Microsoft has been quietly killing off a number of Surface devices over the past few years. At first it was the Surface Headphones and Surface Earbuds that started to disappear, then came news of a changed “hardware portfolio” amid 10,000 job cuts at Microsoft in early 2023. A year later, Microsoft then killed off the Surface Duo and ended production of its innovative Surface Studio 2 all-in-one PC. Now, I’m hearing that another Surface device is on the way out.
Sources familiar with Microsoft’s Surface plans tell me that the company stopped production of its Surface Laptop Studio 2 earlier this month. No more units are being produced, and Microsoft is planning to mark the device as end of life in June. I asked Microsoft to comment on the end of life for the Surface Laptop Studio 2, but the company declined to provide a statement.
Microsoft’s official Surface resellers, however, were happy to discuss the future of Microsoft’s folding laptop. “Surface Laptop Studio 2 has reached end of manufacturing and availability of supply will be limited and may vary by market going forward,” confirmed one reseller when I queried about a lack of stock. “Microsoft will continue to support Surface Laptop Studio 2 through driver and firmware updates in accordance with the Surface Driver and Firmware Lifecycle.”
Much like how the Surface Studio reached end of life, there doesn’t appear to be a Surface Laptop Studio 3 on the horizon. That’s a shame because ever since Microsoft hit the Surface 10-year mark in 2022, I’ve been wondering whether the company will continue to innovate in the decade ahead and push PC makers to invest in laptop and tablet designs.
Over the past few years, the future direction of Surface hardware hasn’t been totally clear, especially after former Surface chief Panos Panay departed for Amazon in 2023. Now, it increasingly looks like the future of Surface is all about the simplification of existing product lines.
The two new Surface devices that go on sale next week — the Surface Laptop 13-inch and Surface Pro 12-inch — are just smaller versions of what exists today. Microsoft isn’t experimenting with a whacky new form factor here or trying to push Surface in a radical new direction. These devices are safe bets, while acknowledging the effort required to develop them.
These two devices are symbolic of the future direction for Surface, and I’d be amazed if Microsoft suddenly surprises everyone with something like a dual-screen Surface Duo or an all-in-one Surface Studio anytime soon.
This simplification is evident if you visit Microsoft’s Surface website, where the only two choices of devices you’re presented with are the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop. If you dig a little deeper, you’ll still find the Surface Go 4 on sale for businesses, nearly two years after it was first announced alongside the Surface Laptop Studio 2.
I understand the Surface Go 4 is still being produced and stock levels are healthy at resellers. We may even eventually see a new Arm-powered Surface Go device in the future, particularly because it’s a popular device thanks to the smaller form factor and pricing.
The Surface Go 4 was originally supposed to ship with an Arm-powered Qualcomm processor according to Windows Central, before Microsoft landed on a traditional Intel chip instead. Any early signs of a Surface Go 4 successor may now come from Qualcomm. Microsoft has been following Qualcomm’s chip roadmap with its latest Surface devices, introducing its Copilot Plus PC initiative alongside the launch of the Snapdragon X Elite last year, and then making Windows laptops cheaper after the debut of the eight-core Snapdragon X Plus launched at CES earlier this year.
Qualcomm typically hosts its Snapdragon summit in the fall, and I’m curious to see if the chipmaker has another Snapdragon X series variant for a Surface Go 5. Qualcomm originally teased an entry-level chip for entry-level laptops last year, which looked like it might have six cores, but it went on to only launch its mid-level 8-core Snapdragon X Plus in January.
Beyond the simplification of its Surface lineup, we might well see Microsoft experiment further with devices for AI assistants in the future, much like how it tried to make dedicated Cortana hardware in the past. Surface and Windows chief Pavan Davuluri hinted at that when I spoke to him in October. “The big difference now for us vs. the past is the agent experience itself is complete enough, meaningful enough, that it gives us permission to look at other form factors and devices,” Davuluri said. “I think it will free up the ability to innovate in hardware and come out with purpose-built hardware.”
Microsoft has already started using the “Hey, Copilot!” wake word to activate Copilot Voice in Windows 11, which reminds me a lot of “Hey, Cortana!” in Windows 10. I’m not so sure that Microsoft is ready to compete with Alexa again, but Copilot is already a far better digital assistant than Cortana ever was, even if everyone uses ChatGPT instead.
I’m just hoping that Microsoft’s fascination with AI will still mean there is room for Surface experimentation in the future. Like I said last week, Surface has become known for pushing the boundaries of Windows laptops, not just smaller iterative designs. Everyone copied the Surface Pro, including Apple, but it increasingly looks like it’s Lenovo that’s willing to experiment more than Microsoft these days. It’s not a great sign that the Surface Studio and Surface Laptop Studio are seemingly gone, but perhaps — just like the Surface Book — they will pave the way for what’s next.
- Microsoft is laying off more than 6,000 employees. Around 3 percent of Microsoft’s entire workforce is being laid off this week, the biggest job cuts at Microsoft since it laid off 10,000 employees in 2023. The cuts have impacted all different roles at Microsoft, with 1,985 employees losing their jobs in Redmond alone (1,510 in office and 475 remote). Most of the job losses in Redmond have been software engineering roles, which comes at a time when Microsoft and others are investing in AI and keep discussing the potential for it to replace human engineers.
