Yesterday, Microsoft held a private event at Space LES in New York City’s trendy Lower East Side neighborhood to showcase the Surface Pro 4’s new signature cover, Alcantara. This was not a tech event. This was a fashion tech event. In a space usually used for art gallery showings, Microsoft had a few Surface Pro 4’s with the Alcantara cover perched up like works of art. But, that was the prevailing sentiment of the night that the Alcantara cover — with its smooth yet tactile grayish surface used in luxury cars such as Maseratti’s — represented.
The modestly sized art gallery was separated by a huge, white wall Microsoft used to showcase all the artwork created across the world as part of that campaign. Placed under the words “Microsoft Presents The Artists’ Process” were buildings plastered with abstract artworks.
The walls of Space LES were lined with surrealistic portraits placed on pieces of exposed brick that gave the impression they were ripped from the buildings they were painted on. Dave “Persue” Ross, a 30 year graffiti artist, sketched his painting using Photoshop on a Microsoft Surface Pro, plugged in a projector and painted his two story portrait of dragons and bunnies floating in space on the wall itself. “[The Surface Pro] probably cut off maybe five hours, or six hours of the time,” required to perform his work, Ross said while speaking with Digital Trends. He says he’s added the Surface Pro to his “larger scale arsenal” and will use it at the Pow Wow mural festival this May in Washington, DC.
Moderated by Liz Gray – president of trend forecasting company Trendera — the night was highlighted by a panel discussion with Rachel Bell, Amanda Curtis, Hailey Profita, and Renn Scott, innovators in the new field of smart fashion. Bell, Microsoft’s Color & Material designer, was the brains behind the new Alcantara cover and gave a bit of insight into the philosophy behind Microsoft’s recent attention to fashion. “That’s why fabrics even in our devices right now play such a big part,” Bell stated “That human and familiar aspect that makes people want to pick it up and touch it.”
While a crossover between a keyboard and fashion may seem odd, such pairing are quite common. HP’s new Spectre was introduced alongside two custom one-offs from popular fashion designers, and Dell’s gold XPS 13 was introduced at New York’s Fashion Week.
Affinity’s new all-in-one creative app is finally coming to the iPad, nearly a year after Canva launched the redesigned desktop version for Mac and Windows. Creatives have been asking for the iPad release ever since, especially because files created in the new Affinity app cannot be opened in the older V2 iPad apps.
Affinity already has Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps on iPad, but the new release combines those tools into the same unified app that Canva launched on desktop last year.
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Apple has just launched its latest iPad mini with a notable set of upgrades, including an OLED screen, improved speakers, and a more resilient build. It also gets a new chip, and the whole package costs $200 more than its predecessor. But if you look closely at Apple’s online store, you’ll realize that $699 isn’t enough to get you the most powerful version of the A20 Pro chip inside this tablet. In fact, even if you pay $800 for the 256GB model, you still won’t get the beefiest variant. Only when you jump to the 512GB trim, which costs an absurd $999, do you get the most powerful flavor of the A20 Pro.
The $999 model gets more than extra storage