[RankingMember]

My experience with Surfaces and, particularly, the Surface Book and its accompanying dock were such that I'd have to be paid to use one again. For example, the dock would get its own updates silently and brick itself randomly and the proprietary magnetic connector between the dock and the computer was prone to a poor connection. I remember many occasions trying to work and my screens just randomly blinking in and out. To get service we'd have to go to a local Microsoft Store, a sad replica of the aging Apple "shiny glass minimalism" aesthetic, which have since all closed so we'd have to mail the thing today instead.

[exmadscientist]

I worked with some of the people responsible for the Surface Book, Surface docks, and specifically the Surface Book's dock. These were hardware people (EEs), not software people, and this was after their time at MS. Unfortunately I don't remember specifics (both because it's been a few years, and because I'd probably have to fuzz details anyway), but... :

Docks are horrifying products. Thunderbolt docks are doubly horrifying. They ordered in every single competing dock they could find, from that era's products, and found that every last one was garbage in some way or other, usually fatally so. The Thunderbolt interface in particular, and the firmware that needed to run on that interface controller, was the source of a lot of issues. None of them were particularly intrinisc to the protocol, but the hardware available was junk and the software available was worse. They couldn't really order up a custom non-garbage IC just for a $100 accessory that sells in limited volume. (Apple, however, could and would; they'd also demand to control the whole stack. This shows.)

They were very proud they got the thing working as well as they did, even though they all knew it was still pretty much trash. It was still better than the competition. Which is sad, but what can you do?

(At least it wasn't the Wi-Fi chip. The Surface Book's Wi-Fi adapter was chosen by higher-ups as the same one used in the XBox, presumably for sourcing reasons. It is trash. Again, much blood, sweat, and tears were spilled making it work as well as it does.)

(I also have the exact circuit for the LED that lights up on the charger cable. Apparently it was a big deal, which I find hilarious.)

[com2kid]

My team (Microsoft Band) discovered the reason why the surface's keyboard sometimes wouldn't work when connected. There was a hardware bug in the cortex MCU the keyboard used involving waking from deep sleep. One of our FW engineers spent several months figuring it out and eventually reported it to the manufacturer, and to the Surface team. IIRC it was something about wake on interrupt in a specific deep sleep mode and also something around timing.

It was a rather nasty bug. Firmware is full of nightmare scenarios like that.

[fmajid]

For an amusing take on the life of a systems programmer, James Mickens' "The Night Watch":

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf

[Gigachad]

I've been using the Apple USB-C multi port adapter thing since I got one free from a previous job, it seems overpriced since I can see a lot of similar ones much cheaper from competitors, but I've also never had an issue with it in any configuration on any device including non Apple ones. While I regularly see people having issues with the cheaper ones from Dell or Amazon sellers. So maybe you really are getting something extra when you pay for the Apple one.

[Terretta]

> So maybe you really are getting something extra when you pay for the Apple one.

Teardowns of accessories tend to show that to be true. Any similarly built product tends to cost even more thanks to Apple volume.

http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surpr...

And this tiny thing proves to be labeled 40W while actually delivering 60W safely which is nuts:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/09/17/custom-chips-and-...

[Forgeties79]

I’ve had great experiences with OWC as well though I know some people say it can be hit or miss even for the price. I’ve got two major docs from them and so far they’ve been very reliable

[thewebguyd]

> Docks are horrifying products. Thunderbolt docks are doubly horrifying.

I believe it. From all my years as a sysadmin, docks were by far the second largest source of headaches (after printers). Super high failure rate, all kinds of quirks, shoddy power delivery. And these weren't some cheap amazon basics dongles, I'm talking the $250+ docks from Dell, Lenovo, etc.

[whatever1]

Docks ok. But why printers are such a hot mess? For the past 20 years they could have been just webservers that we send REST requests to.

But no, we had to install random drivers on our machines, get blue screens and have to plug and unplug the printers until they get reset properly.

