Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

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> I did take a close look at the Surface Pro. Sorry, the build quality is nowhere near a MacBook Pro.

Shrug, not my experience.

> Secondly, I found the touch screen very gimmicky. I tried using it for a week and found that my hand just hurt lifting it up repeatedly and also hated switching context from the keyboard to the screen.

Don't force the touchscreen. Just use it when it makes sense. I've found it's a very natural way to press buttons (because you can just... press the button), particularly when I'm using the keyboard (e.g. filling in a multi-page form, or writing generally) - must nicer than pushing a pointer around to the right place. And it's nice when dragging and dropping, and there are a few games that play nicely that way. And being able to draw/write on it is very nice occasionally. But sure, most of the time I don't use the touchscreen. But even if you ignore the touch aspect, it's a beautiful screen. I've also fallen in love with 3:2 - it seems to strike the right balance between vertical space for development and rectangular enough for watching movies on. At least for me.

> Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile.

That seems like something that shouldn't be happening, assuming your hands were clean? It doesn't happen on mine.

> Don't force the touchscreen. Just use it when it makes sense.

This is like saying "Don't force the new touch bar on macbook pro. Just use it when it makes sense.". A lot of people are pissed about how useless the touch bar is. You can make the same argument about this but the thing is, they could have done better. There's nothing wrong with people criticizing something that's bad. Sure you can just "NOT use it". But these are features designed to be used, and when it doesn't make sense in many cases, it probably means it's badly thought out.

>That seems like something that shouldn't be happening, assuming your hands were clean? It doesn't happen on mine.

Good for you for having the most sanitary hand in the world. For the rest of actual human beings, everyone knows that touching any glass surface leaves smudge, not just computers. I'm fine with logical arguments but please don't deny what everyone knows as fact, because that doesn't fly, and brings credibility of the rest of your arguments down to zero.

The difference being that the touchscreen doesn't take away anything, while the touchbar replaces function keys. You could circumvent this by getting the smaller pro, though.

I own an SP3 and the touchscreen is a blessing. Ironically, even more so because the touchpad on the sp3 is crap, but either way, I seem to know my fingers more than mouse pointers on the screen and prefer to touch the screen as often as possible.

It's not for everyone, but for me, I can dual boot Linux on it, write code, still keep MagSafe charging, have a USB port, AND disconnect the keyboard at the end of the way to watch a movie on a kickstand tablet, AND throw it in my bag and forget it's there, for much less money than a macbook. I love the thing to death.

Also, the screen can be cleaned with a cloth or the bottom of your shirt, like most of us do with our phones. That might be annoying but doesn't sound like a deal breaker.

I find the trackpad to be quite good compared to most other Windows PCs, but it is on the small side. I haven't tried the SP4 keyboard yet where it is slightly larger.

The touch capability is interesting in that I've found that I've begun using it along with the pen more and more over time. The pen has really grown on me as I've discovered more ways to put it to use. For the first year that I owned my SP3 I rarely used the pen, but now I use it almost every day. Being able to switch from full on tablet and pen back to keyboard and mouse mode is pretty killer and I plan to continue using this form factor for the foreseeable future.

> The difference being that the touchscreen doesn't take away anything,

it takes away "thinness". I wanted a thinner screen and when the computer MUST have a touchscreen, then I lose the thinnness.

> This is like saying "Don't force the new touch bar on macbook pro. Just use it when it makes sense.". A lot of people are pissed about how useless the touch bar is. You can make the same argument about this but the thing is, they could have done better. There's nothing wrong with people criticizing something that's bad.

I think people are more annoyed about losing the physical function keys. Honestly the touchscreen is niche functionality unless you're an artist or something, and if it were a choice between a brighter/sharper/clearer non-touch screen and a touchscreen I would absolutely go for the former. But like I said, the surface book screen is really good even if you ignore the touch aspect - at which point the touch really does just become an enhancement, and the little enhancements add up.

> For the rest of actual human beings, everyone knows that touching any glass surface leaves smudge, not just computers.

Indeed, which is why I was very surprised when it didn't happen (it did on previous laptops I've used). But it doesn't seem to. I figured the anti-grease coatings or whatever they use must've got a lot better. (Modern phones are the same - whatever it is that makes the screens smudge they seem to have found some way to deal with it. So it's not like this is magical technology).

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