The Vergecast - Microsoft Surface roundup: Surface Pro X, Surface Laptop 3, and their processors

Episode Date: November 10, 2019

In a bonus episode of The Vergecast this week, Dieter Bohn hosts a Microsoft Surface roundup with deputy editor Dan Seifert and senior editor Tom Warren. The trio go through reviews of this years new product lineup and how they compare with their counterparts. Links: Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 15-inch review: it’s a bigger Surface Laptop Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 13.5-inch review: have a normal one Microsoft Surface Pro 7 review: I wish this looked like a Surface Pro X Microsoft Surface Pro X review: heartbreaker Surface Pro X vs. Pro 7: ARM needs some legs Microsoft bet against Intel with its new Surfaces — and lost Microsoft leak reveals Windows 10X will be coming to laptops Microsoft unveils new Edge browser logo that no longer looks like Internet Explorer Microsoft’s Edge Chromium browser will launch on January 15th with a new logo Microsoft previews the future of Office documents with Fluid Framework for the web Hands-on with Microsoft’s xCloud game streaming service Xbox Game Streaming hands-on: turn your Xbox into a game streaming server Xbox Elite 2 controller review: Microsoft’s best Xbox controller just got better Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. And welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship. Actually, today is not a flagship. Today is like a skiff. It's a bonus episode that we're recording. I am Dieter Bone, and I am joined today by Tom Warren and Dan Seaford. Hey, guys.

Hello. Hello from Brexit land. Oh, gosh. We're not going to talk about Brexit because it's too painful. And so we're going to talk about other pain. I was thinking that we reviewed, Microsoft dropped a bunch of new surface computers. And they were really fascinating, important surface computers because in a lot of different ways, they tried to do some really new stuff. And Microsoft is also doing new stuff with the way that they're having people build apps and so on.

I've been referring to it in the newsletter. We've been writing about it on the site. But there's so much stuff here that I didn't feel like we could really capture all of it in our reviews. There's so much stuff that we left on the cutting room floor that I wanted to record a bonus episode. So I guess to get started, Tom, can you talk a little bit about this year's round of hardware from Microsoft and how it felt different? And I'm not even getting into the stuff about the Neo and the duo and the future-looking stuff. I'm talking about just the stuff that they actually released. Yeah.

So they did three things. They did the laptop three, the Surface Pro 7 and the X. And they're all kind of different in their own sort of ways. So the laptop three, they obviously went for USBC, all this sort of up. crazy you'd expect, but then they throw in this one where they did an AMD laptop on the 15-inch version. And similar to that, on the pro-X side, you know, you've got the pro-7, which is Intel, looks the same as a pro four. I mean, even a pro-free kind of really. Like, we're talking five years of the same hardware, essentially. So that's pretty much, everyone should probably know

what that's all about, but it's got USBC now. But they also did another one, the black Surface Pro X, which has a Qualcomm chip inside. It's basically an SQ1 processor that you've co-engineered with Qualcomm, and it's basically an ACX processor inside. Right. So, yeah, that is the hardware lineup. That's their holiday lineup and some, obviously, some earbuds as well. But we're not talking about those because we don't have them yet.

I'll admit I forgot about the earbuds. So thank you for reminding me. Well, I mean, they're giant reflectors on the side of your head. How could you possibly miss them? They're NECO wafer. They've also like really annoyed Will I Am. It's actually, we're giving them a good review. Actually, we're derailing into Will I Am litigation discussion.

We're definitely going to give these headphones a good review because they annoyed Will I Am. Like that's absolutely happening. Well, let's get the laptops out of the way. Dan, you reviewed them. The 13.5 inch one, you had a meme headline. Congratulations. You said have a normal one. I snuck it in.

Yeah. Tell me about this laptop. It seems like it's, okay, it's a surface laptop. they put a USB port on it instead of display port at the end. Basically, yes. I mean, so like they swapped that display port out that which was on the first two versions of the surface laptop, and I'm pretty sure nobody used. Finally, for a USBC port, which you can do video out and you can charge it through the USBC port,

but it's not a Thunderbolt port, which is an annoying thing. And I think it's going to come up, that annoyance is going to come up again. I mean, you talk about the other devices. And then inside of it has the 10th-gen Intel Ice Lake processors. So these are quad-chips. Really great performance. They have actually really surprisingly good integrated graphics with them. This is not a gaming laptop.

It doesn't have a discrete graphics card. But if you wanted to like, you know, process a 4K video on this, you could do it. I did it in a test. And like, it wasn't the worst thing in the world. I wouldn't recommend it for doing that. But like, if you need to, you can get it done. They still have the great 3x2 screen. I love the screen on these things.

It's the best screen to work on if you're doing productivity stuff on a laptop. Awesome keyboard. awesome trackpad, really great basics. The one that I reviewed is the gold model, which they called Sandstone, because of course, but it's gold. And it doesn't have the Alcantara fabric on it, which is kind of like the other big change. For a couple of the colors, they dropped the fabric.

So this is like when you use this thing, it feels like you're using a MacBook error because it's just basically an aluminum deck, which is fine. It's just not unique as maybe the blue or the silver, which still have the fabric on them. I mean, the fabric thing is the, that's the biggest change, right? Did you prefer the fabric, though? I prefer the fabric.

I think the fabric actually, like, feels nice under the hands. Like, it's not cold to touch. It's not sharp. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't feel like every other laptop that you could buy. So it's, like, kind of unique. But there was, like, some concerns with durability. You know, if you look at, I've got a Surface laptop one that I got as my work computer two years ago. And there are definitely some, you know, hand-prone.

in the fabric where it is. Have you tried cleaning it? No, I don't know. See, whatever. It's a patina. So, like, you know, if you're worried about that, the metal ones are obviously not going to have that issue. And then, like, the other thing that, like, is less applicable when you first open the box

or use the laptop or whatever is that Microsoft apparently made these a lot easier to take apart and repair. So you can actually open them up pretty easily and access the SSD and swap that. You can swap parts like the keyboard easier. I Fixit did a whole tear down on it. Then they, like, I think brought the score up from like really low up to something in the mid range. Yeah. Because I guess the display is still hard to change.

You're probably not going to do that. I think you still need to have like a quote authorized service center do that for you. But it's now more possible. Whereas the other one you basically just had to rip it apart. Yeah. So here's a funny thing about the Alcantara, right? So this year's Alcatar, the silver one, like, or whatever color you want to call it, is slightly darker than before. It's like, yeah.

That is right, yes. I remember noticing that. I wonder why they did that. Yeah. Maybe. If you go into a Microsoft store and you pick up one of these things and it's like beat to hell, like it looks terrible. And the gray is silver color. Yeah.

It's terrible. They got rid of the red color too, which was like the messest color. Yeah. All right. The one other thing I want to talk about here at the 13.5, because it actually applies to every single surface we're going to talk about today is they kept the surface connect charger thing about, but Jake. the little wing tip, whatever the hell you want to call it that you magnetically attach into charge. You could still attach to it, blah, blah, blah, blah. I feel like they did this bait and switch or something where they added fast charging,

but so far as I know, it only really, really works off the surface charger. You won't fast charge that well off a USBC, right? I got some pretty fast charging speeds off the USBC port. Yeah, as long as you have a high enough wattage charger. Okay. I think what I tested on was like a 90 watt or 87 watt USBC charger, which is, like what you get with a MacBook Pro 15-inch, just because I wanted to see if it did compare

to the Surface Connector, which is a 65-watt charger. So as long as you're using a 65-watt or above, you should get some fast-charging speeds. But what you won't get is fast-charging while you're using the laptop. And that is if you use either the USBC port or the Surface Connect port, it's going to charge like at normal slow speeds. If you close the lid and let it go to sleep, you can get that like 80% in an hour. In my test, I got up to 40% in 30 minutes.

