Welcome to the TechMain right home for Thursday, September 21st, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough today. All the headlines from the Microsoft Fall event, all the headlines from the Amazon Fall event, open AI teasing Dolly 3. And one more review of a recent Apple product, and for the first time in a long time, the consensus seems to be it's hot garbage. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. It's event season in tech. Apple did the iPhone last week.
Amazon had their big event today, more on that in a second. YouTube weirdly is doing an event today. And then there's a pixel event. Is it next week or the beginning of next month? Can't remember. More on all of that when it comes. But first things first. Microsoft's big fall event was this morning. Microsoft announced a unified co-pilot built into Windows 11, launching across all of its apps and services, including Office 365, starting on September 26, quoting Windows Central.
Microsoft kicked off its Surface and AI event with the announcement of co-pilot. While the tech giant has had separate versions of co-pilot within specific apps and services, the newly announced co-pilot will extend across the company's offerings. It will be available on Windows 11, Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Edge. It will start rolling out on September 26, the upcoming Windows 11, 23H2 update focuses largely on co-pilot.
Microsoft showed off several AI features during its presentation, including writing math equations with a stylist directly within a text field. Microsoft also plans to release 365 co-pilot AI on November 1 for Microsoft 365 customers on certain business and enterprise plans for $30 per month per user, quoting the verge. By charging a $30 per month premium per user for access to the feature, this almost doubles the total price of a subscription for businesses on some of the lower end plans.
Co-pilot is like a modern-day clippy, sans anthropomorphic animated paperclip. With it, business users can sum up documents or outsource email creation to their AI helper. You can also create holy new word projects using information from other files or offer real time highlights from team's meetings. It can even tell you how it did something in Excel after you ask it to visualize data for you or make projections.
Co-pilot's debut comes shortly after Google released its own AI tools called Duet AI in Google Workspace. It's analog for 365. It's charging the same amount per access, $30 per person per month, and the feature offers many of the same benefits as Microsoft, end quote. When it was onto the hardware, Microsoft announced the 12.4-inch Surface Laptop Go 3, offering Intel's 12th Gen CPUs and Iris G GPUs, and up to 16GB of RAM, starting at $799 and shipping October 3rd, quoting Engaget.
Microsoft says it will run for up to 15 hours on a single charge while still being thin and light, 0.62 inches and just shy of 2.5 pounds. The lightweight machine has a 12.4-inch touch screen with a 3x2 ratio, a resolution of 1536x1024, and a brightness rating of 320 nits. At first glance, the bezels don't seem to have changed much from previous iterations. Performance-wise, Microsoft claims the Surface Laptop Go 3 is 88% faster than the original model, which came out three years ago.
Inside, it runs a 12th Gen Intel Core i5 CPU along with Intel Iris G graphics. You can configure it with up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of storage, 512GB in the commercial version. In addition, there's a 720p HD front facing camera, a power button that doubles as a fingerprint sensor, dual-far field studio mics, and Omnisonic speakers with Dolby Audio. As for connectivity, you'll get a USB-C 3.2 port that you'll use for display port and fast charging.
A USB-A 3.1 socket, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a Surface Connect port. There's also Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 support. Unsurprisingly, given Microsoft's focus on AI over the last year, the laptop will embrace co-pilot AI, which the company is baking into Windows 11. The Surface Laptop Go 3 will be available in four colors, platinum sage, sandstone, and ice glue, and we'll start at $799. It ships on October 3. End quote.
There's the 14.4-inch Surface Laptop Studio 2, offering Intel's 13th Gen chips, Nvidia RTX 4050 or RTX 4060, and up to two terabytes of storage, starting at $1,999. Quoting the verge. The Laptop Studio 2 keeps the overall aesthetic of its predecessor, including the pull forward, 14.4-inch display that makes it a much more touch-friendly device, but adds some welcome power user features.
The Studio 2, which starts at $1,999 runs on Intel's 13th generation chips, specifically the i7-H class, with an Nvidia RTX 4050 or 4060 GPU inside. It also has an Intel Neuro Processing Unit, or NPU, which is the first Intel NPU in a Windows computer. There were rumblings that Microsoft might be making the chip itself, but it appears not.
You can configure it with up to two terabytes of storage and 64 gigs of RAM, and all Microsoft says it's the most powerful surface we've ever built and promises twice the performance of the previous device. The Studio 2 also offers some big new connectivity options. It has two USB-C ports, one USB-A port, a micro SD card reader, and the Surface Slim Pen 2. In addition, there's a new customizable and more responsive haptic touchpad that Microsoft calls the most inclusive touchpad on any laptop.
