Posted on 06/15/2017 6:03:20 PM PDT by dayglored
Today, Surface is celebrating the largest launch in its history with Surface Laptop and the new Surface Pro now available in 25 markets around the world, as well as expanded global availability for Surface Studio.
Today, we are excited to launch the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop and bring our full family of Surface products to more markets than ever before. When I look at the journey we have been on since we launched the first Surface nearly five years ago, I am amazed at how far the product family has come. With Surface Pro, we created a new category and challenged the status quo of the laptop. With every Surface release since we have continued to push the boundaries of existing categories – bringing more power, more pixels and more versatility to help people work how they want, where they want.
From the professional that seeks inspiration out in the world and wants to capture it, to the student traveling from class to dorm room to library, we all desire tools that allow us to bring ideas to life wherever we choose. This is why we build Surface products, and this is why we’ve expanded the Surface family with beautiful and powerful devices that reflect the individual using them.
People are already falling in love with Surface Laptop. The rich, deep colors draw you into an experience that is warm and inviting. The blend of beauty and performance hits all the right notes without compromising the things required to keep you productive, like all-day battery life, incredible display quality, and portability. Even the Alcantara® material covering the keyboard balances its elegance with a clever design that resists spills and absorption. Every detail on this product has been thought through.
This meticulous attention extends to the software as well. Surface Laptop is made for Windows 10 S and the best of Microsoft’s products and services like Office and OneDrive. Windows 10 S ensures that your device is always up to date, and because Microsoft verifies every app in the Windows Store, you don’t have to worry whether an application is legit or malicious. You get the benefit of superior performance and streamlined security. To learn more about getting started with Windows 10 S, visit this blog post.
New apps arrive in the Windows Store all the time – in fact, we recently announced Spotify will come to the Windows Store this summer. We also recently launched SoundCloud Beta and will see iTunes in the Windows Store in the coming months. If you need an app that isn’t yet available in the Windows Store, you can easily switch to Windows 10 Pro at no additional cost until Dec. 31, 2017.
And, for a limited time, Surface Laptop comes with an offer for a one-year subscription to Office 365 Personal and 1TB of free storage on OneDrive*, giving you full access to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
We’re also excited to announce that we are making all four Surface Laptop colors available in 17 new markets over the coming months. Burgundy, Cobalt Blue, and Graphite Gold will join Platinum as options available in Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, HK, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the UK.
Visit Surface.com to learn more about available colors and pre-orders in your country.
Also available today, the new Surface Pro is the perfect balance of versatility and performance. We wanted this product to be the laptop you can bring with you anywhere since you never know when or where inspiration will strike.
We’ve redesigned this game-changing form factor from the inside out. While the refined exterior may look familiar, this is a new generation of Surface Pro, offering up to 13.5 hours of battery life so you can work and create all day on the go and over 2.5x more power than Surface Pro 3. It runs Windows 10 Pro and Office, and it can handle the powerful desktop apps you crave, without compromising the thin and light form that has defined Surface Pro since we launched the first device five years ago. We’ve also made incredible progress with the Surface Pen. This is our most natural and responsive Pen yet. You can read all about how we’ve quadrupled the pressure sensitivity over our previous version, or how we dropped latency to milliseconds while adding tilt functionality. This new Surface Pen pushes the boundaries of the digital and analog worlds, bringing a fluid real-to-life inking experience. Every stroke, every line, shows up as intended, even the finest of touches.
With Surface Pen, touch, and on-screen support of Surface Dial, Surface Pro becomes a mobile creative studio that offers unparalleled versatility and performance.
Surface Pro is available now with LTE coming later this year.
People around the world have been asking us when they can get Surface Studio. This device has sparked the imagination of some of the world’s most creative individuals. We heard you. After recent expansion to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, we are proud to share that Surface Studio will be available starting today in Austria, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.
In my own case, I just vastly prefer Win7's UI and tools to Win10's (even with Classic Shell). I acknowledge that under the hood, Win10 is superior.
I think in general the problem people have with Microsoft is technical security and privacy. Those are also an issue (though arguably less so) with Android/Google. They are not an issue with Apple, since they go to great lengths to be secure and protect privacy. Tim Cook's unfortunate personal habits and the company's social stance may sway some folks, but it's not a technical security/privacy issue, is a personal/social/political one. That's different.
> It’s just a tablet or laptop, you can run whatever you like on it, please try not to panic.
Well, you can run whatever you like -if- whatever you like is supported on the platform. Secure boot and proprietary hardware get in the way some of the time.
Yeah, forget this Alcantara stuff. I want a laptop coated in Corinthian leather.
MS seems to be doing a great job in hardware system design.
Apple needs to step it up a bit.
MS is indeed doing some great engineering.
Apple has a substantial lead, and Microsoft is not (yet) viewed as a dangerous hardware/systems competitor. But MS is getting serious. It cracks me up that after all these decades, MS is finally catching onto the model that Apple started in the mid-80's with the Macintosh: an integrated system of hardware and software and applications, that are designed to work together.
I hope MS does well, and pushes Apple a bit. There's plenty of room for both outfits, both Windows and macOS.
And since both companies' hardware will run it... Linux! :-)
Microsoft shines when it has a successful model to knock off and undermine with a lower price. Green field, pure innovation? Not so much. Some memorably comical efforts, in fact.
> I want a laptop coated in Corinthian leather.
FINE Corinthian leather, mind you.
No, seriously, Alcantara is a pseudo-suede, and you can just imagine what contact with palms and fingers, much less coffee, would do to it.
>(arguably less so) with Android and Google
Yea, I think I’ll argue that one ... Apple and MS at least have a product to sell you; Google only has YOU (your data, your activities, your privacy) to sell ... to others.
Agreed on Apple’s privacy stance, even if they’ve extended closed architecture right into the hardware.
Lastly, the MS privacy thing here seems to stem from various apocalyptic articles written by the same people and sources that provide us fake news on every other topic, (even formerly reliable sites like Ars Technica now splash ‘climate change’ and anti-Trump nonsense daily) so I encourage a bit of skepticism. Personally, the latest major W10 update booted into a review of potential data sharing (Xbox/phone/PC) and collection options and the screen enabling me to turn it all off (which I did).
Apple has been regularly "sincerely flattered" by Microsoft since the mid-80's. Nothing new there. :-)
Microsoft's engineering talent is exceptional, and can come up with technical achievements that are outstanding. I will not demean their technical folks.
But MS's Marketing people, and their ways of developing a product concept and bringing it to market, are strictly from hunger. Their successes have most often (though not always) come after someone else shows the way with a successful product. Their failures have been when they try to introduce something of their own -- focus groups are not visionaries, they're the opposite thing.
From "BOB" to "Zune" to "Metro", with a lot in between, MS marketers have tried their hardest to ruin an otherwise capable company.
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