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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

I have a Surface Pro 7, their oversized tablet, after ditching my ipad pro out of frustration. I wanted something that had a nice pen but still had a real filesystem and I could easily load comics and movies on, use ssh, and was full featured enough that I wasn't required to lug a laptop with me.

And the surface pro is.. fine. Hardware wise it's great even, but my issue is overwhelmingly that Microsoft's default software makes a sad tablet experience. Their screen keyboards are garbage, the store is lackluster and the tablet mode does not play nicely with most apps leading to weird issues like not being able to leave the kindle app once it's fullscreened.

If Microsoft invested a bit more in improving the tablet experience, they could really eat some of Apple's marketshare.

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I made a similar decision when the increasing bloat of the web made my 3rd gen iPad inadequate. I considered the new iPad Pro, but decided on a Surface Pro 4 instead. Except for me it wasn't a real filesystem I wanted. It was a virtual memory system that didn't make programs discard data when multitasking.

On the iPad, opening a couple more browser tabs and then coming back to the original tab might cause the page on the original tab to reload. This could be very frustrating on sites like HN or Reddit. I might start typing a comment, and in the middle of that need to look up some things to fact check myself or get some references. Do that, go back to the comment--and the damn page reloads, wiping out what I'd typed so far.

Anticipating this, I could "select all" on my comment and copy it, then go do the research, and then come back. If the page reloads then I could just paste the comment back. If I needed to copy and paste something from the other page it was usually safe to do at that point. Just switching between two already loaded pages usually would not trigger a reload.

I never ran into anything like that on SP4. I could pause writing an HN comment and research in other tabs as much as I wanted, and never had the partial comment gone when I switched back.

I don't know if this is because Windows will use a pagefile and/or swapfile when there is not enough physical RAM for everything, or because the SP4 had 16 times as much RAM as my 3rd gen iPad so I simply never got it low enough on RAM, but for whatever the reason browsing worked a lot better the SP4.

Since then I also got a 6th gen iPad (not Pro). It's much better than my old 3rd gen was about this, but still does occasionally force a refresh when witching among tabs.

Current mobile OS's (iOS and Android) do run without a pagefile, in order to cope with the crappiness of inbuilt eMMC storage which would quickly wear out as the pagefile got rewritten. Theoretically, well-behaved applications are supposed to checkpoint their own internal state when signaled by the OS to do so, since this ought to be more space-efficient than the use of a pagefile; in practice, almost no applications actually do this properly.

For what it's worth, Linux is a lot more parsimonious in its use of swap space than Windows, given very similar hardware and use cases.

Of course, modern iPhones and iPads actually come with fully fledged NVMe SSDs. So it's not really clear why that decision hasn't been revisited - or why Apple hasn't at least introduced some kind of process hibernation which fully restores background processes when switching back.

This would seem to be necessary for any serious multitasking workflow on an iPad Pro.

It might be worth revisiting the Windows 8 interface. It was maligned at the time but it’sa very fluent, intuitive interface now that people are used to iPads. The multitasking is exactly the same as iPad now, only difference being you pull down to close apps instead of up.

I pulled out my original Surface RT yesterday and was surprised to find it has aged incredibly well - perhaps better in 2020 than it was in 2012, because it was well ahead of its time.

I heard someone complaining the other day that every iOS application has the Share button in a different place and sometimes a different icon altogether, and poured another one out for the poor, misunderstood Charms bar.

Windows 8 had so many great ideas and it is an open question if Microsoft had stuck to their guns a little longer and waited for more people to get used to where their cheese moved if Windows 8 might be even more fondly remembered for moving touch UIs forward.

It's not like I did any market research, but I recall people liking the Windows 8 interface on phones and tablets. My personal impression from playing with Windows phones in stores was very good. Opinions were (predictably, IMO) less positive for the same interface on desktops and laptops.

I definitely fell in the latter camp. Working helpdesk there were a couple "Help my Windows 8 PC is in this weird setting and I can't get to my programs" tickets. I don't recall it being as easy as it should have been to get out either.

The Surface RT was a crappy, closed device. You can put Linux on just about any Baytrail- or Cherrytrail-based device now (used to be a huge pain), and with a decent amount of RAM and GNOME3 on Wayland it's actually a very intuitive and productive tablet experience. Even the windowing UI is just as intuitive as Windows 8 if not more so: you click on an "Activities" overview as opposed to a start button, but the rest is pretty much the same.