[jasonjayr]

MS got involved, and they are web servers that you send SOAP requests to, (to support MFC devices, of course) and the Windows stack uses UPNP to discover them, and register them by their UPNP names, and they tend to be sticky to their temporary IPv6 addresses, and often fail to rediscover when their temporary IPv6 address changes. Oh and the windows UI doesn't give you any ability to edit the 'port', failing instead with some incomprehensible "operation not supported" if you dare click the 'edit' on the port.

[dwaite]

It's not considered fully RESTful, but it sounds like you are describing IPP, which came out in 1997.

Compatibility marks/certifications like AirPrint (2010) define how to advertise your IPP printer and its features, such as whether you can directly send a PDF. IPP Everywhere is perhaps the most notable open alternative to AirPrint.

[jorvi]

IPP Everywhere and AirPrint are virtually identical AFAIK, it's just that AirPrint uses a slightly different proprietary raster format because Apple is gonna Apple.

[kube-system]

> For the past 20 years they could have been just webservers that we send REST requests to.

That exists, it’s called IPP.

[numpad0]

Because everyone wants 100% PostScript-compatible printers and nothing else.

The PostScript was created by ex-PARC people as they were founding a small startup called Adobe Systems, and it was chosen by Apple for its revolutionary 1985 LaserWriter printer. LaserWriter was partially OEM'd by Canon, and its competitors couldn't simply steal the protocol; most others to date use a 100% compatible proprietary protocols that, IIUC, aren't internally that much different from it. And PostScript later became the basis for Adobe's other publishing data formats, including PDF, which means pdf/ai/psd is 100% guaranteed WYSIWYG. macOS 10.x also partially uses PDF to render desktop.

and this ^ is why.

[coldtea]

>Because everyone wants 100% PostScript-compatible printers and nothing else.

Nothing about what the parent wrote prevents that.

[chubs]

What if computers simply rendered 300dpi PNG files and sent that to the printer?

[exmadscientist]

That's actually what a lot of Brother printers do with their default or generic drivers. Except... it's JPEG, not PNG, so you get artifacting. Drives me crazy.

Installing the specific driver like it's 1999 works well, but most people don't bother these days. And thus the world is a bit more crap.

[colechristensen]

Printers are complex robots, require frequent supply refills, and are high touch interactions with people. (people printing things wrong, people misusing printing resources, managing quotas for same, etc.)

It's not just firmware.

[coldtea]

It's 100% just firmware + crappy business model.

Printers are hardly "complex" - a few very standard gear/roller/sensor based mechanisms we've built for 4 decades pretty identically with hardly any innovation. Besides far more complex frequent-use devices don't have such shit problems and experience.

Nor is "you're out of blue ink, you can't print this b&w document" or "you didn't install the official $50 cartridge, but a third-party $10 one, you can't print" and such crap related even remotely to printers being "complex robots" or "requiring frequent supply reffils".

[colechristensen]

You're talking about printers at home. We're talking about printers at work.

[KaiserPro]

Apart from speciality printers[1], I've not had to use drivers for many years.

[1] ie a risograph

[vitally3643]

Because printers must be as cheap as possible and require a recurring revinue stream, which includes malware. Sorry, "valuable special offers".

It costs more money to make a printer with good firmware, and you're more likely to throw away a buggy printer and buy a new one with new special ink cartridges.

[coldtea]

>And these weren't some cheap amazon basics dongles, I'm talking the $250+ docks from Dell, Lenovo, etc.

Most of premium "docks" (if not all) are repackaged cheap hw sold much lower as no-name.

[dylan604]

The fact they are stuck with the concept of a dock being something the computer needs to physically sit in is just funny to me. I have a "dock" for my MBP that is just a little box that everything connects to that doesn't leave my desk. When I connect my MBP to it, I just plug in the single cable to it. If the cable goes bad, it hasn't in the 3+ years of use, I would just swap out the cable.

[esikich]

I haven't seen a dock that the laptop needs to sit in in ~10 years. Afaik those kind of laptops haven't been made for that long either. It's all USB-C now.

[UltraSane]

There are many windows laptops that have usb-c docks that don't physically dock. They are more accurately called port replicators. My work laptop is a Dell with one.

