Where are you Microsoft???

For what it's worth, the November 18th update seems to have fixed a number of issues with my SB - particularly around the lock screen not working properly when I put the device to sleep.

This update definitely complicates things. 

Now it can safely be said that this is the best laptop ever. It's trackpad is perfect in all that it does. I would still like more ability to assign the trackpad gestures to functionality such as Two Finger swipe left to go back, but I can be patient while that happens. The scrolling is every bit as good as a mac. The Screen Brightness is working very well now. I noticed yesterday my daughter was turning on and off the lights and the screen kept up as I would expect. I can safely say that Windows 10 does EVERYTHING that Windows 7 did. It now fully and correctly identifies tablet mode and all of that looks to be working perfectly as well. Highlighting text seems to be working perfectly with the trackpad too. Just to reiterate, this device IS the perfect laptop now.

So lets move forward:

I had my machine wiped and ready to return when I got home yesterday.

After hearing about this update, I decided to give it a try, and YES it was a welcome breath of fresh air.

I did notice that I had to re download, re arrange the start menu, re setup the settings for things like disabling tapping on the trackpad... all things that I would expect to have been saved in One Drive. It would be nice if we could save the "Configuration" of the device in the cloud, then when I go through the install and it has me log into Microsoft, that it would pull down those settings and apply them. That it would pull down the apps that I had, and reinstall them from the store.

I noticed that the Fox News app no longer goes to portrait mode. I might have mistakenly said that it was the CNN app that was screwed up when switching orientation, and this might have been the fix for that if Fox News didn't implement portrait mode. So that part of the apps might be fixed.

I also noticed that Watch ESPN seemed to work correctly.

However I would still like to see a bigger X for closing apps in the switcher. I want the Switcher to stay open so that I can rapidly close apps from it. Currently you have to open switcher, close the app, then re open switcher. I would expect the switcher to stay open. If I go to switcher then close an app, it's more likely that I still want to switch to another application or close more applications.

I noticed that the universal back button seems to now just open the start menu. I was expecting it to work in the CNN application, but instead it just opens the start menu, and does not perform the Back functionality.

I think I figured out what is wrong with the XBoxOne app. I opened it, and went to streaming. When you launch a game like Destiny, THEN the xbox only takes controls from the controller, and not from IR or the App on windows or IOS. So then Destiny sits at the "press b to try again" screen waiting for me to go down and get the controller. It would be ideal if I could still press buttons even when a game is loaded from the app. It would also be ideal if while streaming I could do directional controls and button presses from Windows 10 so that I don't have to also get out my phone. Here is where it goes south. I popped the screen off to flip it to tent mode to put on my couch. I was planning on launching another application, but since I had the XBox streaming app open, it apparently crashed the video driver. Now I had a black screen but I could still hear the XBox sound coming through the Surface Book. This is probably why the audio was screwed up on my XBox the other day. When it's streaming, it's only playing audio through streaming. I did notice that I could disable it from the XBox so that was nice, but I still had a Black Screen only and I had to restart windows because NOTHING could get me out of the broken App. Not even the trick with Locking and Unlocking. I had to reboot... which was really annoying because I had started this reply already.

I looked at the source code for FreeCad and the issue there is that it was written using QT, which is 3rd party UI framework. I played with the Zoom and noticed that when I put my laptop at 100% instead of 200% default, then everything was the same scale as FreeCad... So, I think this should be easy enough to fix, and it's definitely outside the realm of what Microsoft should think about.

I'd like to know if (Surface Management Engine && Surface Touch Servicing ML) are new settings screens or if they are new in the .Net framework or are they just part of the windows kernel? I'd like a user interface to assigning touchpad Gestures to core functionality whether its provided by MS in settings or provided to developers so that I can write it myself for others.

Anyway, GREAT update! This November 18th update definitely makes the SurfaceBook the BEST laptop out there. Even though the Windows 8 stuff like the Windows Store Apps and the App Switching are still a little buggy, With this update, Windows 10 is EVERY bit of what Windows 7 promises and then some of what Windows 8 promises on top. It's important to note that developers are not writing applications for the OSX Mac App store either. With that in mind the Surface Book is every bit as good as a Macbook with SOME of the capabilities of the iPad on top.

My big issue is that Currently I do about 97% iPad and 3% Macbook. Since owning this Surface Book I can say I've not once felt that I needed to pick up the Macbook at home. I have however had to get the iPad out for things like Yahoo Fantasy football or the NFL App for streaming RedZone (which currently is completely broken on Windows 10, none of the buttons work in the NFL App). I would LIKE to bring my ratio closer to 70% tablet 30% Laptop, but currently with the Surface Book it's more like 30% tablet 70% laptop at home. The issue is the Apps. The issue is no longer Windows or the Surface Book.

However it could be said that Apps are not as good or plentiful because Microsoft decided to Completely Rewrite the .Net framework for Windows 10 universal. You cant write Universal apps on Windows 7 and any .Net app has to be rewritten for Windows 10 Universal. This seems like a really crappy decision. Wasn't the Point of just in time compile that you could write your software once and it would work across many different machines? I fail to understand why all of the Windows.Media Framework couldn't have just been integrated with the System Framework? It seems like rewriting how the System Framework handles audio and video streams could have been routed through an object that the Windows.Media framework simply controls, rather than forcing all Windows Universal apps to do everything through the new Windows.Media Framework. Then All of the existing software written for .Net would still work, and developers who knew .Net wouldn't have to relearn a new framework.

So... with all of that being said: What are the plans with .Net?

I too believe a class action lawsuit is fully warranted in this situation.

Microsoft really needs to start learning that using their paying customers as beta testers is NOT okay at all. Microsoft is wasting thousands of people's valuable time--a good portion of which are billable hours being wasted on Microsoft's incompetence, dysfunctional devices, and completely worthless tech support.

Panos Panay needs to be fired.