Ask Paul: July 5 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s a surprisingly detailed Ask Paul for a holiday long weekend that I hope is well worth your time.

PC gaming

anderb asks:

Doom 2016. Keyboard/mouse or joystick?

I use an Xbox Wireless Controller (though it’s wired, via USB) and pretty exclusively. That said, as part of my video game testing on Snapdragon X-based PCs, I’ve played for stretches using the somehow still-familiar keyboard/mouse setup, I guess it’s like riding a bike.

But I do prefer the controller: I fully switched from PC gaming to Xbox in 2005 when the Xbox 365 arrived, and I never really looked back until a year ago March, when I played my last real game of Call of Duty on the Xbox Series S. Three months turned into six months turned into one year and more, and today, I don’t really play games on the console anymore, though I’m not opposed to it. I’ve been playing games on the PC instead, usually sporadically, and a lot less frequently than I did on Xbox over the previous—dear God—18 years. But where I got over my game habit/addiction, I never really dropped my preference for the controller.

I still think console gaming makes more sense in general because of the seamless experience. But PCs obviously have many unique advantages. And while most would point to the possibility of the best-possible graphics and performance, to me, I have other preferences. And with the advances we’re seeing in modern integrated graphics, it’s becoming more and more possible to play games with acceptable quality on mainstream laptops. And I love that.

Over the past year, I probably spent the most time playing the OG Half-Life port Black Mesa via Steam, but I also dabbled in a lot of other older games, including various versions of Doom and Quake, and a few months of Halo Infinite, which I found a bit tedious. This year, I picked up Doom Eternal because it’s in Game Pass—and I don’t have any Activision Blizzard games to play yet, for some reason—and I got past the section I had gotten stuck at years earlier.

With the Copilot+ PCs, I went back to Doom (2016) because I didn’t want to pay for Doom Eternal on Steam, as I get it for “free” on Game Pass. And with that game, I had gotten much further into it originally, but I just went past that section of that game too. So I hope to finish both and look at whatever DLC is available. I wasn’t so enthralled with Doom (2016) when it first came out—the movement felt like ice skating to me—but I’ve warmed to it. (I still hate the inability to save games arbitrarily: Some of the checkpoints are brutally far apart, and having to continually replay certain sections repeatedly still gets old.)

Anyway, I have large collections of PC games in at least a few places—Xbox, Steam, Epic Game Store—and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which provides me with access to many PC games (just not on Copilot+ PCs, at least so far). I feel like I’ll be playing PC games for a while, still more sporadically than before, and mostly older titles. I purchased Doom (2016), Doom Eternal, Control Ultimate Edition, and Borderlands 3 on Steam recently, and will try to finish the single-player campaigns in each. I hope to play more games through Game Pass, including perhaps some newer or even new titles as they appear. We’ll see.

But yeah. Controller.

Hardcore Sinofsky

vernonlvincent asks:

Over the last several weeks, I have heard you reference Steven Sinofsky’s book several times. And I have noticed that your references to him have been, if not more positive, less laced with the understandable frustration at your treatment from him during the time that he was there. I’ve avoided buying the book out of a sense of solidarity with you and Mary Jo because it sounds like he treated you both pretty poorly.

He did.

But I have conflicting needs here. In the same way that any victim of abuse would naturally want to avoid their abuser, I’ve spent the past decade or more trying to forget, and I actively ignored whatever he was doing publicly. I would spiral whenever someone I respect in the industry would refer to him in a positive light, though I understood why some of a generation of now-former Microsoft executives and employees who owed their careers to him (in part or totally) would do so.

To be fair, there are two sides to every story: From his perspective, I suspect, I and some others like me betrayed him—or, Windows, or Microsoft, or whatever—when I/we turned on Windows 8 and the often-bizarre decisions that led to the final product.

That said, as a sort of life experience thing, I am reminded of the time I moved cross-country to live with my (real) father and his family after visiting many times, and of the resulting disaster that occurred when this person, whom to that time had been more friend than father, suddenly became really strict and started inventing arbitrary rules, and we had a falling out. Being self-doubting, I wondered for years what I might have done differently, but it finally occurred to me that one of us was an adult and one was not, and that it wasn’t my fault, and that he was the one who should have done the right thing. And everything’s fine now, I guess, we’ve gotten past it.

