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0:00 Hey every Friday. This week Microsoft announced big changes to both Surface and Windows. Android is coming to the desktop and Apple wants more AI search. Welcome to Friday checkout. This video was sponsored by 80,000 hours. Okay, for my first story of the week, we start with both new hardware and software from Microsoft. Starting with Windows, Microsoft teased a new generation of Windows experiences in a giant blog post listing a ton of new features. These include, for example, Copilot Plus PCs being able to use a natural language to search in settings and then also having the ability to actually toggle settings right away from there. It includes click to do being able to do more things like creating bullet point summaries out of long text. And Microsoft also claims
0:45 that Copilot should now be smart enough to look at you using, for example, Photoshop and giving you tips on how to improve an image, including visually highlighting where you can make the tweaks. That last one is something that I could actually see myself using if it was actually good. But better yet, third party apps like Gigapixel AI, Cap Cut, DJ Pro, Da Vinci Resolve, and a bunch of others should soon all be optimized to make use of the NPU on these machines. Neural networks are super useful for, for example, segmenting images, so if these actually work well, that'll be great. And meanwhile, in hardware news, there's a new and cheaper Surface Pro 12 2in-1 and also a new and cheaper Surface Laptop 13. Both are slightly smaller than their regular flagship counterparts, and they're kind of like a hybrid between a cheaper Surface Go and the regular Surface Pro. And for that, both come with an 8core Snapdragon X Plus chip, 16 gigs of RAM, and 256 or
1:33 512 gigs of storage. I think the Pro looks especially attractive since it's fanless and can therefore be really sleek. Plus, with a 90 Hz screen, Windows Hello face recognition, and a pen that attaches on the back, it should make for a pretty nice package, especially at the starting price of $799, plus another $150 for a revamped keyboard. I think that's the first time that you'll be able to get what should be a reasonably good Surface Pro with a keyboard below $1,000. Meanwhile, the laptop does have a fan and only has a 60 Hz screen, which at $899 is okay, I guess. And both devices also ditched the Surface Connect port, which people might or might not find annoying. Anyway, what is annoying is that to make room for these, Microsoft effectively raised the high-end Surface prices by discontinuing their base models. The 256 gig models of the Surface Pro 11 and the Laptop 7 no
2:21 longer get sold, and instead you'll have to buy the 512 gig model for at least $200 more. I'm sure tariffs had some part to play here as well, but I'm thinking that this was mostly a calculated move to get people to step one step up on the price ladder. Anyway, for my second story of the week, Samsung Dex and Google's own version of Dex desktop mode are getting a big upgrade. First, Android authorities Michelle Raman wrote that Google is finally building its own Dex and that he actually managed to try it on a Pixel phone. This feature now looks like it'll be turned into a proper fullyfeatured Samsung Dex competitor. The work is still in progress, but it looks like you'll get a nice taskbar with pinned and recent apps, the possibility to launch multiple apps and floating windows simultaneously and all the usual things that you'd expect from a proper desktop mode. Michelle speculates that this likely won't launch with Android 16
3:08 right out of the gate, but instead it'll possibly be in a quarter release later or maybe even launch with Android 17. My kind of conspiracy theory is that if Google really has to sell off Chrome, like maybe the judge will force them to, then they might also lose Chrome OS, and in that case, making Android run really well in the desktop might be a kind of backup plan for the company, and that's why they might be pushing for this right now. I've also seen other people commenting this on my previous videos, so I'm probably not alone. After all, there were leaks from earlier that claimed that Google was turning Chrome OS into Android, so I wouldn't be too surprised. And better yet, Twitter user Ipsos dev has also managed to get their hands on the new version of Samsung Dex, which has also made some changes to better align with the upcoming Android desktop mode. These are mostly cosmetic, at least as far as we can tell, but they
3:53 look nice. It makes sense that if Android itself has a desktop mode, Samsung would want to have their deck system somewhat aligned with that. Okay, and for my third story of the week, Apple's Eddie Q said things in court that made Google's share price drop by almost 10%. Specifically, he said that Apple wanted to add AI search partners to Safari, which is because for the first time ever, he claims that searches in Safari have actually dropped last month due to users increasingly turning to AI instead. Q admitted that this has never happened in 22 years and that he's lost a lot of sleep thinking about it. He apparently said that AI tools like ChatGpt would eventually replace regular search, though he claims that today they're just not good enough. Anyway, Google then quickly released a statement where they say that no, they continued to see overall query growth in search from Apple and everything is just fine.