I would much rather have another USBC port than the Surface Connect at this point, right? Yeah, I mean, maybe Tom can speak to this more than I can, but... I like the Surface Connect, though, but it makes no sense when there's USBC, you know? Right. I think it's like a legacy thing, right? Like, Microsoft has a bunch of commercial customers who all bought that terrible Surface Doc, and they still want to use it, and so the Surface Connect lets them do that. Like, it also has that MagSafe knockoff so that it, like, doesn't pull your laptop off the table, but I agree. I would much rather have...

I'd much rather have A, another USBC port, and Thunderbolt 3. Right. Because if at Thunderbolt 3, I could plug in an external GPU and actually do real video editing or maybe gaming if I was so inclined. I could use really fast external storage, which is if you are a creator using these for photo or video editing, that's always helpful. It's like four times the bandwidth of USBC. So I think it's a very silly misstep at these price points for Microsoft not to have included

Thunderbolt 3. Yeah, and I think the connect is the reason why it doesn't have Thunderball 3. The Connect? The Surface Connect, yeah, because I think it's like to do with whatever the tech specs are on it, like the PCIE lanes and stuff. Right. They're used by it. See, I don't think they can, unless they've got like a new version of the Connect,

it doesn't support past 115 watt stuff like that for charging. Right. So it's a little restrictive. So let's talk with the 15 inch. This laptop at first, until I, like, really sat and like, pondered it and came to a realization about it, it was the most confusing thing ever, right? Like, it seems obvious at the start,

but then you reviewed it, and it turns out it's not like, with a MacBook Pro, if you get a 13-inch, you know, like, it's a little bit limited. It's just a 13-inch, but if you just want, like, power and a little bit, like, you know, slightly better thermal limits,

you can get the 15-inch, and that becomes, like, the power laptop. And I was expecting, especially since there's an AMD version, the 15-inch of the Surface Pro to be like the power surface pro laptop. And it's not not. Not at all.

No, it is like if you took the 13.5 inch and just stretched it to a 15 inch chassis. Yeah. Like, I mean, that's really what it is. And like if you want a MacBook Air like computer, which is what the Surface laptop is, in a 15 inch size, then the Surface laptop 315 inch is that product. But if you were thinking, oh, I'm going to upgrade to the 15 inch and get more power and I'll have. more capabilities and do X, Y, and Z that I can't do on the smaller one, that's not the case at all. And in fact, if you're a consumer, we're going to talk about this more with the AMD Intel differences.

If you're just, like, buying the one that's accessible to you in the 15-inch, it's actually not as good as the 13-inch Intel in terms of performance. So, like, you're taking a step backwards. You're also not getting a bigger battery, which is kind of bonkers to me. Like, the battery inside the 13-inch model and the 15-inch model is the exact same capacity. So that's kind of just nuts so to me. Well, and like the size of it is if you're not doing anything fancy with like power, then it seems to me that you should at least try and do something cool with like the bezels.

But like this is like a bog standard 15-inch laptop. Yeah, yeah, the bezels are kind of big. It's not super powerful. You mentioned the MacBook Pro differences earlier. And the reason the MacBook Pro 15-inch is so much more powerful is because you can get discrete GPUs. and you can more importantly get like 45 watt CPUs. The CPUs in the 15-inch laptop 3 are still 15-watt chips, so it's the same class of chips.

You're not getting any more power there. And you can't get discrete GPUs. You can get different. If you get the AMD one, you get a different integrated GPU, but it's not as good as Intel's latest GPUs. So, like, you're taking a step backwards there. Right. So it is kind of baffling.

It is kind of like a very niche thing, I think, for someone who wants a thin, light computer that's also a 15-inch screen. Yeah. But yeah, that's really what it boils down to. I think the keyboard is fantastic on it. I actually liked, I fell in love with the keyboard first when I reviewed the 15-inch model because that's the one I did first and it carries over to the 13-inch model. But the keyboard is tremendous.

The trackpad is probably the best track pad you're going to get in the Windows world, bar none. Like, it's bigger, it's smooth, it tracks great, it's got the best drivers, all that stuff. The screen is great. The touch on the screen is great. So, like, all of those, like, interaction things are really. nice and I'd say best in class in Windows. But then you're limited to the same ports that you get on the 13 inch. You're limited to the same capabilities in terms of power.

You actually get worse battery life because a smaller battery, pushing a bigger screen, is not going to do you any favors. And all the other things that we mentioned with the 13. And it costs more. Yeah. Let's talk about AMD then. Tom. What's the deal here?

Yeah. I don't know. I'm surprised they went with AMD. Like, no one uses AMD on laptops. They do, but they're kind of like, few and far between. Right. Just because AMD aren't quite there on the mobile side.

I don't know why they did it. Like, so Dan obviously had performance problems, a bunch of reviews had performance problems and battery issues and all that sort of stuff. It was all the sort of stuff that we kind of like feared as soon as you say AMD's going to a laptop. Right. And I think they did it because it's just to put pressure on Intel, right? It's just to say, you know, we have another option, even though it's not going to scare Intel like right now.

But obviously AMD are trying to be way more competitive in that space. They're like certainly competitive in the desktop space now. They're like they're up there and they're there. But in the mobile space they're obviously still, you know, still a step behind. So but I think that that was the main reason. Like, and I think it kind of goes back to the surface the surface book and the Surface Pro 4. I think they came out at the same time.

And there was a bunch of sort of intel related issues with those chipsets. and Intel kind of struggled to be there and Microsoft were kind of like the first on what was it, was it KB Lake back then? I think it was Sky Lake, sorry, yeah, Skylake. I always get the names mixed up. These names, Intel continues to, I think that people would like Intel twice as much

if they had better code names and they just went back to numbers. It's so stiff. I think the Pro4 was sixth generation, so that's a more sane way to put it. Okay. Yeah. They had a few issues.

Apple stayed away from that, notably. Yeah. And yeah, I think there's no, there's no question that they had issues. And I think that decision probably stem from as early as then where they thought, right, we need to have some sort of other option here. Yeah. But I mean, Dan, you used this, right? Yeah. How did you feel about it using it? You just wanted the intel? Like, what was wrong with it? Well, I mean, it depends what you want to get out of it, right? Like, but I feel like, you know, the, the model that I reviewed, I believe it was like about $1,600 as configured. And it just didn't feel like a $1,600 laptop should in terms of like what it should let me do.

If I'm going to deal with carrying around this bigger laptop, it does weigh more. It's not the heaviest 15 inch laptop, but it's also not the lightest. And, you know, and I'm going to like pay this price premium for it. Like, I want to be able to do more than just work in office. And the AMD version just kind of let me down. Like I did some export tests with Premiere Pro, which is, you know, obviously the most popular professional video editing suite on Windows. that was like completely unusable.

