Microsoft's Panos Panay on why the Surface Pro 3 beats your tablet and laptop

[MUSIC] Hi, everybody, Tim Stevens with CNet here in New York and Panos Panay from Microsoft. You sir, just got done introducing the world to this, which is the new Surface Pro 3. A lot of changes in here, new kickstand, new display, new keyboard. Yeah. Can you give us some of the highlights of this new display. Yeah, yeah. So it's a 12 inch corner to corner display, but it's a three by two aspect ratio. Those are words, it feels and looks like a piece of paper. That's another way to say it. Okay. I mean, we had a design point that was hey listen, what's the most familiar thing we can give to people when they hold something beautifully in portrait. What have you done your whole life? At 12 inches and when you're using the Windows scaling, you get a lot of content on this screen. It's actually 7% more content on this screen. Maybe 6 1/2% more content on this screen. Then like a 13.3 and 16 by ten laptop. So it gives you the feel of, if you really wanna be productive, that bigger laptop is all packed into this punch of a screen we also added a friction based kickstand. That's kind of a dorky term to say this thing articulates back down to 150 degrees, and you can hold it at any position. If you just set it a couple of points, you can pretty much put it wherever you want. You can put it wherever you like and I think when people would give me feedback, like well Panos, a laptop, I can use any angle I want, like okay, here. And so now you have this kick stand that you can pick any position. You've got this screen that's as productive or tablet friendly as any screen ever made. Mm-hm. Those two things come together nicely, and then the new type cover has some little subtle features in there that start to stabilize it on your lap and on the desk. And once that happens it starts to transform into this full PC. But the truth is, it's the core processor in it that drives this thing. You've got a Core x7 in here? Yep, yeah. [INAUDIBLE]. The one you're holding probably is a Core I5, I think we gave everybody an I5. Come on. And the I7 is launching a little bit later than the I5. okay. But yeah. So we have the I3, the I5, and the I7 coming. The I3 is an entry point. Mm-hm. I think. People, oh find the device probably you know, elegant or sexy. Whatever or however they determine it they want it. We want that desire of course and, but we didn't wanna keep the price point so high that people couldn't enter into this market. You, you chose I3, I5, I7. Yeah. Thinner and lighter. Yep. Tell me about battery life. That was one thing we didn't hear about today. So battery life, like you got up to eight, nine hours of web browsing on this thing. Okay. And so you call it all-day battery life. Another point I didn't make and I haven't given out is it literally has a standby time of a year. And,I was supposed to say it. Mm, I blew it. Maybe you can tell people. [LAUGH] [CROSSTALK] Now's your chance. A year standby time. [CROSSTALK] Yeah, like, when this product decides to put itself down, like, go to sleep. It'll be because it knows you haven't used it. It's smart enough. Mm-hm. And once that's the case it'll put itself in a mode where okay, with the two and a half second boot time, you literally, or three seconds, not sure of the exact time anymore because we keep optimizing it. You literally can keep the battery on this thing a year and not lose it. There is something else I've noticed is that the start button has actually moved to the short side of the display from the bottom side, so why is that. Oh good catch. Impossible to show in a presentation. It's making, it makes two points, which is really important, one it's the right place for it. When you come here, same idea when I'm, when I'm swipping in from the left but if I come to the, come to this side. Sorry wasn't ready for this but when I swipe in, this is where the natural spot for the Windows key was meant to be. The second thing was it was meant to point out that in portrait use this is a powerful device. Mm-hm. And, you know, Surface is beautiful in portrait. The design here is really meant to scale Windows perfectly. So when you are in something like OneNote, it is a beautiful writing device. It's exactly what you'd expect as opposed to something too thin or too wide, also from a holding it perspective. Mm-hm. Same idea that's exactly what's kind of happening here. Where it feels comfortable you'll feel the distribution of weight. Pick up your laptop and hold it by the, by the thinnest part and you can't hold it. Hold it by the thickest part and you can't use it you know. So I like that change now. I mean, the iPad it, it's definitely