On that note, I view my relationship with Steven in the same light. He was the adult in this relationship, a rich and powerful man working for the most successful software company on earth, in charge of the product I had based my career on, and here he was, actively harming me and my career … because we disagreed. And I can forgive that in the sense that we’re all human, we all get stung by criticism, and it did work out in the end. But this understanding came about slowly: When I was writing the article series that turned into Windows Everywhere, the parts that dealt with Windows 8 in particular were very difficult. But in working through that, I did gain a bit of perspective divorced from the emotional stuff.

And that led to me actually purchasing his book Hardcore Software, belatedly, and years after he had started writing it as an article series of his own, in this case on Substack. I went into it gingerly, but I specifically read it backward, starting with the final section (about Windows 8) and then moving section-by-section backward, to the beginning. At which point, I found myself re-reading key chapters. And that’s the thing: In the end, my desire to understand Windows, not just the product, but the history, outweighed my personal feelings. And as had been the case with my article series, revisiting this era, reading about it from his point of view, was not just cathartic but useful. The book provides key bits of information I couldn’t otherwise know about. It’s written by someone who wasn’t just on the inside, but literally led the development of this product for several years across two major Windows versions. I don’t agree with everything he writes or believes. But that’s part of being an adult. Accepting that we all have our own viewpoints and opinions. And he matters deeply, to the history of Windows, and thus to me.

As I read this book, it occurred to me that I wanted to speak with him. Not to hash out the past, not at all. But rather to ask some specific questions about Windows, the product, and how things happened. And, as important, I’d love to know what he thinks about what happened to Windows since he left Microsoft. There is a key point in there that I keep glossing over, related to what’s now Windows 11 on Arm, and how there was a direction Steven and that team wanted to go with what was then Windows RT: They saw this architecture, this platform, as a chance to really break from the legacy, but for various reasons—Office sticking to the desktop apps and ignoring the Windows Runtime key among them—it never came together. There’s a lot there to unpack.

I haven’t spoken to Steven per se. But I noticed that he started using quotes from my review on social media, and then he emailed me to thank me for the review. And, he noted that he had made a big editing pass and had even recorded a complete audiobook version. He offered to send me a surprise if I gave him my mailing address. Sensing a trap, I … well, I gave him my address.

And when I returned home from Mexico, there was a package from Steven: The hardcover edition of Hardcore Software. Which is incredibly impressive, given its size, about 1200 pages. This was very nice of him.

Has reading the book changed how you look at his time and caused you to reevaluate things? If so, in what ways?

Most of this is noted above, but there are different sides to this: The historical stuff, which is important to me, the insider details, and so on, but also the insights I allude to in my review. I will continue to reference this book in my writing, it’s important, and it will inform some updates to Windows Everywhere. But just as a person, I think that getting past whatever damage I felt from our past interactions is important. And it’s not about blame or cause or reason, just about not letting it continue to fester, as that’s unproductive.

I would love to speak with Steven now. He’d likely be understandably suspicious of this, but it’s not a trap, or a gotcha, and not about any of the personal stuff. I just value his opinions and insights into this world. I’m curious what he thinks about the issues that are now the focus of my professional life, the problems with Windows 11, the ongoing challenges in this space. I know he has opinions.

I bet I agree with a lot of them. I may disagree with some. It doesn’t matter, either way.

I may give this a shot.

Apple and other alternatives

SarahDuguay84 asks:

I’ve noticed that you use a MacBook Air and iPhone to stay updated on development and progress. I recently tried out “Apple One” after a community member recommended it. The trial period is free, but it will cost CAD 19.99 plus 13% taxes after that. I’m interested to know if you have any experience with this subscription.

A million years ago—OK, 25-ish years ago—when I transitioned from just writing books to writing more broadly about Windows, Microsoft, and the industry, it occurred to me that I needed to have experience with alternatives—platforms, software, hardware, whatever—if my opinions about Microsoft and its products and services were going to matter. After all, someone living in a Microsoft babbling about how great it all is, is about as useful as an American who has never ventured internationally proclaiming that the United States is somehow the greatest nation on earth. You gotta get out there first.

