Microsoft’s Surface Studio is a device defined by its premium user experience. It was engineered from the ground up to just feel great, and an important part of that package is the Surface Dial.
Until now it’s been something of a mystery: We knew what the Surface Dial did, and likely how, but thanks to the fine folks over at iFixit, now we can see exactly what makes it tick.
The Surface Dial is a unique peripheral. It expands the typical mouse-and-keyboard user input scheme in a really interesting and refreshing way. Even if you’re not a digital artist, you might find yourself using the Surface Dial for everyday tasks – it’s compatible with the whole range of Microsoft Office products and a growing number of productivity apps. So seeing what’s inside is a little bit like finding out how a magic trick works.
The Surface Dial is a bit of a pain to get into once you pull off the magnetic battery enclosure, according to the iFixit teardown. Only after digging into the space between the plastic and magnesium enclosure was the iFixit crew able to get into the Surface Dial’s delicate internals, so it’s not exactly a user-repairable item.
The Dial’s non-user-repairable design became even more apparent as the iFixit team dug further in. Accessing the midframe of the device required taking apart the internal bearing mechanism — a plastic cage containing ball bearings, which gives the Surface Dial something like the feel of a premium speaker volume knob.
Getting to the core of the Surface Dial not only required a series of specialized tools, but would also require drilling out some of the plastic covering up some of the screws which hold the internals in place.
Following the teardown, iFixit gave the Surface Dial a low repairability score of 4 out of 10, and concluded that servicing any of the device’s internals would require a healthy dose of courage and probably a lot of patience.
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.