch. Or for a stylus. Yes, of course, much of it will work with touch or a stylus, but not well. It's not like android or iOS where apps are specifically written for touch.



    What I find really strange is that the PC cheerleaders keep promoting the benefit of touch screen laptops, but when pushed on how they're using it, the answer is elusive at best.  Even if the software (not just the OS as in Windows start screen) were touch enabled, it does not make sense to be moving your hands and fingers from the flat plane on the keyboard, to the vertical plane of the screen.  You end up slowing down your interaction when you could more quickly and with less effort effect the same outcome by using the trackpad and keyboard.  And for those that think using a stylus is better / faster / more efficient than typing, they must not be able to type.  I see the iPad Pro being exactly that, a professional device used by creatives where touch and stylus input makes perfect sense. 

  • Reply 124 of 399
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by NasserAE View Post

     

     

    Yes.. Because clearly Apple is having trouble finding developers who are welling to write apps for iOS. /s

     

     

    That was with unoptimized Swift using beta version of Xcode. We are already at Swift v2. They updated the results to include optimized code. Look it up.

     

     

    Well duh! The language was just released to the public last year. You can't expect it to hit all the performance marks compared to a languages that's been around for long time.




    Let me get this straight. I am not trying to trash Swift. It is not like everybody cares, but I think Swift is a really good move on Apple's part!



    But Fortran and C are the fastest languages that also can produce smallest memory footprint WITHOUT sacrificing performance. And that is why I said that swift is a bad idea for using it in OS development. I didn't extend that to anything else!



    As for Swift v2 tests - can't find any, apart from one guy who for some reason thinks that using RAND function for testing programming languages is a good idea. As expected, C = Swift v2....duh. He seems not to care that logic of his benchmarking is faulty, though...

  • Reply 125 of 399
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by enature View Post

     

    I've been an ardent Apple fan and back in 2005 even predicted that Apple would lead as a tech company. I called this process of Apple resurgence somewhat awkwardly as "Appleution" -- the Apple led revolution in tech industry.

     

    However, now I am bearish on Apple. Daniel Eran Dilger desperately tries to trash Microsoft by backing his arguments with the past Apple profits and growth. But as everybody knows the past performance is no guarantee of future success.

    Steve Jobs said that Tim Cook is not a product guy. Exactly. Cook argued that merging a tablet with a laptop is akin to merging a toaster with a refrigerator. His naive and misguided argument just shows that he has no clue about products.

     

    Merging a tablet and a laptop is more like merging a freezer and a refrigerator. Why would you want to keep them separate? And Microsoft is precisely on the right path. While I still very much like Mac OS and use a Macbook Pro as my main laptop, iOS is becoming a joke. So Cook's desperate attempt to catch up with Surface by producing iOS based iPad Pro just further pushes iPad toward being a toaster. Apple record breaking profits won't last.


     

    Nothing wrong with merging a tablet and a laptop if someone can find or workout an optimal interface/hardware design.

    So far, no one has.

     

    My issue with Microsoft is Windows and Windows UI.  I hated that Microsoft is trying to bend or change the way I work according to their vision with Windows 10.  I have multiple Windows PCs but don't buy into their computing vision at all.

     

    Microsoft needs to re-design their UI for touch, but they won't because they want backward compatibility with Desktop PC.

     

    Tablet PCs have been around even before iPad was invented.  Why didn't they sell in the first place? 

    Fast forward to 2015, Microsoft has another go at tablet, separating keyboard from the main unit and install Windows 10 and this is called innovation? How is this different from the tablet PCs a decade ago?

     

    There will be people who want and love Windows, Surface is for these people.  For people who are done with Windows and can have their computing needs satisfied with IOS device, why would anyone go back to the hardware/software mess of wintel?

  • Reply 126 of 399
    Originally Posted by NasserAE View Post

    Based on their current naming convention (iOS, watchOS, and tvOS), I believe it will be macOS not OS XI.



    Who’s to say they’ll be Macs? The Apple was the keyboard computer, the Macintosh was the mouse computer... we need a new cultivar for multitouch.

  • Reply 127 of 399
    saarek wrote: »
    Can't believe I'm going to defend Microsoft here, but feel in this instance that I should.

    I frequently see threads littered with people mocking competitors who simply copy what Apple does, heck DED himself has made many articles to this accord.

    With the Surface Microsoft has tried to do something different and to be honest for certain segments of the computer market their way does make sense.

    I'm not arguing that the surface is better than an iPad or a MacBook, but it is different.

