Microsoft Debuts New Copilot+ Windows PCs Designed Around AI

[AndiG]

Microsoft got a major point here. "PC's designed around AI" - this is the way to go and it feels right, like Androids way to integrate AI - or build Android around an AI core.

The question is if Apple is capable to follow MS/Google here since Apple neither has the hardware/cloud infrastructure, nor does it have the data to train its models.

I guess the combination of Windows and AI is still Windows and it will be still ugly and ship with a bad user experience. But MS has the power and the knowledge and MS could introduce a Linux/Gnome or BSD based OS tomorrow with powerful AI agents.

 

[freezelighter]

More AI? Freaking hell I don't think I've ever seen the entire computer industry become *this* suddenly obsessed with something before.

You seem to have no idea what is happening here and NOW. Our top management is being replaced since a year. Teachers, psychologists, lawyers, process designers, opex specialists, photographers, models, artists, bloggers, youtubers - all are gone in the upcoming months. Midjourney 6, Firefly 3, Imagen 3, Astra, Veo, Sora, GPT4o combined with Optimus 2, Atlas 2, Astribot S1, Unitree G1 and Figure are just the start of what will come in 9 months and only show a small part compared to what is going on behind the scene and on darknet. I quit NatGeo, I quit OM Digital Solutions and Roche leadership team last year in Switzerland and entered OpenAI. The world we know will not exist anymore in just a couple of months. Mind uploading is closer than you could ever imagine. More I am not allowed to tell. And humanity is already divided in those who accept this reality and not.

 

[incidentallycheckout]

The question is if Apple is capable to follow MS/Google here since Apple neither has the hardware/cloud infrastructure, nor does it have the data to train its models.

That’s why there are the rumors they are partnering up at least at first.

Apple can easily have the infrastructure and data over time to transition to its own solution down the line.

 

[stinksroundhere]

Steve Jobs came up with the phrase 'If you're not paying for the product you are the product'.

Since his passing, the tech industry has allowed itself to become an arm of the money laundering and surveillance sectors. Any profit is good profit for these people and they treat you as the product even when you pay for the product now. It can only become worse with these people always chasing the next method of harming users and citizens.

Jobs would absolutely be sickened by this stuff. If you think he was rebellious before he would have been even more rebellious now. He was a big fan of handicraft and using your brain. He travelled half way around the world to buy or view the works of Hasui Kawase. His home didn't look like a tech bro cave. It was a mess with wooden desks, old wooden flooring and handmade objects.

He would absolutely have opposed the extreme AI-fication that AI bros are pushing which will be very harmful and reduce brain-muscle motor and thinking skills.

The internet and television was supposed to expand education for all. It just created more extremism, more forms of warfare, more rich-poor divide, and the return of authoritarianism. Access to information and AI doesn't make people smarter. It just increases surveillance by the worst people on the planet and turns people into their sheep.

 

[transpo1]

If Apple’s all in on AI now it can’t be something that gets updated once a year at WWDC. I don’t believe the only options are once a year or half-baked.

Apple’s got a lot at stake every time they add a feature to their ecosystem. They’ll likely want to control it. If they end up using OpenAI or Gemini to supplement their new features, they’ll want to vet these before they’re added across devices. I could see them trickling out new features every 6 months but I’d be surprised if it were a steady drip….

 

[transpo1]

Why would there be a privacy issue when the entire thing is on device? Unable to comprehend.

The entire thing won’t be on device— at least that’s what the rumors have been saying.

 

[sracer]

Recall is all locally stored, they addressed this in the presentation.

Yes, Recall data is locally stored on the system, but Microsoft didn't say that the data will ONLY stay on the local system. (at least it wasn't mentioned in the linked article)

They've fine-tuned their telemetry hooks over the past 10 years. That Recall data is going to make its way to Microsoft servers.

 

[danielchow]

Gag! Only something careless like this could come out of this company. Another Pandora’s box — privacy abuse issues, class actions, extortions, blackmails, just anything. Their idea of security is like a horizontal sliding latch to lock a sliding door. Their entire product line of OS, from MSDOS to present, is a Pandora’s box. But nowadays, it is a very ornate Pandora’s box 🙄

My friend added, Of course the slightest thought of selling this Recall data to marketers and politicians never even vaguely started to cross their minds.

 

[incidentallycheckout]

Yes, Recall data is locally stored on the system, but Microsoft didn't say that the data will ONLY stay on the local system. (at least it wasn't mentioned in the linked article)

Why would it leave the system and go online later on? The only reason it'd ever phone home is if it was needed all along and it isn't needed since it works without it.

 

[bradman83]

I remember the last major moment for Windows was Windows 95. The entire industry was excited during its release and it became so popular and a defining moment for MS. It literally nearly decimated the Mac and by extension Apple. I see similar things with this Windows / CoPilot / ARM launch today. If MS continues to execute right and Apple has little to show at WWDC, the Mac (not Apple) could end up being in the same situation as it was during the Windows 95 launch.

I would argue the landscape for computers was entirely different in 1995 versus today. Everything is much more platform agnostic compared to the 90's. Most consumer computer usage today is through a web browser; it doesn't matter what platform you use, and most major apps outside of gaming are on both platforms. Classic Mac OS was on its last legs and the NeXT acquisition and Mac OS X were nowhere in sight.

The Mac and Apple are both in much stronger positions today with a substantially larger user bases. And you know what? Apple could use a kick in the pants to be more reasonable on things like upgrade pricing, baseline specifications, or other user irks to remain competitive.

 

[Beautyspin]

The entire thing won’t be on device— at least that’s what the rumors have been saying.

