- Okay, we just got wrapped up
at Microsoft's special Surface and AI event
in New York City where the company announced a bunch
of new surface hardware.
They focused really hard on AI and this new copilot system.
And then there was the big question hanging
over this event about the future of Windows and Surface
now that Microsoft's former Surface
and Windows Chief Panos Panay has announced his resignation.
But before we get into all of that,
let's check out the new Surface hardware.
So Surface this year is a lot more iterative
than we're used to.
There's no big new surface device,
it's all sort of upgrades on existing hardware.
So we've got the Surface Go 4,
which is kind of like the smallest Surface Pro
with chips inside that are nowhere near as powerful.
Then you've got the Surface Laptop Go 3,
which is on 12 gen chips.
And it's kind of like the alternative to the Surface Laptop,
the sort of fully-fledged device that Microsoft has.
And then there's the Surface Hub 3,
which is really for commercial customers and businesses.
But the one that's the kind of star of the show,
if that's what we wanna call it,
is the Surface Laptop Studio 2.
It's always been the spiritual successor
to the Surface Book,
and this year Microsoft is upgrading the innards,
but they're also doing some tweaks on the outside,
but it largely looks the same
as the original Surface Laptop Studio.
So let's check out what's changed on the outside.
So first up, there's a micro SD card reader on the side,
so you can expand storage.
And then on the left hand side there's a USB-A port,
so useful for sort of your legacy peripherals,
alongside the USB-C ports that we had originally anyway.
And that I guess is most of the changes.
Microsoft's adding a charging port
for the Surface Slim Pen 2, which is kind of useful,
'cause it still sits underneath the keyboard and trackpad.
Really, the other big upgrade on the outside,
and you could argue on the inside, is the trackpad.
So this year you can change the haptic feedback on this.
You can change how sensitive the click is.
But there's another thing here that Microsoft's
really focusing on, and that's accessibility.
So they have a new mode on the trackpad
which essentially disables palm rejection.
And they showed it in the demo on stage
with a guy who was born without fingers on one hand,
so now he can actually use the track pad
and it's helping him out in his day-to-day activity.
That's not something that I had personally thought
about, but now I'm like, why doesn't every track pad
have the ability to disable palm rejection
'cause it would sure be a lot more inclusive.
Okay, so that covers the outside, but on the inside,
there's a lot of upgrades too.
So Microsoft's upgrading
to the 13th Gen Intel core processors.
There's also the ability to pick
between the RTX 4050 or 4060 GPU,
which seem like they would be pretty good
for PC gaming and obviously creator applications as well.
And this is the first surface device that you can upgrade
to 64 gig of RAM, alongside up to two terabytes
of storage inside as well.
There's also a tiny little chip inside developed by Intel.
It's called an NPU, a Neural Processing Unit,
and it's an AI chip, which essentially boosts
these AI tasks in Windows.
So we've seen some of this before with the Surface Pro 9,
the ARM-powered version,
where it'll do sort of like removing background noise
when you're talking on a conference call.
So we haven't seen a bunch of applications take advantage
of this NPU just yet,
but I've got a good feeling that's gonna change
over the next year, because Microsoft spent
I'd say 90% of the time talking about AI on stage today.
And in particular, Copilot.
Now, Copilot isn't new,
Microsoft announced this earlier this year,
but it's essentially this AI-powered assistant
that's there when you need to call it up.
Think about Cortana
and how that was supposed to be revolutionary
in your life, and work, and be there as this assistant.
This co-pilot feels like it might actually do that.
So Microsoft spent a bunch
of time talking about how Copilot will,
write your emails for you or respond to them
for you, or do some Excel data analysis for you.
But it got me thinking,
is it really gonna work quite as well
as what they showed on stage?
And I think we're gonna find out real soon,
because Copilot is coming
to Windows 11 in an update on September 26th.
And I think this is kind of the beginning
of them planting this copilot seed into Windows,
and really it's gonna grow
on November 1st when it comes to the Office app.
So that means it's gonna show up in Excel,
it's gonna analyze data for you, it's gonna show up
in Word where you can just get it
to rewrite your paragraphs,
and it's gonna show up in stuff like Outlook as well,
where you can just get it to write emails
to your boss and stuff.
All this stuff,
if it works really well, it's gonna really
change the way you create Office documents.
And Microsoft says
that it's also coming to consumers as well.
So it's coming to businesses first.
But when it comes to consumers,
I think that's gonna be super interesting.
So they're putting Copilot in Windows,
they're putting Copilot in office, but it felt
like there was something missing here at this event today.
So obviously Microsoft announced
the Surface laptop Studio 2 with this NPU,
but they didn't really explain why that really matters.
So this felt like a Copilot sales event
where Microsoft was selling us on its copilot system
rather than the vision of how Surface, Windows,
and Office will fully adapt to this new AI future.
And I think some of that lacking of vision
is because Microsoft's Surface and Windows Chief
Panos Panay announced his resignation earlier this week.
And so we just didn't really get that sort
of future-looking stuff that we might have seen in the past.
Or like a strategy for where this all goes
over the next 12 months or way into the future.
Is there even gonna be a surface event next year,
or is it just gonna be a Copilot and AI event?
Is Microsoft gonna get back to this innovative hardware
that kind of pushed the boundaries?
That was the success of Surface.
Microsoft created the Surface Pro,
it was something that others weren't doing.
But with Copilot and AI,
it feels like the entire tech industry is pivoting
in that direction, and Microsoft
is gonna need to stand out beyond just copilot.
So the big question remains,
how exactly is Microsoft gonna reinvent Windows
and its Surface hardware in this new AI era?
Okay, it's been a crazy week for Microsoft.
They've had Xbox leaks, Panos Panay
apparently joining Amazon, and now the Surface and AI event.
We've covered all of this and a lot more,
so check out theverge.com.