A few minutes ago I said that you could use the 13-inch model to render 4K video. You can't do it on the 15-inch with AMD. I even had trouble playing like 4K video from YouTube. Like just playback. Like it would stutter and chop and skip and things like that. And I'm like, this is a brand new laptop in 2019 and it can't play 4K video on YouTube.

Like what is going on here? Yeah, you got to imagine that. I bet you most of that is due to codex and some sort. Oh, absolutely. But like I'm sure that the, the, The codecs is AMDs are not optimized for VPP9, which is what YouTube uses. And then the Premiere Pro problem is that Intel has quicksync technology, which helps render H.264 video, and AMD doesn't have it.

But at the end of the day, I as the end user or the consumer, don't care. You don't care about that. I just want it to work, and I'm going to buy the one that works. Yeah. Yeah, I don't see AMD sort of fixing that overnight. Like, there's a lot of politics involved in that. And when Microsoft announced these at their event, a big discussion around the 15-inch model was how powerful it was. And like how it was 2X whatever they were comparing to and had the special, you know, AMD Vega 9 and Vega 11 graphics chips on there.

And, you know, in like actual things that you want to do with the laptop, though, like they didn't they didn't step up. I mean, Intel's just laughing right now, right? I would assume so. They've spent the last year and a half, two years hearing me and lots of other people say, you suck, you can't get it, you can't get it done. Why are you still stuck on whatever nanometer you're on? Apple's running laps around you, and Arm is going to eat your lunch, and AMD's coming for you, and then there's finally a laptop that's like mass consumer in theory

that doesn't have an Intel chip, but it's just like, womp, and Intel's just sitting back, just told you so. Yeah, I mean, the salt in this wound is the fact that Microsoft is selling an Intel version of the 15-inch laptop for $100 more than the AMD one. Yeah. And it is on paper only available to business commercial customers, but if you have the link to Microsoft Store, you can just click it and buy it. Right.

So, like, that is kind of like the obvious thing caveat there that, like, I guess Microsoft knows that. Apparently, it's not good enough for their commercial customers. The only thing is if you buy that version, it doesn't come in a box. It comes, like, stuck to a piece of cardboard. Oh, that's perfect. That's exactly how I don't. Computer boxes are super annoying.

There's, like, there's so much air in them. It's, I don't know. I just had to send back a whole lot of Chromebooks, and it was just, like, stacked up. The Chromebooks were, like, you know, maybe, like, half a foot tall, a foot tall. But, like, the boxes were, like, six feet tall when they were all put back in their boxes. So it was super annoying. Anything else you want to say about the laptops? I think that, you know, just kind of sum it up, if you're looking for a 13-inch laptop and you're looking for Windows 1, I think the laptop 3 is actually an excellent choice, as long as you don't mind the loss of Thunderbolt 3. It's right up there with what Dell's doing on the XPS 13s and what HP's latest stuff. So I think it is actually an excellent laptop. If you are like insistent on getting the 15-inch version, then I strongly recommend seeking out the Intel model and getting that instead. I would not recommend the AMD version to anyone.

I mean, XPS 13 or Surface Laptop 13? Go. I mean, the answer for me is I would buy the XPS, but if my, like, a family member asked me what to buy, I would probably tell them to buy the surface because I think the surface is maybe just slightly more durable and slightly just simpler in certain ways. I don't know if I would say it's more durable. The XPSs are pretty solid machines. They got, like, a flex to them.

Even now, there's, like, a little bit of a, ain't hurt to them. The thing I like about the surface is it's three. 3x2 screen. So like if you're using it for productivity, it is a million times more comfortable to use than the XPS 13, which is still using a 16 by 9 screen. Right. That's the big thing about all the surfaces. Yeah. And like so I think for me that that is the clincher. Like it sucks that I won't have Thunderbolt 3 and my battery life might not be as good as I get with the Dell and I don't have as many port options. But I'm on a screen that I'm much happier to live on for six, seven,

eight hours a day than I am on the Dell. So I have one question about the surface. surface book, sorry, the surface laptop before we move on, is the keyboard. So the Alcatara one is, it always had like a little bit of a flex, right? Like he kind of get with the pro. So I'm assuming the other one doesn't. Yeah, I mean, like, I have to caveat this with that. I have not used the Alcantara version of the laptop three. I've only used the aluminum ones.

And it was rock solid. Like, this thing is like, like, it is, doesn't flex at all. The keyboard feels great. I read some other reviews where some people didn't really like the travel with it and things like that, but I think the spacing, the size of the keys, the travel is really nice under my fingers. It is like, I put this in the review. I don't know how Microsoft could actually improve this keyboard beyond what it is. I'm sure that's a silly thing to say, and like there definitely could be better things.

But in terms of like of the laptops I've used in the past couple years, this is like my favorite keyboard. All right, Surface Pro 7. Tom, you reviewed it. Tell me something other than like it's a surface with new chips. Well, it has USBC too. Oh, yeah. Sorry, of course. That's pretty much the only difference.

Yeah, so I reviewed the six last year, and that was already, you know, sort of pushing it on the sort of samey idea and design. And this is, yeah, it's the same. The big difference, obviously the USBC, that's cool. It's good to have, finally, but it should have kind of really been there last year at least and probably before. But the only other big thing is quick resume. And it's kind of interesting that they've done this this year,

because I'm sure they could have done this the year before, even before that with the chips. But it's interesting that it's happened this year alongside the Qualcomm surface. And it basically means you know, you unfold the keyboard away from the display and it instantly resumes you don't have to touch the button.

And it'll go into this sort of like standby state for like, I can't remember how many days it was. It was like 72 hours or something insane. Yeah. And it would do that and when it's in that state, it uses like less than a percent battery. I will say that every surface I have tested.

or used until this one has always felt broken. I always thought it was broken, because I assumed that when you open the keyboard, it should light up. Because that's how laptops work. That's how the iPad works with its keyboard. Everything works, but with the surface, you'd have to, like, open it up.

You have to tap the power, yeah. And it's weird how you kind of got used to that. And now that it's changed, it's like, oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, this is what it should be doing. Yeah. Apart from that, they've got, like, studio mics. They've kind of done that sort of thing

across the line. I haven't really tested it too in depth, so I can't really speak, but that's pretty much it in terms of hardware. It's really not that different, sadly. I mean, we'll get into this with the ProX in a minute, but I bought the Surface Pro 7, which I feel like okay about,

but also dumb about because I'm sure that they're going to finally do a proper redesign next year and maybe they'll have an LTE option next year. But, you know, I've been using the Surface Go for the past year, so I am feeling great about life. I am very, very annoyed that Microsoft does not offer. They've got like, I don't know, eight different specs that you can configure, and they don't have the one that I want.

They have black. I want black, I-5, because I don't want a fan, like, no matter what, and I want 16 gigs of RAM and 256 storage, and they don't offer that. You can get black eight gigs. You can get black with an I-7, but if you want, The I-5, 16 gigs of RAM, 256, like the platonic ideal mid-range surface. Like, this is what everybody wants at a Surface Pro is that spec. You could only get it in gray.

