Edit: I'm not hating on Windows. I just don't prefer it.

Worth watching.

I love my command line and linux like commands and tools. - Homebrew - Bash scripts - Docker (Windows 10 currently not supported) - Vagrant

I just feel the tooling for MS isn't in the direction I am. I still have a Windows 7 desktop and it's just not the same.

When the iPad Pro was announced, many joked about the fact that it was just like a surface. With the release of this device from Microsoft, the look even more similar then before from the outside.

Still, the huge difference in the approach is the software. Microsoft is bending a computer operating system, with a full hardware keyboard and an interface made mainly to be used with a mouse, to adapt to touch and the use of a tablet. Apple instead is slowly expanding the functionality of a pure touch operating system that reject the idea of a mouse and a cursor entirely, to accommodate more computer uses, adding a keyboard and a pencil.

That aside, the product looks very interesting. I was a Windows user for a long time and switched to Mac in the last few years. This makes me want to give the newbie a try.

I'm glad to see them take ownership over the hardware. That has always been the black mark. I build my own PCs and always bought ThinkPad to keep the good experience. Now, Microsoft can help others who don't or can't do that.

Let's hope the Surface Book will be succesful and Apple finally gets serious competition in the premium laptop market.

The Surface Book blows me away. It looks like it covers all use cases except for a phone.

Apple has their advantages, primarily most people love Apple devices. They just need to improve their cloud services.

Google's huge advantage is their AI based systems. Google Now has no real competition right now.

I am almost 65, and even though I enjoy running a machine learning/AI consultancy, I am transitioning to a more complete retirement. I am looking for a "winner" in the digital life space, adopt their products, and make my leisure years simpler. But, Microsoft, Apple, and Google blow me away with their products and choosing will be difficult.

Since the live event looks done now, we've picked (what I think is?) the most significant product URL to change to from http://www.microsoft.com/october2015event/en-us/live-event. If anyone suggests a better URL we can change it again.

MSFT:

- nav 1

- nav 2

- header with what sounds like a call to action, but no button to buy?

- hero image with text overlaid that has terrible contrast nobody will read

- inter-page menus with some insane zooming function that scared my browser

- another hero image

- 3 columns - maybe buttons? no not clickable.

- another hero image

- 3 more columns - maybe buttons? no not clickable.

- another hero image

- 3 more columns - maybe buttons? no not clickable.

- 2 columns marketing other products? maybe buttons? yes - those little ">" things mean they're clickable i guess.

- 3 more columns - maybe buttons? ok now they're buttons. but there's no ">"?

- another hero image with a price action, no button to click to follow the action! WTF!

VS vs the iPad Pro http://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/ which is single column and nav consistent throughout.

As the old quote goes "If I'd had more time I would have written a shorter letter."

Feels rushed.

If it were possible to dual boot to Linux, I'd be sold. I have my doubts that it is, however. I guess one could use a VM...I've always found that clumsy in the past, particularly in terms of getting accelerated graphics drivers working, but maybe times have changed.

I haven't had that feeling since then. Sure, the MacBook Air came out and it was amazingly thin. Now there's Force Touch, and that's quite nice as well. But this whole time I've just been waiting for somebody, Apple or not, to blow me away the same way I was blown away ~8 years ago, to do something that makes you wonder how everyone else got it so wrong.

Is this that moment? I don't know, but it might be.

Would love to get a Surface Book as soon as possible.

[1] https://youtu.be/XVfOe5mFbAE?t=90

Yes. And I think they said that with DirectX 12 it'll split the load between GPUs when both are connected.

Is that news? I think I've seen similar setup with ExpressCard-based PCIe adapters for desktop graphics cards for a few years now. Thunderbolt also has had hotplug PCIe connections from the beginning. (Less elegant, of course, but the same engineering challenge.)

And that the TB3.1 spec is "bullshit free" (unlike DisplayLink).

The Surface 3 and Surface Pro 3 weren't misses. They were extremely well received and fairly successful products.

This was after the launch of the iPad Pro which is xbox-huge. I was imagining a product which was a MacBook "Base" which you could connect an iPad to as the 'screen' - except you'd have two different OSes that you'd have to cover. It's not exactly a product that fits anywhere in Apple's lineup.

This Microsoft thing is exactly what I was envisioning. You have a solid base which can include a GPU and more battery life and a detachable screen that works as a tablet. Brilliant!

Most laptop-designed backpacks have a padded compartment designed to hold just the laptop; if there aren't other things in that compartment, then that shouldn't be an issue. (If there are, and they aren't the kind of small, loose things that could slip between the screen and keyboard, same thing.)

> That is why the old Thinkpads used to have a "click" mechanism.

I always thought the click-locking mechanism on most older laptops (not just old Thinkpads) was there to reduce the wear on the hinge.

PowerShell = bash, Chocolatey = homebrew, Windows Server Containers = docker, Hyper-V+powershell = vagrant, DSC = ansible etc etc.

I don't use Windows 10 for reference though. Still on 8.1 until they fix a few things and release a version-matched server platform.

- The console host application on Windows 10 finally doesn't suck. Resizeable, copy-paste supported, word wrap text selection, etc.

- It seems like they're trying to make their dev tools use a lot less "black box magic", the kind that that's wonderful when it works right and impossible to debug when it goes wrong. At an ASP.NET workshop recently, Scott Hanselman went to great pains to emphasize that everything he was doing in the VS GUI could also be done from the command line.

- Nuget keeps improving. It's still not a replacement for apt or even Homebrew, but they're listening to feedback and making the changes people request. I feel like in another year or so it could be a real contender.

Edit: Formatting

>> I love my command line and linux like commands and tools. - Homebrew - Bash scripts - Docker (Windows 10 currently not supported) - Vagrant

I switched from OSX to Windows last year. I thought I'd miss stuff, but you don't.

There are package managers like chocolatey to replace homebrew.

I use Cmder as my terminal and it works a lot like Mac's terminal. It was probably the key app that made my transition easy.

I use Vagrant on Windows and it works fine.

Can't say much about bash scripts or Docker though, since I rarely run those locally.

Under VirtualBox my development environment can match my production environment almost completely. There's no awkward "but here's how you do it in Windows/OSX" that mostly works but often doesn't in some subtle way. I haven't tried Windows 10 yet but this setup has worked very well under Windows 7 and 8.1 so I expect it will be fine under 10 since it's just an evolution. I've used this setup in OSX and Windows and it goes more smoothly in Windows.

One of the keys to it is that you use SMB to mount your VM disk as a local drive to the host, so you get the benefit of any Windows editor.

EDIT: someone below said the CDN might be on the fritz, so that likely has something to do with this. it may be fixed by the time some people see these comments.

"Intel HG Graphics"

http://i.imgur.com/kLt8Ydz.png

If you're writing for Windows Runtime, you are as fully touch-enabled as you are with an iPad, and the apps run in a similar way.

The complaints about Windows 8 were that the two environments were disparate. Windows 10 does a reasonable job of integrating Runtime apps for desktop users (eg scaleable windows and mouse control options). It could do with further improvements, but it's still being developed.

If you're, say, a photographer, you can use full-strength Photoshop, Lightroom etc on Windows 10 then switch to an iPad-style app for viewing or showing stuff to other people. It's actually very convenient.