When comparing Microsoft Surface Pro 4 vs MacBook, the Slant community recommends Microsoft Surface Pro 4 for most people. In the question“What are the best laptops for programmers who travel/digital nomads?” Microsoft Surface Pro 4 is ranked 5th while MacBook is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Microsoft Surface Pro 4 is:
The (included) Surface Pen has a very interesting set of features - it allows for 1024 points of pressure, has an eraser on top, and when you click the eraser it will open Cortana (Microsoft's new voice assistant). It's magnetized, so it will stick to the left side of the Surface. The Surface achieves all of this via its new N-trig technology (replacing the Wacom technology found in older generation models). There's also palm rejection technology, so whenever the pen tip it close to the screen is will ignore all finger or palm touches.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Great pen support
The (included) Surface Pen has a very interesting set of features - it allows for 1024 points of pressure, has an eraser on top, and when you click the eraser it will open Cortana (Microsoft's new voice assistant). It's magnetized, so it will stick to the left side of the Surface. The Surface achieves all of this via its new N-trig technology (replacing the Wacom technology found in older generation models). There's also palm rejection technology, so whenever the pen tip it close to the screen is will ignore all finger or palm touches.
Pro Laptop-level specs
The Surface Pro 4 comes in configurations from core M up to a core i7. RAM starts at 4GB, and goes to 16GB. Storage caps out at 256GB of SSD storage, which should be enough for most users. These are all specs that can be found in most laptops - even beating out some budget-midrange desktop options.
Pro Good expandability options
The Surface has a USB 3.0 port that can be used for a mouse to be plugged in, or you can plug in a USB hub or Microsoft's own Surface Dock, which has 4 USB 3.0 ports, audio output, Gigabit Ethernet, and two HD video ports. The Surface Dock allows for as much expandability (or more) as most laptops out there. There's also a SD card slot if you need more storage (current SD card sizes range up to 200GB, although this won't be as fast as the internal SSD speeds).
Pro Extremely portable
The laptop weighs just 2 pounds and is 13.1 mm thin. It's one of the thinnest and lightest laptops on the market and it's extremely portable and easy to carry around.
Pro macOS is developer-friendly
macOS is based on XNU (Darwin) kernel, it's a certified Unix and arguably a lot more developer friendly than Windows. Development for Unix is native on macOS.
There's a large selection of great development tools available for macOS. The operating system itself comes bundled with a powerful terminal emulator, called Terminal. Additionally, Apple provides tools, like Xcode, an IDE that contains a comprehensive collection of tools for developing macOS and iOS software, for free.
You can also install Homebrew, an extremely useful package manager.
Pro Amazing display
Everything about the display is very good - from its high resolution (2304x1440) to the brightness (325 nitts), uniform brightness distribution (90%), and high contrast ratio (1000:1) with over 95% of the sRGB spectrum. Overall, a great display which will come in handy for people who work with visual arts.
Pro Excellent trackpad
The MacBook has a large 4.4 x 2.7-inch Force Touch trackpad with a Taptic Engine that delivers haptic feedback whenever the user taps on it to give them the impression that they are actually clicking on it. It also supports gestures and multi-finger swiping.
The accuracy is almost perfect and there's virtually no lag or stutter when using the trackpad.
Pro Decent battery life
The battery lasts around 7h30m of continuous web browsing which is about average for this class of laptops. Where this laptop's battery truly shines though is under heavy stress where it manages to last an impressive 2h35m under a total stress test (maxed out brightness and processor usage - circumstances that you are likely never going to encounter in the real world).
Pro Completely silent operation
Thanks to the Core M processor (which doesn't require a fan) and the SSD storage, there are no moving parts the in MacBook. It will operate in complete silence.
Pro Very good speakers
The speakers, found above the keyboard produce loud and clear sound with minimal to no distortion whatsoever. They can be used for both listening to music and watching movies with no problem at all.
Pro Decent keyboard
Pro Available in 4 colors
The laptop is available in space gray, gold, silver and rose gold (pink) finishes.
Cons
Con Expensive
You can find a computer with similar specs for about half the price of the Surface Pro 4. You are paying a premium for the high-end build quality, for the engineering required to manufacture a fully portable computer, as well as for the high resolution touchscreen.
Con Lack of touch-focused apps
Windows has traditionally been a mouse-and-keyboard operating system. Finally, third party apps are starting to become more touch friendly, although it's a long, slow process. The Windows Store still lacks many big titles, which means the only option is to download the regular Windows version of most apps, which are rarely touch-friendly.
Con Not very powerful
With an Intel Core M processor, the Macbook isn't a serious development laptop. While it will get the job done for lighter tasks, it will struggle with heavier jobs.
Con Non-free software
Apple doesn't release the source code for most of their software & firmware. This makes it significantly more difficult to customize, automate tasks, and verify security.
Con It's a bit hard to get used to the keyboard
The keys are pretty shallow, with a travel length of just 0.5mm. They still provide good feedback and the writing experience itself is not bad, but it's just a bit hard getting used to, especially if you are coming from a laptop that's not a MacBook.
Con Connecting more than one thing requires a hub
The laptop comes with a single USB-C port that's used for charging as well as any other peripherals or external storage devices. Connecting more than one thing at a time requires using a USB hub.
Con Premium price for not-so-premium hardware
Macbooks are one of the most expensive computers for the hardware they have. Mac is the most expensive UX to buy, as the price has low relationship to how good the hardware is and, instead, is related to how the whole experience from opening the box, to the physical shop, to the cloud and sync services they have.
Con Too fragile, compared to the competitors
Can barely handle liquid, breaks easily with bumping and, at a premium price, has the largest probability of something just breaking without apparent reason.
Con Very expensive (official) repairs
Fixing any problem with a Macbook through the official means is a very expensive investment. Usually, any problem that happens means replacing most of the laptop for 80% of the price, even if the problem can be solved by replacing a 5$ transistor or a 15$ chip or even bypassing with a 1$ wire.