Hacker News Reader

Comment by marricks | Hacker News Reader

Highlights how much Apple and Microsoft are targeting the same market with very different products, which is good for consumers.

Unfortunately consumers can also be the casualties. Less popularized "specs" would be the manufacturing and software issues that have plagued windows devices like the surfacebook being extremely buggy at launch and the del XPS 13 completely lacking drivers when launched with win 10... Apple seems to have a but better of a job at hardware and software integration.

View on HN

Yeah, the Surface Pro 4 was pretty buggy at launch too, but it's since improved. I use it as my primary personal laptop. Good screen. Plenty fast.

That is very true, I've never had a Macbook that the OS didn't know how to drive, but the early flakiness of the detach/attach with the Surface Book was very maddening (and the crappy WiFi). Since that time and post "anniversary" update it has been rock solid for me but that was nearly 9 months after I originally purchased it.

But it was clear from both the Surface Book original announcement and Wednesdays thing that Microsoft considers the Macbook the "only" competition it wants to compare itself too.

I've had to RMA it twice, but otherwise my surface pro 3 has been the most reliable computer I've ever used. My only machine for work and play for the last 2 years, and right now it looks like a Surface will replace it.

> I've had to RMA it twice, but otherwise my surface pro 3 has been the most reliable computer I've ever used.

That's... a pretty major "otherwise".

Well, my only problems were ones where I got a quick replacement. Day-to-day it simply worked well.

How can you consider something reliable if you had to RMA it twice?

or it was just broken at the beginning and been working fine ever since?

Well, the RMAs were for major issues, and MS had a new device in my hand within 48 hours. But day to day, the Surface has simply done everything I want my computer to do, requiring little to no effort on my part to keep it performing excellently. I will say that Windows 8 was pretty bad, but I got into 10 early, and it's been smooth sailing since then. In contrast, recent Macs I've used and older Windows machines would hit glitches regularly, where some aspect would stop working, or some mysterious set of conditions would cause a crash. The Surface Pro 3 has been a machine I can carry everywhere and do practically anything with (coding, project management, media, light gaming). Fan is a little louder than I would like, and battery life wasn't superb to start, and has gotten worse.

xcode is pretty buggy

Reply on news.ycombinator.com