Microsoft unveils Copilot + Pc, embraces Arm and challenges Apple's Macs

What changes with the new Surface

The switch to Snapdragon should ensure much better battery life. Not only that, should the rumours be confirmed, Qualcomm's chip should be powerful enough to become the market standard for generative Ai. The chips presented last year were described by the company as the fastest to handle generative artificial intelligence algorithms. According to Microsoft managers, the Snapdragon platform has a battery life of 20 hours of video. "The new Surface," they explained, "is 80 per cent faster than the previous generation. The Surface Pro will be 90 per cent faster and for the first time will have an Oled display. These devices are also designed to integrate dedicated AI hardware accelerators called NPUs to better support the upcoming AI features of Windows 11. One of those rumoured features, AI Explorer , is supposed to keep track of everything you do on your Windows 11 computer, then allow you to ask the AI what you did.

The novelty of Recall

At the event, it was also announced that OpenAi's new chatbot Gpt-4 o will soon be available within Microsoft Copilot. And to demonstrate this they showed a demo of the Minecraft video game with the chatbot able to 'see' and guide what is happening. The most surprising announcement was Recall for Windows 11, a new tool that keeps track of everything you see and do on your computer and, in return, gives you the ability to search and retrieve everything you've done on the device. A kind of desktop photo memory that will make it unnecessary, so they say, to take notes. Recall is designed to be integrated locally on PCs. In short, there will be no need to connect to external servers. In this way, Microsoft managers pointed out, 'no one will use your information to train their AI models'. Microsoft has reportedly created 40 language models in the new Windows that can use the Recall feature locally. Also because what is now clear to all manufacturers is that the real challenge is to manage the Ai gen locally without the need to use the cloud or the Ai providers' servers. In June, Apple will show us its artificial intelligence and all analysts are betting that it will be entirely hardware managed.

The impact of Ai on the PC market

Ai gen devices are also considered by technology marketers to be able to boost sales in a market in perpetual crisis. Microsoft declared yesterday that 50 million AI PCs will be sold by the end of next year.

According to Gartner, 22 per cent of the expected shipments of smart PCs and mobile phones (basic and premium models) in 2024 will involve devices equipped in some way with AI tools. Three Ai chips will drive the business: Snapdragon X Elite will be released in the summer, AMD Strix Point is expected in the second half of the year as well as Intel's Lunar Lake.

Qualcomm is playing a game worth billions. And not only them.