Improving the Surface Customer Experience
When we first started working on Surface, we set out to build a product that would be the ultimate stage for Windows. We put the customer experience at the heart of all that we did and with attention to each and every detail, we brought this idea to life. Whether you’re looking for a tablet that provides a great entertainment experience with the ability to get some things done, or you’re looking for the power and performance of a laptop in a tablet package, with Surface RT and Surface Pro there are two great choices from which you can choose.
Since we first launched Surface in October 2012, we’ve been making updates and improvements available via Windows Update to further enhance the customer experience. Even though Surface is first and foremost a hardware product, the customer experience is certainly not static and many great improvements have been made. At launch, there were updates to the inbox apps, Windows RT, and the final release of Office Home & Student 2013 RT for Surface RT customers. Since then, we’ve been making updates available on a regular basis and the overall customer experience has improved incrementally. This will continue over time.
We’ve made updates to the hardware drivers thereby enabling additional functionality such as with the track-pad, reduced the instances where Limited Connectivity is reported for wireless access, improved the audio quality and reliability, tweaked the software responsible for interpreting keystrokes on Touch Cover so you can type more quickly and effortlessly, and we’ve made it possible to use Type Cover and Touch Cover at a larger variety of angles. One recent announcement brought an update to Internet Explorer 10 such that Adobe Flash content now runs by default on both Surface RT and Surface Pro.
And yesterday, we announced that there would be an update to the Mail, Calendar, and People apps that come with Surface RT and Surface Pro. These apps are designed to manage communication seamlessly on your Surface across multiple accounts—Outlook.com, Exchange, and others. This update is available starting today and for a detailed overview of new features and improvements, see this blog post on the Windows Experience Blog including instructions on how to install this update from the Windows Store.
When we started working on Surface we put the customer experience at the heart of all that we did. That is still true today and as such, over the coming months, you’ll continue to see updates and improvements made available to both Surface RT and Surface Pro customers. This includes further updates to the wireless system to reduce the instances where Limited Connectivity is reported as well as an update to the Surface Pen driver to enable pressure functionality in Adobe Photoshop with Surface Pro.
We know many of you are waiting for an update on specific dates for Surface Pro availability. Please rest assured that while we don’t have anything specific to share right now, we’ll let you know in a follow-up blog post just as soon as we do.