I don’t really see how any of that is relevant.

Surface RT was running underpowered Tegra with 2GB ram and still does 60fps on the entire desktop/Start experience.

Have you used the Windows 8 multitasking interface recently?

Tegra has a good focus on graphics, so it's no surprise that it could do 60fps animations on the Windows 8 start screen. Nice eyecandy, I suppose. And 2GB RAM will still run pretty much anything a Surface RT user might care about, except the modern web of course.

This. The Surface Pro is a really decent machine and I don't have any complaints on how it functions as a laptop and 'workstation' (or whatever you call laptop+2 monitors+mouse+keyboard), but as far as tablet goes: the hardware is all there but the software is not quite there yet. The only tablet-y thing I do with it is tell it to never switch to tablet mode and then use the pen to draw and take notes. It does that really well btw (was one of the reasons I got it in the first place), but for the rest I don't see me using it as I'd use a 'standard' tablet. Not sure if it's me, I don't use tablest often, but when I try to do so on this thing I end up opening the desktop software anyway to get things done because the alternatives are non-existing or not good. And navigating typical desktop software with just touch isn't really cutting it.

For all the deserved hate Windows 8 got, the tablet experience was fantastic - the experience of running multiple apps side-by-side in particular was better than what the iPad has to this day.

It's mindboggling to me that Microsoft must have the code for that sitting around in a repo history somewhere and yet tablet mode on Windows 10 is still such a mess even after years.

I pulled out my Surface RT yesterday and it is almost exactly what iPad multitasking is.

It really is mind boggling that Microsoft fumbled that so bad - great tech but some really user-hostile business decisions cost them dearly.

Yes, tablet mode on Win8 was good!

The problem was ramming it down the throat of all the desktop users too. I still don't understand how such a big company can make such obviously bad decisions.

But it wasn't a terrible desktop experience: in 8.1 you had a strongly tiling window manager and a lot of apps designed for phone widths or smaller to tile. The tiling was horizontal only, but you could do a lot on a two widescreen monitor setup.

It moved a lot of cheese, sure, but it wasn't offering as much an "inferior" desktop usage as people seemed to think it did because they never bothered to learn what it did offer new/different/better.

>I still don't understand how such a big company can make such obviously bad decisions.

Simple, resume ego driven development from someone who just want to climb ranks.

>Their screen keyboards are garbage,

Have you tried the WordFlow (swype or whatever it's called on other platforms) method on the keyboard ? Seems to work as well as Windows Phone did, which is pretty damn good.

It's fine as a portable Windows PC to me. Great for travel, does pretty much everything I need, including Visual Studio. iPads are so much more consumption oriented that I can't see myself every needing one in addition to an iPhone.

>If Microsoft invested a bit more in improving the tablet experience, they could really eat some of Apple's marketshare.

They did with WinRT (not the tablet the API, now called UWP) and it failed because they decided to throw away backward compatibility of APIs.

Windows 8 and the Metro design language was my favorite UX by far of the last two decades.

This time, I guess they've decided to throw away the user experience in favor of backward compatibility :-)

I have an original surface pro I inherited, it works fine except for the garbage keyboard/cover. Well, it did work fine until some recent firmware update made it so the wifi crashes any router it connects to... It's really a beautiful bug.

This only seems to effect windows, I've been using it with OpenSuse with no such issue.

> swype

Swiping seems to be efficient mostly in english. I had a try on android and it was just exhausting while being unforgiving for CJK type input.

Just to say, having a decent keyboard is still important to a lot of people. And Apple has effectively made efforts in this regard to have a good keyboard experience on the iPad.

I have very little experience with iPads, but I absolutely hate the iPhone keyboard compared to Windows Phone/Mobile. Windows 10 is unfortunately not in the same league as its mobile predecessors.

Haven't used the Windows 10 on-screen keyboard much to be fair. I usually use the Surface keyboard (which has improved a lot circa 2017), but for prolonged work I'll attach a USB keyboard (mostly because I need an ergonomic keyboard to type).

Microsoft scaled back a lot of their tablet functionality because consumers didn't like it, and of course Apple started to copy Microsoft's tablet functionality shortly thereafter. I think maybe, Windows X will be more touch based instead of them trying to meld them into one OS. Only the core will be the same, but the UIs will be split on the OS level. I think...but who knows, Microsoft often changes directions. All I know is that the Surface hardware is on par, and in many cases better than Apple.

