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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

It looks quite nice, but personally I still think Surface still has the upper hand for (some) developers by offering a full blown OS where I am able to use Visual Studio and friends.

The tools available for coding on the go on Android like AIDE aren't as compelling to me.

Maybe that is something for an upcoming Android version.

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Not that I have anything against Surface, but, despite all the effort, it still isn't a touch-first device. And Windows isn't a touch-first OS. IPad will vastly outsell it, and despite Google doing a crap job marketing Android to businesses, so will Android tablets. That's because Windows tablets have never been touch-first, and a great finger-touch UX is what characterizes mobile devices.

In Windows 10 tablet mode the Surface is a great tablet. Once I got the Surface pro 4 its completely displaced ipad usage for me.

It's really cause no one wrote any Windows apps, and a lot of the ones that were written have been removed because the respective companies don't want to maintain them. The Kindle reader for my Windows Mobile phone was sooooo buggy.

If it had the apps to back it, Windows would have been okay as a touch OS. But that whole thing totally failed.

Microsoft should have put the Courrier table into production. It was ready to go. That one move totally killed any chance at Microsoft making it into the tablet realm (and really set them back 2 ~ 3 years as a consumer tech company)

> Microsoft should have put the Courrier table into production.

Yes, yes, yes. Like iOS and Android it would have been born a touch device. Killing Courier makes buying Nokia's handset business Ballmer's second worst decision.

What you describe is an "issue" I have with the Surface Pro 3: I always want to just use the physical keyboard. I eventually put Linux on it and I now use it as a normal laptop, using the touch input only occasionally (admittedly, support for touch within GNOME is worse than even Metro's efforts).

These hybrid touch devices that have "optional" keyboards can't seem to decide what they want to be, and I don't think this is actually a software problem in the case of Windows devices which seem capable enough in either "mode." Rather, I think if people are actually given the option of using a keyboard and a touchpad to do any non-trivial task, I expect most of them will do so. At which point... how is this tablet with a keyboard attached to it worth owning when one can get a small laptop?

Even at the height of my "Give Metro a Chance" phase with the SP3, relying exclusively on touch was at best a kind of awkward stopgap until I could position myself to use the physical keyboard. Sticking with touch only makes nothing easier, except in situations where your interactions with the device are limited by your physical surroundings.

Chromebooks, and thus presumably the Pixel C, ship a fully functional ssh client. It is therefore easy to connect to a linux box and do some development from the console.

I own a raspberry Pi to which I connect from my chromebook. I think it's a great combo. I'd totally buy a Pixel C but that would be unreasonable of me considering I bought my chromebook only few months ago.

> Chromebooks, and thus presumably the Pixel C, ship a fully functional ssh client.

The Pixel C is an Android tablet, not a Chromebook (unlike the Chromebook Pixel which is, as the name suggests, a Chromebook.)

Oh, my bad then.

Doing work over SSH isn't something I enjoy doing as developer.

I side with Xerox PARC in how a software development environment should look like.

I know many like to work like on a PDP-11, but for me that is only for time travel or server administration purposes.

I had my share of teletypes since the 80's, plus remote work on the go while traveling across Europe isn't something that I would recommend.

I got a Surface 4 Pro. The problem I have with it is it's not a very good laptop in your laptop. Like putting on your lap and using it is very awkward for me. The kickstand barely bits on my legs. Everything else I liked but since I can't easily use the laptop on my lap...I returned it.

I'm also going to have to say that I'd rather own a Surface than this. Android is only useful for phones for me, there is nothing really compelling about Android on a tablet for me.

Disclosure: I own an Android tablet, I never use it.

"full blown OS" seems like a very vague label.

Not really? I'm not sure what would be ambiguous about it.

For one thing, Android is based on the Linux kernel. The very same kernel that is driving the majority of servers on the net right now.

An OS is more than the kernel.

Android/Linux is a complete different animal than GNU/Linux.

Can you really say that when you can install a terminal, get shell access, and drop in a Debian based chroot?

Yes, because it isn't any longer Android.

I guess:

- it isn't running the standard kernel, which is not 100% like a vanilla Linux

- it is making use of non official NDK libraries

- doesn't make use of Android user space, which given the NDK limitations is like 90% Java

It is just like putting Wine and calling it a Windows distribution.

My personal definition of full blown OS is something that considers me enough of an adult that it allows a file explorer / remote shell based file sync rather than use of a specific sync app or MTP.

Sad thing being that Android had that, and then it was taken away (my personal suspicion there is that it was done as part of an agreement with big media about content in the Play store).

This is a Tablet so it is vs Tablets not Surfaces (Which I personally consider a Surface a convertible) A tablet can't just mean has no keyboard to me.

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