    The surface line keeps getting better and better with each iteration, as one would expect, and personally I applaud Microsoft for trying to create a viable premium device rather than following the "me too" approach of others.

    Replace "Surface" with "Tablet PC" and "Different" with "Marketed Differently."
  • Reply 128 of 399
    ingelaingela Posts: 217member

    Touch on windows is pretty bad, so the Surface with full Windows is not really a thing,. The thing is how do you get your work in and out of the Pro without usb? Wifi won't cut it.



    Storage is another big thing, But lack of Windows or OSX are not it.. If the tablet is capable and people are buying it,, the lack of pro software will sort itself out.. It's not like there is a rush of developers hoping to get on the Windows bandwagon, it's the old developers that are stuck there, that make Windows a still viable platform, not the other way around. The Adobe suite would jump ship just as everyone else has on Windows if the numbers for the iPad Pro were there. But at the moment I don't see how that can happen without the ability to easily transfer your projects to and from.

  • Reply 129 of 399
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Ingela View Post

     

    Touch on windows is pretty bad, so the Surface with full Windows is not really a thing,. The thing is how do you get your work in and out of the Pro without usb? Wifi won't cut it.



    Storage is another big thing, But lack of Windows or OSX are not it.. If the tablet is capable and people are buying it,, the lack of pro software will sort itself out.. It's not like there is a rush of developers hoping to get on the Windows bandwagon, it's the old developers that are stuck there, that make Windows a still viable platform, not the other way around. The Adobe suite would jump ship just as everyone else has on Windows if the numbers for the iPad Pro were there. But at the moment I don't see how that can happen without the ability to easily transfer your projects to and from.




    USB is not the way. It is slow. That is the decades old SneakerNet. With wifi you just copy the files once, not copy onto a USB and then off the USB. Adobe is really pushing cloud storage because the networks are getting fast enough these days plus with cloud you can do things like share and collaborate.

  • Reply 130 of 399
    You folks are all missing the point...
    They buried the lead. The big news is that after Apple has gone after your wrist with the a-watch, now Google and Microsoft are going after your ears by licensing "beats" technology for incorporation into Google earrings and Microsoft earrings. Forget Glass - the ear is where it's at! Don't believe me? It's right there (buried) in the article. The author has let the cat out of the bag. I quote:

    >>
    And yet investors were throwing money at both Google and Microsoft this week as both announced earrings that "beat" expectations.
    <<

    It says both Microsoft AND Google have announced new "earring" products with expectation of "beats" technology in them. This surprise introduction of new beats earrings from Google and Microsoft only proves that wearables are important (Apple was first with the wrist) and that they are going after the hipster market in a big way. It's all about the ear now.
  • Reply 131 of 399
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Imagine Apple Insider saying something negative about Microsoft products. Really at the end of the day this is an Apple fan boy site so one would expect anything written about Microsoft to be negative, even if it isn't true. Keep it up Apple fans love this kind of reporting.

    Hmm. I find it to be just the same, or worse on Microsoft and Google centric sites. Do you have a point?
  • Reply 132 of 399
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Oh yes, I am really oppressive and misogynistic

    I also torture and eat alive small children...

    LOL

    Just the facts. I go by what people say.
  • Reply 133 of 399
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by mstone View Post

     



    USB is not the way. It is slow. That is the decades old SneakerNet. With wifi you just copy the files once, not copy onto a USB and then off the USB. Adobe is really pushing cloud storage because the networks are getting fast enough these days plus with cloud you can do things like share and collaborate.


    Ah, yes that was the other surprise that you reminded me of when you mentioned USB.....  I am completely surprised that there is no thunderbolt on the Surface Book thingy ....  Up until now it has been a nice thing to have, but with the plans of what Intel is trying to push with Skylake - it might actually an even bigger nicety.... the ability to dock with multiple external graphics docks etc. that it will support.  Thunderbolt has always been a more expensive option, but for anything like external drives, very high speed networking, external graphics docks etc.... there is nothing like Thunderbolt (low latency; very high speed).

  • Reply 134 of 399
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bkkcanuck View Post

     

    I am completely surprised that there is no thunderbolt on the Surface Book thingy


    You shouldn't be. Surface is for memo writing sales people, not heavy duty power users. WiFi is plenty fast for office workers.

  • Reply 135 of 399
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    hungover wrote: »
    I didn't say that she doesn't use a keyboard or the trackpad. I was pooh-poohing the suggestion that you can't use the Surface Pro without the stylus.

