Microsoft introduces AI PC era with direct shots at Apple’s MacBook

Microsoft has revealed new consumer laptops optimised for AI and explicitly marketed as topping Apple’s MacBook Air, powered by new chips from Qualcomm rather than traditional Microsoft partner Intel.

Windows laptops have been perceived as falling behind ever since Apple dropped Intel and began using its own M-series chips, but Microsoft says its new line of Copilot+ PCs are faster, last longer and power more capable AI than the latest MacBook Air with M3.

The new Surface Pro (left) and Surface Laptop as Microsoft’s own take on the Copilot+ PC.

“Over the past year, we have seen an incredible pace of innovation of AI in the cloud with Copilot allowing us to do things that we never dreamed possible. Now, we begin a new chapter with AI innovation on the device,” said Microsoft marketing boss Yusuf Mehdi in a blog post following a reveal event overnight.

“We have completely reimagined the entirety of the PC — from silicon to the operating system, the application layer to the cloud — with AI at the centre, marking the most significant change to the Windows platform in decades.”

Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella introduces the new AI-focused line of devices.

The lineup of Copilot+ PCs will come from the likes of Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, but Microsoft also showed off its own models. A new Surface Pro comes with either an LCD or OLED display, while a new Surface Laptop comes in either a 13.8-inch or 15-inch size. Both are powered by variants of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X processor, and were used as examples to represent the Copilot+ line as a whole.

Microsoft used multi-thread benchmarking tools to show one of its new Surface devices beating an M3 MacBook Air for sustained performance, and another test to show one of its devices outlasting a 15-inch M3 MacBook Air in a video loop battery test.

Recall, which will work on supported Windows devices, remembers everything you do on the PC so you can scroll back through time.

The new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop start at $1900 in Australia, which is $100 more expensive than the base M3 MacBook Air. However, Microsoft’s machines also start with 16GB of RAM; the cheapest M3 MacBook Air with the same amount of memory is $2100.

While Microsoft has thus far framed Copilot and AI tools in Windows as primarily enterprise tools, CoPilot+ PCs clearly target consumers as well. The company showed off several features that make use of AI models that run directly on the devices rather than in the cloud, including Recall, which is like a supercharged version of the abandoned Timeline that appeared in Windows 10. At any point you can use Recall to move back through the things you’ve been doing on your PC — which Microsoft said remembers literally everything but organises information like a human — to get back to a task you left unfinished before.

The company also showed off generative AI Windows tools including the ability to turn a scribble from Paint into a fully illustrated art piece, and new filters and styles for photo and video editing. Apps from Adobe, DaVinci and more were also shown processing AI tasks on CoPilot+ PCs.

This is not the first time Microsoft has put Windows on a device powered by an ARM chip, which differs in its fundamental structure compared to the x86 chips made by Intel. It tried it with the Surface RT way back in 2012, but a major problem was that all Windows apps were designed for x86 and ran very poorly on the device. This time, the company is confident it can follow Apple in the transition to ARM.

Many apps, including all of Microsoft’s own but also many browsers and creative suites, now have native ARM versions. That means a user spending most of their time in Office, Photoshop and Google Chrome for example will be able to make the most of the new hardware. For apps with no native ARM version, Microsoft uses a new emulation layer called Prism to make them work on the Snapdragon-powered Surfaces. It claims the results are just as efficient as Apple’s Rosetta 2, which is used to get apps designed for Intel Macs working on devices with M-series chips.

All of the new CoPilot+ PCs use a Snapdragon X processor, but Microsoft said it looks forward to working with Intel and AMD to get the classification on future laptops powered by their chips as well.

Both companies have been talking up new chips optimised for AI, with Intel’s Lunar Lake line expected to launch in the third quarter this year offering greater speed and efficiency than the Snapdragon X, while maintaining compatibility with x86 software and mainstream graphics processors.

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