So I will say the core I-7, I've used the Black Core I-7, Service Pro 6 with the fan. And I don't think I've ever heard the fan. Really? Yeah, I think you'd really have to push it to get the fan going. I think they are just saving you from the grief of fingerprints on the black model leader. Well, you don't get so many, so you get way more fingerprints on the ProX than the black Pro 7. Yeah. Yeah.

And on the laptop, because they're aluminum. Yeah. I mean, don't tell me that because now I'm going to return the Surface Pro 7, I5, and get the black one. I feel like you've been doing a surface juggle recent. Oh, man. So, okay, we're going to get into the ProX, but just so everybody understands the mockery that I've had to live with because of my own. stupidity. Surface ProX gets announced.

I'm like, this is it, I believe, and I pre-ordered one. And then, like, two weeks later, I was like, this is stupid. I shouldn't, I shouldn't pre-order this. I mean, I'm good at review it. It's fine, so I cancel my pre-order. And then a week later, I'm like, yeah, but if it's really popular, then if I do want it, then if it goes out of stock, I'm going to have to, like, wait, and that sucks, so I pre-ordered it again.

And then a week later, I'm like, this is stupid. I can't do this. And I cancel my pre-order. And then the next day, the day after I canceled my pre-order, I got the review unit. So just to be clear, I didn't cancel because of the review unit. Review the thing. Decide, you know what, that's it. I'm buying the Surface Pro 7.

I buy the black one with 8 gigs. I tell Tom and Dan, all right, this is what I bought. I really want the black one. I want the I-5. I didn't want to spend as much for the I-7. I'll be okay with 8 gigs, right? And they're both like... Like the sound of their like intake of breath came through in.

slack. It's like when a family member tells you they brought a laptop, they'd tell you the one they brought, and you're like, Oh, Lord. Yeah. I'm sure you'll be very happy with it. Oh, my God. So, like, the same day, I ordered the good one, the 16 gigs of RAM

one, and they both came, and then I had to return the black one. And now you're telling me I should get the I-7. I'm surprised that Microsoft doesn't think you're running some kind of fraud. I am shocked that my credit card kept working. Like, there's no way that they should have. Like, my credit card gets rejected all the time for just the most

random reasons. But yeah, no, I haven't heard the fan. Like, I probably have, but it's not noticeable. So, all right. I will say the fans on the laptop three are also very team. Like, even when they crank up, when I was doing, like, video export tests, they were significantly quieter than what I'm used to from, like, a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. Yeah, whereas previous models, I've definitely heard. I have a Service Pro 4 at home that I bought a couple years ago. every time I turn that thing on, it's a hurricane in my office. Yeah, well, that's why I just assumed it was that bad. That's why I didn't want to.

Where do we start with the Surface Proax? I don't even know where to start. There's so much to talk about here. The design. Start with the simple stuff. The simple stuff. It's black. It picks up fingerprints, whatever.

The screen is great. I think it could stand to get brighter, especially in sunlight. Like, it can't quite stand up to, like, direct sun. But they extended it out. So the thing is, like, I think it's just a little bit bigger, like, the X and maybe Y axis than a Surface Pro 7, but it's thinner. The curves are a little bit gentler. The bezels on the left and the right are thinner.

And I think they might be thinner at the top of the bottom, but not by much. And I actually am finding that I'm accidentally like touching the screen and it's not rejecting my touch when I'm like adjusting the kickstand. So I've had to use it. Like I've had to learn how to like hold the thing in such a way that I don't actually accidentally touch the screen when I'm adjusting it. Yeah, because the bezels on either side are free. They're really thin.

Yeah. Yeah, but I said this in review, I actually want to expand it on a little bit. I think this looks better than an iPad Pro. Yeah, I think it's more of a tablet for the Surface Pro than they've ever done before. Like, it feels like a tablet first rather than a computer. No, no, I'm curious as to why that is. Is it because it's thinner? Is it because they, you know, stretch the screen out?

Is it because it's got the more rounded corners? It's not as angular. I think it's all three of those. Yeah. It's just when you hold it, it just feels slightly. It just feels a lot different to the, the pro. There's a subtle line where it being thinner, not having that

extra ridge, and like the sort of weight distribution that you expect from a tablet feels like a tablet. Whereas the Surface Pro 7 and all the Surface Pro's before it, you can kind of tell that they're like fronting. You know, like it's not, it's a PC that they just happen to like put all the

all the crap into one side, right? That's what a Surface Pro is. And this is the same thing, but for some reason it crosses that subtle line of feeling like a tablet. And the reason I think it looks better than an iPad Pro is because I think the iPad Pro looks okay. Like the curve screen is impressive, but the whole thing looks

like someone drew their ideal tablet in like a CAD program. Like what if we would if this tablet was possible? Wouldn't that be amazing? And then they're like, well it's possible now so they made it. But it doesn't have like a soul. It's very, very generic and very sort of

I don't know, whatever character it has is like just the most like vanilla anodyne character I can imagine. Whereas this thing like it's not like beefy, powerful, but it like, it has like an identity in a way that I feel like the iPad doesn't. Yeah. And I think like from the keyboard side, it's still, I mean, I obviously had issues with the

keyboard. Oh man. We're going to talk about this for like 45 minutes. But like it's still the best two in one keyboard, right? Like there's no one's really, because of that kickstand combination, like no one has really done that well. Yeah. And certainly not on the iPad pro.

That is a kind of frustrating keyboard. and it's just the one, the single angle stuff. It's just irritating. But yeah, like the design. Yeah, I like the design. I like the hardware, but it's not really, the hardware isn't the thing. No.

Before we jump into like the thing that we really want to talk about, how does how, you mentioned that it's like, it looks more like tablet, feels more like, how is it actually using as a tablet? Did you guys actually use it much ripping that keyboard off and like getting out of the Windows desktop world and like trying to use it as a tablet? Is it any better?

No. Not significantly. It's Windows on a tablet, right? It's still big, and it's still like, man, like, getting, like, Kindle to go on it is, like, a fiasco. Because, like, the Windows store version still, like, this happens on the Surface Pro 7, like, just doesn't work. And so you need to go to, like, Amazon and download it directly. And you have to, like, check out. You have to, like, buy it, like, purchase it through Amazon standard checkout workflow.

And then download it, like, you purchased, like, toilet paper. It's the most, anyway. But yeah, so carrying it, like actually, I almost, I found myself using it in portrait mode as a tablet more so than I expected just because the bezels on the left and the right were so thin. It was more comfortable to carry in portrait mode. So it's like that clipboard mode sort of thing. So that's how I was using it as just a tablet. But yeah, like fundamentally, like you know how you use the surface. You leave the keyboard on and that's what you end up doing this.

