Source: Wall Street See

Apple's rival in the Mac market has arrived!

On June 18th, the closing price rose by 3.51% to $135.58, and the market value reached $3.34 trillion, surpassing [Microsoft] to become the highest market value company in the world. As of closing, Nvidia's market value was $3.32 trillion, and the third-ranked market value was $3.29 trillion. Nvidia's rise is very eye-catching. According to Dow Jones Market Data, five years ago, Nvidia's market cap ranking had not entered the top 20, one year ago, the company's market cap ranking was fifth, and two years ago it was ranked tenth. $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$The first batch of Windows 11 AI PC officially announced - the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop are on the market, which are the first batch of Copilot+ PCs launched by Microsoft, officially opening a new era of AI PC.

Microsoft introduced this brand-new Windows PC designed for AI experience at its release event last month. Microsoft's OEM partners such as Dell, Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, etc. will also release Windows 11 AI PC one after another and will be gradually launched from June 18th.

Microsoft ambitiously wants to surpass Apple's leading position in the PC market with this new product. According to Microsoft's tests, the new Surface outperforms the MacBook Air with M3 chip by 58%.

Microsoft CEO Nadella confidently claimed at last month's release event:

Apple has done very well in the Mac product line, but we will surpass them. We finally have a truly competitive product.

Some netizens excitedly announced on social media after receiving the Microsoft AI PC: Goodbye Mac, hello Windows!

Some media has likened it to the "Tesla of the PC industry":

How strong is Microsoft's Copilot+ PC? The first round of evaluations has arrived!

Equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon X, starting from $999.

Microsoft's first Copilot+ PCs are equipped with$Qualcomm (QCOM.US)$Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors, which improve the performance by 90% compared to Surface Pro 9, and use custom Qualcomm Oryon CPU.

Microsoft claims that this new product is the "fastest and smartest" Windows computer, and uses a brand-new system architecture built by the CPU, GPU, and the new NPU chip that can perform more than 400 trillion operations per second (40+TOPS). It can run new Windows features including Cocreator (text-to-image generation), Windows Studio Effects (webcam blur), real-time caption translation, and Recall.

The Microsoft new product comes in four colors: Bright Platinum, Classic Black, Sapphire Blue, and Sandstone, starting from $999.

Microsoft's positioning for Copilot is a daily AI companion. The new Surface is equipped with the Copilot key, which can activate the Copilot application with just one click.

Other configurations include:

The brand-new Surface Pro is equipped with an ultra-wide-angle HD front camera and AI-driven Windows Studio Effects function. Even when waiting for a plane or train in a noisy airport or station, users can use the voice focus function to filter out environmental noise;

An optional OLED display screen that supports HDR technology provides higher peak brightness and more accurate color display;

Surface Slim Pen 3 with the brand-new Surface Pro provides a better painting and calligraphy experience for users;

Surface Pro Flex Keyboard 3 supports both linking and separating usage;

Microsoft released its first batch of Copilot+ features at Microsoft Build 2024 last month.

These features include generative AI tools, third-party app integration, and the flagship Recall feature. However, due to security and privacy concerns, the Recall feature sparked controversy and Microsoft has delayed its release, it will not appear in the Copilot+ features released on June 18th.

Copilot+ PC can run generative AI models on devices and includes tools and features with image generation capabilities, including Restyle Image and Image Creator in the Photos app and Cocreator in the Paint app.

The AI features of Copilot+ PC can also improve the performance of third-party creative apps such as Adobe Creative Suite, DaVinci Resolve Studio, and CapCut.

The first round of testing has arrived!

Tom's Hardware, a well-known hardware website, has just purchased a 15-inch Surface Laptop with Snapdragon Elite X CPU, and shared its preliminary review results in a blog post.

Cinebench test: Surface beats ThinkPad.

Cinebench is a CPU and GPU performance testing tool developed by Maxon. It is mainly used to evaluate the performance of computer processors and graphics processors, especially multitasking and single-threaded processing capabilities. With Cinebench testing, users can get a quantitative score to compare the performance of different processors or systems.

Tom's Hardware used Cinebench 2024 to perform 20 consecutive tests on the Surface Laptop 15 with Snapdragon X Elite, and found that its multi-core CPU performance was 72% higher than that of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon with Core Ultra 7 155H:

The average score of the ThinkPad is 537, the lowest score of the first run is 466, and the highest score of the 16th run is 585.9. The score soared sharply between the 6th and 9th runs and has not been lower than 548 since then.

The Surface Laptop scored the highest in the second run, reaching 947, and the lowest score of the first run was 909. Most of the runs were in the range of 910 to 935, so the laptop with Snapdragon is not only faster but also more stable.

AI function evaluation: offline applications and compatibility are inadequate.

Due to the controversial Recall feature, there are only three Copilot+ exclusive features in Windows 11, including Codesigner, image generator integrated in Windows Paint, real-time subtitle conversion and translation, and Windows Studio Effects.

After Tom's Hardware's review, they expressed skepticism about the practical utility of Copilot+ exclusive features such as Studio Effects and Cocreator, especially their need for an internet connection to work, which is inconsistent with the expected offline capabilities of devices with powerful NPUs:

Studio Effects: This is a new feature in Windows 11 that provides a range of webcam effects that use local processors instead of the cloud to process effects. The effects include auto framing, portrait lighting, eye contact, background effects, and creative filters. However, testers found these effects to be not particularly special, and in some cases, such as the eye contact mode, they had no effect at all. Testers also noted that although these effects should be available on any Windows 11 PC, they did not leave a deep impression.

Cocreator: This is a new feature in Windows Paint that allows users to generate images by combining drawing and text prompts. However, testers expressed doubts about the actual utility of Cocreator. First, Cocreator requires users to provide both drawing and text prompts, rather than use only one of them. Secondly, although the device has a powerful NPU, Cocreator functionality requires an internet connection to work, which is inconsistent with the expected offline AI processing capabilities. In addition, the quality and response speed of the generated images did not meet the testers' expectations.

Internet dependency: Testers pointed out that although Copilot+ PC is equipped with a high-performance NPU, functional such as Cocreator still need to depend on the internet to work, which seems to contradict the original intention of possessing powerful local processing capabilities. This design choice may be due to considerations of monitoring the generated content, but testers believe that Microsoft should be able to implement similar monitoring functions locally, rather than sending data to the cloud.

Content supervision issues: Testers also mentioned the potential content supervision issues with Cocreator. Although Cocreator can prevent the generation of some inappropriate images, it still allows many other suggestive prompts to pass through. This suggests that there is still room for improvement for Microsoft in preventing biased or embarrassing content from being generated.

Performance and response speed: When using Cocreator, testers observed that the NPU usage rate would skyrocket to 100%, but there was a 2-3 second delay in image redraw. Although this is faster than similar features on some other systems, this delay can still be inconvenient during the creative process.

Some compatibility issues were also discovered in the evaluation. Although the device has a powerful NPU, some AI workloads, such as Whisper AI and Stable Diffusion, are difficult to run on Snapdragon laptops.

Finally, the testers also complained about the excessive amount of Windows 11 advertisements: when setting up the out-of-the-box Surface Laptop 15, I realized how hard Microsoft is trying to sell you their products.

Editor/tolk