Don’t Be Concerned by the Surface Release Schedule (Premium)

On the eve of Microsoft's next press event, anxiety is high: Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book are now over 18 months old and there are no replacements in sight. What's going on? Is Microsoft mismanaging a once-proud hardware lineup in the same manner it allegedly did with Nokia?

Folks, relax. It's not that bad.

But since we now live in a knee-jerk, A.D.D. world in which our navel-gazing misgivings can be broadcast around the world in seconds, we obviously have to over-analyze this. So let's look at what's really happening and then try to figure out why it's happening.

As you may recall, Microsoft announced Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book in October 2015, over 18 months ago. That's over 10 years in dog years, and it isn't all that long compared to some Apple product revisions. But it's also fair to say that most major PC makers update their core products about once a year. And that Microsoft has never taken so much time to revise its Surface Pro lineup.

Worse, Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book are both based on the Intel Skylake platform. And I know from multiple sources that these products have endemic hardware issues that, in some cases, actually can't be fixed. You'd think Microsoft would want to upgrade them to Kaby Lake, at least, and more quickly, not more slowly.

But that hasn't happened.

According to sources both public and private, Microsoft long intended to host a Surface hardware event in April 2017, and looking at the calendar today I can see that that isn't going to happen. Adding to the confusion, next week's Microsoft event is focused on Windows 10 Cloud (final name TBD) in education. And while there will almost certainly be a Surface hardware device announcement of some kind, it will not be a new Surface Pro or Surface Book. At least not according to Microsoft PR, which told me and some other journalists and bloggers this specifically.

I wrote recently about a source who has now seen a Surface Pro 4 revision in person, twice. According to this source, and later corroborated by others, Microsoft is not doing what I think needs to be done with Surface, which is a major upgrade that drops the proprietary and limited Surface Connect power connector for a more powerful and versatile USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 solution. Instead, this revision utilizes Surface Connect like previous generation devices. It will come with Kaby Lake processors, at least, but otherwise will very closely resemble today's Surface Pro 4.

Of course, the big question about this device is when. If Microsoft is not going to announce this update at next week's event, will it hold a separate event? Will it do so at Build? Will it not even hold an event, as it did with Surface 3?

That I don't know. But all of these questions, plus news that Surface revenues plummeted by 26 percent to $831 million (from $1.3 billion a year ago) in the most recent financial quarter, have triggered some anxiety, some angst, in the Microsoft community.

Ars Technica's...

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