[kakacik]

Yeah parent is out of touch with 2026 reality. I sit now at work, having dell laptop connected to 'dock' via single usb cable to dell monitor. Monitor handles usb mouse, keyboard etc and power delivery.

No boxes laying around, just a single cable.

[jonhohle]

I’ve been doing this for about a decade with thunderbolt 2 then 3 (and backwards compat with 4).

I’ve had one cable begin to fray in all that time (a thunderbolt 4 caldigit cable). It swapped it out for an Apple cable and kept going.

I’ve used OWC docks, which aren’t known to be the best, but have worked great for charging, usb, Ethernet, FireWire, display (both over daisychained thunderbolt and display port), and SD cards. The only thing I have used them for extensively is audio. My monitor is a Thunderbolt 2 monitor with USB breakout. In between it and the dock is a two drive SATA enclosure.

I recently threw an extra Thunderbolt 3 dock I had on a USB-4 mini computer running Linux and it worked without any issue.

I’m sure there may be things that don’t work well, but its worked for me. I even wrote an app to have a global hot key to eject all my attached disks (DriveLight). Press the key combo, wait for the eject sound, pull the cable and go.

[whateverboat]

> They ordered in every single competing dock they could find, from that era's products, and found that every last one was garbage in some way or other, usually fatally so.

It is so hard to believe that when more than 1000 employees at my employers are also using at least one dock (Dell and Thinkpad both) and using them very well.

[selicos]

In 2017 or so the standard Surface docks were rough. I think we had at least a 60% failure rate, though for the CEO who demanded a surface we swapped his issue dock with the one he had the week prior. And it would work for X weeks until failing to display to external monitors. Then we'd swap it out for the one from X weeks back and continue the cycle. Maybe change the power brick out.

Today I swap the power brick on my Dell thunderbolt dock when it acts up. Given the hours of use and how many times it's been plugged/unplugged from various laptops/etc (it worked great off an AMD desktop PC with thunderbolt on the rear I/O), I think my employer should buy me a knew one out of respect.

[mschuster91]

We are talking about a situation some years past. I member there were USB docks that if you had them attached to external power and ethernet, but not a laptop, they'd instant-kill the network by sending garbage frames that would cause switches to fault off.

Only around 2024-ish the situation with USB and TB docks seemed to stabilize.

[menssen]

I had a CalDigit TB dock -- maybe 2021-ish? -- that every time I unplugged my MacBook would take my internet offline. I thought I was insane. How is that even possible? But I finally gave up and returned it.

Thanks for finally answering this mystery for me.

[mschuster91]

Ayup, it was a topic on HN at least twice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31268134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12339902

[semi-extrinsic]

I have a brand new TV where if I plug the HDMI into my M4 MBP, MacOS ceases to have any functioning WiFi capability. Unplug the HDMI and internet returns instantly.

[mschuster91]

That's probably because your TV has support for Ethernet over HDMI enabled. Run ifconfig to check if there's a new (and, possibly, default-routed) interface when you plug that TV in.

[cthalupa]

I remember getting my first CalDigit TB dock and being excited - everyone seemed to love them. I expected it to largely Just Work.

That thing Didn't Work more than it Worked, but options were slim. Eventually it fully died about 14 months in. I didn't even bother checking to see what the warranty terms were. TS3 Plus, back in 17 or 18. What a piece of shit.

Sounds like it's a good thing I didn't bother trying again in the early 2020s and only recently bought a new dock.

[phs318u]

Very similar story here. Went through two Caldigit TB hubs most recently a TB4. Soooo many issues. The same Ethernet issue described above, a failure to provide the rated PD power, and the TB linked monitor connection was dodgy af. A very expensive lesson. Add to this the confusing (and deceptive) jumble of TB cable standards. I have so many supposed TB3,4 and 5 rated cables I could probably circle my house. You have to hand Apple one thing and that’s the consistency of their hardware due to tight control of the stack and supply chain. You get far fewer of these sorts of issues.