> had a real file system

Apple’s Files app solves mostly solves that for me.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/files/id1232058109

> use ssh

The Blink app solves that nicely for me.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blink-shell-mosh-ssh-client/id...

There are also several VNC viewer apps if I need to connect to my Linux workstation for more cpu or graphics intensive work.

The problem with iOS for these solutions is that iOS is a designed experience and you're always swimming upstream when you deviate from the path.

The Microsoft stuff tries to live in both worlds, but the ecosystem around the "modern" side is weak.

Everyone is struggling with this stuff, as witnessed by the schitzoid steps to evolve MacOS and Windows.

“Apple’s Files app solves mostly solves that for me.“

It’s better but it’s still riddled with arbitrary restrictions. For example when I want to watch a MKV video in iCloud I have to copy the file from iCloud to the folder of the player, then delete. Can’t open iCloud files directly with the player and can’t move either.

On the bright side I am confident by 2025 in iOS we will have the same functionality we had already thirty years ago... with the exception that every piece of software will be charged with the 30% Apple tax.

Using infuse (a video player app) I can open files from icloud directly.

Wow, that's a $60 app (or $10 per year). I wonder how much of the code for that is actually open source.

It's a quality app and there's also a free version that might be enough for OP if his codecs are supported.

The free version I think will suit most people. It's what I use.

How?

Settings->Add files->via documents

That open the icloud browser (wierd name)

It works but it’s quite clunky. Either you have to copy over when you play directly the video it’s not in the library. Definitely not very intuitive or simple.

I pretty consistently hear that the iPad makes a great tablet and a shitty laptop and vice-versa for the Surface. I’m not sure it’s possible to have the best touch experience and the best keyboard and mouse experience in a single OS. Maybe Apple will let the iPad dual boot iPadOS and macOS someday soon assuming the MacBooks transition to ARM.

People really want a GUIs that are much more dynamic and context-aware. The size of the buttons should change if I attach a mouse or a touchpad. The on-screen-keyboard should completely disable itself if I attach a keyboard. (Did Windows figure this out yet?) If I walk into a dark room, apps (and ideally, websites) should change to dark mode. If I walk into an area with direct sunlight, the contrast should be boosted. The device should behave differently if it's laying flat on a desk, or on a kickstand, or if I'm holding it in my hands.

Cell phones are better. They've figured out obvious things like screen rotation, adaptive brightness, bluetooth audio handoffs, and Android has made some headway with things like darkmode and automatically changing settings when you get into a car, but tablets have lagged behind, and I'm sure there are dozens more tiny things that automatically changed based on the device's context.

> The on-screen-keyboard should completely disable itself if I attach a keyboard. (Did Windows figure this out yet?)

This always works fine for me on my SP6.

That's good to know - I had a touchscreen windows laptop a while back and it didn't get this right.

> Maybe Apple will let the iPad dual boot iPadOS and macOS someday soon assuming the MacBooks transition to ARM.

That would be excellent. iPad needs a local web server capability for development, e.g. to run Jekyll/Ruby or Hugo/golang. Rumor is that upcoming Apple Arm CPU will support hardware virtualization, which could theoretically enable Linux to run in a sandboxed VM.

As for UX, the new iPad Magic Keyboard is a game changer that seamlessly blends tablet and laptop. Now we need to address the iOS gaps (e.g. Xcode, non-Safari browser and mail client) and/or allow dual-boot as you suggested.

On Pythonista you can run Flask or Django, it's nifty. The apps are coming, there's one for nodejs and react. Would not be surprised to see ruby/go soon.

This is interesting as over in the WinUI thread people are complaining how the tablet features have ruined Windows on the Desktop.

Probably true too though.

One of the problems with MS' approach is trying to get a "one UI fits all" approach which just doesn't work, the usecases between tablet and desktop are too different.

Even Apple hasn't made this mistake and they're all about simplicity and consistency.

Yes, it’s all the more galling that they ruined the desktop experience without providing a good tablet experience. Yes, things are bigger and more tappable, but there’s more to a good tablet UX than that. They have only done the relatively easy part. The hard part requires redesigning behavior and workflow, which will take far more time and effort than just adding some whitespace and increasing widget size.

Windows 8 was all about redesigning behavior and workflow, those were the aspects that were largely walked back in successive updates.

