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Microsoft Offers $650 To MacBook Users Who Switch To A Surface Tablet (techcrunch.com)
After Wednesday's announcement of their new Surface Studio tablet, Microsoft launched a campaign to entice MacBook users to try Surface tablets. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes TechCrunch:
Essentially, the company is offering MacBook owners $650 toward a Surface Pro or Surface Book, if they trade in their Apple laptop. Sure, it's all promotion, but it's the sort of gag that affords the company opportunity to showcase its perceived advantages over Cupertino as the company looks to appeal more and more toward creatives -- a category long dominated by Apple.
The offer is only valid through November 7th, according to Microsoft's official rules, and the deal does not extend to iPads.
The offer is only valid through November 7th, according to Microsoft's official rules, and the deal does not extend to iPads.
They're offering up to $650. My not-very-old Retina Macbook Pro is only worth $475, and I do not a $899 Surface Pro to be trading "up".
I had been using an old Macbook as my primary system for my day job, however I was forced by my employer to upgrade. The newest version of MacOS X supported on it was still so old that the anti-virus software that my employer uses was no longer being updated for it. All of the upgrade choices ran our corporate-build of Windows 10, so I ended up with a shiny new Windows 10 laptop.
I figured that it wouldn't be a big deal. Most of my work involves VPN'ing into a corporate network and ssh'ing into Unix-y/Linux systems where my real work is done. But, after a couple of months of this, I am ready to buy a cheap, used (but new enough for anti-virus upgrades) MacBook to do my work on.
There are just too many stupid bugs in Windows (when switching between displays and display modes, the desktop manager resizes windows to the smallest width and height even after switching to a larger display until restarted) and really annoying inconsistencies between applications (is consistent cut-and-paste behavior really so hard to implement?). And, then there is the battery life. The laptop nominally has a 10-hour battery, but, using it the same way that I was using the 9-year-old MacBook with a 5-year-old battery, I am getting less time between needing to recharge than I did with the MacBook (2.5 hours max). There may be ways to get the new Windows laptop to work as well as the old Macbook did, but shouldn't it just work well out of the box?
These things are almost detail-for-detail copies of the MacBook, iMac, and iPad lines. Only, they look a bit clunkier.
And the best part of all is that they are manufactured by Lenovo. You know, IBM's former laptop brand, sold to a Chinese conglomerate. . . and Lenovo products are notorious for coming with spyware and malware pre-installed.
OK, here is the best part, actually. You must send in your charger along with the functioning Mac laptop. Those things cost $65 to $85 all by themselves! Add in that that $650 is only a discount coupon to the purchase of Microsoft's clone of the MacBook Pro you are ditching. And of course, you only get the full $650 discount on a really recent Mac laptop. An older one. . . Well, you would get more on ebay for it than this 'trade-in value' that Microsoft is offering.
Last, there are many restrictions. The display must have no dead pixels. None. No scratches. Must boot up. No property ID tags. The list of restrictions goes on and on.
This is just PR, and a bad deal for someone looking to sell/trade an extra laptop they have sitting around. (I have 6.) You will get more cash money by selling your old laptop on ebay than by taking up Microsoft on this "deal" – and all the back-doors you'd expect from Lenovo and Microsoft.
In sum, the offer is insulting. If I trade in my fully-loaded Mac to get a Microsoft (Lenovo) clone of that Mac that has the same specs of what I am trading in (1 TB, 16 GB RAM, etc.), then the price is at least $3300! That is more than I paid for my Mac with similar specs. . . a couple of years ago! Why does this myth of Macs being expensive persist? Sure, you can buy a cheap computer, or a cheap car. Neither is the same as a well-designed and reliably manufactured laptop or car. You can buy a Camry or a BMW. You can buy a Dell or a Mac. I digress. . .
In any case, a Mac can dual-boot to run OS X, Windows, or Linux. Just partition your drive and go. I run Windows, when required, from a sleek Micro-SD card that does not stick out. I use Fusion, enabling use of Windows and OS X simultaneously, thanks to my two dual cores. And it's sand-boxed, so no Windows sploits can breach my main system (OS X).
It works seamlessly. I switch between Windows and OS X in a programming class that I teach: I use the environment that a given student is using on their laptop. The API is running on both OS's, as well as Firefox on both, and some others on the OS X side. It is so dead-easy to switch between them on the fly, during lab-sessions of a class.
No one will take this "offer" from Microsoft. You would get less than you gave away. And be stuck in Windows-only. Ick.