a portrait oriented device Yeah. With the home button down at the bottom like that. The Surface though traditionally was a landscape device. Yeah, that was one of the problems. Why change it now? I think, when we said a tablet to a replace a laptop one of the biggest missing parts of the traditional surface is you can't use it in portrait. Now let, let's talk the market reception. Services have been very [INAUDIBLE] from a hardware standpoint. Yeah. But not necessarily from a sales standpoint. We've got a lot of interesting improvements and a lot of nice tweaks. Yeah. Is that going to be enough do you think? Yeah, I mean it depends what you think the goals are. I think the answer is yes, enough. I think people will be excited about the device and run after it. It's solves a whole new problem. You know, it's one we've been going after, but I think you find Surface Pro two you get a lot of feedback that's it's a really good PC and sometimes it's a good tablet. It doesn't hit it, but it does great work I think when you get to this device, yeah you start to cross it. You cross that line of people are excited. You, there are two devices in people's bags right now. I don't think you need 'em. So you spend a lot of time talking about that, about how a lot of people have a laptop and a tablet, 96% I think you said, of people who have and iPad and a laptop to back that up as well. Yeah. Why do you think that is, that people have been unwilling to really kind of combine the two and go with a device like this? Because a tablets can't be productive. And, and [CROSSTALK] Like the service in El Paso. [CROSSTALK]. Because it, it wasn't big enough and it was too heavy. And there were, and it wasn't thin enough. And you start putting yourself in this place where like, wow, these subtle tradeoffs, they mean something to people. If you look at the price point of this, starting at 799 that's quite of a nice price, especially if you consider this against a tablet and a laptop. Sure. But that shows that people aren't willing to really compare the two in terms of pricing anyway, they, they're willing to pay more to buy two devices. Yeah, then they are, and you're seeing it. Yeah, and so, why buy two devices? [LAUGH] Doesn't makes sense to me. Some of it that the operating system as well because that in the past has been part of the, the negatives against servers that all the people aren't exactly in love with windows eight. Yeah. Which is a lot of good improvements to Windows eight. Yeah. So that's hoping we experience as well, I think it is, I think its not just I don't think it is helping the experience. Windows eight one and the latest update is phenomenal. I mean Joe and team have done amazing work, Terry's leading a great team over there. I think you're starting to see Microsoft become one Microsoft and a lot of things coming together and coming to life. Windows is a massive part, man. You can't get to the battery life we're getting to, you can't get to the beauty of this screen, you can't get to split screen, you can't get to all these features without the power of Windows and it's been you know it's, still amazing. Yeah, I mean we saw Adobe up on stage talking about a special edition of Photoshop. Is that something we might see more of? Yeah, you will. I mean, final draft, I didn't say, but that's exclusive, specifically, maybe I did. But, you're looking at the guys over at Autodesk that are really starting to optimize for Service Pro 3. Look. You have a device that you can carry with you with the full power, it's hard to debate it, people get excited. Watching developers getting excited about it and develop for it I think it's natural, and it's gonna happen. And so we've got the hardware, and we've got the software is there anything missing now for this to be a huge, huge success? No. [LAUGH] We'll find out, I think. You know, I think from a technology standpoint, there's not much missing right now but I will tell you, you know, we won't stop, we'll keep pushing the boundaries. And if people want to give you more feedback, what's the best way? I know that you guys are active on Reddit- Yeah. And I know that you're on Twitter, is there- how would you like to get feedback? Yeah, you can get me on I think what I read and retweet on [UNKNOWN] underscore [UNKNOWN]. If you wanna send something to me, send it, [NOISE] I look at it. I don't respond a lot, but I read every single tweet that comes through, for sure. It's important to me, and that feedback comes through pretty quickly and we use it. Yeah. Alright, I'm excited to try this out and I'll give you my view back as soon after I get some comments. I can't wait, I know you will. Thanks very much. Hey. [MUSIC]