Pumped (Premium)

Panos Panay once said that Microsoft Surface would “bring the thunder.” This week, he fulfilled that promise in a dramatic expansion of the product line. In doing so, he sent a message: Surface isn’t just here to stay. It’s poised for the future as well.

There’s a lot to discuss.

So let’s start at the beginning. It’s sometime between 9 am and 10 am on Wednesday morning, and the reporters, bloggers, and other media who arrived before 9 have been allowed in the building where the Microsoft event will be held, but not inside the event room itself. So we’re mingling. I’ve just pronounced that Microsoft could announce a phone this morning, which is based on nothing more than the fact that I knew Microsoft was working on a phone; I had no idea that it was dual-screen or that it would definitely happen that day. And then Microsoft’s Panos Panay and Yusuf Mehdi entered the room, performing what I called “the perp walk,” saying hello to the media as they walked through.

In this case, the term seemed particularly apropos: Panos, normally jubilant and, well, pumped on the morning of Surface announcements was weirdly subdued, almost mopey. In what I’m sure was a breach of protocol, I actually put my hand on his shoulder and asked him if he was OK. He seemed confused by the question, so I told him that he was usually almost jittery with excitement when I saw him before these events. He smiled, said he’d be fine, greeted a few others and moved on.

The group of us exchanged puzzled glances. But it wasn’t the only weird omen that morning. Steven Bathiche, normally one of the happiest guys I’ve ever seen, had blown by the media earlier, and he hadn’t stopped to chat. He didn’t look glum, he looked pissed. Steven Bathiche never looks pissed. Again, weird.

Had the leaks spoiled the morning for the Surface team? Were they going to under-deliver on what we had collectively heard, perhaps, not even pre-announce Windows 10X and the “Centaurus” dual-screen device as a result? Would this event seem weak if all they had were mostly evolutionary updates to existing products?

Also alarming, Microsoft had invited “fans” to the event as a cheering section in the audience. I was told that the goal wasn’t to mimic the rally-like experience that occurs at Apple’s so-called press events. But that’s exactly what happened. In fact, it was worse: They applauded, and far too loudly, for truly innocuous statements and announcements. It ruined the event, interrupting the flow, if you will, for everyone. I bet it doesn’t happen again. Or if it does, that these well-meaning fools are instructed to rein it in next time.

(I was also told that Panos wanted to look out at a crowd of eager, expectant people, not reporters and bloggers with their faces buried in their laptops, typing.)

We were told upfront that the event would be bookended by Satya Nadella, a reminder that it was important to Microsoft and would be about more than just evolutionary product updates. Nadella, after all, had not attended the previous Microsoft hardware event. Something was going on.

And something is going on. Each of the products that Microsoft announced, even the seemingly innocuous evolutionary updates, is important in some way. And each together, and in concert with products like Surface Studio and Surface Book, which were not updated but will be updated in the future, sends a collective message about the importance that Microsoft places on hardware.

You may recall that I observed two years ago that software makers like Microsoft and Google often cite the Alan Kay trope that “people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. But that most today misunderstand what that means here in the 21st century. Yes, these firms make actual hardware devices that are sold to customers. But the more important work is happening inside the devices, a fact that was driven home repeatedly by Microsoft at this week’s event.

“What they’re really alluding to is something far more sophisticated,” I wrote at the time. “What they’re really talking about is how they differentiate from other companies from making their own hardware components.” In 2017, I cited examples like Pixel Visual Core, Google’s unique custom-designed co-processor for image processing and machine language, and Microsoft’s Pixelsense Accelerator chip that “runs Windows Ink acceleration code natively on hardware.”

Point being, in a world in which any hardware company can and does copy other companies’ designs at will, the real hardware differentiation is internal. Apple differentiates with its A-series processors, which most believe are miraculously faster than anything in the Android world, but are not really; they just benchmark well. And increasingly, companies like Microsoft—and Google and Samsung and others—are likewise differentiating beneath the surface, if you will.

As expected, the Pixelsense Accelerator chip was just the start. As of this week, Microsoft has partnered with all three of the top three non-Apple processor makers—Intel, Qualcomm, and AMD—to create custom, Surface-only silicon that will, over time, truly differentiate Microsoft’s offerings from the competition.

Yes, I have reservations about this for the same reason that I worry that Microsoft competing with its PC maker partners in a very low margin business is dangerous for the entire ecosystem, but whatever. (And perhaps they will license these designs over time to others. Perhaps; they told me this week that they are not planning to do so.) The interesting thing is that Microsoft’s partnering model remains, but here it is partnering with microprocessor/chipset makers. In Apple’s go-it-alone approach, it simply bought the company that was making its mobile processors.

And it’s early days: Each of the microprocessor/chipset-level advances that Microsoft announced this week will no doubt reap more benefits in the future via hardware and software advantages that will come in future generation silicon. But just going down this path sends a message. And there are already some key advantages to this approach.