[bayesnet]

I have a TS3+ that broke about 18 months in. I talked to support, set up a repair, and before I could send it the dock unbroke and had worked since. Truly mysterious and left me with a sense of unease with that thing given the cost.

[jon-wood]

My Caldigit TS4 dock is so close to being perfect except for my secondary monitor turning on maybe 50% of the time if I connect it to the dock via USB-C, I've given up and now have USB-C from the secondary monitor going straight to my laptop but let me be entirely clear in saying I hate that I have to do that.

[davb]

Yes!! The Dell WD19 was notorious for that. My wife’s company used those - we couldn’t leave her WFH dock connected to our home network because of the wild broadcast storms causing our core switch to stop processing frames from her home office desktop switch. My org used HP Dock G5 units which behaved much better (besides the occasional firmware update killing video output until a power cycle, and inconsistent MAC address pass through between hardware revisions).

[exmadscientist]

Yes, this would have been around 2015. (When I said "Surface Book" I meant the original!)

Docks were bad, bad products in those days. They were no longer the dedicated bulky-but-reliable things of years past, or the modern finally-debugged dongles we've got now.

This was Intel's Alpine Ridge and it was hell. (At least, I think that was the one. Certainly, it was hell!)

[mschuster91]

> They were no longer the dedicated bulky-but-reliable things of years past

The old bulky-but-reliable things often enough didn't contain much electronics - it was often enough the raw interfaces exposed directly on these multi-pin connectors. Simple, stupid and reliable as long as no electrically conductive dirt was around.

[esikich]

Ask your helpdesk team what they think of docking stations.

[rtpg]

I think 2017 is the big thing here.

We had those early "blessed by Apple" USB-C LG monitors. Garbage when it came to connectivity. Same with docks and the like.

We're now 9 years later so... I think it's all better now than before.

[als0]

> It was still better than the competition

Plenty of cases where Surface isn't. Microsoft like to think they can make hardware but they're no better than other OEM and it's clearly not a focus for them

[chihuahua]

When I worked at Microsoft (years ago), some employees had Surface laptops. They frequently had issues where the laptop just wasn't working right and required rebooting, at the start of a meeting where they wanted to connect the Surface laptop to a projector. Always the Surfaces, never the Lenovos. One of the Surface things split into two parts, the screen (containing the actual computer) and the keyboard. There was something weird about connecting and disconnecting those parts, some motorized docking/undocking mechanism, that caused problems.

Then Microsoft had the episode where some of their Surface hardware would not reliably stay in sleep mode and cooked itself while being transported in a bag. At the time, Microsoft tried to excuse this by claiming that "a fundamental Computer Science problem" needed to be solved to fix this issue. Strange how other manufacturers could do this without overcoming unsolvable problems in frontier CS research.

While I'm usually a die-hard Microsoft fanboi, I have concluded that their Surface line is terrible.

[alargemoose]

This is even more of a knock to Microsoft but the overheating during sleep issue can affect any windows laptop made in the last 5 or so years. The cause is nothing surface specific, it’s Microsoft enforcing “Modern standby” and blocking S3/S4 sleep states in windows. My best understanding is that some bug causes the system to stay awake after one of the periodic wake ups to check for updates/notifications that happen in modern standby.

[jval43]

My work laptop just started doing this 3 weeks ago! It's insane. Rather new machine too.

It gets so hot in my bag I actually worry about it starting a fire one day. I now take it out every night.

Obviously I tried googling but no dice. Nothing changed, settings seem in order, no idea what to do.

[vel0city]

It's probably a particular device that's causing it to wake. Check out using sleepstudy.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...

[selicos]

Windows 8.1 and a Surface Pro 2, touch first with the start screen completely replacing the desktop outside storing files, was fantastic. It felt new and functional in the world of ungainly non Apple tablets, could do everything a regular laptop could, and boast solid touch support and features. It was a phenomenal device for me in college for notes given I had my own wireless keyboard for long typing sessions. Given the rush for digital text books, PDF or terrible, its form factor and flexibility made sense.

