I went to the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash., to get our first look at the new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro tablet, but I found far more in the May 20 announcements than just new hardware. This was an opening salvo from Microsoft and Qualcomm, declaring not only the “era of the AI PC” but also the ostensible end of AMD’s and Intel’s dominion over PCs. Whether either of these declarations proves true over time is yet to be seen, but you should not doubt that the Windows world is changing.
As a hardware guy, I’m most excited about the new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro, but first, let’s digest the big changes coming to the Windows 11 operating system. Microsoft has promoted ChatGPT-powered Bing for months, dubbing it Copilot, but this takes things to a new level, adding AI to system-wide features and powerful new capabilities that are run entirely on your device.
The biggest of these is Recall, an AI-powered system search tool that lets you describe what you’re looking for, where it came from, or even just a description of the content or mention of a conversation to find the thing you need right when you need it.
