Everything announced at Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra event — SkimNews
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- Surface Laptop Ultra launches October 16 starting at $2,599 with Nvidia's RTX Spark Arm-based chip, 24GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage, positioned explicitly as a MacBook Pro competitor.
- Nvidia's RTX Spark — the company's first Arm-based PC processor — powers the Surface Laptop Ultra (up to 128GB unified memory, 15-inch HDR touchscreen at 2,000 nits peak brightness) and the $5,999 Surface RTX Spark Dev Box shipping in November, aimed at developers running AI models exceeding 120B parameters locally.
- Copilot's "Hybrid Intelligence" lets Microsoft's AI search across local folders, rename files, zip documents, and draft emails on Windows, demonstrated onstage by EVP Jacob Andreou using an Autopilot tax-filing workflow with his real accountant.
- Microsoft swapped its proprietary Surface Connect for a magnetic USB-C "Magnetic Connect" charging solution on the Surface Laptop Ultra, while keeping the USB-C port functional for standard data, video, and connectivity.
- Meta's Muse AI agent is getting a native Windows app, though Microsoft gave no launch timeline; Meta launched a Mac version of Muse in September.
Why it matters: The $2,599 Surface Laptop Ultra is the first major real-world test of Nvidia's Arm-based PC chip against Apple's MacBook Pro silicon, while the $5,999 Dev Box targets developers running 120-billion-parameter models locally. Copilot's new local-file access — not the laptop itself — is arguably the bigger shift, turning the Windows desktop into an AI-readable workspace where the assistant can act on your documents without cloud round-trips.
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