Consider the Microsoft SQ-1 chipset, which Microsoft insists is “just a part number” but almost certainly stands for Surface Qualcomm (or, perhaps in a funny twist, Snapdragon Qualcomm). It’s very much a custom modification of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx that other vendors of Windows 10 on ARM-based PCs will start selling in the coming weeks. So, why would Microsoft secretly fork a coming generation of Snapdragon processors that was specifically designed to make this kind of PC finally make sense from a performance perspective? After all, the 8cx was supposed to provide Intel Core i5 levels of performance.

Because it didn’t go far enough.

Microsoft won’t say it like this—Qualcomm, after all, is now an important partner—but the 8cx performance gains were more general than they’d like; what Microsoft wanted, specifically, was a processor that would speed up the chipset’s Intel x86 emulation, ensuring that the desktop applications everyone uses all day every day, like Microsoft Office and Chrome/New Edge, ran just as fast as they do on real x86 PCs. And so the SQ-1 is optimized for that task.

(Getting over the x64 hump is a problem for another day. For now, Microsoft is working with key 64-bit app vendors, like Adobe, to get key applications like Photoshop ported over natively to ARM.)

Optimizing an ARM chipset for x86 emulation requires some trade-offs. The first SQ-1 based PC, Microsoft’s Surface Pro X, will deliver “only” 13 hours of battery life, compared to 20+ for other Snapdragon-based PCs. But it still provides the real-world benefits of the Windows 10 on ARM platform—All-day battery and always-on connectivity thanks to its LTE capabilities—while delivering on real-world performance too.

Now consider the custom AMD processors and graphics chipsets that grace the 15-inch versions of Surface Laptop 3. AMD’s current generation processor platform is called Zen 2, but the firm is known to be working on a Zen 3 that will ship … whenever it ships, maybe in 2020. The processor used in Surface Laptop 3 is unique to that device, and Microsoft described it as “Zen 2-plus,” meaning that it is the most powerful mobile Zen processor available.

Great. But why choose AMD when it’s already using Intel on all of its x86-based Surface PCs? It’s not just about diversifying suppliers, though I suspect that is part of the reason. It’s because Microsoft wanted to create a bigger version of the Surface Laptop and doing so would require a bigger display that would sap more power. Put simply, only AMD was able to deliver performance and thermals that were consistent with the 13.5-inch offering, but in a 15-inch form factor. It is what made the device possible.

One final note about Surface Laptop: I had theorized that perhaps Microsoft was killing off Surface Book since the new Laptop comes in both 13.5- and 15-inch versions. Microsoft tells me that that’s not true and that a Surface Book 3 is on the way. An insider source told me that the form factor will be identical to Surface Book 2 and that this version is just about updated internals.)

Now consider Surface Pro 7. Sure, it’s a conservative update, in an identical form factor to previous versions. (And, as a result, it looks positively old-fashioned next to svelte Surface Pro X with its much smaller bezels and thinner and lighter form factor.)

I’ve often criticized Microsoft for moving too slowly, like Mac slowly, when it comes to updating its Surface product lines. But in this case, at least, that was by design: Microsoft was literally waiting on Intel to deliver its 10nm “Ice Lake” chipsets before updating. The resulting 10th-generation Core chipsets are thus dramatically more efficient and powerful, enabling truly notable model-over-model improvements.

How notable? In the Core i7 versions, graphics performance has literally doubled. But even the Core i3 and i5 versions are noticeably snappier, and both of those versions of fanless and thus silent too.

Now consider the custom hardware advances that are common to all of the 2019 Surface PCs.

Each of the 2019 Surface PCs provides Fast Charging for the first time, and because this capability is built-in to the PCs and not the chargers, that means you can fast charge the new PCs using existing power bricks and the Surface Dock. Very cool. What that means in real-world terms is you can obtain an 80 percent charge in about an hour. (It varies a bit by model.)

Each of the 2019 Surface PCs also comes with USB-C, and you can use this port for charging, too, and it will charge at up to 60-watts in. This port can also charge phones (out) to 15-watts. And it provides display (4K to 60 Hz, one display) and storage capabilities, too, of course.

What it doesn’t provide is Thunderbolt 3. According to Microsoft, they’ve heard the need for USB-C from their customers, and have acquiesced this year across all of their new PCs. Given that they’re mobile PCs, USB-C probably does make sense. And it’s possible that more powerful PCs, like the Surface Book 2 mobile workstation and the Surface Studio, will see Thunderbolt 3 in the next versions. (Microsoft would not comment on that.)

Each of the 2019 Surface PCs provides a perfect and quieter typing experience with 1.3 mm of key travel. A 20 percent larger touchpad with a, yes, sexy (and nearly silent) click. And seamless, instant, one-finger display opening experience that feels like opening the door on a premium automobile; you can just tell the difference when compared to more pedestrian offerings. Surface Connect continues because Microsoft’s customers, especially businesses, require it.