But I completely understand why it didn't meet market expectations and the 8/8.1 UI fell off a cliff. If you weren't willing tyo overhaul how you interacted with a Windows device and use it as designed, or needed something that was better at any given feature the surface tablet presented, it was not the right option.

I would love an option for the 8.1 style start screen on Windows 11, at least for a touch screen laptop. It really worked for me and how I used a computer at that point in time. I have an 8.1 install iso hanging around in case it comes up.

[exmadscientist]

> One of the Surface things split into two parts, the screen (containing the actual computer) and the keyboard. There was something weird about connecting and disconnecting those parts, some motorized docking/undocking mechanism, that caused problems.

Yep, that's the Surface Book (original). I've got one, and mine still works! Somehow.

That detach mechanism is insane. As far as I've been able to put together (I haven't done a patent search or anything, just heard bits from people who'd know), there's no motor involved... it's way weirder. I believe the thing actually heats up a nitinol shape-memory alloy latch in the base so it detaches from the tablet piece. That heating is why it takes a couple seconds. But then reattachment is instant, so it's just something clicking in to place. And you can't reattach immediately, because the base has to cool down (just a few seconds, short enough that you never notice unless you're deliberately messing with it). Black magic!

I'm not 100% sure of any of the above, except the use of nitinol somewhere. That's right, the weirdest piece of the conjecture is the only one I've got hard confirmation of. Like I said, black magic.

[gambiting]

>>Then Microsoft had the episode where some of their Surface hardware would not reliably stay in sleep mode and cooked itself while being transported in a bag

To be fair, I've had exactly this with a Dell, MSI and a Razer laptop in the last few years. The only way I can reliably get it to stop waking up while asleep(and never going back to sleep) is disable sleep entirely and use hibernation instead. It's insane that such a basic functionality seems to be broken across a whole range of hardware.

[numpad0]

The bottom half of Surface Laptop(with the bending snake hinge) is a not-the-Thunderbolt dock. It has an optional GPU and fan in addition to what's obviously in it. So you're attaching battery at different SOC, and PCIe device, and keyboard and such, all at once, when the thing appears. No surprise that such a thing is not so reliable.

[8note]

the split thing got updates that juat made it unable to be removed except while the device is restarting

but also, it was really easy to accidentally lock the screen while removing it, at which point youd put it back on to get the password filled in again

that and if the battery got low, youd be stuck with it in the wrong configuration, so the screen would get scratched

[2muchcoffeeman]

Microsoft has built some good hardware over the years. The problem with this is that it runs windows. The hardware is probably nice.

[Forgeties79]

This is going to come across a flippant, but aren’t they Microsoft? Couldn’t they order whatever parts they wanted to spec? It’s hard to imagine that every fundamental piece is so horrifically useless as you describe, but it’s also not my world. It just seems to me if any company could, M$ could just spend their way through the problem. Grabbing everybody else’s cheap hardware and going “there’s absolutely nothing we can do“ is strange to me, but maybe I misunderstanding what you’re describing. I fully admit I am way out on a limb here so I am curious to learn more because I really don’t know much.

[exmadscientist]

>aren’t they Microsoft? Couldn’t they order whatever parts they wanted to spec?

Economically and logistically, yes, absolutely. Would it have had positive ROI (stuff like that is expensive)? Who knows, there's a lot of factors to consider, like accessory costs, increased sales, brand goodwill, new markets, whatever. But they could do it if they wanted to.

Culturally, though, this is just not how Microsoft operates. Not for boring accessories like that, anyway. (The Dock team was not where the ambitious-for-promotion people wanted to be.) It absolutely is how Apple operates, though, which is why I mentioned them. Their relative positions in the hardware ecosystem are not an accident.

(However, the technical constraints at that time were severe, and it might not have been technically possible. As I said in a sibling comment, this was the era of Intel's Alpine Ridge (I think that's the right one), and it was a nightmare. I don't know that it was really feasible to do much better, on the timelines needed. Now, after that disaster of a chip was out in the market, everyone else knew what the correct solution looked like, and could build it. But Alpine Ridge had to... salt the earth?... first so we could all move on. Build one to throw it away, but ship it first and poison the market.)

