#HTE

Microsoft’s Beautiful, Design-ey New Surface Pro

Now that Apple has slowed down on innovative design, it’s great to see that Microsoft is picking up the slack. Yesterday they put out a video of their new Surface Pro, and the thing looks amazing:

I’m digging not only that they’ve developed their own style for the video—remember that stretch of time when all people did was try to look like Apple’s videos?—I’m also loving the outside-of-the-box thinking here. Every laptop requires the hinge between keyboard and screen to support the latter, but here the kickstand does the supporting, taking the burden off of the keyboard connection. I’m not sure if using it would prove irritating—in a café, for instance, you’d need more free table space behind the screen—but I’m impressed that Microsoft is willing to take these kinds of experimental risks.

I’m also very curious to see, and try using, the “next generation hinge” in person.

We all know that Apple does things on their own terms, and typically will not react to a competitor’s product by trying to one-up them. That is a shame and, these days it seems, to their detriment.