    Personally I don't own either a Surface or an iPad. That said, I would always rather use a physical QWERTY keyboard whenever possible AND one that supports keyboard shortcuts. Once one is using a keyboard- having to reach out to the screen to use your finger is an ergonomic nightmare, and thus (if using a keyboard) I would rather have a mouse as well (personally I prefer them to trackpads, as an aside the trackpad on my GF's SP2 is horrible). 

    My GF's use of her SP2 is very narrow. Email/word/excel/browsing, and printing to her dymo label printer. At the time of purchase neither word, excel or dymo were options on an ipad (the USB dymo printer still isn't available on the ipad).

    No one has said that it can't be used without the stylus or keyboard for simple things, or if you're willing to work slowly, or to have to poke around incorrectly. But to use it really usefully, you do need them.cthe older Sirface tablets would have the on screen keyboard cover up most of the screen. That made it difficult to use. The newer tablets are conforming more to Apple's screen ratio, as are Samsung's. That makes the virtual keyboard easier to use. But you still need a way to select items, and so you need that trackpad, or a mouse, or to bother with the stylus, which is a real pain while using a keyboard of any kind.

    There are quite a few printers that work with the ipad. Many printers use WiFi, and work. All printers on a network will work. If you have a USB printer attached to a computer that is on, it will work. I have label printers on my network that work with all our computers, and our iPhones and iPads as well. There are a few label printers with Bluetooth or WiFi that will work. A direct connection isn't needed.
  • Reply 136 of 399
    pmcdpmcd Posts: 396member
    enature wrote: »
    I've been an ardent Apple fan and back in 2005 even predicted that Apple would lead as a tech company. I called this process of Apple resurgence somewhat awkwardly as "Appleution" -- the Apple led revolution in tech industry.

    However, now I am bearish on Apple. Daniel Eran Dilger desperately tries to trash Microsoft by backing his arguments with the past Apple profits and growth. But as everybody knows the past performance is no guarantee of future success.
    Steve Jobs said that Tim Cook is not a product guy. Exactly. Cook argued that merging a tablet with a laptop is akin to merging a toaster with a refrigerator. His naive and misguided argument just shows that he has no clue about products.

    Merging a tablet and a laptop is more like merging a freezer and a refrigerator. Why would you want to keep them separate? And Microsoft is precisely on the right path. While I still very much like Mac OS and use a Macbook Pro as my main laptop, iOS is becoming a joke. So Cook's desperate attempt to catch up with Surface by producing iOS based iPad Pro just further pushes iPad toward being a toaster. Apple record breaking profits won't last.

    Apple and Microsoft have very similar problems. The original promise of the Mac, and the Xerox system before it, was to allow for more complex I/o than the 2-d oriented ascii keyboard, largely based on Roman characters. MS-Dos and ProDos before it used this limitation to build on similarly limited apps ( spreadsheets and so on). The ability to mix more complex objects was always a bit of a hack involving importing data from specialized programs into programs such as PageMaker. FrameMaker made some attempt at having it all but eventually faded away. TeX was an extreme example of bridging ascii input with mathematics. The beauty of mathematics as a language and universal means of communication was largely done in by the dominance of the English language in science and TeX. Computer science developed its own means of communicating rational thought largely forcing mathematicians to abandon a far more elegant means of communication that they had developed for ages. In no some degree the lowly typewriter was to blame. The dominant apps such as Office, databases and such carried this lowly application of mathematics to the extreme bringing in a fortune for Microsoft. Of course they had a problem giving up this 2-d based foundation for one with more complex I/o handling. Their initial Tablet PC solution found popularity with precisely the people who could benefit from the more flexible I/o. Meanwhile the Mac had been coopted by artists, musicians and TeX lovers. OSX with its great PDF handling only cemented this. The end result was that both OSX and Windows were largely keyboard, mouse driven platforms. The iPad came along with a touch driven platform based on a subset of OSX with different I/o. Apple has the problem of beefing up that subset without losing the I/o capabilities. Microsoft has a similar problem of restricting Windows to minimize the dominance of the 2-d influence. Microsoft has better handwriting capabilities but within that 2-d jail while OSX has virtually none but iOS has more ( but with the screen type/stylus limitations). The iPad Pro is a first attempt at adding meaningful geometrical I/o. It is limited to its very experimental Pro iPad.

    The problems really are very similar. If iPad Pro were to get something like PDF Annotator then we would know a major shift was happening. If Microsoft can get rid of the dominance of the desktop and show that its win10 universal approach attracts more apps then we will also know something is happening.

