Some Thoughts About a Surface Pro Refresh and the Spring Hardware Event (Premium)

The other day, I revealed the first concrete information about the next version of Surface Pro. Today, I'd like to expand on that a bit by thinking through what this information means for Surface and the Spring hardware event.

In case you missed it---which makes sense, since I only tweeted it---here's what I revealed.
Surface Pro 5 will not change the Surface Connect power connector, I was just told. Kaby Lake, nothing dramatic.
I received a number of questions from people about this claim, most of which were of the "what about [insert other feature here]?" variety. But I tweeted what I know, and nothing more. And at the time of the tweet, I didn't know anything more than what I tweeted. Beyond one very important detail: The veracity of this claim.

Which makes it somewhat irritating that no one who wrote an article about this information even thought to send me an email, ping me on Twitter or Skype, or otherwise contact me to find out more. Despite the fact that doing so would have been easy. And more important, from a journalistic standpoint, might have provided them with more information, a scoop of sorts. It might have also made them feel better (or worse, I guess) about the quality of this information. But no one contacted me. Not one.

This article isn't about the abject lack of journalistic integrity that now grips my industry, but I mention this because it makes me worried for all of us. But let's move on.

Since tweeting that information and seeing dozens of articles pop-up around the blogosphere based on nothing more than that one tweet, I've received confirmation that my information is accurate from a separate source. I didn't actually need that confirmation, as I already trusted the original source---who, yes, has in fact seen a new Surface Pro in person---enough to warrant the tweet in the first place. (I didn't write a post about this topic because I intended to instead analyze what this meant, which is what I'm doing now.)

There have been a lot of questions and much speculation---and much speculation that mistaken for fact---about when and where Microsoft will update its Surface lineup, and of course what Surface devices will be included. But I think we can arrive at something pretty close to the truth by reexamining what we do know.

Let's start with the when.

For example, we know that Microsoft has long planned a "Spring" hardware event; Microsoft CMO Chris Capossela told Mary Jo Foley and I this publicly, on Windows Weekly, in late December.

In January, was told by a trusted source that this event would occur concurrently with the early April launch of the Windows 10 Creators Update. But the date I was told at that time was April 7, not April 11. (The numbers 7 and 11 rhyme, so that could have been an honest mistake, but it's more likely that the date has simply changed over time.)

So that's the when. Spring was always the plan. April was more specifically the plan, secretly, and some date in Apri...

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