Right. Well, yeah, I guess. And you're saying the prox does not change that paradigm. Not really. I mean, it is a little bit, it does, I think it's like about the same weight, but it feel, like I said, like the weight distribution feels more tablety, but it's not like a huge change. Like if you buy this thing and you don't buy the keyboard, you're a ridiculous person. Yeah. It's that thing between like the iPad and Windows tablets. It's always that sort of push and pull, right? The iPad you go for it because it's great as a tablet, but it's not quite as good as a desktop, you know, laptop sort of thing. This comes down to like Windows has the crutch of, there's always a. touchpad, right? And so people aren't forced to design stuff that's touch-friendly. And the touchpad on the keyboards on all surfaces are like, I'm happy that it's there, but I wish it was like always 10%

bigger all the time. I find that maybe it's because I don't use Windows enough, but I find that I get way more like accidental drags on Windows than I ever do on a Mac. Like I'll like think I'm tapping on a window and then all of a sudden I'm like dragging it across the screen and it's like screwed up my window snapping and everything is gone. It happens to me all the time. And I don't know if it's muscle memory or what. There is actually a way to stop that. So there's two settings that they enable on the track pad on the surface, and you should just disable them. I can't remember exactly what they are. There's like a three finger thing.

Oh, no, there's a, there's one in the top level, and then there's one where you like need to go all the way back into classic Windows settings. I've like poked around at it. And I forget what they're called too, but. There's two that I go in and I just untick them. Yeah. And then I never have those issues. But it just feels like, yeah, they shouldn't really just off there. It's something like two finger drag and drop.

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Terms and conditions apply. I guess before we get into Arm, because that's going to, that's like the whole, that's the whole shooting. match here. I think that the surface slim pen itself is pretty good. I think that people that really like Stylair probably might get a little tired using it because it isn't as, you know, it's thin, basically, slim. But in terms of like its overall performance, like I have zero complaints about it. And I love that it charges magnetically inside this little keyboard slot. I didn't realize this, but when you buy it separately, if you don't buy it in the bundle with the keyboard that charges it, it comes with like a little cradle that you plug in by a USBC.

It's like a cot. Yeah. Like where it goes to sleep. Yeah. So if you buy this pen to use like a Surface Pro or whatever, you like have to make sure you don't lose the cradle, which is just nuts. Yeah. Yeah.

And you can actually stick it to the side of the Pro 7. Yep. If you like it sort of, you know, falling off. Yeah. If you like it to get knocked off in your bag. Well, I mean, that's how the old stylus works with Pro 7. Yes. You're not really missing anything.

It like just about hangs on in there. The magnet on the side of the ProX is actually really strong for sticking the pen on the side of it. It's on the right side, which I prefer because I'm right-handed. So then, Tom, you, so the way this pen works is it goes in this little slot that's above the keys, and then when you fold it up to magnetically attach to the screen, it like hides it. But you hate this keyboard. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Those were not my words.

I'm just going off of what you said in Slack, and we had a long argument about it. so I feel like it's a step back for sure like so I think it was the was it the pro it was the pro four right where they did the like sort of magnets for it yeah yeah yeah where like that little onto the screen yeah and this has that but it also has like a tiny like I say like five mill or something like that of like where it just flexes yeah and I think like if you're a super skinny individual then it's probably fine but if you have a beer belly like I do then you will probably squidge that screen up against, that keyboard up against the display more than you'd like to. Yeah. And I think it also depends on how you're using it and where you're using it and stuff. But I found, I still find it like irritating. And I think that's because I like to see what apps are open.

Yeah, same. And I like to see the notifications and stuff. Yeah. So the bar that shows you that the app is open, it's really easy to get hidden. If you're like using it at a desk and you're looking down on it, you see it. And to be clear, I've got a little bit of a little bit of a beer belly too. But I didn't have this problem, and I think it's because we sit differently. And so I think the answer is that you're lapping it wrong.

Yeah, Panos would tell me the lapability is fine. And I'm sitting wrong. Yeah, but that wobble, you do notice it a little bit on your lap. Like, it does shift just a little bit more than... Yeah, and I think the worst thing is... You know how, like, you use the pro. You kind of adjust yourself to it rather than it adjusts to you. Yeah.

And I think the worst thing is sometimes like you when you're sitting, like, It might be cross-legged or, you know, whatever. You've got it, like, rested in a particular way. Yeah. Like, the keyboard kind of goes a bit wonky at the screen, so, like, half of it gets cut off and the other half doesn't. Yeah. It's just, I don't know.

Like, I haven't tried the other keyboard. Yeah, I wish they had sent us the other keyboard, because if the other keyboard's fine, we would be having a totally different conversation right now. And I can't buy it in the UK until, like, the 19th. Yeah. So I'm like, okay. But, yeah, like, I feel like that's probably, probably fine. Yeah.

But it's just, it's just one thing to, like, keep in mind if you're, to surface pros at all. Because I feel like this keyboard just feels like, you know, the same sort of two and one stuff that other people do when they kind of rip the surface off. Like the other people, the other OEMs and stuff don't always get that like hook to the screen. Yeah. Yeah. Basically the takeaway from this is if you are like buying a pro X and you're not interested

in using the stylus, which is actually, I guess, the vast majority of surface users don't actually use a stylus. Then just forget about the new stylus and the new keyboard and just go with the older design. And the older keyboard is cheaper anyway. Yeah. You'd really need the, you really need to want the pen. The only thing keeping us from saying that definitively is we haven't tried it. It's possible that they screwed up that at keyboard

also. We just don't know. I'm assuming they haven't because why would they? But they might have because they're Microsoft. Well, the other thing to note, I guess, is if you are upgrading from an older Surface Pro, like a Pro 4 or newer, your keyboard will not work with the Pro 10. Or Pro 10. The Pro-10.

The older Pro keyboards have like two little plastic, like tabs and then there's like pogo pins and this keyboard has two fins and then the connectors are on like one of the fins So you're buying a new keyboard either way. Yeah, they had to redesign that because they were obviously going for a finner device So but you can still flip the thing like underneath and like back and then like the pen sort of is like sitting there So you might lose it if you do that but it works. You can still flip it around and put it into tattlet mode and you can still like reverse the keyboard entirely for people that do that I don't know many people that do but you can't know many people that do but you can't can if you want to. Okay. So this computer has a Microsoft SQ1, which is a modified version of the Qualcomm 8CX. There's only one other 8CX laptop that I know of, which is like that Samsung Surface

book, which hasn't even come out. So this is basically the first. So far as this first one I've touched. And so the Microsoft customization, Tom, what is the customization that they've done on top of the 8cx here? Like, what do they feel like they needed to do? So they clocked the, the cores slightly higher, I think up to 3 gigahertz. And then they did some GPU work to increase the GPU performance, essentially. Why is it called SQ1? I guess Surface and Qualcomm, SQ. Oh, so next year they have an SQ2, Surface Qualcomm 2.

There it is. Okay, so that makes perfect sense. Why is this called the Surface Pro X? Why is the Xbox one? That's just what I tweeted to you. Why is the Xbox 1X called that? I don't know. Like, I don't know.

They obviously like the X name because they've used 10X on, on the Neo stuff. Yeah, but 10X, the 10X on Neo is a different kind of Windows that has nothing to do with Arm. It has to do with like dual screen. So Windows 10X means like it works on dual screen. Maybe it'll mean something else by the time it comes out, but that's what it means to me now. The Xbox 1X means we are the super powerful Xbox. And the Surface Pro X means, I don't know.

It's like, does Microsoft just think like X means like future? I think it does. Yeah. And if you view it in that way, it kind of makes sense. Yeah. What they're trying to say, but... I want to call it the Pro 10, though. What happens when we get to the...

What do we have? The Pro 7 was released this year? Yep. Next year is a Pro 8, then the Pro 9. And we're going to have a Pro 10. That'll be fine. And we're also going to have like an X3. Sure.