I was a big fan of Win8 (was fine with it on desktop as well) but tablet mode on Win10 was a major downgrade and I only ever use Surface in desktop mode, even on the rare occasions I tuck back or detach the keyboard. I still use touch a lot though, sometimes simultaneously with mouse or trackpad.

Totally agree... got my surface pro for the same reason (wanted a combo laptop/tablet, and was excited for a tablet with a real OS)

The tablet mode sucks for anything but basic reading. The touch interface is crappy, the on screen keyboard sucks.

It is a really good laptop... as long as I use it on a desk or table. The non-rigid keyboard makes using it without a desk impossible.

It is a nice, light, laptop for travel, though... but I still need to bring a tablet.

The non-rigid keyboard makes using it without a desk impossible

Can you elaborate? Which version? I've been using the Surface Pro 6 and I don't notice a difference with using it on a desk or on my lap.

I think I have the 6 as well... the keyboard connection to the tablet is not rigid, meaning you need something to support the tablet itself (like the kickstand)... but using the kickstand on your lap is not very convenient, because it does not hold the keyboard at a fixed angle to the computer... and you have to move it up your legs far enough to have the kickstand extend back and still have room on your legs. You can't have the screen be at your knees.

Also, you are limited in the angle you can have the screen. With a normal laptop, you can open the hinge very wide (like 150 degrees or so) so that you are looking directly at the screen when looking down at your lap. With the non-rigid keyboard, you have to have it fairly close to perpendicular (close to 90 degrees) which means you are looking at a bad angle to the screen when it is on your lap.

In some of the fullscreen apps like the Kindle app, the Close icon is hidden behind a swipe gesture. Swiping up/down at the very top of the screen makes the top toolbar appear, usually either as a full title bar or a small gesture bar that can be activated with a swipe.

> had a real filesystem and I could easily load comics and movies on

Apps might not expose the iPadOS filesystem well (since they've gradually accreted a UX paradigm over the last 10 filesystem-less years), but it actually does work perfectly well to open files from your iPadOS home directory [the thing the Files app exposes] in any app that can handle that file type. You can open video files from Files into VLC; you can open CBRs/CBZs into https://chunkyreader.com/ ; etc.

For getting the files in/out of the iPad, Files can access external disks just fine (I've been using a Samsung USB-C T5 SSD); and Safari (don't know about other browsers) now allows you to save arbitrary files, putting your downloads in a regular Downloads folder within the Files-visible homedir. I'm sure there are other methods as well (e.g. copying files to the iPad's local storage from a storage provider, e.g. iCloud Drive, or Dropbox, or an SFTP/S3 client's host profile; or using a BitTorrent client to download whatever.)

Of course, apps can't access your homedir arbitrarily if they don't have the relevant capability, but that's just good sandboxing—if an app only works with particular files, it should only be receiving capabilities on individual files (through e.g. the Share/Open With action), not capabilities on your filesystem as a whole. The only reason desktop OSes aren't already mostly this way is the inertia of legacy apps.

(There's also nothing stopping a local POSIX terminal emulator app from creating a shared container that other apps like IDEs can write into, if you're wondering. Nobody's bothered yet, but that's because everyone wants to own your eyeballs with fully-integrated single-app solutions, not because it's not technically possible. You could totally build the equivalent of Termux for iPadOS. The only limitation would be that the package ecosystem would have to use the App Store as its package manager, with packages containing executables being distributed as Apple-signed extension "apps." Sort of like how iMessage's sticker-pack "apps" work, or how Photos.app's filter-pack "apps" work; or how Safari's content-blocker "apps" work. Or, come to think of it, exactly like how XCode.app attaches its POSIX tooling into the [read-only] macOS rootfs.)

> BitTorrent client to download whatever

AFAIK Apple doesn't allow BitTorrent clients to run on iOS devices

I share the same feeling, even though didn't own an iPad before (I knew I needed something with less limitations). The new tablet mode they did is better (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2019/08/29/annou...), however the biggest deal breaker for me _is_ the on-screen keyboard. Try using Slack in tablet mode, it's impossible: every time you go to a channel, the on screen keyboard pops-up, the animation to open/close takes 2-3 seconds each time: it's frustrating to the point I just plug the keyboard back on and use the surface in laptop mode.

>Their screen keyboards are garbage

This coming from the company who bought SwiftKey is indeed baffling.

First, you should not be using the store. It is an also-run of an anti-feature. Just ignore it for the bloatware it is.

