Thoughts Unboxed

In the post Panos Panay world, Microsoft held its first major event centered around Surface products and AI updates on September 21st, 2023. While Panos's departure came as a surprise , the missing of many surface products from the rooster raised many eyebrows.  Does Microsoft's Surface Division fall prey to the company's recent cost-saving strategies? Is there a link between missing products and Panos's exit? Clarity is expected to emerge over time, however, it would be extremely short-sighted on Microsoft's end to kill-off Surface Division after all these years of building premium products. Surface devices, despite some imperfections, have earned recognition for their top-tier construction and have pushed industries forwards by introducing many creative innovations that were lacking in the past. Here is the list of all the Surface Products that were missing from the event and we don't know if they would ever be getting their successors or not

Artifical Intelligence surely has been the hot selling point for tech giants since the rise of conversational AI. Microsoft held its September Surface and AI even on Thursday, September 21st. The event focused on hardware refresh to the surface product line alongside further integration of Microsoft's AI assistance named CoPilot into more products and features. Here are the major announcements happened during the event: HARDWARE ANNOUNCEMENTS Surface Studio Laptop 2 The star of the hardware was Surface Studio Laptop 2. This is the successor to the Surface Studio Laptop that was launched exactly 2 years ago. The original was a great idea but its 11th Generation Intel processors were already outdated. It also lacked port variety.  Surface Studio Laptop 2 builds on the positives of the predecessor and added 13th Generation Intel processors and up to NVIDIA GeForce 4060 dedicated graphics card. The laptop also added a USB-A port and a MicroSDXC card slot. Pricin

The time has arrived. Google Domains has joined many Google Products in the Oblivion-yard. Starting September 7th, Google has stopped taking new domain registrations. Current owners would be transitioning to Squarespace in the coming months.  If you visit Google Domains site right now, you would be welcome with the following message: On September 7, 2023 Squarespace acquired all domain registrations and related customer accounts from Google Domains. Customers and domains will be transitioned over the next few months   The page also has a big blue link "Get a new domain from Squarespace" that would take you Squarespace for new domain registrations. It is fun that Google would still be taking a piece of the cut if you do so. The page indicates the link to the Squarespace is an affiliate link. So, even though Google Domain is dead, Google is still taking this grim opportunity to squeeze out every single penny off the platform. Here

Windows and Surface Division chief Panos Panay is leaving Microsoft after almost 20 years. The surprise news was shared on Monday by Rajesh Jha - Microsoft's VP of Experience and Devices in an email to the employees. He said: After nearly 20 years at the  company, Panos Panay has decided to leave Microsoft.  The timing of the news is really confusing. Microsoft is about to announce the next generation of surface lineup in an event happening on coming Thursday - September 21st. Panos would not take part in the event. Yousuf Mehdi - Microsoft Consumer Marketing Head - is set to succeed Panos Panay. In a statement by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, he thanks Panos for his services. He said: I’m grateful for your leadership, support, and all you’ve done for Microsoft and our customers and partners. As Rajesh stated, we remain steadfast and convicted in our strategy and Yusuf Mehdi will take lead on our Windows and Surface businesses and products externally

In a surprising move, Microsoft has decided to retire Visual Studio for Mac, its macOS counterpart to Visual Studio. In a blog post, Anthony Cangialosi - The Group Product Manger of DevDiv announced the news:   Today we are announcing the retirement of the Visual Studio for Mac IDE. Visual Studio for Mac 17.6 will continue to be supported for another 12 months, until August 31st, 2024, with servicing updates for security issues and updated platforms from Apple. While the decision has been made to retire Visual Studio for Mac, we remain committed to our developers on Mac with alternatives like the recently announced C# Dev Kit for VS Code and other extensions that will allow you to take advantage of our ongoing investments in .NET development on a Mac.   This is a surprise decision considering Microsoft overhauled the IDE while announcing Visual Studio 2022. Microsoft touted the overhaul back then stating: Our goal with Visual Studio 2022 for Mac is t

Microsoft is on a chopping spree of late. After chopping off Cortana and Visual Studio for Mac, the latest victim of this trend is WordPad - a program that was part of Windows since Windows 95! In a Blog Post on the official site, the company outlines features that will be deprecated from the future versions of Windows and this time around, WordPad made it to the list. Microsoft will not only stop supporting the unfortunate piece of software, it will actually remove it from the future Windows updates. Microsoft recommends Microsoft Word and NotePad as alternatives depending upon the requirements. Here is the official details and mitigation: WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt   Analysis WordPad began its life almost three decades ago as a replacement to another software - Microsoft Write. It was shipped with W

After a failed acquisition attempt by Nvidia, Arm, owned by SoftBank, is once again gearing up to become a publicly traded company. According to SEC filings, the company is eyeing a staggering valuation of $52 billion, making Arm's IPO the largest on the US Stock Exchange this year. A Return to Public Trading Arm, once a publicly traded company, entered the private sector when SoftBank offered a $32 billion acquisition deal in 2016. Now, Arm is set to raise approximately $8 billion through its IPO on Nasdaq, translating to a per-share price in the range of $47 to $51. The Antitrust Hurdle The decision to take Arm public comes in the wake of the collapsed takeover plans by Nvidia. Concerns about antitrust issues raised by various regulatory bodies led to Nvidia dropping its acquisition plans. SoftBank, no stranger to recent high-profile setbacks, including the WeWork debacle, sees an opportunity amid the surge in AI. Arm's Strategic Position Arm's reference designs are licen