I had a Surface Book 2 WITHOUT the base i.e. just the screen. Best tablet I've ever had. 15" and yet thinner (then) and lighter than an iPad Pro which still doesn't come bigger than 13".
Two useful accessories I had were 'surface connector to USBC' adapter (to mitigat the small battery) and a ring mouse. Scrolling on touchscreen for Windows has been as good as MacBook haptic trackpads, certainly better than most Windows oem trackpads.
There was brief moment in time where Panay was poised with the Surface Book and Surface Studio (just wish they made a monitor version of the studio) to give Apple a run for their money. But they replaced the Surface Book with Surface Laptop studio, devolved the OS with ads and AI and now I'm mainly only on the Mac...
I tried out hers to see if I liked them, and am not sure which make/model it is. I'll ask her when I get a chance. I do remember her saying they cost about $125 so not cheap, but probably not high end either
>> Complaining about the name of the bill "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" is just dumb. Senators and Reps name bills all sorts of funny things aiming to be catchy or what have you, it's part of our process.
Senators and reps and bills all sorts of funny things aiming to be catchy by creating a succinct acronym. [1]. This cultural practice is sometimes called ‘backronym’. Trying to tie ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ as an example of that practice is ‘sane-washing’; ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ is a dumb person’s idea of a backronym [2]. Dissecting the bill name is not just complaining for complaining’s sake; it’s just another in the long list of examples of Trump doesn’t understand what he’s doing and his enablers are not serious people by going along with
OK, I hear you that OBBBA is a bad backronym. So bad it's not a backronym. But it's catchy; Trump is a master of catchy soundbites. I submit to you: we're talking about it by name on HN, when we could be discussing mechanistic interpretation theory, which IMO is much more interesting. In fact, I submit that it's the last bill I really registered the name of since the Affordable Care Act. Which was (checks notes) 15 years ago, shortly after Teddy Kennedy died.(!)
Look at Trump's career. Look at his skill set. Look at what he's doing in the white house. He's a lot of things but he's not bad at getting what he values; he is in fact perhaps the most successful American ever in those terms. If you care about America it is incredibly short sighted to think he's dumb. He's extremely effective, just not at the things that a) you might want him to be b) we hope a President will be c) he says he's doing to the media.
It’s catchy in the same way “Mexicans will pay for the wall”, “China will eat the tariffs”, “Lock her up” is catchy; all catchy slogans but also nonsense. And, to bring it back to Krugman, Trump’s enablers let it slide because they are not serious people.
>> He's a lot of things but he's not bad at getting what he values; he is in fact perhaps the most successful American ever in those terms.
Nonsense. He’s bankrupted casinos. He lost his first reelection bid. He started on third base and ended up back at first.
>> If you care about America it is incredibly short sighted to think he's dumb.
He IS that dumb. He really doesn’t understand how tariffs/trade balance works. But his enablers have let him run riot. Biden was old. Reagan had mental issues. But their teams had firm hands on the steering wheel. That’s a serious country with some checks and balances. Trump admin is trying to revoke all that
Agreed on the slogans. I think you may have misunderstood me: I think he values locking in some (actual) billions, playing golf, being on TV and securing his jailfree future post-office. He's out-Reaganed Reagan - a C list reality TV star that somehow levered into being one of the most powerful people in the world.
In what sense can "NY developer nepo baby" be third base while "guy with the nuclear codes, billions of dollars of graft and personal guarantees from the Supreme Court" be first base? I truly don't understand that thinking.
>> Remember when Apple tried to tell the judge that they would be happy to welcome Epic back to the App Store once the court case was over and the issue adjudicated? I do, because I read the transcripts and listened to the hearings.
>> I guess technically it’s not over yet because Apple has appealed. On the other hand, Apple made the offer, without the condition of the court case being over, after the legal battle had already begun. So it seems like it was never a serious offer and only meant to sway public opinion.
Apple’s malicious compliance then pretending to ask for permission. Apple was trying to get the EU to rubber stamp the scare tactics. Instead the EU said let’s see that works out for you.
And fwiw we have hard evidence of Apple acting in bad faith. Gruber keeps giving Apple PR the benefit of the doubt but they absolutely do not deserve it.
>> "Tim cares about nothing else," an insider with knowledge of the matter told Gurman. "It’s the only thing he’s really spending his time on from a product development standpoint."
>> he's looking to beat Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who shares an obsession with AR and VR headsets — to market.
Is Tim Cook a product person now?
Does Apple care about being first now (instead of being best)?
Before the Vision Pro release we heard similar reporting from Gurman (1) (and recall the skepticism about Gurman's reporting: 2)
Yet here we are. After a decade of promoting AR (3) Tim Apple released a headset of which "the weirder things about visionOS (and the Vision Pro itself, really) is that there’s not a lot of true AR in the mix" (4)
Bigscreen made their name as VR video viewing solution before pivoting to PCVR hardware. I’m surprised they haven’t shown off any simple video solution with Beyond 2 especially considering that’s the main use case for the Apple Vision Pro.
That said, eye tracking and IPD adjustment is a huge upgrade to Beyond 2 for their niche
Flyover states versus costal states is too simplistic and inaccurate. A more accurate reduction is rural+suburban (isolated insular) communities versus urban (integrated diverse) communities.
Two useful accessories I had were 'surface connector to USBC' adapter (to mitigat the small battery) and a ring mouse. Scrolling on touchscreen for Windows has been as good as MacBook haptic trackpads, certainly better than most Windows oem trackpads.
There was brief moment in time where Panay was poised with the Surface Book and Surface Studio (just wish they made a monitor version of the studio) to give Apple a run for their money. But they replaced the Surface Book with Surface Laptop studio, devolved the OS with ads and AI and now I'm mainly only on the Mac...