Whatever was shown in the presentation was fully on-device.

 

[dominiongamma]

The entire thing won’t be on device— at least that’s what the rumors have been saying.

people believed that ? I sure never did

 

[transpo1]

Whatever was shown in the presentation was fully on-device.

If true, that would be great but I’m skeptical. We’ll find out at WWDC, I guess. Maybe any potential OpenAI and Gemini deal would simply be licensing their tech to process using the Apple Silicon Neural Engine.

 

[sracer]

Why would it leave the system and go online later on? The only reason it'd ever phone home is if it was needed all along and it isn't needed since it works without it.

Because it isn't a technical reason for phoning home... it's a data farming one. Microsoft regularly collects data from users of Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems. They want to use the data from Recall for their own purposes.

 

[joecomo]

This does seem like a good effort. They have revamped their Rosetta equivalent and claim that 90% of “user app time” is on native ARM code now. The Surface Pro is the Microsoft equivalent of an iPad Pro running macOS that so many on the iPad forums claim they want. The neural processor is faster than the M4. We’ll see from the benchmarks how the CPU and GPU compare to the M4.

Yes - it will be interesting to read the reviews once it is out

 

[tomtad]

The Surface Laptop also supports three external 4K displays (without having to close the lid)

View attachment 2380530

Is the MacBook Air still stuck on 1? 😆

 

[incidentallycheckout]

Is the MacBook Air still stuck on 1? 😆

Yeah plus the screen on the laptop itself.

 

[aevan]

And with their traditional schedule and way of doing things, it appears they were unwilling or unable to release something to tie us over meanwhile. After WWDC and then September, other companies will keep advancing every few months or even weeks, but Apple will wait a whole other year to make major progress. This model might have to change.

Apple will release something when it's ready, usable, and practical. That's their MO. They don't need to change anything.

 

[c84216]

Why would there be a privacy issue when the entire thing is on device? Unable to comprehend.

I liked this quote from this article at ArsTechnica. Says it better than I can:

"At first glance, the Recall feature seems like it may set the stage for potential gross violations of user privacy. Despite reassurances from Microsoft, that impression persists for second and third glances as well. For example, someone with access to your Windows account could potentially use Recall to see everything you've been doing recently on your PC, which might extend beyond the embarrassing implications of pornography viewing and actually threaten the lives of journalists or perceived enemies of the state."

 

[AndiG]

That’s why there are the rumors they are partnering up at least at first.

Apple can easily have the infrastructure and data over time to transition to its own solution down the line.

Apple doesn't own a search engine like MS oder Google. Apple doesn't even own cloud infrastructure, it only rents it from AWS/Google/younameit.

Apple wants to build custom silicon for machine learning, but it is lightyears away from Nvidias A100/H100 or the latest Blackwell architecture. And NVidia sells this stuff like hot cake - while Apple always refused to sell its silicon e,g, to car manufacturers.

It just doesn't make sense to create a technology like Blackwell (and pay the complete development) just to train an AI for the iPhone.

AI is a disruptive technology like the iPhone was 20years ago. And Apple today is more like Nokia when the iPhone appeared.


But nuff said, well be interesting to see Apple stretching to the roof and trying to keep up.

 

[purplerainpurplerain]

Apple wants to build custom silicon for machine learning, but it is lightyears away from Nvidias A100/H100 or the latest Blackwell architecture. And NVidia sells this stuff like hot cake - while Apple always refused to sell its silicon e,g, to car manufacturers.

Watt for watt their neural engine and GPUs outperform Nvidia. If Apple’s chips consumed as much as a high end Nvidia chip it would have monstrous performance and if they had cloud computing services Jensen Huang would be forced to sell his douche bag leather jacket collection.

 

[Frantisekj]

Man, with other tech companies pulling out AI magic at every big event, at this point WWDC is either going to be mind-blowingly amazing... or a massive disappointment if Apple turns out to be behind the curve on AI again.

I really hope for the former. 🤞

We all hope even AI hype may cool down soon and just some stuff evolve further as usefull and essential. But as I said they have some time. Posting link not to repeat myself

Microsoft Says New Surface Pro is Faster Than 15" M3 MacBook Air

There are few points. Even Apple looks like late in AI they have not presented their achievements yet. So wee need some time to judge. On HW side, there is important to realize that MS is bringing new platform, that is starting nearly from scratch. No one has laptop to use, there is limited...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Frantisekj]

Copilot+ systems also have the new Phoning Home Engine that has 2 performance cores dedicated to processing and sending your data to Microsoft.

There comes question what all it will cost. Not all AI services are for free. Will people need subscription for some or be paying by phoning home as you say?

And on which platform developers be faster at implementing new stuff. Even it seems MS implemented some on system level.

 

[smulji]

"Apple is dying"

"Apple has their backs against the wall"

"Apple is in decline"

And then the stock price continues to go up and up.

Stock price doesn't f***k all.

 

[Beautyspin]

I liked this quote from this article at ArsTechnica. Says it better than I can:

"At first glance, the Recall feature seems like it may set the stage for potential gross violations of user privacy. Despite reassurances from Microsoft, that impression persists for second and third glances as well. For example, someone with access to your Windows account could potentially use Recall to see everything you've been doing recently on your PC, which might extend beyond the embarrassing implications of pornography viewing and actually threaten the lives of journalists or perceived enemies of the state."

If somebody has access to Windows account, you have more than Recall to worry about. If somebody had access to Apple ID (or any other OS), so that they can access your PC, then Recall or something similar will be the least of your worries.