Apple CEO Tim Cook: "Microsoft Surface Book Tries Too Hard To Do Too Much" (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: Apple CEO Tim Cook isn't making any friends on the PC side of the aisle this week. Cook took to the interview circuit this week to heavily promote the release of the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro and didn't waste any time kicking some dirt in the eyes of PC consumers around the world. When questioned on his thoughts about PCs, Cook wondered, "I think if you're looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?" Many would take issue with those comments. But we'll leave those comments behind, because Cook decided to set his targets on the current darling of the PC community — the Microsoft Surface Book. Even though Cook says that his company's relationship with Microsoft is "really good," he went on to say that the Surface Book "tries too hard to do too much" and that "it's trying to be a tablet and a notebook and it really succeeds at being neither." It will be interesting to see Mr. Cook's reaction as sales figures for the device roll in post holiday shopping season.

Comments

He's got his talking points

[Anonymous Coward]

He's trying to defend his design calls of the ipad "pro".

The fact of the matter is that, if it weren't for Windows 10, I'd probably be looking at a surface over the ipad "pro" because it's more versatile and makes more sense. But I don't like where MS seems to be going with Windows 10's spyware and forcing everyone onto updates - So I'm holding off on any purchases for now.

Re:He's got his talking points

[TWX]

Work issued to me a Thinkpad Yoga with the 12.5" screen, i5, 4GB RAM. It works so well that when my wife needed a new computer to replace the old Thinkpad X301 she bought the i7 version with 8GB RAM. It's running Windows 8.1 and we currently have no desire to change that.

Cook is right, it is neither a perfect laptop nor a perfect tablet, but when she was traveling and going to be gone for about three weeks for a family emergency without reliable Internet access it made for an excellent platform on which to watch movies and TV shows, a good book reader, a good casual simple game computer (ie, emulated card and tile games), and a good computer on which to take notes. It also allowed her to do some work when she could occasionally get Internet access as it ran full versions of productivity programs.

If I want a toy I'll buy something that's only a tablet. If I want a computer to do work on then at a minimum I want something that runs a conventional computer operating system.

Re:He's got his talking points

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

There's a certain irony that the one thing that really puts me off Apple gear, both iOS devices and mainstream OS X computers, is the lack of commitment to long term support. I don't want to buy a device and find the OS isn't even getting security patches within five minutes unless I update to some new version that I might or might not want. I want to buy a device where the software is supported for the working lifetime of the machine and whether to install updates for anything other than security/stability/compatibility is up to me and an independent decision.

Whatever else you can say about Microsoft, until very recently they always made a serious effort to support Windows systems long-term. But then with Windows 10 they've baked in the forced updates, which removes the one thing that almost guaranteed I'd be buying Windows and not OS X machines for the foreseeable future.

Re:He's got his talking points

[Anonymous Coward]

An honest review of iOS' call-home tendencies would probably not give it higher marks than Win10. For example, try playing a game? Can't disable GameCenter. Try listening to music when there's no network? You're treated to a message it can't connect to Apple before you can play it.

Re:He's got his talking points

[AmiMoJo]

It's a security measure that has been in place since Windows 98. Windows Update always bypasses the hosts file to prevent malware disabling it that way, or even worse redirecting it to another server.

Note that it only affects Windows Update. I have confirmed with a packet sniffer that the telemetry stuff does use the hosts file.

Re:He's got his talking points

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

OS X systems also tend to be updatable more times before the newest accompanying hardware undergoes some major change that prevents the upgrade from running on older systems.

It's not having the ability to update that I object to, it's being forced to update the whole OS just to keep up with basic security and stability issues.

For one thing, upgrading your OS is never a trivial exercise and always carries some risk in the real world, even if you're careful. A major update might fix some security issues but introduce new ones as part of new or modified features, for example.

Just as important, you might simply not like the new version as much as the old one. Maybe that's because of the UI look and feel. Maybe they changed the way some feature you rely on worked, or removed it altogether. Maybe they dropped compatibility with some third party software you use. In any case, you shouldn't have to feel like you're playing the lottery about how long a computer is going to continue working in the same way it was supposed to when you bought it.

Devices for professional use and at this kind of price level should be supplied with software relevant to a generous reasonable working lifetime. If that software was defective (security vulnerabilities, instability, whatever) then it should be properly fixed so it works properly and as advertised. Security screw-ups are not an excuse to get the user to change to other software that wasn't what they signed up for.

Re:He's got his talking points

[cfalcon]

Windows is easy, Linux is hard. In Linux, sometimes you have to use a package manager. In Windows, all you need to do is, turn off one drive, log out of your microsoft account, ensure one drive isn't active, disable cortana, add one hundred entries to hosts, add them to windows firewall, add them to an external firewall because Windows ignores hosts and windows firewall, disable and remove seven services, remove several entries from a task scheduler, change several group policies, and spam over twenty wusa uninstall commands from the command line.

Simple.

That's not everything though. It may be close.

Re:I remember a time...

[Macfox]

The G's were rarely faster. And the ones that were, cost vastly more. Kinda like saying "my Ferrari is faster than the average consumer sedan....So there!" The whole photoshop benchmark was a joke. Basically comparing optimised PPC PS plugins against vanilla x86 plugins, processing rather large images to exaggerate the difference. Anyone that worked with both on a daily basis knew the truth. The one thing Apple had going for it was it's elegant structure ("System" OS). No DLL hell, simple drag and drop. No Install/uninstall. Just delete the files. But that was all lost in the switch PPC and I guess need for extensible OS with the various clones. OSX just shoves all the nastiness under the rug.