This thinking has resulted in a lot of time, money, and energy spent on things that are not Microsoft, and maybe that’s healthy or whatever. But to your question specifically, Apple figured prominently in this work and for all kinds of reasons. But about 25 years ago, it was largely about Apple bringing back Steve Jobs, adopting and adapting his amazing NeXT-based software into Mac OS X, and then taking on Windows at a technical (and aesthetic) level that, frankly, I don’t think Microsoft was ready for. That was fascinating enough, but as Apple transitioned into devices, with first the iPod but then most dramatically with the iPhone, kicking off the poorly named “Post-PC era”—I think I’d just call it the mobile era—the world literally changed. When I started in the industry, I focused on Windows and Microsoft, because that was personal computing. Today, that’s just part of personal computing, and it’s not the biggest or most important part. It’s both to me. But I also need to cope with the reality and address the need. So my work testing and evaluating what I still think of as alternatives has at least paid off in some sense. I’ve always had a toe in various other worlds.

I can’t recall how many Macs I’ve owned. More than all but the most devout (and rich) Apple fans, I bet. But I’ve always had at least one reasonably new Mac in-house, usually more than one. And I’ve kept up with what’s happening there since I purchased a white iBook in 2001 specifically to test Mac OS X, which was, at the time, a secondary boot OS and not yet ready for prime time. Many people have incorrectly seen my MacBook Air M3 experience as some sort of belated come-to-Jesus moment, as if I had ignored Apple for years. But this is the third Apple Silicon-based Mac I’ve owned. The difference is that I used it a lot more, all at once, in part because I knew that Snapdragon X was finally going to give us the best attributes of macOS/Apple Silicon on Windows. And I needed to get past some of the user experience hurdles that had always bothered me with the Mac. And I did. I’m more comfortable with this platform now than I’d ever been. I could use it full-time. And … I will not. I still prefer Windows. And I’m delighted that the Surface Laptop, especially, gives me that experience, but with Windows.

I don’t just examine macOS, of course. I look at Apple’s apps and services, and its other hardware too. I use an iPad every day, and have for years, and I just upgraded to a new iPad that I’ll write about soon. (I’ve been too busy with the Snapdragon X/Copilot+ PC stuff to do so yet.) I started using the iPhone again when I started using the MacBook Air. And I started looking at Apple’s services more than I had in the past, including some Apple One and standalone services I had maybe had superficial experiences with previously.

I meant to write about this separately, but because of the same reason noted above—Snapdragon X/Copilot+ PC—I’ve not found the time. And you asked, so I will at least quickly step through some things that I’ve been doing over the past few months in this space.

Apple is many things, but criticisms aside, I think some of the best work it’s done is in integrating its hardware, software, and services in ways that competitors can’t really match, and certainly not Microsoft, because it lacks a mobile platform. This is why I switched back to the iPhone after reviewing the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra instead of moving back to the Pixel 8 Pro I otherwise prefer and would be using. The cross-platform benefits of the Apple ecosystem aren’t just real, they’re vast. You can seamlessly use an iPad as a second screen for a Mac, which is huge. You can copy text or an image on an iPhone and paste it into whatever you’re doing on a Mac, or vice versa. There are specific solutions like AirDrop, which let you copy files between the devices, or AirPlay, which lets you cast audio or video between Apple and compatible devices. On and on it goes, it’s impressive.

A lot of the benefits are little things, the “details matter” stuff. I bought AirPods Pro 2 earbuds, and it’s impossible to overstate how seamless the interactions are if I move between my Mac, iPhone, and iPad: The AirPods will just pick up whatever source you’re currently using, and it works every single time. This means I could be listening to music from the iPhone, but if I choose to watch a video clip on the Mac, it switches to that, and, when that’s done, it goes back to the music from the iPhone. These niceties add up, and when I consider going back to, say, the Pixel, I have more to consider than just “I prefer Android.” This is the impact of lock-in: The Apple integrations are so good, they suck you in and make you want to stay. (Contrast this to the experiences I had using Phone Link, so I could update that chapter for the Windows 11 Field Guide. What a nightmare of garbage quality and inconsistent experiences. It’s the opposite of “it just works.”)

My kids both have iPhones (and my wife does not; her continued use of Samsung phones is troubling and weird to the kids). And so I’ve long paid for the lowest-end iCloud+ storage tier, which is 50 GB and costs 0.99 cents (USD) per month. Over the past year, we’ve been hitting against that limit, mostly because of my daughter’s iPhone backups. And that, combined with my vague desire to remain platform-neutral/portable where possible, led me to not use iMessage or Photos and turn off and delete my own device backups because I never needed them anyway. But with the Mac and my renewed iPhone usage in early 2024, I rethought all that. And I started paying for the iCloud+ 2 TB tier, which is the only reasonable step up from the base tier and costs $10.99 per month. (A 1 TB tier at $4.99 per month would have worked well, but … Apple.)

