Re: surprisingly good – at least from a hardware perspective.
> Until Linux supports all the touch/pen/dial features, you would just spend a lot of money for a device you can't fully use. It looks MS understood it needs high-end hardware to sell an OS many would like to avoid...
@LDS
You may have a point. Hit the nail on the head you have, When you put this together with Apple's new function-bar-strip plus touch-id reader which undoubtedly also does not have drivers then we have the worrying trend that PC hardware which has been traditionally open(-ish) is being made more closed by two of the world's biggest tech companies. I would not be surprised if this was a deliberate tactic. It is as much about building walled gardens in the middle of the open(-ish) PC ecosystem as it is about innovation.
The people here suggesting that OEMs ought to do hardware innovation like this are speaking out of their hats. The normal way the PC hardware industry has worked for 30 years is that a standard is born, de facto or otherwise and the OEMs manufacture to those templates. Same goes for box builders and peripheral makers. I'm all for hardware innovation but do you trust every shop to bundle Linux drivers with their new innovative tech? No, didn't think so. I has taken 50 years to get a semi-open PC ecosystem. Have we forgotten the days when networking kit only worked with a particular OS? Do we want to go back to those days?
When Apple launches new shiny laptop features (tied to macOS) and Microsoft launches new shiny laptop and desktop features (tied to Windows) and Google launches new shiny phone features (tied to its flavour of Android) what we geeks need to be doing is calling them out on not creating open hardware standards. Forget about your stupid fan-boy and -girl partisanship for a while can you not? Stop Apple bashing and Microsoft bashing. It's getting really old really quickly. I can barely read the comment section here any more. We get it. You hate *insert object of hate* here. Keep it to yourself. Nobody cares.
Rant over :)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