    It is pretty clear that iOS is very limiting, sort of like System 7. It is also clear that Microsoft is weighed down by legacy 2-d software. Both companies have an albatross around them. It may perhaps take a combination of both to finally free us of the shackles of the typewriter.
  • Reply 137 of 399
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by mstone View Post

     

    You shouldn't be. Surface is for memo writing sales people, not heavy duty power users. WiFi is plenty fast for office workers.


     

    The surface book is suppose to be the "ultimate laptop" - not talking about the surface pro 3/4.

  • Reply 138 of 399
    ed17331 wrote: »
    You folks are all missing the point...
    They buried the lead. The big news is that after Apple has gone after your wrist with the a-watch, now Google and Microsoft are going after your ears by licensing "beats" technology for incorporation into Google earrings and Microsoft earrings. Forget Glass - the ear is where it's at! Don't believe me? It's right there (buried) in the article. The author has let the cat out of the bag. I quote:

    >>
    And yet investors were throwing money at both Google and Microsoft this week as both announced earrings that "beat" expectations.
    <<

    It says both Microsoft AND Google have announced new "earring" products with expectation of "beats" technology in them. This surprise introduction of new beats earrings from Google and Microsoft only proves that wearables are important (Apple was first with the wrist) and that they are going after the hipster market in a big way. It's all about the ear now.

    Apple is apparently not interested in pursuing the "earring" market being content with their earpods and beats headphones. I think it is a smart move they licensed their "beats" technology to Google and Microsoft. Let them go after the hipster market with their beats earrings. Apple will dominate the ear with headphones and earpods.
  • Reply 139 of 399
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    pmcd wrote: »
    Apple and Microsoft have very similar problems. The original promise of the Mac, and the Xerox system before it, was to allow for more complex I/o than the 2-d oriented ascii keyboard, largely based on Roman characters. MS-Dos and ProDos before it used this limitation to build on similarly limited apps ( spreadsheets and so on). The ability to mix more complex objects was always a bit of a hack involving importing data from specialized programs into programs such as PageMaker. FrameMaker made some attempt at having it all but eventually faded away. TeX was an extreme example of bridging ascii input with mathematics. The beauty of mathematics as a language and universal means of communication was largely done in by the dominance of the English language in science and TeX. Computer science developed its own means of communicating rational thought largely forcing mathematicians to abandon a far more elegant means of communication that they had developed for ages. In no some degree the lowly typewriter was to blame. The dominant apps such as Office, databases and such carried this lowly application of mathematics to the extreme bringing in a fortune for Microsoft. Of course they had a problem giving up this 2-d based foundation for one with more complex I/o handling. Their initial Tablet PC solution found popularity with precisely the people who could benefit from the more flexible I/o. Meanwhile the Mac had been coopted by artists, musicians and TeX lovers. OSX with its great PDF handling only cemented this. The end result was that both OSX and Windows were largely keyboard, mouse driven platforms. The iPad came along with a touch driven platform based on a subset of OSX with different I/o. Apple has the problem of beefing up that subset without losing the I/o capabilities. Microsoft has a similar problem of restricting Windows to minimize the dominance of the 2-d influence. Microsoft has better handwriting capabilities but within that 2-d jail while OSX has virtually none but iOS has more ( but with the screen type/stylus limitations). The iPad Pro is a first attempt at adding meaningful geometrical I/o. It is limited to its very experimental Pro iPad.

    The problems really are very similar. If iPad Pro were to get something like PDF Annotator then we would know a major shift was happening. If Microsoft can get rid of the dominance of the desktop and show that its win10 universal approach attracts more apps then we will also know something is happening.

    It is pretty clear that iOS is very limiting, sort of like System 7. It is also clear that Microsoft is weighed down by legacy 2-d software. Both companies have an albatross around them. It may perhaps take a combination of both to finally free us of the shackles of the typewriter.

    Why do you keep talking about mathematics? What's your point?
  • Reply 140 of 399
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ed17331 View Post





    Apple is apparently not interested in pursuing the "earring" market being content with their earpods and beats headphones. I think it is a smart move they licensed their "beats" technology to Google and Microsoft. Let them go after the hipster market with their beats earrings. Apple will dominate the ear with headphones and earpods.

     

    You lost me - what technology is this "beats" technology?  Beats technology was actually pretty bad (have not tried the new stuff) all puff.  I have generally just stuck with my old Sennheiser headphones - earpods just do nasty things to my ears (one day I might try the molded ones to see if they are better).

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