4:40 But their stock actually fell almost 10% on the news. So, the market clearly said yikes. Okay, and moving on to a release monitor. Boop has released three new bands for the fitness obsessed, which come with updated hardware, longer battery life, and better integration of menstrual cycle data. Pretty cool, I guess. Then Razer announced the Joro gaming keyboard which is specifically designed to be super slim and low profile so you can actually take it with you when traveling but to still keep your RGB bling wherever you go. And last in the release monitor is Samsung launching the new Galaxy Tab Active 5 Tactical Edition developed jointly with the US Department of Defense. It has a 5G band locking mode allowing the tablet to connect to only certified network. It has a stealth mode that disables cellular connectivity and mutes radio frequency broadcasting overall. And it
5:26 even has a covert lock mode that turns off the modem and the GPS to prevent the device from emitting radio frequencies. You actually have to contact Samsung to get one of these. So, I'm not going to be linking this one down below, but all the other products as usual, including all the Surface stuff is linked down in the description. Hello, editing Martin here and I wanted to add a bit of a rant and also show you two things that I have to fight every goddamn week. So, I try to find the right product links for every major market for new releases each week, right? And this is what it looks like on the official Surface page of Amazon.co.uk. Here you have the older laptop 13.8 in and also the newer laptop 13-in both listed. Reminder, these are actually two very different machines, but then I click on the 13 and it opens the page of the 13.8 instead. Makes no goddamn sense. A lot of times the
6:12 product pages are basically a lie and the prices make no sense either. Here's that same supposedly more expensive 13.8 8 in laptop with a very attractive €948 price in Spain. But then the newer and supposedly cheaper laptop 13 actually costs €1,99 in reality. What the hell? So, if you ever open these links and they don't immediately make sense to you, trust me, it's not messing with you. It's just the brands being really stupid. But, okay, going back to the main video now. Okay. And as for the brief, we start with a little scoop. Fairphone actually randomly left this comment on my latest tech altar video confirming that if I hang in there a bit, they might give me a reason to do a follow-up. That means Fairphone randomly teased that an upcoming phone is coming out in a comment under a video of mine. That's a random way of doing it, but I won't say
6:59 no to that. And if you haven't seen the video yet, you can watch it somewhere here. It's also down in the description. Anyway, next, Realme showed off a prototype phone with a massive 10,000 milliamp battery. At just 8.5 millimeters and 215 g, it's neither thicker nor heavier than conventional flagships either. And while this is only a prototype, that's pretty bonkers. And moving on, Samsung confirmed that the 13th or the 12th of May, depending on your time zone, will be the launch date of their super slim Galaxy S25 Edge device. I usually don't do hands-on videos with products anymore, but I really want to see what this product actually feels in hand because that's the whole point about it. So, I think I'll make a video about this. It should be coming to this channel pretty soon. Meanwhile, Sony has also announced that they're launching their flagship Xperia 1 Mark 7 pretty much on the same day. So, this will be a very packed week. And
7:46 then their fancy headphones, the WH100XM6 were leaked, too. And we now know that their starting price will be $450. Okay. Then in more leaks, an Xbox branded Asus RG Li 2 has just leaked in the most disgusting leaked photo I've seen in a while. And it's rumored to launch as early as the 19th of May at Computex, which is pretty soon. And then in classic Google fashion, the company also managed to leak its next version of Material Design called Material 3 Expressive. I think it looks, let's just say, bold, I guess. And I can't really decide if I like this or not yet. Anyway, moving on to official news. Skype is now officially and fully dead. While Microsoft says that all the users should just migrate over to Teams, I can't actually imagine regular people doing that. Like no normal human would call their friends over Teams doesn't
8:33 exist. So I guess they'll just end up with no real consumerf facing video calling software, which is kind of odd. Then if you remember 2 weeks ago, we reported that the European Union is planning to force phonemakers to include some pretty detailed standardized energy labels on their devices. But meanwhile, this week, Trump basically looks to be doing the exact opposite by cutting the US's own Energy Star program with seemingly no replacement in sight. Cool. Next, in actual cool music streaming news, first Spotify announced that you can now snooze songs, which lets you take a break from overplayed songs for 30 days. And then Apple Music had the brilliant idea for a viral playlist that shows you which songs people are actually trying to identify using Shazam. Recently, Apple actually bought Chazam a couple years ago, and I think that's a pretty clever way of showing what songs are getting really popular.
9:19 And then in the seemingly neverending AI news, an updated version of a Gemini 2.0 Pro was announced as Google's most intelligent model yet, including things like a 1 million token context window, while Mistral announced their efficiency focused Medium 3 model, which they claim has flagship level capabilities while costing even less to use than Deepseek. Now, AI can be useful, but the constant onslaught of news might leave you feeling powerless about a future that we might be creating for ourselves if we aren't careful. Today's sponsor, 80,000 hours, has actually been researching and writing about these kinds of issues for nearly a decade. And they have tons of in-depth material on their website that you can read, like what an AI caused existential catastrophe would actually look like. And if just reading about this isn't enough for you, then they have also found fields that you can actually work on to contribute to making
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10:50 If that sounds interesting, you can get a copy of the career guide of 80,000 hours, which distills some of their most important research into one volume for free at 80,000our.org/tfc. That's a great place to start. And if you're wondering, everything they provide is free forever because they're a nonprofit. So check them out at 80,000our.org/tfc to get started. And I'll see you next Friday.
