Microsoft’s CEO Says New AI PCs [Copilot] Will Revive PC-Mac Rivalry

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Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella is betting a new generation of computers with specialized artificial intelligence chips and faster performance will revive the long-running rivalry between Windows PCs and Apple Inc.’s Mac.

“Apple’s done a fantastic job,” Nadella said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday. “We now want to bring real competition back to the Windows versus Mac.”

Microsoft unveiled a new category of AI-focused PCs called Copilot+PC. Thanks in part to a chip dedicated to AI processing, the company said, the machines from Microsoft’s Surface line and other manufacturers will be more powerful and 58% faster than Apple’s top-of-the-line MacBook Air M3. The new hardware will start at $1,000 and ship on June 18.

Apple is playing catch-up with Big Tech rivals in AI but is poised to lay out an ambitious strategy at its Worldwide Developers Conference next month. The company is placing high-end chips — similar to ones it designed for the Mac — in cloud-computing servers created to process the most advanced AI tasks coming to Apple devices, Bloomberg reported previously. Simpler AI-related features will be processed directly on iPhones, iPads and Macs.

Apple will focus on features that make life easier for users as they go about their day — say, by making suggestions and offering a customized experience.

Microsoft is leveraging its relationship with leading AI startup OpenAI to forge an early lead in the burgeoning field of generative AI services. But the partnership has come under regulatory scrutiny. Officials in the US, Europe and the UK are examining Microsoft’s AI investments, as well as those of its rivals, to determine whether they impinge on competition or should be regulated more similarly to mergers.

Nadella said his company’s partnerships are increasing competition in the nascent field rather than constraining it.

“Today there is formidable amount of competition, right?” he said. “Whether it is between the big players or the small players. So I don’t think that this is about any one company acquiring or not acquiring, but it’s about competition.”
 
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WOW!!!!!!!!!!
Minecraft.png
Copilot watching over-the-shoulder of somebody playing minecraft and helping them.
Next will be an aimbot I guess.


Demo of Copilot/Minecraft
 
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Macs are PCs.

He must mean Windows/macos rivalry.
 
The problem is that Microsoft is now introducing Apple upgrade prices like 200 US dollars for an extra 8GB RAM or 512GB additional SSD storage.

They need to bring upgrade prices down by half as otherwise these new devices will fail as the cost is prohibitive and people will not pay.

Apple found out the hard way that consumers will not buy MACs that are overpriced when you want to upgrade to the level of performannce you need.
 
Apple is working together with OpenAI and integrate ChatGPT with Siri.
 

Microsoft releases new Nvidia-chip AI PCs with revamped Windows 11​


Back in June, Nvidia announced that it had secured agreements with Microsoft and a host of other PC makers to develop AI- and agent-ready PCs for Windows based on its RTX Spark chip, but details on the machines were scant at the time.

On Wednesday, at an event held in San Francisco during the city’s Tech Week, Microsoft revealed the specs and price for its new Surface Laptop Ultra. The PC comes in two base models, one that starts at $2,600 and one with a more powerful chip that starts at $3,700. Prices rise from there with options for more memory and storage, up to $5,900. (Microsoft says the highest-end device is already out of stock.)

Microsoft also revealed its new workstation powered by the RTX Spark chip: the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, which starts priced at $6,000 and comes equipped with Microsoft dev tools like VS Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, WSL, and PowerShell 7.

The pitch for both this PC and workstation is that they are designed to run AI models on-device locally (and for free) with the CPU, GPU, unified memory, and other hardware modifications, like superior cooling, necessary to handle them.

Plus, they are running a revamped version of Windows 11 that includes a feature called “Execution Containers.” This makes it easier to sandbox AI agents, the company says. That feature will be available for all Windows 11 users, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the event.

Nadella explained: “One of the things we realized in the last 3-4 years is that just having a model doesn’t do much for anything. You really do need to orchestrate, and you need to have memory outside of the model. You need to have this harnessed layer that is able to take multiple models plus context, plus memory, and the action space.”

He added that Microsoft is enabling that “not just for our apps but apps for anyone’s agent. That’s what the Windows platform is all about going forward.”

The devices are clearly aimed at developers, so much so that Microsoft is offering up to $1,000 off to people who trade in a MacBook Pro, as Macs have become a popular choice for developers and AI agent enthusiasts, particularly in Silicon Valley.

Still, these Surface PCs, with such powerful graphics processing, are also capable of content creation, video processing, and gaming, the company promises.

Microsoft wasn’t the only PC company to announce the specs for its new Nvidia-RTX Spark AI Windows PCs on Wednesday. Dell also announced the details of its previously announced Dell XPS 16 Creator Edition PC. It’s available for preorder now for a later October delivery at Best Buy, priced at $3,800.



Windows, Surface and Nvidia Event Highlights: Everything Announced in 16 Minutes​

 

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