I have to second this. We are an all Mac company, but service customers on Windows. For testing purposes, our company purchased a Surface Laptop (not a Surface Book), and I was blown away by the quality coming out of Microsoft.
As I use the Surface Laptop, I wish Apple would steal the design and apply it to a new MacBook Air.
The screen is excellent, and coming from the Mac world it is surprisingly how good having a touch screen is.
Battery life is great and smashes my 15” 2016 MacBook Pro. It reminds me of the good old days of MacBook Air (all day) battery life.
The keyboard has travel, but I had to swap around the “Windows Key” and “Ctl key” to stop going mad (I have 19 years of macOS shortcut muscle memory).
Microsoft reminds us that you can still have a USB-A port and SD Card Slot in a nice form factor. It is possible to escape the #DongleLife .
My only gripes are 1) Windows still pales in comparison to OS X 2) the power supply is proprietary (I really like USB-C chargers).
I guess most people, even in HN circles, agree that Microsoft as well as other PC manufacturers like Dell (XPS) or Lenovo (Thinkpad) can built beautiful, high quality hardware, but as you already state in your last sentence, that's not the problem at all. Windows is. Or the lack of macOS, for those of us that can't use Linux fulltime.
As I use the Surface Laptop, I wish Apple would steal the design and apply it to a new MacBook Air.
The screen is excellent, and coming from the Mac world it is surprisingly how good having a touch screen is.
Battery life is great and smashes my 15” 2016 MacBook Pro. It reminds me of the good old days of MacBook Air (all day) battery life.
The keyboard has travel, but I had to swap around the “Windows Key” and “Ctl key” to stop going mad (I have 19 years of macOS shortcut muscle memory).
Microsoft reminds us that you can still have a USB-A port and SD Card Slot in a nice form factor. It is possible to escape the #DongleLife .
My only gripes are 1) Windows still pales in comparison to OS X 2) the power supply is proprietary (I really like USB-C chargers).