Surface Book: Past, Present, and Future

Having successfully formalized the 2-in-1 product category with its Surface Pro family of products, Microsoft next set its sights on the laptop with Surface Book. After one year of extensive experience with this incredible yet flawed product, I have some thoughts about Surface Book's first year and its future.

First, let's look back on the most important milestones in the first year of Surface Book availability.

October 2, 2015. I tweet a "rumor" that was the first mention of Surface Book: "Potential rumor on the new hardware: 14-inch Surface 2-in-1 with Retina-class screen, dual GPUs, keyboard base with ports. Is it real? Hm."

October 6, 2016. At a new hardware event in New York City, Microsoft announces Surface Book alongside Surface Pro 4, Band 2, and the Lumia 950. Check out my Microsoft Surface Book Preview and Brad's Gallery: Microsoft’s New Surface Book for more information.

October 9, 2015. Microsoft opens up Surface Book for preorder, with pricing started at $1499. The first Surface Book commercial also aired.

October 21, 2015. I publish my first review of Surface Book---the Core i5/8 GB/256 GB version---noting that it was an expensive, first-generation, and untested product with a controversial design. Worse, my review unit was dogged by reliability issues, which Microsoft said were due to it being a pre-production unit.

October 26, 2015. Microsoft begins selling Surface Book to customers in the U.S. and Canada only. It would expand availability---and add a few models---over the coming months.

October 28, 2015. Just two days after the device ships publicly,Microsoft issues the first major firmware update for Surface Book. A second firmware update then shipped just five days later, addressing numerous additional issues.

November 19, 2015. Microsoft releases a third major firmware update arrived on November 19, 2015. Over this first month, it became clear that Microsoft's new laptop seemed to have some serious issues. "This [update] was necessitated by major reliability issues, in particular with Surface Book, related to power management, Windows Hello, and the display driver," I wrote. "I’ve certainly experienced these issues myself."

December 4, 2015. Buried in a support forum, a Microsoft representative finally acknowledges the rampant reliability issues with Surface Book and then drops a bombshell: Citing the "very hard computer science problem" that caused the issues, he said that Microsoft would not fix Surface Book until sometime in 2016. My response was simple. Bullshit, I wrote.

December 11, 2015. Faced with widespread criticism for shipping an expensive and yet reliability-challenged product, Microsoft finally apologizes to customers. In a support forum. "For those of you who’ve had a less-than-perfect experience, we’re sorry for any frustration this has caused," a Microsoft representative wrote.

January 22, 2016. Having waited over a month for Microsoft to do something---anything...

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