Microsoft announces new Surface Laptop Go and Surface Pro X
I couldn’t find a good roundup that covered both of these and didn’t want to add clutter to the front page with two posts.
From The Verge:
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Microsoft’s new $549 Surface Laptop Go aims to compete with Chromebooks
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Microsoft’s updated Surface Pro X has a faster processor and new platinum color option
The Surface Pro X seems like just a spec bump, so there isn’t too much interesting there. But the Surface Laptop Go is interesting. The base model is absolute garbage (4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of EMMC storage) but the other models are somewhat decent.
The overall design of the Surface products is really striking. I honestly think they look much more modern and clean than Apple’s laptops. I also really love that they are offering colors. I wish Apple would offer more colors than just gray, silver and pink/gold on their laptops.
This is the only real interesting thing to me in this press release; Microsoft is trying yet again at another ARM play (after various experiments like Windows RT.) If they can get consistent, performant x86 emulation on ARM that would really make ARM a viable alternative, but considering that one of Windows' biggest strengths is backwards compatibility for enterprise software, this is really going to need to be down pat.
I don't yet see why one would shell out that sort of cash for a Windows ARM device that isn't compatible with their software. This is a realm that is properly cornered by ChromeOS and Android at roughly half the cost of the Windows offering.
Honestly, this is a big deal. I’m really interested to see how Apple’s new homegrown ARM chips compare to Microsoft/Qualcomm’s chips when it comes to x86-64 performance.
Apple seemed pretty confident at WWDC this year when they showed off non-native apps running on their ARM dev kits and they have a lot more experience at platform migrations than Microsoft. Apple also has the advantage of being able to move ALL of their devices to ARM and that gives developers a bigger incentive to move (since eventually there won’t be any Intel Macs left). Microsoft will have to continually support ARM and x64.
The tomb raider presentation really impressed me. People were down on it because they had it on pretty low settings, but still--it's tomb raider, a relatively recent AAA game that's still used a benchmark.
The vast, vast, vast majority of applications people use are not even close to tomb raider, even on low settings, level demanding of both CPU and GPU. And it's on an iPad chip!
I think Rosetta 2 will be good enough bandaid for now. The most worrying thing, naturally, is how much the battery hit from these apps will be.
It seems like the battery hit won’t be too bad, since they are translating the apps before they run, rather than on the fly.
I think Apple is far, far less concerned as a business about backwards compatibility. Windows is staked on being the OS that doesn't break backwards compatibility. Windows makes many of the compromises that it does for the sole purpose of keeping legacy applications afloat. Largely, your enterprise application from the early 90s will likely run on Windows 10 (which is amazing to me.) Unless your app is under current support, it probably won't last on an Apple product more than an update cycle or two.
Apple switching processor architecture doesn't feel near as ambitious to me, Apple is fine with breaking your app if you don't keep it up to date.
You’re absolutely right. But how many people are still using an enterprise application from the early 90s? I get that the number isn’t zero but that just seems like a market that isn’t worth going after for most companies.
I get that it’s one of the reasons that massive companies choose Windows - because it can run their random software from 25 years ago that they haven’t updated, but if you aren’t already in that market, it seems unwise to invest in going after it.
Well certainly, if you are talking about a percentage of the population, that number isn't going to be that high. But if you are talking about corporations who have already spent millions of dollars on the creation, support, and training on that application, they are going to be willing to spend the big bucks to keep it running rather than build a new one.
Besides that, I am convinced that large organizations are incapable of using common-sense solutions.
That is the market that Windows exists for. With these devices being priced 2x & 3x times their Chromebook counterparts, the premium seems to be to have Windows which is synonymous with "my favorite application from a decade or two ago will run on this."
Been using Markdown for a decade and you’d think I’d remember the order by now...
These are both exciting laptop options on the market right now. I think that the Surface Go looks like a pretty good competitor to low end chromebooks, and I could see buying something like this for one of my kids or for my dad; easy to use, underpowered but not really requiring much power for what it does.
The Surface Pro X spec bump looks nice; as you've said there's not a lot else going on here.
One of the things that I do miss is the beautiful hinge that earlier models had - the newer ones, lacking that, look quite boring to me.