But maybe that'll be once, you know, once they can finally get to this design on the Surface Pro 7 side. Yeah. If we've got three years left. They'll call it the XI. And then everyone will call it the 11 by accident. You know, because it'll be the Intel version of the X. That'll be X-I-N-W-A-N-W-A-W.

All right, so the basics here is Microsoft has made Windows work on Arm, and Windows itself is, like, designed for Arm now. It works fine as an Arm operating system, I think. We can get into that if you want a little bit. But then for the apps, there are three kinds of apps to think about, four maybe. There's apps that are directly compiled for Arm, and they are few and far between. there are 32-bit Intel apps, or X-86 apps, not Intel apps, and those can be run in an emulated mode.

And I forget the name of the emulator now. It's not wine, it's something else. I can't remember. Yeah, but for some reason... Yeah, I mean, the system just runs them. You don't actually have to, like, open an emulator, and then, yeah, it just runs them. And then it is unable to handle emulation for 64-bit X-86 apps,

which are the one that matters to me is Lightroom, but there's a bunch of them that just like, oh, you're not going to do it. And then the other category of apps, I guess we could talk about are, we're calling them UWP apps now, like basically Microsoft Store apps, which in theory, since they've been, they followed Microsoft's rules for existing in the store will just work because they're 32 or their arm, I think. And so in theory, the idea here is absent a couple of wacky exceptions and then all video games, all games, except for Angry Birds, whatever you install here, it just works. You don't have to think about it.

Microsoft handled all of the problems of the transition from Intel to Arm. That's the theory. The practice that I found is, man, I don't even know to start. The 32-bit Intel apps or X-86 apps run much, much better than I expected, but I expected just it to be terrible. But it actually was like, okay, like iTunes ran, like Chrome ran, and like it didn't feel like holaciously slow.

I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Apple made the Intel transition from PowerPC or whatever it was way back in the day. And you could definitely tell when something was running emulated. This doesn't feel like that. This feels like pretty good. But over the course of an entire day, there are like a thousand tiny cuts that like it's fine when you're just using it. You're like, oh, yeah, this is great. No problem. But then there's just like, huh, I just woke the computer up it.

Everything's really slow and I don't know why. Or, huh, this battery isn't as good as I expect. it to be and I don't know why. There's just like little things that add up to, uh, right? Like any individual thing you look at it, you look at Chrome and like you've got 10 tabs open and you're like, huh, this works. But then you like, you just go back to like, you know, edge and you're like, oh, this works way better.

Yeah, I had the same sort of thing. I think the problem was you'd load one emulated app and it'd be fine. You know, you'd use it. I know like Chrome. Load another one on. Yeah, fine. And by the time you got to like, you know, five or six going. then it all just starts to like grind in places where you're multitasking and stuff.

And I think that is the problem. Obviously the emulation layer, what they're using here is, you know, it's very capable. But it's not designed so that every single damn app that you run on the thing is, you know, supposed to be emulated. So the idea is that hopefully these apps will go to arm 64 and be natively running on the on the thing. And so we installed Chrome because everyone uses Chrome. You just use Edge to get Chrome. That's the meme. So we did that and yeah, like it was not great.

But the Edge Chromium, we got a copy of that, the Arm 64 version. And Lord, it's like night and day. Yeah. In terms of like both performance and battery life, right? Like, because using all the emulated apps really takes a hit on your battery. Yeah, it takes a hit and it just slows everything down. Like you can try to Photoshop on this thing. You literally like.

Oh, God. It's so bad. You could just watch it almost frame by frame. It feels like like just rendering to try and do a new document. And it's just try zooming in, try multiple layers, like, try different font work. Like it's just, yeah, it's not good. And that's just for basic editing. I can't imagine if you tried to load a gig, PSD on it.

But yeah, just get a love with that. But yeah, like so, but a lot of the stuff that you will run on here or like a lot of the core and key stuff on desktop the machines now, it's run through the browser. So I think a lot of the slowdowns and the problems we were seeing on Chrome and whatever, it's because it's emulated. So, yeah, as soon as I started

using that Edge Chromey, I was like, oh, like... Just to clarify, Tom, the Edge Chromium is not officially out. You were able to get a copy of it through some sources. Do we have any idea when that is going to be released? Is it coming out in January with the Edge final release? So Microsoft won't say... Yeah, we asked them over and over

and over again. Yeah, it's definitely not coming out January 15th publicly, like the final version of Chrome, edge chromium's coming out then, but the Arm 64 version won't be released, like, stable channel, won't be released there. And I don't think, like, chromium itself, there's like, there's like a couple of builds that are 64-bit arm working, but, like, there's not like a stable build out there or even a beta build of just, like, straight up chromium that you can go get. Yeah, it's not quite writ. There's some sort of blocker bug, apparently.

But apparently it should, well, from what I know, is that it should be going to Canary soon. So there will be a build that you can officially download from Microsoft rather than the ones that are sort of floating around. And you'd be able to use that on the ProX. But they should, like, the builds are okay. Occasionally the tabs crash, but they should have had this ready, you know? Like everyone should be able to download this on the ProX and get going right now. Because it feels completely different with it. So my battery life, I characterize it as around six.

maybe seven hours of active use. Microsoft's battery estimates, everybody does it differently, but now Microsoft is saying, like, it'll last this long, like, total, like, if you know, when you're, like, at lunch and blah, blah, blah, blah, and they clock it at 13,

which actually, if you think about it, isn't that much. And I was not quite getting that. They're also doing it at very low screen brightnesses. Very low screen brightness, yeah. So I was, like, pretty disappointed with battery life. And now maybe, I don't know, like, I think actually I'm getting better battery life

and even like the Surface Pro 7 than I am on this thing. But I was also just using it like a computer. But if you use it with the 64-bit version of Edge, apparently gets way better battery. If I haven't done this as full-time as you have, Tom, though. So I've tried to exclusively use Native Arm 64 stuff, although that's not strictly too, actually. I've been using UWP stuff and the browser. But I've not used anything like, you know, Discord or Chrome or anything else that is running emulated. So I've running stuff from the store or the browser. And yeah, like, what was it? Let me check my notes. Like, it was draining probably about 10% an hour. Right, which is incredible, which is what you expect. Yeah, like 10 hours is what I

expected. Of real use. Yeah. 10 hours of like real solid use. Yeah. If it hits 10 hours, that's down good. Yeah, that's about what I get when I'm really truly using an iPad Pro, like my 11 inch. The 13, whatever inches probably last a little bit longer. But like, the iPad Pro seems to last forever. But when you're actually like doing work, especially stuff like conference calls, which kills the iPad battery for some reason, it ends up running around 10 hours. So like that's actually comparable. Yeah, I feel like 10 hours is on the edge of like where I'd be like, you know, this is probably worth the compromises and some of the, you know, the slowdowns and the other apps, maybe. Yeah, well, Dan, the point you keep bringing up is there's, there's like, you have different metrics for

what's acceptable for battery life. So a battery life on like a pretty big chunky laptop, that you know you're going to be walking around an office with. It's like that's one thing. But a battery light and an ultra-portable is something different. Yeah, you know, I think that actually the battery expectations for a device like the Prox or the iPad Pro, or even a laptop that is very thin and light that's designed to go with you everywhere you need to go or actually higher than, say, like, your average run-of-the-mill laptop that you are probably parking at a desk for a long time because these computers are meant to go wherever you are and always be accessible and be used.

