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Comment by jaxn | Hacker News Reader

I am feeling the same way, except that I know what my next laptop will be. I am ordering a Surface Book.

The weird screen thing looks terrible on this MBP. It will require me to look at my keyboard, not my screen.

Meanwhile, the Surface Book gives me a touch screen (which is important to me because I create web software that is used on touch screens), the pen is great, the dial looks interesting, so I will probably buy that too.

The Surface Book should work great on my desk with an additional monitor and keyboard / mouse / dial. Whereas the MBP completely loses the utility of that weird touch bar thing in that same setup.

Also, I use virtualization on my Mac to develop a .NET app. So, now I don't have function keys for the guest OS?

It was developers who led the way to Apple's dominance in the notebook space, and I suspect it will be developers who lead the migration in the opposite way.

The question for me is, will I end up ditching the iPhone too?

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> It was developers who led the way to Apple's dominance in the notebook space, and I suspect it will be developers who lead the migration in the opposite way.

I don't think any serious developer wants to use Windows, but … maybe this will actually be the impetus for more folks to start using — and more importantly, start demanding — Linux.

Honestly, it makes life easier. No more dealing with the bits where GNU & BSD are gratuitously different. No more straitjacket: a good Linux WM lets you customise your workspace exactly for the way you work. No more throwing money down a hole in licensing fees.

It's pretty awesome.

Visual studio.

emacs:-)

Honestly I'd rather write Common Lisp in emacs talking to PostgreSQL and fronted by NGINX than C++ in Visual Studio talking to SQLServer and fronted by IIS.

Linux in Windows 10 is pretty usable now - I am on insider preview. You still have to use VM for things like Docker, but thanks to having real native linux shell at your disposal, the experience is great. In my opinion much better than with macOS.

In my journey to buying and moving to the Surface Book, I just stumbled upon this announcement from March.

I have a MSDN subscription, so will I have access to this preview as well?

Is it good enough to do Ruby development on Windows directly? I had been thinking that would be in a VM, but maybe not. Maybe Atom (or even Visual Studio) will do the trick.

The other shift that makes the transition to Windows easier for a developer like me is that more and more of my development ends up in the cloud anyway. Push to git and the CI runs the tests. I could probably make the last jump to using containers and local testing would not only be easy, but also more accurate representation of the production system.

I am actually getting kind of excited to ditch my MBP.

Yeah, but it's still Windows, with all the pain it entails. Why throw off one boot on your neck for another?

> In my opinion much better than with macOS

Could you elaborate on that?

I'm very interested in this, is there anything that really feels like it gets in your way? I'm planning a setup that I'll need windows on and I'm considering not bothering with dual booting and just using this.

> "Meanwhile, the Surface Book gives me a touch screen (which is important to me because I create web software that is used on touch screens),"

Have you ever tried using touch screen on windows as a developer? I just don't understand how people can list it as a benefit, windows interface especially in any apps for developers is horrible for touch use, and don't forget that in order for you to touch the screen you have to raise your hand , how many times a day can you do that without your shoulders being sore?

The thing I applaud Apple for is standing (at least here) the ground and not going with a touch screen for laptops, I think having a touchscreen in a laptop is a horrendous and useless idea, touch screens should only be on the object where you already lay your arms on, like keyboard in this case with Apple, having a touch screen 5 feet away from your hands will make you not want to use it, and that's not even considering OS your which is not meant for that

He clearly stated that he develops web software that is used on touch screens. It seems like a pretty big benefit to be able to test how well your software works on a touch screen without having to a use a separate device.

Have you ever used a laptop with touchscreen? It's not that your touching it all the time.

You really miss it when you're switching between touch and non-touchscreens. You can't help but pointing at the screen only to realize: "Damn, this is not a touchscreen".

It's like that saying: Once you go touch, you never go back.

I've a SurfaceBook, I didn't think I'd use the touchscreen at all when in regular "laptop" mode. I end up using it _all the time_. It really is super intuitive to just reach up and touch the screen.

I have a laptop/tablet hybrid. My next device will not have a touchscreen, it's a waste of time on the windows ecosystem where most apps aren't touch friendly.

I've a feeling you're in the minority though. It's not that touch becomes the main method of interacting with Windows. It's that it becomes convenient for some things, particularly scrolling.

I have a laptop/tablet hybrid. Sadly it weighs too much for me to actually want to use it as a tablet. So I never use the touch screen, I have a wireless mouse that I use to scroll. Being touch is mostly annoying when people point at my screen and click things.

I still think the surface book is cool, but the weight factor is probably my biggest concern for the tablet mode.

While your dragging your finger across the touchpad to click on that thing you need to click on... everyone with a touchscreen is already on to the next task.

Dragging a finger is quicker and less tiring than lifting your whole arm and reaching the screen

Do you own a touch-screen laptop? I have one (a Razer Blade) and I actually love it. I thought it would be a gimmick that I never used, but now when I use my work computer (a Macbook) I find myself poking the screen and being irritated that it's not working. For UIs that are designed for it (like 50% of Windows 10) it's really nice to just poke at the screen.

My problem is, I need Unix in order to get shit done. I need Emacs and I need a package manager that can install the missing parts of Unix I now rely on, like pv and entr. I just don't think I can live without that stuff and I'm terrified of trying to make Windows work for me. I know Microsoft announced their "Linux" support or Ubuntu for Windows or whatever—how does it compare to macOS and Linux?

At the same time, I fear how finicky Linux is on modern laptops. I especially hate touchpad-related sensitivity issues. I tried running Linux on my MBP and wasted days trying to get the touchpad sensitivity settings to something remotely close to the MBP and couldn't figure it out. I imagine the situation is probably worse on platforms like the Surface because I expect Linux driver authors are doing more work on inexpensive commodity laptops. Is that true or do you think Surface Book will have decent Linux support?

I don't like feeling like a prisoner of a platform that's drifting into stupidity. If I had a lot of spare income I could splurge on a couple of possibilities and see what works but I just don't have that much spare capital.

It sounds like the Linux on Win 10 stuff is just a native Windows version of bash and the GNU toolkit. Plus it has apt, so you can apt-get packages.

Now, how many packages are available, I don't know. But I am hoping I can just open up a terminal window and cd / grep / cat / vi / git / etc

So, you bring up a really good point:

Whereas the MBP completely loses the utility of that weird touch bar thing in that same setup.

The majority of professionals seem to use the MPB with an external display and keyboard, so the new MBP keyboard will not be touched at all.

Maybe they will update the bluetooth keyboard with a display?

> The question for me is, will I end up ditching the iPhone too?

You must've read the discussions earlier but I really think it's worth giving the Google Pixels a shot.

My thoughts exactly. My next laptop will be a Surface Book as well.

Limited RAM, no Fn keys, no ports used in enterprises all over the world... I'm not carrying the lightest laptop money can buy if it has to be accompanied by the largest bag of adaptors.

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