New Surface products, built for Windows 11(blogs.windows.com) |
New Surface products, built for Windows 11(blogs.windows.com) |
The one thing I can't stand about Windows is that they've added a bazillion of settings. It literally took me 6 hours a day just to go into every freaking setting in Control Panel, and I can't even remember where is everything. You have menus on the left, menus on the right, extra links on the bottom, a clusterfuck of UI design. For fuck's sake Microsoft, I just need an OS to do my work.
One thing that I missed was SQL Server Management Studio, but Azure Data Studio was more than good enough and it even had some nice features that SSMS lacked, like project folders and GIT integration. SQL Server itself ran just fine in a Docker container.
A peer of mine is doing the same thing on the Manjaro desktop that I setup for him and he's using .NET Core v5.
The tech seems too early for the folding screen phones, and they unfold into something which is an awkward shape. There's nothing I want to do on my phone with a really big square of content.
I wish the surface neo could have gotten a chance to shine.
While we're on the subject, I wish the surface band had been given a little more time. Google has really dropped the ball with android wearables, it would have been a huge opportunity for microsoft.
- Windows 11 was announced and proves to be another Vista-like misstep.
- I have learned about Framework laptops and repairability and being able to upgrade one has become a killer feature.
I've had it send in for repairs because the touchscreen was unresponsive a bunch of times before I got my money back and bought a Thinkpad (T440s). It was a software issue because a reboot always fixed it. But I bought it for school so the main part randomly stops working while taking notes was a deal breaker.
The concept isn't bad. But the height of it while being a tablet on a surface is a pain to comfortably use a pen.
I hoped for a tablet I can do light dev work on, but I got a mediocre laptop without a keyboard.
The open/edit/save process is good for desktop, but not for mobile. On mobile operating systems you open and close apps without thinking. On windows you first need to tackle the unsaved change dialogs, find where you save your files, etc. You don't open recent drawings from a gallery, but from your filesystem. It sucks all the joy out of sketching, for example. It becomes work.
The lack if drawing apps was critical. There were Photoshop-like desktop apps, and half-baked mobile one. They were either really complex, or buggy beyond repair. Each handled the pencil in a different way, but never smoothly.
Even media playback sucked. I had to mess with environment variables to make VLC usable with fingers. Windows Media Player was not better.
Then there's Windows Update. My tablet was unusable for a big chunk of the first evening while it installed Bing news in my task bar and messed with my theme.
I heard that these tablets have tons of hardware and software problems, but I didn't get to that.
Long story short, it's really hard to get excited about Surface products when they are crippled by a poor OS and serious reliability issues.
They've enlarged the Surface Pro screen (now 13", half inch less than the 13.5" Book), but it has a subtly different design (that is, port-richer), which inevitable increases the weight to 880+g - uncomfortable for extended time tablet usage.
If the use case is tablet-like functionality, any convertible design simply doesn't work. Using a 700g tablet is already barely comfortable for long usage; a 1.2+ kg one is essentially unusable. In my opinion, it's a great marketing success (in other words, a scam).
For other use cases, I really have no idea what's the user base. I definitely recognize the (relative) innovation of the new functionality, but I have the suspicious that very few users actively use it. The convertible idea itself has been around for a long time, and based on my experience, it doesn't work in practice (in other words, it's a very
iPad Pro is a thing.
Surface studio "infinitely powerful" and the best cpu that MS offers is i7-11370H?
Is that true?
Surface Duo runs on Android 11 :)
I guess at least the version number is the same.
Sometimes I wonder how marketing department comes up with such statements.
Can you explain what makes you think Windows 11 "pretends desktops don't exist anymore"? If it's the product line-up revealed at this Surface event: the Surface line is explicitly a line of touch devices, so the focus on mobility seems on par.
It is like if Apple decided that a third of all interactions on the next iPad OS would require you to plug in a mouse.
Win95 vs Win98/ME/etc (? not sure)
WinXP vs Vista
Win7 vs Win8
Win10 vs Win11?
It's like the Intel's tick-tock model almost. On some level I do think that bashing this is a bit hypocritical when most of us nerds are also the first ones to bemoan a lack of innovation.
95/98 -> 98SE
ME -> 2000/XP
Vista -> 7
8 -> 8.1
Can't say about 10 as the version numbers are harder to track
It's not even out yet?
That said, from what I've been seeing Win11 is mostly just Win10 with some minor incremental changes, some good, some bad. The default centering of the task bar is certainly a thing but you can set it to align left as normal although I miss having the task bar moved to the top. Only thing I find a bit tedious is the new right click menu in the file explorer, which I can understand the reasoning behind but still don't think was the right move.
I think the new widgets thing is a misstep like the charms bar but it's just another icon you can ignore. The built-in MS Teams chat feature is interesting but just adds to the redundancy of having to have separate Microsoft and Microsoft 365 accounts, which is getting silly.
I appreciate the typeface changes, though as a Windows user such things have never been a priority to me.
What irks me is the loss of customization and productivity enhancements of being able to group and size the start menu - all my video editing stuff in one group, coding-related apps in another, etc. That organization is what I miss the most on a daily basis.
Yesterday they did a community talk about Ink support as if it was something completly new in Windows 11, my feeling was "have these guys ever used UWP Ink?!?".
Most of the time I use the touch support for sketching or highlighting with the pen. My pairs of external monitors at home and in the office are also non-touch.
But yeah, in win11 search is more of a focus not because it’s a new feature compared to win10, but because they hobbled the other features, and that seems like an enormous step backwards to me (the loss of customization/options).
Win 11 lets you pin apps to the menu still, but there’s no grouping, half the menu is taken up by a “recommended” section, and there’s no resizing of it. For the unchangeable half of the menu, which so far as I can tell is not an MRU list, it does hold recently installed apps from the store (and nowhere else) and likely will be used to stub in advertised apps (call me cynical). It’s a crippling change, and I suspect we’ll see those features added back in sooner or later. Much like win8.1. That’s about the best I can hope for anyway. MS is intent to release as-is.
Which IDE did you use to replace Visual Studio?
Create or use an Apple ID without a payment method: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204034
However, you need an Apple ID to use the App Store. It's not needed for any of the built-in apps, though.
(It might be needed for iMessage or FaceTime? I'm actually not sure. I think you can use iMessage without it, but it doesn't sync between devices.)
I was even able to update my old Thinkpad x230 after enabling TPM from the bios, it feels usable again.
To me, it looks like another coat of varnish haphazardly and thoughtlessly painted on top of multiple layers on a crumbling, dry wall. A mishmash of ideas added on top of Windows 10, not an evolution and revolution and refactoring of what Windows is. Ah, and more telemetry and ads.
I only have issue with Telegram’s client, and that’s due to their use of Qt, which doesn’t support native UI scaling without relaunching the app.
But I would guess that may vary depending on your setup.