So like in the example of the ProX, it's got built-in LTE, which is like something I've wanted on every laptop for the past five years, which means that I can use it when I'm not in a Wi-Fi environment and I'm not near an outlet. So like I actually have higher demands of the battery for something like that than I do for say a MacBook Pro that's sitting on a desk all day long anyways. And so when we're talking about these battery life expectations and when we're like getting disappointed by them and things like that, like, sure, I can kill a MacBook Pro in seven hours just like you can kill. kill this pro 10 or pro x in seven hours i keep saying pretend um but getting 10 hours out of the pro 10 really the pro x really helps fulfill that dream of this computer that is always accessible always with me always on the go it doesn't limit to me to where i need to be to use it okay so if we're

talking about categories like when i when i talked to myxhaught about i'm like this is like an executive computer it's a CEO computer it's not an engineer's computer like yep that's exactly right um Like, this is a C-suite computer. And, like, we felt, we sort of described, like, the very first MacBook, MacBook that way. You know, like, it's a little bit underpowered, but, like, you're a cool guy if you have this super thin-light computer, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I want to feel that way about this.

And I kind of do, especially if you, like, live in office. But it's like, at what point are you like, well, it doesn't run this, but that's okay. It doesn't run this, but that's okay. It doesn't run this, but, man, that's just what the hell, right? And if I could tell you where that line was on this thing for you, I would tell you go ahead and buy it as long as you can stay within those limits. But because of that like arm variable, you never really know if it's going to run the thing that you want with doing a ton of research. And then even if you do that research, so if people are going to have this, you won't really know if it runs that thing that you need well until you spend the $1,800. Because you shouldn't buy the $1,000 version.

you should buy the $1,800 version. Until you spend $1,800, you just don't know. And that's nuts. That's the biggest problem with that. If they had done this as like the Surface Go, you know, tiny little computer, a different kind of thing. It's going to be slow, but it's small so you're not going to get mad at it if it doesn't run Photoshop or whatever.

And it costs $800. I'd be like, huh, yeah, there's like actually a lot of people that, like, even if it doesn't run the thing they need, for $800, they've got like an ultra-portable computer that has LTE. That's great. But 1800, man, that's just, I don't know. And when we're saying 1800, we're including the cost of the keyboard. Yes.

Probably the pen if you're buying that as well. We're upgrading to the more storage because the base model has like menial storage. Well, it's the storage, but it's the RAM. The RAM is the main thing. And I think it's like 1650, maybe 17 something to get the cheaper keyboard. So I'm like, I'm overstating it a little bit, but not much, man. Yeah, nobody's walking out the door paying a thousand bucks. Yeah.

Because you have to buy the keyboard to use it. So the reality is you're paying a lot. And it's just that if there were no other computers in the world, we'd have one conversation. But think about the Windows computer, how much Windows computer you can get for like $15, $1,600 bucks. You can get so much, right? So I'm going to give a little teaser. I'm working on a review of the latest XPS 13, which has a six-core Intel processor in it. It is like the most powerful 13-inch laptop I might have ever tested.

and it has a 4K touchscreen. It's got 16 gigs of RAM. It's got 512 gigs of storage, battery life of like 7, 8 hours or what have you. And it's, I think, $1,600. Yeah. Damn. I mean, Tom, the thing that's driving me crazy, though, is now that I've got this leak of this, you know, 64-bit thing, I use a Chromebook all the time.

And so if I literally only use a 64-bit edge and just make app versions of every single app that open up in separate windows and just use this as a Chromebook that happens to have office if I really need it. I'm kind of like, oh, this is great. It's actually all right, right? Yeah, it's like they made the Chrome OS tablet that Google should have, right? Yeah, I think that's kind of what it is.

It just costs you $17 or $1,800. Yeah, so you know, you should totally go buy this if you're willing to spend $1,800 and use leaked beta software and nothing else. Sure, go for it. Like, come on. So the other thing I've seen people, people say is like, oh, there's no apps.

And, you know, it's like Windows RT and Windows phone all over again. Like, that's one thing I've said. But, like, I think it's, I think that's fair to say. Definitely like, you know, it's like Windows RT again. But there's slight difference here. And the only slight hope is that people don't have to create entirely new apps for this, right? Right. Like Microsoft's not saying, you have to do this.

And that's, you have to recompile your app to Arm 64, which, you know, it's not, It's not a simple task, but it's not as crazy as going and building a UWP app or Windows phone app. Yeah. And I think the key difference is that when people say there's no apps, and we discussed this already, but there's just the pro-level apps that on a device that has pro in the name that costs this price and you can't run Lightroom on it, you're going to have a real hard time running Photoshop. I couldn't recommend this for a student in STEM classes because they're not going to be able to run any code compiling software that they need to use.

things like that. So, like, that pro level that puts the pro in this name is what's missing here. There is, as we've said, you know, you can use the browser for 95% of your things. You can, you know, use Office and things like that. There's a lot of, like, you know, Twitters and utility apps or whatever. Yeah, but even Office is running 32-bit. Office is running in 32-bit. Yeah, that's crazy.

Even Microsoft can't get this stuff recompiled to Arm. Like, come on. For me, it's not necessarily the app availability. it's the app unpredictability. It's that you just never know what you're going to get when you click on an icon. Yeah, that is a problem. And I think that's also,

the problem is they've called it a pro, a Surface Pro. So you have expectations knowing what the Surface Pro is. And at this price point, like you have expectations. Yeah, they called it an X. You have expectations of what an X is. I mean, Microsoft is so consistent in its use of the letter X and its products.

Okay, just to wrap up, Microsoft did this whole big Ignite IT thing, conference and I was expecting it to be a snoozer but then I woke up one morning and Tom had posted 35 things to the site and it would like there's a big shift happening

and I am trying to figure out what Microsoft's plan is for Windows apps basically and just for like yeah Windows apps and like its whole system for how it wants developers to interact with the stuff that it makes because

you know we make fun of them right so for jumping from Metro to Windows store to UWP to blah blah blah and never and nobody like every time they do one of these shifts they get like a couple big companies to go along for the ride and then they're like well that didn't work and then they bail

like S mode is another great example like Dropbox is available at S mode on the surface of ProX but S mode isn't even a thing but the name of Dropbox in the store is Dropbox for S mode but like Microsoft doesn't even have S mode anymore. It's also like fake Dropbox. I love it But so there's this fluid framework, which we got to talk about a little bit.

But is Microsoft trying to make UWP apps anymore? Are they trying to make 64-bit apps for ARM? Are they just like saying, screw it? We're only just going to do classic Windows apps because that seems to do what they decided with OneNote. Or are they making web apps? Are they doing all the above? Tom, just please tell me the answer so I could stop wondering. God, if I knew.

Damn it. But as anything with Microsoft, it's far more complicated. But I think the overall thing is that the UWP stuff was for a different era. It was for when they were going off the phone, they wanted it to run on Xbox. They had this vision of an app that would run everywhere, hence Universal part of that name. Yeah, so the UWP, I'm sorry, if you don't know, it stands for, I think, Universal Windows Platform, profile, yeah. And so the idea was you could write once, run anywhere.