In the Verge's review of the original Laptop Studio, Dan Cepher praised a lot of the device's big ideas. It was a great looking computer that added useful functionality without compromising its essential laptop-ness. Still, it was lacking on a couple of obvious fronts. It didn't have enough ports. Its performance didn't match its price, and its battery didn't last long enough. Microsoft appears to have gone after these deficiencies head on.
Microsoft's hardware future is suddenly in a confusing spot, though, with devices head Panos Panay announcing on Monday that he's leaving the company after nearly two decades. Panay led both Windows and Surface in recent years, and was one of the people pushing the company's vision of multi-use devices the hardest. Panay was supposed to be the star of today's event, but dropped off the program after his departure was announced.
Brett Ostrom, the leader of the Surface Product team, did the announcements instead. Yusuf Medi, the head of Windows and Surface, may have different ideas about where Microsoft should go from here. Finally, the Surface Go 4, quoting the Verge. The new Go 4 features some minor performance upgrades over its predecessor, but it won't be sold to consumers. The company says it's specifically targeted at businesses and frontline workers.
As WinFuture leaked last week, the official Surface Go 4 specifications revealed that the two core Intel Pentium processor features on the Surface Go 3 now has been replaced with a new slightly beefier 4-core Intel and 200 chip. Microsoft has also ditched the four gigabyte RAM configuration that's been available on previous models, which means the Surface Go 4 will now only be available with eight gigabytes of LPDDR5 memory.
Even with the Surface Go range, primarily targeting the business and education market, that's a welcome change. Considering four gigabytes is barely capable of handling everyday multitasking duty these days, storage starts at 64 gigabytes with additional options available for 128 and 256 gigabytes. Microsoft has not provided any pricing for the Surface Go 4 or an official release date.
It did say in a press release, however, that the device will be, quote, available exclusively for organizations. We've reached out to Microsoft for a pricing update and will update this story if we hear back, end quote. Cool new product alert. What if every dollar you spent could bring you closer to your next home? The Rocket Visa signature card is the first credit card designed for home ownership. It's simple.
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Today, I want to talk to you about how Mirror Works where you work. Mirror connects with over 100 apps to align your teams and make your work more efficient all in one scalable and secure space. I'm talking at Lassian, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Jira, Asana, Azure, all these plug into Mirror. No matter where you work, Mirror is there with less tabs, steps, and context switching and more visibility, speed, and access.
With Mirror as your team's main hub, you can bring in multiple sources to create a cohesive story helping your team track updates, execute faster, and make smarter decisions. Transform uninspired meetings into engaging purposeful and fun experiences. Every meeting can end with an artifact, a Mirror board that captures the conversation. Mirror is also ISO 27001 Enterprise-grade security compliant. And Amazon held an event yesterday. It's kind of interesting.
Amazon's hardware ambitions with the energy of these events was more muted than recent years. That was They announced the $50 Fire TV Stick 4K, the $60 Fire TV Stick 4K Max, the $120 24-inch Fire TV Soundbar, and Generative AI updates for Fire TV Voice Search. Speaking of AI, they also highlighted new Generative AI features aimed at making Alexa more conversational and personalized, available as a free preview right now on all Echo devices in the US. Goatting TechCrunch.
Our latest model has been specifically optimized for voice and the things we know our customers love, like having access to real-time information efficiently controlling their smart home and getting the most out of their home entertainment. Dave Limp, the SVP of Devices and Services at Amazon said on stage, Amazon says that the new model will power more conversational experiences, experiences that take into account body language as well as the person's eye contact and gestures.
It will interact with APIs to enable new smart home capabilities, inferring the meaning of descriptions like spooky lighting, and it will give Alexa a bigger and more opinionated personality. The capabilities deliver unique experiences based on the preferences that you've shared, the services that you've interacted with, and the information about the environment in and around your home, Limp said. This new model will allow you to surface personal reminders.
For example, it can help you with recently played music or even come up with recipe recommendations based on your grocery purchases. During a demo, Limp asks an Alexa device connected to the new generative AI model. What's your favorite sports team? After a brief hiccup with the event's Wi-Fi, Alexa responded to that and follow up questions about Seahawks, Stats, and Game Times, even after Limp paused to address the audience and then returned to the conversation with Alexa.
