gumbi

macplusplus said:

gumbi said:

jkichline said:

I'm not buying the 13.5 hours of battery life though.  The claim is that this is with video playback without WiFi and screen on low brightness.  However, that's not typical usage.  I know for a fact that I can get 12+ hours from an iPad with it actually being used.  I

This device is about 50% thicker than the iPad Pro and the latter has more pixels.  Notice how they compared it to the 12" MacBook instead of the iPad Pro... why are we comparing laptops to tablets exactly? Why isn't the iPad Pro considered a computer by statistics companies again?

The thing also weights more.  I'm not saying it wouldn't be a great device, but I don't think it's all that much better than the existing iPad Pro lineup and Apple is set to announce something new in less than two weeks...

Because you can do heavy workloads on a surface you can not do on an iPad...  Can you run VS or equivalent dev environment?  Can you run a full on database server like Sql Server?  A local web server?  Linux?  Full Photoshop?  No...  That's the reason they don't compare to iPads.  One is a toy one is a powerful computer for real productivity tasks.

Apparently you have used none of these (Visual Studio or other dev environment, Sql Server, local web server) because if you had, you'd know that is impossible to manage thousands of lines of code without the versatility of a mouse interface. If you plan to do so, then kick-off that ridiculous Metro UI, attach a mouse and switch to the good old Windows desktop. And never mind why your powerful computer is shaped like a tablet and why it actually has a bigger footprint than a true laptop...

brucemc said:

As for touchscreen Macs, I have yet to hear how people can advocate for both of these (as they often do on this forum, although in different threads):

1) Touchscreen Macs are required as it is far easier / more intuitive just to touch what you want...

2) iPad needs mouse support to be truly usable and productive, as the UI with finger is a cumbersome workflow...

ericthehalfbee said:

This is Apples answer to those who think the actual screen should be a touchscreen (stupid idea, IMO - who wants to reach up to touch your screen and who wants fingerprints).

AppleInsider said:

Microsoft recently opened up the SDK for Xamarin, an iOS and Android-compatible test tool that was once priced at $999 for business users. To Joe Silverman, owner of New York Computer Help, that was a "surprising" move from the Redmond, Wash., software giant.

"If they can create lots of code, games, and programs to be sold, everyone wins in the end, including, dare I say it, Microsoft," Silverman told AppleInsider on Tuesday.

the.bear said:

Sigh. Why assume that every move that everyone makes is in response to something that Apple does or may do?

Ask yourself. Is Microsoft competing with some future Siri speaker product that Apple may or may not release? Are they competing with the few million Apple TVs that Apple pushes a year that Apple may or may not add Siri to? Or are they trying to compete with Nintendo and Sony in the video game console market like they have been for nearly 20 years?

Look, the next Nintendo console is being delayed to add VR capability. You can be certain that the next Playstation will integrate with Android Daydream VR also. How does Microsoft fight back? Making sure that the next XBox - or XBox refresh - supports both their HoloLens VR platform, which Sony and Nintendo can compete with ... and the digital assistant/AI app that Sony and Nintendo cannot.

But sure, go ahead and think that Microsoft is trying to grab a slice of that booming 3 million units a year smart speaker market from Amazon, Google and Apple instead of being primarily concerned with the long existing competition in one of their long existing product lines. Wow ... step into a place where a product that one company may or may not ever introduce and may or may not commercially succeed if they do is more important than a business that a company has been in for nearly 20 years. And that place, that wondrous realm, is called ... the Twilight Zone!

But then again, I guess that you can perhaps say that Microsoft was following Apple when they created the XBox in the first place because Apple had the Pippin gaming system first. Right?