[Forgeties79]

Interesting, thanks for elaborating

[jmyeet]

Not an EE but I'll add an anecdote as a user.

I went through a period of using a Macbook Pro with a dock. At the time the best option seemed to be the Caldigit TS3. It's a sleek device but luckily someone else was footing the bill because:

- 3 of them failed on me. THREE;

- You really learn how bad cables are. I got in the habit of ordering 2-3 at a time because experience taught me that at least 1 of them would be bad or die;

- It exposed just how bad the USB-C situation was (and still is). Is this just a power cable? Or you want data too? How about an alt mode so you can do DisplayPort passthrough? Well good luck with all that. There's no cue that the cable can do any of that. And if a cable can, it's typically 3 feet or less in length, expensive and prone to failure.

A lot of people don't know how complex a modern USB-C or Thunderbolt cable really is. It typically has a chip in each end of the cable. So the failure mode is not just the cable, it's the two chips as well. Bend or twist the cable too much. Gone. Damage the head of the cable. Gone.

Oh and USB-C is made more complex because it can be plugged in either way. The cable and the chips at either end and the controller on either side need to be able to seamlessly handle all 4 combinations (or 2 of the cable is truly symmetric pin-wise; it might be, I'm not sure).

I hope that this tech is more stable now but I honestly doubt that it is.

I'm reminded of an old quote I heard (not sure from who) that said we went from a world where no cables fit but if they did, it worked, to a world where the cable always fit but nothing works. That's USB-C in a nutshell.

Docks have to handle a lot of bandwidth. Even passthrough requires bandwidth. It's a nice idea but it's a hard problem.

[whynotminot]

I’m a little surprised to see how much trouble people in this thread have had with the Cal Digit TS3.

Mine works pretty well — have used it with three Intel MacBooks in the past and now currently two different Apple Silicon MacBooks.

One of the Intel MBPs did not like it. Would reboot every time I unplugged it from the dock. I blamed that MacBook for that one, since nothing else was ever a problem. I sent every crash report to Apple, along with some choice words that my $2,500 MacBook should be able to handle connecting to a very commonly owned TB Dock. Eventually they did fix it and it stopped being an issue.

Has ended up one of the more reliable pieces of tech gear in my life, especially given the absolute mad complexity of TB3 behind the scenes.

[Marsymars]

Yeah, I've had 3 CalDigit docks (USB-C Dock, TS4 and Element 5) and they've all been bulletproof.

I will note that mine have all functioned as docks for effectively-stationary PCs, so there's basically zero cable wear happening.

[Tsiklon]

Apple’s AMD GPU driver had issues gracefully handling hot plugging monitors via thunderbolt. It reliably panic’d every other time I plugged in my ‘19 16” machine to a thunderbolt 3 dock.

[miladyincontrol]

Same, mines worked a treat across a number of laptops using a generic cheapo 6.6ft USB4 cable over the years.

[tencentshill]

I've always suspected Thunderbolt (and USB-C with a thick, inflexible cable attached) is a terrible port for a dock.

This guy tears down and analyzes docks with incredible detail, he might like to hear about your experience

https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/category/surface/

[basch]

It was not better than a competing dock from Dell or Lenovo etc at the time. Wireless docks worked better.

[8note]

clearly they werent mechanical engineers - the dock bent my pro-3 and shattered the screen

the clamp around setup was a very poor choice

[anonymars]

My absolute favorite fact about the Surface is that if the battery runs out, the Surface Dock power is unable to bootstrap it. You have to plug in a charger

Not sure if that's still the case but truly astonishing

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/surface-dock/tro...

[10000truths]

To be fair, my MacBook Pro had the same issue - if the battery was dead, charging via USB-C wouldn't work, it would need the MagSafe charger. Presumably because the USB controller needs power in order to negotiate power delivery.

[cthalupa]

Never had this issue with any of my MBP. I never even have magsafe available, couldn't tell you where a USB-C to magsafe cable is in my house if my life depended on it.