Second, ignore tablet mode. It's one of those things developed by underfunded teams. Just use it as what it is, a portable PC. If you configure windows to have >2px thick borders you will not miss 'tablet mode' or whatever it is. Just enable all settings on the quick side bar thingy to toggle auto-rotate and you are set.

And finally, i agree with you on the keyboard. It's sad :( pen writing recognition was supposed to be the saving grace, but it only works minimally OK for japanese and chinese. No hope for english and let alone for other latin languages. and even using with chinese text, the input UI completely kills your ability to use things you would have on a keyboard like shift, shortcuts, arrows, etc.

Seems to resonate with me. A tablet by default is a consumption device.

While a surface is a production device. Since you can actually do something with it except sending emails.

Are you considering switching back to the iPad Pro? Or is fine good enough for your use?

If the iPad let me stick in a usb drive and copy over comics, and load open source software from outside the Apple store - yes. Since that will never happen in our lifetime, probably not.

For what it's worth, the iPad feels great in terms of size and construction, it has a fantastic screen and the overall UX/UI is pleasant. Unfortunately, it's not usable as a short term laptop replacement and basic computer tasks are just not possible, especially not offline.

FWIW since iOS 13 usb drives work fine on iPad. I use mine for work, but most of what I do can be covered with a browser and video editor.

For what it's worth, you might be able to copy over comics using a USB drive now. You can definitely copy comics over a network share as an alternative, as the Files app supports mounting samba shares.

EDIT: of course that doesn't help with the loading of open source software on the device.

You can even use your USB floppy drive in iOS's Files app now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH8EJutmmT4

You can also compile your own open source software from outside the Apple App Store, there are some limitations to long-term use that might require a $99/year developer account, but it’s still possible. And the $99/year is not per user but per company, so if you know somebody with a dev account, you can split it with them by starting a company instead.

Not to say that the iPad Pro is a Windows tablet replacement, to me they’re still very much distinct products right now. iPad OS isn’t (yet?) a macOS replacement for developers and power users.

I haven't tried using USB drives with the iPad, but they have been building out the Files app and there are more ways to work with external storage than before.

Loading software from outside the App Store is not going to happen, but they are, slowly but surely, expanding to support other tasks.

You can do both. For OSS software though, it would need to be iPadOS apps built with Xcode or some cross-platform framework like Xamarin, but some time ago, Apple enabled anyone to install apps without a developer account.

> load open source software from outside the Apple store - yes. Since that will never happen in our lifetime, probably not.

If that was non-negotiable why did you even consider an iPad Pro in the first place?

I briefly owned a Surface Book before returning it and I agree.

The tablet experience on Windows was horrendous.

Eg: something as trivial as adjusting the display brightness required me to go into Windows settings.

> something as trivial as adjusting the display brightness required me to go into Windows settings.

I've never had a Surface Book but I had the Surface Pro 3 for awhile and I'm pretty sure it predated the book.

On the Surface Pro you just slide from off screen to bring up quick settings and then tap the brightness icon. Granted it only had preset values rather than a slider...

It's had a brightness slider for a long time now. And if you have a Surface, Fn+Delete and Fn+Backspace are hidden shortcuts to Brightness Up and Down.

> Granted it only had preset values rather than a slider...

Yeah and that was always either too bright or too dark.

I'm glad they added the slider now.

you swipe from the right and adjust the brightness with the slider at the botton: https://i.imgur.com/sBYNv5z.png

older versions, you had to swipe right, then touch screen icon and slide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFYmwnzRpJ0

Thanks. That wasn't available when I tried it circa 2016. You had to tap an icon with 25% steps which never resulted in the brightness I wanted.

I've put Arch Linux with GNOME on my SP7 and it's been great. There are a few tweaks I needed to make, but nothing too drastic and I really think the hardware is word-class, I love the tablet form-factor, but iPad OS is way too limiting. SP solves that, so I hope MS will keep making them.

Does the pen still work? What about multi-touch and pressure sensitivity?

The pen doesn't currently work, I have an older iPad Pro for when I need pen input so not a big issue for me.

I primarily like it for the form-factor & build quality, which in my opinion matches Apple level, but I seldom use it as a "tablet". It's more a super-portable laptop for me that can also serve as a convenient way to kick back and consume content.

I, weirdly enough, also like the type cover over standard laptop keyboards. Maybe it's because it's not part of the tablet itself that I find the keys less stiff and as a result more comfortable than on most laptops.

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