Another week, another batch of Microsoft Surface-related news stories. Here’s what’s on deck for this Weekly Surface News Roundup:
- Microsoft Apologizes for Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book
- Panos Panay Dodges Surface Phone Questions
- Skylake CPU Shortage Delays Surface Shipments
- More Surface Problems For The NFL
It’s a short but interesting list this week. I went for a lot of quotes because, it seems, people had a lot to say about Surfaces this week. Let’s get started…
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Weekly Surface News Roundup: Microsoft Apologizes for Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book
Representing the Microsoft Surface Team, Josh_F, posted the following apology on the Microsoft Community Forum:
First, a big thanks to all of our customers for your open and candid feedback on Surface Book and Surface Pro 4. For those of you who’ve had a less-than-perfect experience, we’re sorry for any frustration this has caused. Please know that we’re reading your comments and hearing you loud and clear. Your input is incredibly valuable in helping us address your questions with timely updates and fixes. Since launch, we have aggressively pursued the most pressing feedback. We have already issued a number of updates via Windows Update and are working to issue additional updates and fixes as soon as possible to further improve the overall Surface experience. To ensure that you have received the most recent updates, we recommend you check out our support page with instructions on how to download and install the latest Surface and Windows updates. Surface Book update history can be found here and Surface Pro 4 update history can be found here.
Thanks again for your feedback. We’ll continue to communicate as updates and fixes become available via moderator posts to http://answers.microsoft.com/forum/surface. If you have any additional support questions, please visit our main support page.
The short version is that they fixed a lot of the problems but still have to create more patches to resolve all of the issues folks are having.
I’ll give them credit for trying (the “old” Microsoft from the 90’s and oo’s would have never admitted anything was wrong) but I don’t know if it would placate me if I was unable to use my new Surface because of some of the reported problems. I guess I’m lucky I’ve not had any problems.
Related: Thurott.com, Betanews, Ubergizmo [divider]
Weekly Surface News Roundup: Panos Panay Dodges Surface Phone Questions
Panos Panay, head of the Surface Team at Microsoft, sat down with the folks over at Geekwire for an interview. He spoke about many subjects but, in this post, I want to concentrate on the conversation around the Surface Phone.
According to some Surface Team is designing a “Surface Phone” scheduled for release sometime in 2016. As you might expect, when asked about that, Panos gave an evasive answer:
People love asking that. Again, nice try. I think you have to continuously check the landscape of what needs to happen next in all our device categories. We’re working on a lot of stuff.
You can listen to the whole interview here:
Despite the evasive answer, I expect to see a Surface Phone as the rumors indicate, but I’ve been wrong before. I guess we’ll find out sometime next year.
Related: Winbeta, WinCentral, Geekwire [divider]
Weekly Surface News Roundup: Skylake CPU Shortage Delays Surface Shipments
It seems the ongoing problems, that Microsoft had to apologize for, are not affecting Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book sales. In fact, presumably due to high demand, Microsoft seems to be having a hard time getting the processors they need for the devices.
According to sources who spoke to DigiTimes, there’s a shortage of Intel Skylake processors from the far east suppliers. This means that Microsoft could have a hard time fulfilling orders before Christmas. The result is that some orders may be postponed until Q1 of next year.
Keep in mind, these are rumors and may or may not pan out. However, if you’re planning on getting someone a SP4 or Surface Book for the holidays, you may want to act sooner than later.
Related: Tech Times, Tech Radar, Softpedia [divider]
Weekly Surface News Roundup: More Surface Problems For The NFL
During the Monday night game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins, a server power glitch caused both teams to abandon their Surface tablets and go “old school”, using paper and pencil to do sideline play analysis.
After the game, Dallas Cowboy’s head coach Jason Garret had this to say about the outage:
We didn’t have tablets, and we didn’t have pictures…. It’s a challenge. It’s a challenge because you get so used to seeing those pictures and verifying your thoughts. So what you have to do is communicate really, really well as to what is going on. The guys upstairs have the best vantage point of fronts, coverages and the different looks that we are seeing so they have to do a good job at taking and writing that stuff down because you don’t have the opportunity to go back and see the pictures or see the stuff you would typically see on the tablets.
So, even though commentators keep referring to Surfaces.
Related: TWCN, Geekwire, Winbeta [divider]
That’s it for this week. Stop back next week for another roundup of Surface-related news stories for your entertainment and information.
Tim
