Microsoft’s Surface family suffered a major blow on August 10, as Consumer Reports not only pulled its recommendation for all Surface-branded products, but moved them into the dreaded “not recommended” category. The consumer watchdog publication cited concerns over longevity and high failure rates, though Microsoft has now responded officially and internally, suggesting the problem is nowhere near as serious as originally described.
“New studies conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center estimate that 25 percent of Microsoft laptops and tablets will present their owners with problems by the end of the second year of ownership,” Consumer Reports said in its report. A damning indictment for any technology company, but Microsoft is adamant that the report doesn’t show the full picture.
It’s a tough sell though, as the report attacked the entire Surface lineup — the Surface, the Surface Pro, Surface Book, and the new Surface Laptop. These products are now “not recommended” by the consumer watchdog publication, but a few products, in particular, received even more devastating news, in that their previous recommendations are being reversed.
Both the Surface Laptop, 128GB and 256GB versions, and the Surface Book, 128 and 512GB versions, are losing their previous recommendations on account of their unusually high failure rates.
Microsoft initially defended its products publicly but has since continued to fight its cause with an internal memo to employees, which could point to a more extended campaign of defense of the Surface line. Discovered by Thurrot, the memo highlights the 90-day return rate of various Surface products, showing that the worst culprit was the Surface Book during December 2015, which saw just over a 16 percent return rate.
In 2017, none of the Surface lines are said to have return rates of anything over 5 percent.
“It’s important for us to always learn more from our customers and how they view their ownership journey with our products,” the memo from Microsoft corporate vice president Panos Panay reads. “Feedback like this stings, but pushes us to obsess more about our customers.”
That said, there were mentions in the memo about minor issues that could be corrected by the user being lumped in with the failure rates of the Surface products, which may have muddied the results. There were also later improvements in Surface devices which were “not reflected in the results of this survey.”
Moving forward, Panay claimed that Microsoft would use its internal data and partnerships with third-party organizations to spread the word about the reality of Surface product reliability.
While we don’t know if that major drive will now happen considering the leaked memo, it’s not entirely dissimilar to what Microsoft has already been doing with its public statements in defense of the Surface range.
“Microsoft’s real-world return and support rates for past models differ significantly from Consumer Reports’ breakage predictability,” Microsoft told us when reached for comment. “We don’t believe these findings accurately reflect Surface owners’ true experiences or capture the performance and reliability improvements made with every Surface generation.”
Panay released a lengthy statement defending the Surface lineup, disputing Consumer Reports’ data.
“In the Surface team, we track quality constantly, using metrics that include failure and return rates — both our predicted one- to two-year failure and actual return rates for Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book are significantly lower than [the cited] 25 percent,” Panay’s statement reads. “Additionally, we track other indicators of quality such as incidents per unit (IPU), which have improved from generation to generation and are now at record lows of well below 1 percent.”
One reason for the reportedly high failure rates could be that Microsoft is relatively new to PC manufacturing.
“The reality is that Microsoft has very little experience in some of the newer categories it’s entering very rapidly, which may expose it to more risk of problems in manufacturing,” a chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, Jan Dawson, told Reuters.
The problem here is that Consumer Reports and Microsoft each have their own data supporting their respective conclusions. Of course, only one of these two companies actually has a vested interest in people believing the Surface products are reliable. The other just wants to make sure you’re able to make an informed decision about which products you buy.
Updated: Added information relating to Microsoft’s internal memo.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.