- Microsoft starts testing ‘Hey, Copilot!’ in Windows. If you’re a Windows 11 beta tester, you can now try out hands-free access to Microsoft’s AI app. Copilot Voice can now be activated with “Hey, Copilot!” in Windows 11 test builds, much like how “Hey, Cortana!” worked on Windows 10 before Microsoft killed off its previous digital assistant.
- Microsoft extends Office app support on Windows 10 to 2028. Microsoft revealed earlier this year that it was planning to stop supporting Office apps (Microsoft 365) on Windows 10 after the October 14th end of support cutoff, but it’s now making a U-turn. Microsoft is pledging to continue providing security updates for Office apps on Windows 10 for an additional three years. It’s all part of helping businesses transition to Windows 11, apparently. Given how popular Windows 10 still is, I’m still not fully convinced that the Windows 10 end of life will actually happen in October, though.
- Microsoft reveals its rejected Start menu redesigns. Microsoft is redesigning the Windows 11 Start menu this month with a new, wider design that finally lets you disable the recommended feed of files and apps. The final design could have looked a lot different though, as Microsoft has revealed a bunch of concept images that could have radically overhauled how the Start menu functions in Windows. One Start menu concept even takes up the entire vertical space of a screen, complete with separated sections that you seem to scroll vertically to access.
- Microsoft quietly bumps Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 price by $200. The entry-level Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 were a great value at $999, but Microsoft has quietly stopped selling them at its own online store after announcing the smaller Surface Laptop and Surface Pro. The base models are now $1,199, which is a cheeky way of Microsoft making its smaller models look like good value.
- Microsoft and Asus’ Xbox handheld appears in leaked photos. The Asus ROG Ally 2 has leaked thanks to regulatory listings, complete with an Xbox button. I revealed earlier this year that Microsoft was working with Asus to develop an Xbox-branded handheld codenamed “Project Kennan,” and this is it. Hopefully we’ll hear a lot more about it very soon.
- FTC loses appeal to stop Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal that already happened. I almost forgot that the FTC’s appeal against an injunction to prevent Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition was still ongoing. An appeals court upheld the denial of the injunction this week, nearly two years after Microsoft closed the deal.
- RIP Skype — you were right about almost everything. Microsoft killed off Skype last week, replacing it with Microsoft Teams. My colleague David Pierce has looked back at the legacy of Skype and just how much people will miss it.
- Microsoft goes passwordless by default on new accounts. Microsoft has been supporting passwordless Windows logins for years and the ability to delete your password from a Microsoft account, but it’s now going a step further. If you create a new Microsoft account, you’ll now be asked to use a passkey, security key, or push notifications instead of a password.
- Microsoft shuts off Bing Search data and recommends switching to AI. The Bing Search APIs will be retired in August, in a surprise move from Microsoft. While some big customers will continue to have access to the Bing Search APIs, other smaller ones will be entirely cut off. Microsoft recommends businesses use its Azure AI agents as a replacement instead.
- OpenAI negotiates with Microsoft to unlock new funding and future IPO. Microsoft is in the middle of contract negotiations with OpenAI that could see the commercial side of the business launch a future IPO. Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar investment into OpenAI is complicated and involves revenue sharing and access to future AI models. The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is now offering to give up some of its equity stake in OpenAI in exchange for access to new AI models beyond the current contract’s 2030 cutoff date. How this all shakes out is going to be a big deal for the future of the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI.
- Microsoft is hiring an Xbox game preservation engineer. The Xbox platform team is looking for an engineer to help build emulation solutions for Xbox that will enable “new generations to play games from the past.” With Microsoft combining the best parts of Windows and Xbox together for handheld gaming PCs, this is an interesting hire. I’m still hoping that Microsoft will one day get Xbox games running on PC as part of its backward compatibility and game preservation efforts.
- Microsoft is adopting Google’s AI agent standard. I have a feeling that next week at Build and Google I/O we’re going to hear a lot about Model Context Protocol (MCP), the standard that lets large language models interact with third-party websites, apps, and systems. While MCP is proving popular, Microsoft is also embracing Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) specification for Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. A2A lets AI agents “collaborate across clouds, platforms, and organizational boundaries.”
- The Microsoft Store is being integrated into Windows Search. Microsoft is getting ready to let people find and install apps right from the Start menu or taskbar. Giorgio Sardo, vice president of the Microsoft Store, revealed the change on X last week, and the replies suggest that people want a way to disable this already.
- Huawei unveils first laptop running self-developed HarmonyOS as Windows license expires. Huawei’s HarmonyOS laptop is ready to go, after its Windows license expired in March. The OS looks a lot like a combination of ChromeOS and Windows 11, and naturally Huawei has added a bunch of AI features, China’s alternative to Microsoft Office, and the DingTalk enterprise collaboration platform.
- Microsoft might narrowly avoid an EU antitrust fine for Office and Teams bundling. Microsoft was charged with EU antitrust violations last year for bundling Microsoft Teams with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Now, Reuters reports that Microsoft might avoid a hefty fine thanks to the unbundling of Teams, better interoperability efforts, and some price changes. The European Commission is reportedly seeking feedback from rivals before a final decision. Slack originally filed a complaint with the EU in 2020, arguing that Microsoft was unfairly bundling Teams with Office.
- More Copilot changes are coming to Windows 11. Microsoft has started testing an “ask Copilot” feature for the right-click context menu in Windows 11. It appears when you right-click a file or an image, and it will upload the item to Copilot so you can summarize it or have the AI assistant make use of it. Copilot Vision is also getting some changes that allow it to support seeing two apps on your PC, so it can guide you through games or apps.
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