MacBook fanboy? Then you’ll love the Surface Laptop
After 15 glorious years of MacBooks I think I’ve found the best one yet. Only it’s not made by Apple. Don’t hate me, but don’t pity me either, there’s method here.
I never meant to move away from Apple, but over the last few months it’s just happened.
First came replacing the iPhone.
I’ve been an Apple devotee for more than 15 years. After all, iOS continues to lead from the start, and the combination of beautiful hardware and joyful software is one of the marvels of modern life.
And there was nothing much wrong with the iPhone 7, except… except it was so immensely boring. I’ve always been pretty ambivalent about the Apple ecosystem, with its emphasis on shiny software and confusing functionality. I’ve never fallen for the Apple Watch or TV, or Apple Music, and iCloud just confuses me (contact groups, anyone?).
So really when it came to replacing the iPhone there wasn’t much to tie me to Apple, and I took a deep breath and bought a Pixel. It’s brilliant. Beautiful, powerful and with a sense of control that is missing from the iPhone. Want to find out what’s going on with a Wifi connection? Swipe down from the top and you can see it’s just getting an IP address from my nearest hotspot. Of course the Google apps work brilliantly on it, but so too do the Office apps.
And that brought me to my second big conundrum. My trusty old MacBook air finally gave up the ghost in the middle of a meeting a couple of weeks back. I quickly closed the lid, wiped a tear from my eye and reverted to pen and paper.
Apple’s reluctance to embrace touchscreens in laptops has always seemed nuts to me. From an ergonomic point of view, your fingers are so close the screen when typing, it makes as much sense to touch the screen as the trackpad, and screen offers far more control.
But I’d have forgiven Apple that had they not also made some downright weird hardware choices in the new MacBooks/MacBook Pros. I love USB-C, but right now most devices have USB-2. MagSafe was beautiful, and has saved my laptop from flying across the room or tripping someone up countless times.
So when I walked into my friendly generic computer store I was, I admit, already wondering if I would just swallow my reservations again and shell out for another MacBook Pro — or whether I could be tempted…
I’d love to be the sort of person to get by with just an iPad Pro and keyboard, but I’m a fast typist and having a good keyboard is too important to me. That also counts out the Surface Pro, which I’d heard good things about but shares the same form factor
Instinctively I love the idea of ChromeBooks, but I need the full functionality of Office, not just the browser version (including local storage and syncing).
And then I saw the new Surface Laptop. And, well, I’m a bit in love. With a f’ing WINDOWS machine!
First up, the keyboard is a joy to type on — every bit as tactile and responsive as the MacBook keyboard. And the alcantara covering is a lovely touch too. Then there’s the Magsafe connector and USB ports, oh and a good old Mini DVI — this all feels very familiar!
But that’s where the similarities end. Windows Hello is really amazing: it can recognise me (also using the proximity of my Pixel), and log me in before I’ve even fully sat down.
And then there’s the screen, and Windows 10 itself. I’m still having to remind myself that the big screen just up from the keyboard is something I can actually touch. Today I tried pairing my old Apple Mouse with the laptop, just to see if it would be better, and honestly the combination of trackpad and touchscreen makes the mouse redundant.
And switching from Office on a Mac to Office on a PC makes me realise how much powerful functionality Microsoft have been keeping back from us Mac users! It’s usable (the ribbon has been tamed), fast, and at times actually pretty fun to use. Keyboard shortcuts work well, and there are some things I just couldn’t do at all on my Mac that are a cinch on the PC. I’m not a fan of OneDrive, but it all plays nicely with Google Drive so that’s not a problem.
Cortana seems as pointless as Siri — but the typed search is way better than spotlight, and I navigate almost exclusively by using the Windows key and typing.
Of course, the advantage of the Mac was that when it comes to a presentation you always knew it would just work. So this week was the moment of truth — a first outing in front of the board. I plugged it in (there was a Mini DVI cable waiting for me) and… it all just worked! No holding down FN and an obscure combination of runes you can only make out by candlelight…it just came on. Turns out Powerpoint on Windows is just as good as Keynote on Mac to present from (love being able to skip slides, and black out the screen as I could on Keynote).
What’s not so good? Well, it annoys me that I have to press a button when I open the lid. Windows updates take a while to get used to — best done overnight. And I narrowly prefer Finder to Windows Explorer (though both suck). I really miss Preview - not much I can do about that — and I was a big fan of the built in screen capture functionality of OSX, but Windows Ink Workspace is pretty much as good.
I’m not a big fan of some corners of Windows 10, but frankly I’d got to hate OSX. And the combination of touchscreen, a UI optimised for it, lightning fast response times and solid hardware designed for today not 3 years ahead is more than enough to compensate.
I may live to regret this, but for now I’m proud to say I’m a PC…and what a PC.