Once you move up to 2 TB of storage, you start thinking. I’ve tested using iCloud with Windows, similarly to how I’ve used OneDrive and Google Drive, for example, another thing I’ve not written about. And I’ve investigated what it would look like to upload my newly consolidated photo collection to iCloud (and haven’t done so yet because of local storage reasons). I pay for iCloud+ month-to-month and I sort of expected this to be temporary, but now I’m not so sure. (My daughter somehow uses more storage than me and my son combined. I need to figure that out.)

Tied to the device purchases and my unexpected iCloud+ usage, Apple offers various length free offers for different services. When the Artifact news app imploded earlier this year, Apple offered me three months of free Apple News+, which is normally $12.99 (wow) per month, and so I tried it. It’s OK. But it’s not worth $12.99 per month, so I let it go when the free offer expired. I’ve had similar offers for Apple Music, Apple Fitness+, and possibly some other services. But I of course examined Apple One during all this, and was reminded how its various tiers are specifically structured in ways that don’t combine the few services I do/might want in affordable ways. I care about iCloud+, Apple TV+ (which I do pay for), and maybe Apple Music. I don’t care about Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, or Apple News+ at all.

But I’m already paying for iCloud+ 2 TB at $9.99 per month. The only Apple One offering with this level of storage is the $37.95 per month Premier tier, and for that to make sense, I’d need to be otherwise spending, or willing to spend, roughly $28 per month. And the only service is “need” (or, literally, want) is Apple TV+, which is $9.99 per month. I could use Apple Music—the lossless and spatial audio choices are certainly interesting—but that costs $10.99, so that Apple One Premier tier is $8-ish per month than I want to spend and $20-ish per month more than I am spending. So there’s no value there. For me.

But that’s just me. Depending on which devices you own/use, which services you use/would use, Apple One can make plenty of sense. But this is the type of thing we all need to evaluate on our own, our needs are different, etc. Right now, I’m already paying Apple more per month than I like or ever expected. And I’m comfortable with what I get, which is basically storage and a streaming video service. Family members gain access to this stuff, which is a nice benefit of the Apple ecosystem. So that can play into a decision, too. (My kids can use the iCloud+ storage and Apple TV+.)

More recently, Apple had its big WWDC announcements around AI, and I signed up for the Apple Developer Program, which is $99 per year, and installed the beta versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS on my Apple devices. There’s no AI in any of these things yet, but there are some interesting new features on each, and some new cross-platform capabilities, too, like iPhone mirroring on macOS. I go in and out of the Apple Developer Program over time, but this year it seemed more critical than it has in a while. So I will also use this opportunity to take a fresh look at SwiftUI, which is an Apple app framework similar to WPF, the Windows App SDK, or MAUI on the Microsoft side.

Anyway, this stuff all kind of happens for me on the side, or in the background. Or whatever. But sometimes something is interesting enough that it bubbles up to the point where writing about it makes sense. Sometimes not.

Additionally, do you plan to review more Apple software like “Apple One,” similar to how you review competing browsers like Edge and competing software like Microsoft 365’s Teams, Loops, and Outlook Mail?

I have some specific plans tied to some of these things. And some vaguer ideas.

I don’t see myself reviewing Apple One per se. As noted above, this bundle is largely a personal decision based on device and services usage, and it can make financial sense for those that are/were already paying for whatever services. Google has similar offerings like Google One   (that I do subscribe to as well) and various standalone subscriptions (YouTube Premium, etc.), of course. Microsoft’s big subscriptions are all productivity-focused, except for those under Xbox. (God, I pay for almost all this.)

I am always using and evaluating different browsers. I was using Opera and Vivaldi a lot over the month or so before the first Copilot+ PCs arrived. And—God help me—I’ve been using Edge full-time on each of the Copilot+ PCs, at least for now. This is partly tied to me needing to finish updating the Edge chapters in the Windows 11 Field Guide, but also something I need to force on myself, like getting over using the Mac. I cover new browser releases as they happen, and I almost always use those announcements as an incentive to look at those browsers again. So that kind of ebbs and flows all the time.

