From Wired: Surface Go Is Microsoft’s Big Bet on a Tiny-Computer Future:

Panos Panay is the betting type. You can see the evidence in Microsoft’s Building 37, where two $1 bills stick out from beneath a Surface tablet sitting on a shelf.

When I ask Panay about the dollars during a recent visit to Microsoft, he says it was a wager he made a few years back on a specific product. I ask if it was a bet on Surface RT, the very first Surface product Microsoft made, and he seems genuinely surprised. “I would have lost that bet, and I’m going to win this one,” he says. “It’s about a product that’s in market right now.” And that’s all he’ll volunteer.

Panay, Microsoft’s chief product officer, isn’t there to talk about the ghosts of Surface’s past, or even the present. Panay wants to talk about his next big bet in the Surface product lineup: the brand-new Surface Go. But to call it “big” would be a misnomer, because the Surface Go was designed to disappear.

I have to hand it to the people at Microsoft. They won’t give up on Surface. You cannot give up in the hardware game when you have billions of dollars in your pockets already.

I’ve thought Panos Panay is particularly adorable ever since he introduced the Surface Book back in 2015. Look at him, the little-big engine that could. You get excited at your show-and-tell day at school! Yeah!

Panos is clearly the right guy for the job, but the real question is whether Surface is the right hardware for the job. I can’t find Microsoft having any meaningful representation on tablet marketshare stats for 2018 (or 2017 or 2016).

But hey, what do I know? If Apple starts screwing up iPads like they’re currently screwing up their MacBook Pros, maybe Microsoft has a shot at getting in the race (just kidding, they don’t).

A top Microsoft exec says the idea it will kill its Surface gadget business is ‘so far from the truth’:

To the guy that heads up Microsoft’s Surface products, the idea that the company is going to kill off its line of computers and tablets is laughable.

“It’s so far from the truth,” Panos Panay, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of devices, said on Monday, calling the notion the “tabloid rumor of the week.”

Panay was responding to a discussion last week by a panel of PC industry executives about the future of Microsoft’s hardware business. The executives, which included representatives from Dell and Lenovo, predicted the company would kill its Surface line by 2019, according to The Register.

Kill it. Stop trying to be Apple. Stop your new-found love of hardware-software integration, and for shit’s sake, stop using Alcantara on your products.

You’ve already killed Windows Phone, just take Surface out back behind the barn and put it out of its misery.

Oh this is tasty:

On Monday, the Cowboys’ communication service to their Microsoft surface tablets wasn’t working properly. With their primary source of playbook information temporarily down, they used the next best thing and relied on printed versions of their playbook. Tangible copies can’t fail, right? They don’t, but even the printers weren’t working correctly for the visiting Cowboys.

To make matters worse, Washington cannot access its devices, either, even though they’re still functional. As a rule, the team cannot use its sideline devices if its opponents have technical issues.

Microsoft paid the NFL $400 million just so they could cause them grief.

I think they have a hit on their hands with this Surface thingy of theirs.

Keep up the great work, guys.

Lenovo won’t be selling Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3:

Dell and HP decided to start selling Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 tablet last month, but Lenovo was curiously absent. Gianfranco Lanci, president and COO at Lenovo, has revealed that the PC maker refused to sell Microsoft’s tablet. “I said no to resell their product,” Lanci told attendees at the Canalys Channels Forum, reports The Register. He explained that Microsoft “asked me more than one year ago, and I said no I don’t see any reason why I should sell a product from within brackets, competition.”

Why the fuck would they ever consider selling Microsoft’s products?