Limp didn't cover it during the demo, but the new generative AI model can also adjust its tone and responses to express things like affirmation, excitement, laughter, and surprise as Amazon says, adjusting to a person's natural pauses and hesitation to deliver, and ostensibly, more free-flowing conversation.
But speaking of generative AI, OpenAI has teased DAL E3, which can be summoned and controlled using chatGPT, also announced plans to make the tool available to chatGPT plus and enterprise customers as soon as October. DAL E converts text prompts to images, but even DAL E2 got things wrong, often ignoring specific wording. The latest version, OpenAI, researcher said, understands context much better. A new feature of DAL E3 is integration with chatGPT.
By using chatGPT, someone doesn't have to come up with their own detailed prompt to guide DAL E3. They can just ask chatGPT to come up with a prompt, and the chatbot will write out a paragraph. DAL E3 works better with longer sentences for DAL E3 to follow.
Other users can still use their own prompts if they have specific ideas for DAL E. In a demo to the verge, Adelia Ramish, lead researcher and head of the DAL E team, prompted chatGPT to help him come up with a logo for a ramen restaurant in the mountains. ChatGPT then wrote a longer prompt, and DAL E came up with four options. My favorite was a rendering of a mountain with ramen snow caps, broth flowing down like a waterfall, and pickled eggs on the ground like garden stones.
Although it looked more like an illustration for some nice merch than a conventional restaurant logo. This connection with the chatbot OpenAI said allows more people to create AI art because they don't have to be very good at coming up with a prompt. DAL E first released in January 2021, came before other text to image generative AI art platforms by stability AI and mid-journey.
But by the time DAL E2 was released in 2022, OpenAI opened a wait list to control who got to use the platform after criticism that DAL E could generate photorealistic explicit images and showed bias when generating photos. The company removed the wait list in September last year and opened DAL E2 to the public. This new version of DAL E will be first released to ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Enterprise users in October, followed by research labs and its API service in the fall.
OpenAI plans to stagger the release of DAL E3, but did not commit to win a free public version will be released. I'm going to squeeze in one more Apple review here, not a typical review, and also not typical because it's not good. I don't know if we spoke much about it, but at the last iPhone event, Apple made a big deal about finally dropping leather from its products, especially its phone cases, to be replaced with what it called fine woven. Well, lots of people are saying this is a big miss.
Goatting the verge. Folks, what you've heard so far is true. Apple's new fine woven iPhone cases and accessories are bad. Like really bad. I've been puzzling over them for the past week, looking at them from different angles, picking them up, setting them down, petting them. Seven days later, I still can't make sense of them and have no other choice but to say it out loud. Fine woven is very bad.
Fine woven is a new fabric option you'll find on iPhone 15 cases, air tag holders, and mag safe wallets. Apple calls it a luxurious and durable micro twill. It's silky, almost slippery to the touch, and costs $59 for any of the phone cases, $35 for an air tag holder, and $99 for one of the new watch bands. Not the most expensive phone cases you can buy, but pretty darn pricey. Apple is pitching them as a premium replacement of sorts for the leather accessories it discontinued.
The company won't sell leather iPhone cases and straps anymore because making them at Apple's scale, quote, has a significant carbon footprint. According to Lisa Jackson, the company's environmental policy VP. But fine woven is very much not the premium material that leather is. When I popped the mag safe wallet out of its box, I could clearly see some places where it was already showing where along the edges.
Little bits of lint immediately caught on the fabric too, and there's the fingernail test. If I'm putting one of these cases on my phone, I'm inevitably going to scratch it on accident with a jagged fingernail edge, or it's going to come into contact with my car keys. And when you scratch fine woven, the results are seemingly permanent.
When we first inspected the cases after picking them up at Apple Park, Verge, Editor-in-Chief Neelye Patel picked one up and ran his fingernails across it five times. And that was all it took to leave a trail of indelible scuffs on the fabric. The scratches are still there a week later, no matter how many times I've tried buffing it out by rubbing my finger over it.
I'm trying to imagine what this case would be like after a year of being subjected to the dust and lint at the bottom of my purse, or the stray scratches from nails and keys. God help me if my toddler ever managed to put his grubby hands on it, which he absolutely would. I just don't see any way that this material ages gracefully. The leather cases had their problems, but when leather gets old, it at least looks nice, a scuffed dusty fabric case will not end quote.
Nothing for you today, talk to you tomorrow.