[dansquizsoft]

While not quite what you are saying here, I have found that I like usbc charging on my 15in m3 MacBook Air way more than its magsafe. The magsafe is always falling out as soon as I move the computer on and off my lap and is another cable that I can only use for one purpose. Nowhere near as good as it was back in the early 2010s macbook days...

[jazzyjackson]

They are saying they don’t own a MagSafe cable and have never experienced the above anecdote of a MacBook that was too dead to be charged by USBC alone. Likewise, my M1 MacBook Pro has only ever been charged by USBC and I let it die all the way often.

[10000truths]

In my specific case, the laptop was already at low (<10%) battery when I closed the lid, and it sat for several days without a top-up.

[daemin]

I would have thought that the default 5V coming through the cable should be enough to power on the chip and negotiate power delivery though?

Or was it actually working but charging only on 5V and taking a long time to wake up?

[10000truths]

Perhaps this was the case.

[StilesCrisis]

I've owned many MacBooks and have never experienced this. I usually just dump the MagSafe in the attic and use USB-C for everything.

[paaradise]

Seems weird. What charger? AT least 60W USBC?

[a-french-anon]

Same here, M2 MBP. Got it in that state because it woke up after I stored it.

Macs have some of these problems too, just less.

[acchow]

I had a similar issue with the Nikon Z5 full frame camera. It can be charged via the built-in USB-C socket only if the battery still has some charge.

If the battery is fully dead, you have to remove it and charge it using the separate battery charger.

That means you can't travel with only a USB-C cable.

[jansan]

MacBooks recently had this bug that you had to connect it to LAN in order to initialize it, or return it to the shop. It's not all perfect in Apple world.

Still, Windows is a problem here. I wonder what the monthly fee is to get rid of the ads?

[StilesCrisis]

Not sure what you're talking about. Almost no one has Ethernet anymore. This would be national news-level failure.

[scrlk]

A bug affecting M5 MBAs & MBPs made it impossible to connect to a WiFi network on the activation screen. The workaround was to use an Ethernet dongle: https://x.com/TheBobPony/status/2033958150936703363

[cobalt]

there is a hidden paperclip button you can unlock it with

[joelshep]

Interesting. I've had exactly the opposite experience. The Surfaces I've owned (3 so far, over the last 8 years) have been much more reliable than the other Windows laptops I've used over the same time period (mostly at work). To the point I bought myself one for work and didn't bother trying to expense it because I was so happy to have a laptop I could rely on (and I could use it for personal use once it was "retired"). Not invalidating your experiences, but they've been really solid for me.

[dboreham]

I've used surfaces of various kinds for more than 10 years. Overall they've been significantly less troublesome than the laptops from other major brands I've had over the same period. I put this down to the dogfood eating nature of the Surface. Whoever is responsible for the sound interface driver in a Dell laptop is unlikely to be a user of that laptop and even less likely to have the capability to get Dell to ship a fixed version. Microsoft however I suspect uses Surfacen extensively in house. In this respect it makes the Surface products more akin to Apple computers. The same is probably true for high end Chromebooks. I never used a dock, fwiw.

[tanjtanjtanj]

A couple anecdotes from me:

A (quite large) company that I worked for stopped offering surfaces to employees after the average lifetime over the 3 years they offered them was under 1 year. We even had a terrible batch of Dells at the same time that still handily outlived the surfaces.

Small sample size (N=3) but, nobody I know that works at Microsoft uses a surface or any other Microsoft branded laptop.

[RankingMember]

> Whoever is responsible for the sound interface driver in a Dell laptop is unlikely to be a user of that laptop and even less likely to have the capability to get Dell to ship a fixed version

Oh boy, don't get me started on Dell haha. Sure, they've got a better service model (people come to you), but at least in my experience they contract with service people who service multiple brands who can't help but shit-talk Dell. Not very confidence inspiring, particularly when the cause of the issue ends up being a connector not being fully plugged in from the factory.

[musictubes]

I have never used any of the Surface products but I do remember how people liked the almost no questions asked replacement policy for them at the Microsoft stores. I knew a guy that worked there and he said it was an all day occurrence.

