I don't have very much hope for Thunderbolt. It seems to be going the way by Firewire.
The Thunderbolt Cables cost like $40 a pop, adapters can cost more as well. Its a far cry from just being able to plug a GbE port directly into the darn thing.
As stated before, Thunderbolt is roughly comparable to the Surface Dock. You can connect an external display and Ethernet port through Thunderbolt, but you have to pay through the nose on extra wires and extra adapters. (or $200 for the Surface Dock).
BTW: Surface Pro prices are much cheaper. $1030 gets you the 128GB model now. The SurfacePro has 1080p screen. Not a single Macbook Air model has a decent resolution.
I think at the end of the day, what decides it is how much you want the 1080p screen, Stylus, Windows applications (and Windows Domain Joining for those business users), and portability.
Price-for-price, Surface Pro just gives you more than even the cheapest Macbook Air. Its just a better deal frankly.
Re: Thunderbolt - You have USB 3.0 for generic connections. Thunderbolt for VGA/Gigabit/Docking/DVDI. Thunderbolt is thankfully compatible with Display Port, so you can connect your 30" monitor at 2560x1600 over a $5 mini-display port to display port cable (as I am right now). I haven't used my Gigabit Adapter in a couple years, and this was even before 802.11ac came out. I don't know if I'll ever use one again.
I guess if you are resolution sensitive - then the Surface Pro has that going for it as well (I've never preferred the retina versus the normal resolution on Laptops - so that's kind of wasted on me)
Regarding what's a better deal - like you said, it all depends on what you want. I've got bash/terminal.app/aperture/quicksilver all in my finger memory now, so kind of stuck on OS X. And - we can't overlook the keyboard. Be interesting to see if the Surface Pro can go head to head with a laptop keyboard.
Regarding Windows Domain Joining - works fine on OS X for the last couple iterations, pretty much the same as the PC for things like accessing file shares. And, Office Productivity Apps (Excel/Office/PowerPoint) are pretty identical on the Mac (plus we get Acorn, Pixelmator, iDraw)...
You've got me intrigued though - I'll have to go into the Microsoft Store and play with one for a bit - the Stylus alone is really, really intriguing. And all those PC Games...
Comments
I don't have very much hope for Thunderbolt. It seems to be going the way by Firewire.
The Thunderbolt Cables cost like $40 a pop, adapters can cost more as well. Its a far cry from just being able to plug a GbE port directly into the darn thing.
As stated before, Thunderbolt is roughly comparable to the Surface Dock. You can connect an external display and Ethernet port through Thunderbolt, but you have to pay through the nose on extra wires and extra adapters. (or $200 for the Surface Dock).
BTW: Surface Pro prices are much cheaper. $1030 gets you the 128GB model now. The SurfacePro has 1080p screen. Not a single Macbook Air model has a decent resolution.
I think at the end of the day, what decides it is how much you want the 1080p screen, Stylus, Windows applications (and Windows Domain Joining for those business users), and portability.
Price-for-price, Surface Pro just gives you more than even the cheapest Macbook Air. Its just a better deal frankly.
Re: Thunderbolt - You have USB 3.0 for generic connections. Thunderbolt for VGA/Gigabit/Docking/DVDI. Thunderbolt is thankfully compatible with Display Port, so you can connect your 30" monitor at 2560x1600 over a $5 mini-display port to display port cable (as I am right now). I haven't used my Gigabit Adapter in a couple years, and this was even before 802.11ac came out. I don't know if I'll ever use one again.
I guess if you are resolution sensitive - then the Surface Pro has that going for it as well (I've never preferred the retina versus the normal resolution on Laptops - so that's kind of wasted on me)
Regarding what's a better deal - like you said, it all depends on what you want. I've got bash/terminal.app/aperture/quicksilver all in my finger memory now, so kind of stuck on OS X. And - we can't overlook the keyboard. Be interesting to see if the Surface Pro can go head to head with a laptop keyboard.
Regarding Windows Domain Joining - works fine on OS X for the last couple iterations, pretty much the same as the PC for things like accessing file shares. And, Office Productivity Apps (Excel/Office/PowerPoint) are pretty identical on the Mac (plus we get Acorn, Pixelmator, iDraw)...
You've got me intrigued though - I'll have to go into the Microsoft Store and play with one for a bit - the Stylus alone is really, really intriguing. And all those PC Games...