But you make an app, you put it in the Microsoft store, and it'll work on Windows tablets, It's Windows laptops and also Windows phones. And you can... And Xbox and HoloLens. An Xbox and HoloLens. And it has a consistent UI across all these things, and it's a beautiful dream world. And they got, you know, tens of developers to do it. Yeah.

And so the majority of that dream has gone away. The phone has gone away. That was the key bridge. Right. And the export stuff is just like, yeah, whatever. And HoloLens is still developing. We'll see what happens. And the other part of it is that.

that these things only run on Windows 10. And they had millions of people still using Windows 7. So to convince even enterprise app developers to refactor their apps into this, it's just not going to happen when they can't run on the vast majority of desktops. So I think that's kind of held, the legacy of the enterprise and stuff

with Microsoft always holds them back on everything because they're always trying to appease everything for businesses. And that's just the nature of their business. And I think that's what we're seeing now. So like the OneNote stuff they announced this week. They announced basically OneNote 2016, which is a desktop app, it's coming back to life. Yeah. And it's going to get a bunch of features.

Yeah. If you're not familiar, there's OneNote 2016 hanging around. And then they made the new, like, UWP basically, version of OneNote that was like the future. And like, if you had a Surface Pro and you like tap the screen, it would open up that version of OneNote. And like, I think. Yeah. And so it was like. And it's really nice.

The UWP app is like one of the better ones. It was, in fact, the app that I recommended as the best note-taking app on Windows. and OneNote general being the one note best not taking app, especially if you're cross-platform. And so I was expecting them, okay, well, eventually what they're going to do is they're going to get all of Office onto this new platform. It's going to be great. They just need to, like, add a few more features,

and maybe some stuff will, like, fall by the wayside when they make the transition, and that's okay because life moves on. But instead, they just totally, like, backtracked and retrenched. They said, yeah, that thing's done. We're just going back to the old 2016 version of OneNote to go along with the old, you know, versions of Office. It's very confusing. Yeah, so they're going back to it,

and I think what they're going to do is their most, merging the co-base underlying co-base and then I think they're going to bring a bunch of those cool new features over to this old desktop app. But I don't really know what's going to happen to the new app. They say it's going to be still exist. Yeah. You know, Microsoft loves having two apps for everything. It's Internet Explorer, there's Edge. Yeah.

On Windows 10, there's two SkyUp apps. There's like Windows Mail and Outlook, like proper Outlook. So it's just, I think it's going to be another one of those scenarios. Great. I don't know. Love it. But, underline. lying all of this is that about a year ago I think it was they said they were going to put their new

touch-friendly um UWP versions of office which are really nice as well those things launch in like less than a second they're crazy basic they just yeah you'd use them every day um it's not the word that you used to those are on hold and they were going to focus on win 32 which is the desktop and web yeah and the only exception was one note until now so I feel like they are going to focus on focus a heck of a lot on the web for the stuff that they were trying to achieve with UWP, like that original dream, and everything else, like, you know, the legacy and keeping their business customers happy, desktop, 32, allowing devs to just kind of go wild, do what you want, you know? Like, I think that's their thing now. Just do whatever you need to do to get

your app in the store and whatever. Yeah. I mean, I mentioned this on the yesterday's Vergecast, or the Vergecast were recorded yesterday. It does seem like there's a little, you know, there's a little bit of Microsoft is trying to make sure that Google doesn't completely dominate everything on the web. They're actually trying to get back in there a little bit, which I'm actually kind of excited about to have a little bit of competition in web apps and web stuff. It's just too bad that it's all based on chromium, but whatever. Yeah. The other part of their announcements, they're previewing the fluid framework stuff, which is essentially just like modular version of like documents. So instead of having a word document, you'd have like a, a, a,

a cloud space where everyone plugs into. And I think the idea is that they'll be able to have this stuff in all the different apps and services. And AI and other apps can just plug into this cloud document and do whatever they need to do. And that I think like that is an interesting concept for the future of the web in general and whether they can pull it off. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I just, I can't wait to live my entire life inside, you know, the Azure X, because they're going to add X to the end of Azure at some point soon because

Microsoft. Windows in the cloud. Yeah, and I'm going to mispronounce it to Azure of course. All right. We've run a little bit longer that I intended to. We've all got to get out of here. Final thoughts. Mine is I bought a Super Pro 7 and I love my life except for the trackpad.

Mine is, I'm so tempted by the ProX but I'm only tempted because I'm like hopeful they'll get better. Yeah, man. And that's not a good temptation, right? Yep, same exact vote. Yep.

Mine is that the editorial I wrote in December of 2016 is still unfulfilled. Wait, nobody knows what you're talking about. In 2016, December 2016 was when Microsoft first announced that arm support would be coming to Windows. And at the time, I wrote that that gives them the opportunity to build the perfect Surface Pro with integrated LTE, great battery life and great performance. And they had to have all of those things across the board. And they kind of did half the battery life. They did LTE, and they missed on the performance.

performance. So I'm still waiting for that. Dan, you're wrong. They built your dream Surface. It's here. It just like it breaks if you install anything on it. Yeah, you've just got to test it for the next three years. Once Surface Pro 3x or whatever is out, that'll be the one. I mean, this is why I called my review heartbreaker because like this is this is the right thing. They made the right thing. And they just, they don't have it, it breaks if you run 32 but too many 32 bit after. They left the pro out. At the end of that editorial I wrote the most important thing that Microsoft has to do is keep the pro in the pro in the surface pro and that means it has to perform like a pro computer and it doesn't do that. All right. Well, everybody, Tom, Dan,

thank you for doing this bonus episode of me. Where can people find you on Twitter? I'm at DC-C-Sifert. S-E-I. Yes. And I am at Tom Warren. And I am at Backlon. And I'm really curious. We always leave review stuff on the cutting room floor, just we can't write 10,000 word reviews. So it was really fun to do this little bonus episode, just going really deep on all the stuff we couldn't talk about in the video or the written review. So let me know what you think of this. Please hit me up on Twitter. And actually, speaking of Twitter, on Twitter, you will find a link. I tweeted it. Dan tweeted it to job posting. Dan, tell us about that. Yeah. So if you love these kind of discussions and having them about laptops and PCs and these kind of debates and testing all this stuff, I'm looking for somebody who is a laptop PC expert to join my reviews team and really own this. coverage of laptops, everything from reviews to how-toes and buying guides and even the hot take and editorial.

So if that's you, go please check out my Twitter. The link is there to apply. I look forward to seeing it. All right, that's the show there are a bunch of other great Fox Media podcast, Empire podcasts to talk about. There's too many. So I'm just going to plug Reset with Ariel Jam Ross. It is a wonderful show, which I actually might appear on relatively soon.

So keep an eye out for that. Anywhere fine podcasts are found. We're also going to have, of course, standard Vergecast stuff. We've got the interview episode of Nil. We're going to have the chat show again. And then over Thanksgiving, we're going to do some weird stuff. Pirate radio, there's going to be a zine. It's going to be wild.

So stay tuned for all that. Thanks for listening, everybody. Rock and roll.