I have been quietly using the new Microsoft Outlook as well. This will turn into a new chapter for the Windows 11 Field Guide soon. But maybe also something of an editorial on the site, as I’m shocked by the negative reactions I see to this app, which works really well. With one big caveat: You need to pay for Microsoft 365 for it to make any sense, as there are ads otherwise. And one smaller caveat: If you use Gmail or some other service as your primary email, don’t use Outlook as it routes your emails through Microsoft servers. I normally don’t use an email app of any kind, I route everything through Gmail and use the web interface. But the new Outlook works great. I don’t get the hate. (And it has one neat little benefit: When a banner notification for a new email appears, I can archive it from there without opening the app, and then get back to work. That’s actually really nice.) Anyway. Yes, I will be writing about this.

Ditto for Teams and Loop. Both are in a state of flux, and both are interesting to me. Microsoft is shifting to a unified Teams client (commercial + consumer) that’s not as seamless as I’d like. And Loop. What happened to poor Loop? It’s never taken off. But I wrote something about this a few months ago: The bar is high, and with a tool like Notion that works so well, it’s difficult to even try Loop let alone switch. I’ll try.

We’ll see what any of these amount to. Short term, I have to focus on Copilot+ PC. I feel like I’m getting caught up there, but as summer transitions into fall, we have IFA and new Intel and AMD chips and PCs, Samsung, Google Pixel, and Apple hardware events, and the holiday season, and on and on it goes. There is no rest for the wicked. It is, at least, an interesting time to be alive. In a good way.

Device maintenance

j5 asks:

Are you a screen protector and case on every device kind of person?

This is another great mind-meld example, as I am going to write what I hope will be a somewhat whimsical post about phone cases soon. Funny you’re mentioning this now.

Without stepping on that, I never use screen protectors. And I’ve always used cases, at least in the post-Lumia (polycarbonate) world. I do this pragmatically, as I usually buy a new phone and then trade it in for the next version a year later, and resell value is key. But I also hate cases, especially bulky cases. And so I usually trend towards thin/light cases. And try to be careful, I’m clumsy.

But again. More on that soon. It’s tentatively called In Any Case.

Do you have a routine of cleaning and checking all your devices, compressed air, isopropyl alcohol, etc. Do you put cases on every device when traveling or when storing away?

I get and use cases for all mobile devices. That includes iPads, Kindles, whatever. But not PCs. I don’t do anything there.

Cleaning, yes, from time to time. I avoid chemicals, though: Water with a microfiber cleaning cloth—I’ve been using these inexpensive cloths from Amazon recently—works just fine almost always. They’re especially good for displays. I always have canned air on hand for blowing dust/debris out of PC exhaust/vents/fans (and for other things, like house fans).

And do you have any tips to share about taking care of your tech.

Hm. Nothing non-obvious or specific. On a kind of Cro-Magnon level, I sort of align with the otherwise silly philosophy from the Transporter movies—”respect the car, respect the man”—but for my own devices. And while I’m in a world in which I need to upgrade devices more frequently than most because of my job, I would otherwise hold on to devices for years and years in most cases. And taking care of them, just being mindful of them and careful with them, goes a long way.

There are people in my life I respect because of how well they take care of things. My father-in-law, for example, is the best-possible person to buy a used car from because of the way he babies his vehicles and keeps them properly maintained. I was so impressed with the condition of the iPhone 12 Pro my daughter gave back to me when we upgraded the kids to new iPhones over the holidays that I wrote an article about it. Some people don’t care about this kind of thing, but some clearly do.

I just spent a lot of money on a MacBook Air and a Surface Laptop, and I expect that I’ll use each for years. I will take care of these computers as much as I can, but mostly it’s just common sense.

Size matters

helix2301 asks:

Paul I tried put the field guide on my kindle says it’s over the 200 mb limit for transferring any ideas?

I wish this were simpler, sorry.

My go-to answer for this question has always been that I use Leanpub because we pay for this service, and Leanpub supports the customers who buy books from the service.

The problem, of course, is that none of that matters: You buy the book because I wrote it, and I should know the answer to this question and be able to help. And, the book is just too big. I wrote about this back in February, and while I’ve done some work to make it smaller (from a size on disk perspective), it hasn’t been enough. Today, the book is bigger than it was when I wrote that article.