And now, finally, we must turn to the future. And to the one-two punch of Surface Neo and Surface Duo.

Microsoft has never discussed future Surface products publicly like this. Panos made a show of being nervous about doing so, joked about telling Nadella that he wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do.

It was no joke: Since we have a year to think about this, we’ll be collectively debating the merits of pre-announcing these products so far in advance for quite some time.

I knew the Surface Neo, Microsoft’s dual-screen PC, was coming. I did not know its name.

I knew that Microsoft had modularized Windows 10 to such a point where it could separate out key parts of Win32, allowing a lighter version of the OS—literally a Windows Lite—to run on such systems. But having seen prototypes of the system and noting their similarities to Chrome OS, I and others assumed that this Lite OS would be very Chrome-like and that Microsoft would never use the name Windows.

These suppositions, guided by multiple sources, were incorrect. Instead, Microsoft is embracing the Windows brand for this new system. And it’s not quite as light as we thought, and will run Windows desktop applications in containers, a fact Microsoft did not discuss at the event. Microsoft was adamant that Windows 10 X, as the system is called, was not a replacement for S mode, and that S mode would still be offered to a customer base that, frankly, doesn’t want S mode. But they do want Windows 10 X, and I bet it replaces S mode in the market once it’s made available on normal form factor PCs. Which it will be.

For now, of course, Microsoft is pretending that the system is aimed at dual- and folding screen systems only. It’s doing so because it will use this initially low volume market to publicly test its simpler new user experiences—the functional bits, described as new, are just evolutions of things like Windows Snap and multiple app windows—and the container technology. Then it will be unleashed on us all as legacy Windows recedes to the background. (More on that in a moment.)

I still see no reasonable unique use cases for a dual-display computer. But whatever, everyone else is doing it, and by jumping into this market now, Microsoft is signaling that it cares about the future of its client platform—important—-and the future of its hardware. It wishes to remain relevant and, who knows, maybe use cases will arrive externally as they did for HoloLens. This is the digital equivalent of leaving your footprint on the moon: We’re here, Microsoft seems to be saying.

Which leads me to Surface Duo, Microsoft’s “surprise” dual-screen handset.

It was only partially surprising, sorry. Microsoft was really proud that it had duped the media, but I’ve been trying to get the community ready for a new Microsoft smartphone since May, when I was told that it was happening. The good news for Microsoft is that I did not know many things about this device, including the timing of the announcement, the name, and that it would be a dual-screen device.

To that, I will say that a dual-screen device makes a lot more sense for a phone than it does for a PC. While no one at Microsoft was able to explain to me why a dual-screen PCs makes any sense at all—“it’s a bit more portable,” one person weakly told me—the phone is easily justifiable. We’ve all had to look something up while talking to someone on the phone or doing something else. And we’ve all wished for a bigger view in certain situations, including navigation, reading, and media viewing.

Where Surface Neo is vaguely cool but mostly pointless, Surface Duo is … immediately and obviously useful. And it is right to wonder that, with Microsoft now shipping its own Android hardware, and supposedly “co-engineering” it with Google (read: It’s using the Google Play Store and Google apps) whether this is the start of an even broader embrace of Android. After all, Duo will require a dramatic expansion of the Microsoft Launcher UX and capabilities. This looks to be the most impressive take on Android yet.

Chatting at the event, The Verge’s Tom Warren theorized that Duo indicates that Microsoft will move from Windows to Android over time. That will be easy enough to test: If Microsoft releases an Android-based Surface Pro in the future, then the die is cast.

But I don’t see that. As noted earlier, this week’s show signaled a deeper investment in Windows at a time, frankly, when I’ve been fretting over how much Microsoft seemed to be ignoring it. Lite OS did not drop the Windows brand, it embraced it. And Microsoft has shown the world that it intends to bring Windows to new form factors. The embrace of Android on mobile is simply pragmatic, I think. Microsoft failed with its own platform in handsets, and Android is open and can be used this way.

As important, with Google under regulatory scrutiny in the EU, the U.S., Russia, and elsewhere, the timing is right, too. Google has already been forced to stop treating its Android licensees as Microsoft did with PC makers back in the late 1990s, and Android licensing is now a lot looser than it used to be. Embracing Android on a handset is now quite viable.

And there we have it. Yeah, there are new colors, materials, and other exterior changes. Surface PCs always had that special something, and the 2019 Surface PCs have that in spades. But the bigger news, the bigger excitement, I think, comes from what’s happening on the inside.

With these new PCs, and with the futuristic dual-display models coming last year, Microsoft Surface has truly arrived. And if you’re not pumped by that, go see a doctor. I love Surface, always have, but I have never felt this good about what Microsoft is doing with its PC and devices lineup.

Yeah. I’m f@#king pumped.