just thought I'd share this story. feels like a bragging point in a very weird way for the surface pro 4 somehow.
I met a friend recently at a local coffee shop to collaborate on something - she brought her MacBook Air, I brought my Surface Pro 4. I found out later her MacBook Air was a 2015 model, which makes it roughly similar in age to my Surface Pro 4, I believe - although her machine should have aged considerably better considering i abuse my surface pro 4 with all sorts of extraneous tasks, while she mostly uses her macbook only for work. When she arrived, her Macbook wouldn't turn. She tried plugging it in to an outlet just in case it was a depleted battery, but it didn't help.
She searched for troubleshooting tips to get her Macbook working (on my Surface Pro 4, of course). The following are the steps she took according to a help forum. Later for fun, I searched for what a comparable help forum would have me do should my surface pro 4 fail to turn on. I will include those corresponding steps for comparison.
to try to get a macbook air to turn on when it won't, press a combination of 3 or 4 specific buttons on the keyboard simultaneously while also keeping the power button pressed. when my friend tried to do that, she found out the buttons she had to press were ones that were in such awkward location to each other that she could barely do it even with BOTH hands. the corresponding step i found for surface pro 4 would be "press the power button for 15 seconds". to emphasize - press ONE button - something i could do comfortably with ONE hand.
apparently, the button combination pressing didn't work for her.
the next step she found - i kid you not - was to vigorously shake the macbook air to try to waken some sensor. i don't think i heard a recommendation to fix a machine by shaking it in over a decade. regardless, there she was vigorously shaking the macbook in the air (I'm sure that's not why it's called macbook air though), in the middle of a fairly crowded coffee shop, with people staring at her like she was mad. the next step for the surface pro 4, i found out was to remove the type cover and press the volume up and down button simultaneously 3 times in rapid succession - no awkward gazes from strangers necessary.
apparently, shaking it like a Polaroid picture didn't help and she was trying to find yet another method to try to get her macbook air to turn on.
she gave up though when she found out the next suggestion - again, i kid you not - was to try putting her macbook air in an oven. let me repeat that: a COMPUTER . IN. AN. OVEN. can't make this stuff up. her exact words were "no f-----g way". no such kooky suggestions were found for the surface pro 4.
we ended up doing our collaboration work on my surface pro 4, which had no problems turning on.
the next day, she lets me know she tried taking her macbook air to the apple store but they wanted $500 dollars from her to try to fix it because her warranty expired or something.she said if she had to spend that much money to just fix something - she would much rather put that money towards a new computer.
apparently, having used my surface pro 4 - she took quite a liking to it because she started asking me questions and showing interest about my surface pro 4. i, of course, gave it a high recommendation if she wanted to try something other than mac and mentioned that for her usage pattern the $500 she would have spent fixing her macbook air plus just a little more could get her a brand new surface pro 4 right now.
then i also mentioned that if she had originally gotten the macbook air because she liked the thin and light form factor and didn't mind waiting a couple of weeks, a similarly thin and light surface laptop would soon be available as well ;)
06-05-2017 10:53 AM