So I decided to look at what Leanpub recommends, not for the first time, but just to see if anything has changed. And it boils down to this one support article, which lists a few ways to get a Leanpub title (in EPUB or PDF format) onto a Kindle e-reader or into a Kindle app on an iPhone, iPad, or Android device. And not only is this support article out of date—it references a 49 MB file size limit twice, when the limit is now 200 MB—but none of the methods it lists will work for my book.

Worse, it also links to a Leanpub blog post about getting larger books into a Kindle app on mobile … which doesn’t exist (anymore) either. (The URL changed: Here’s the correct link.)

I’m surprised you couldn’t figure this out.

But I kid.

Their recommendation is to upload the EPUB (it was MOBI format at the time of the blog post) to Dropbox and then use the Dropbox app on your device to “Open in” the Kindle app. Humorously, this blog post, from 2016, uses the Windows 10 Field Guide as the example. But that book is much smaller than the Windows 11 Field Guide. Plus, it’s 6 years later. Plus, this post doesn’t address Kindle e-readers.

I need to spend time on this, and now I will. Because there must be a better way to do this than what I’m about to suggest. In the meantime, this is a makeshift way to get it done until I can fix this properly.

This is silly. I apologize.

First, you’ll need to download the EPUB version of the book to your PC from your Leanpub library. This file is currently about 344 MB.

Regardless of where this file is headed—a Kindle e-reader, an iPhone, iPad, or Android device—I recommended using Calibre to shrink the size of the EPUB. The best way to do that is to use its Edit book feature: Select the EPUB when prompted, and when the Edit book window appears, choose Tools > Compress images losslessly. By default, it will shrink the images to 80 percent of the original quality, but you can go lower if required. At 50 percent, for example, the resulting EPUB file is only 62 MB.

Then, you can use Send to Kindle to add this EPUB to your Kindle library. Amazon will process it, and then it should appear in your library everywhere and work normally.

This begs the question. If anyone can do this using a third-party tool like Calibre, why can’t I (Paul) do this?

Part of the problem is Leanpub: I have to use its book preview/publish pipeline and I can’t take an output PDF or EPUB, “fix” it, and then give it back to them. So the only thing I can really do is what I partially did in February, but more aggressively: I can change the original quality of the images in the book (and/or remove unnecessary images). I will look at doing that again, and I think I can do this in a way that will lower the size enough while retaining the quality.

Again, apologies.

UPDATE: I think I’ll be able to reduce the size of the download by an appreciable amount. Stay tuned, it will happen before the end of the weekend, if so. –Paul

Which Copilot+ PC?

a93nckd2nakrhjw3 asks:

I would like to purchase a Copilot+ laptop in the next week or so and am deciding between the base model of either the Surface Laptop or Yoga Slim 7x.  I already own a 2TB M.2 2230 SSD and a 2230-to-2242 adapter, which would be needed for the Yoga, is $5 on Amazon.  So storage is not a factor in the decision.  The Yoga comes with a slightly better CPU but my main priorities are the best touchpad and keyboard.  You’re testing both.  Which model do you prefer based on your experiences thus far?

These things are subjective, and there’s a lot more that goes into this than the touchpad and keyboard. I am writing an article now that discusses the differences between the three Copilot+ PCs I have in-house that should be out later today.

But the big differentiators for the Yoga Slim 7x are its OLED display, which many will find superior, and its cheap RAM (and storage) upgrades: I strongly recommend getting 32 GB if you go with the Yoga. Right now, it looks like the Yoga might get slightly better battery life than the Surface, but that could be incorrect and/or related to the Surface Laptop’s 15-inch display.

The Surface has one USB-A port, if that matters. It can be used on a bed or other soft surface with no worries about heat. It has a proprietary charger that frees up both USB-C ports, or you can just use any USB-C charger. (It also has two display size choices, and both are 3:2, which is both odd and unique.) If you’re going with lower-end configurations, you have some interesting color choices you don’t get with the Yoga.

I find that the Yoga, Surface (and HP) all have very similar/excellent keyboards and touchpads, and it’s difficult to pick one over the others. The Yoga keyboard is quieter than the Surface’s, if that matters. (The Surface keyboard is not loud, per se.) But they’re all very close.

It’s early to say for sure which I prefer overall. But right now, I do prefer the Surface Laptop to the other two, mostly for the bigger display (again, I have the 15-inch version). Otherwise, they are all very, very similar in use. None is quieter than the others, or louder. The day-to-day performance and overall experiences are nearly identical, etc.

Honestly, you almost can’t go wrong either way.