[yndoendo]

You have to pay me to use Microsoft. There software has become garbage and alternatives are far more better. I cannot think of a single product they have I will be willing to use personally.

Hardware, Frameworks has replaced any other OEM in the market for me. You have to pay me to use Dell, HP, Microsoft, Asus, Apple, ...

[AustinDev]

Counter-point the Surface Studio was one of the best PCs for drafting and design we've ever owned.

[tortilla]

and love the 3:2 monitor aspect ratio

[AustinDev]

Yeah that was really the cherry on top. Just sublime to use.

[chollida1]

Oh wow. I love mine, so much that I've never been back to the apple laptop eco system since. The two surface laptops I've had are the best laptops I've owned.

The build it rock solid, its trivial to run wsl for a Linux environment and I still get a windows environment for work with excel, etc.

The keys don't come off the keyboard like they do with my old mac chicklet style laptop keys and even my 10 year old can still drive multiple external monitors.

[paj26]

I similarly bought a surface laptop during Covid WFH - better Remote Desktop experience for the windows shop I was working at. Assumed that spending the extra for premium Microsoft hardware, “it just works” - not at all. I ended up using my Mac’s USB-C Ethernet dongle because the dock would just lose the Ethernet driver. Insane for an ecosystem fully owned by one company, but very telling of the company.

[rbanffy]

> local Microsoft Store

The backrooms version of an Apple Store… I’ve been to precisely one and it was, indeed, a sad experience.

You’d also need to pay me a lot to use Windows. I even have an assigned Windows virtual desktop at work, but I also have a MacBook for actual work - the VDI is only used for the stuff that doesn’t quite work right on Macs.

[twoWhlsGud]

They weren't exactly hopping, but having a local store where you could get hardware support was a big deal, for me at least. I stopped buying Surface devices and switched entirely back to Apple for anything mobile when they closed the MS store near me.

[Krasnol]

I've been managing dozens of Surfaces for work.

Never had any issues with them. Solid hardware and a good alternative to the Lenovo Thinkpads we're also using but "don't look so nice".

[smrtinsert]

I also had a bad experience, but I'm willing to throw all that out of the window after seeing that it had 128 unified memory on a CUDA enabled device. This is an AI native dream machine from what I can tell. I'm almost obligated to buy one.

[regexorcist]

Sadly memory bandwidth, which is the bottleneck for AI, is pretty disappointing.

[tannhaeuser]

I only have used the power connector on a Surface Go tablet but have really no complaints. I've never been much of an MS person, but with that thing Windows (10) certainly left on a high note for me.

[aksss]

I remember these issues from earlier Surfaces. I was not impressed. Latest ones are pretty dope tho, IME.

[866-RON-0-FEZ]

Thunderbolt docks being absolute dogshit is universal across the market, it's not limited to one manufacturer.

Apple doesn't have this problem because they don't even make docks they're so problematic. Enjoy dongles, Mac users.

Modern docks usually run their own internal OS and require frequent reboots to even attempt to appear stable.

The worst part is most use docks to get Ethernet, but docks nearly universally use low quality USB Ethernet controllers internally (vs PCI) making the whole exercise rather pointless.

[robotresearcher]

Apple’s displays are docks in that they supply power, usb ports, camera, sound, and recently thunderbolt pass through. They put a big chunk of an old iPad in there to run the thing. Overkill but they own the electronics and software.

[rconti]

I've been super happy with my Caldigit TS3 for my various Macs.

[adamfarhadi]

Same here. My TS3 Plus is around 7 years old now and I’m still daily driving it. Haven’t experienced any issues at all and I’ve used it with various Windows/MacOS/Linux computers.

[twoWhlsGud]

I got my TS3 after it had been out awhile and it's been great for me, also. Wonder how the current (TB5) versions are. They generally seem to take a few (?) years to really get the firmware working properly.

[musictubes]

Is it too late to point out that what most people call dongles are actually adapters? A dongle doesn’t have any pass through.

[bdhess]

> Apple doesn't have this problem because they don't even make docks they're so problematic

There’s a Thunderbolt dock built into every display that they sell