 Well, good afternoon and welcome. I certainly want to thank everybody for joining us for today's event. The past several years have seen great change in the industry and great innovations coming from Microsoft. We've helped usher in a new era of cloud computing. We've embraced mobility. We're redefining communications and attempting to transform entertainment. In all that we have done, Windows is the heart and soul of Microsoft. From Windows PCs to Windows servers to Windows phones and Windows Azure. Windows has proven to be the most flexible, general purpose software ever created, spurring on an ecosystem of unrivaled success. When Microsoft was founded, our vision was bold and broad, a computer on every desk and in every home. And while certainly we are optimists to the core, Windows has exceeded even our most optimistic predictions. It now powers well over one billion PCs from desktops to laptops to ATMs to NASA workstations and more. In homes, in businesses, in schools and in governments literally around the world. With Windows 8, we've reimagined the Windows product. We reimagined Windows from the chipset to the user experience to power a new generation of PCs that enable new capabilities and new scenarios. We approached the Windows 8 product design in a forward looking way. We designed Windows 8 for the world we know, in which most PCs are mobile and people want access to information and the ability to create content from anywhere, anytime. People want to do all of that without compromising the productivity that PCs are uniquely known for. From personal productivity applications to technical applications, business software and literally millions of other applications that are written for Windows that work perfectly on Windows 8. We're incredibly gratified by the enthusiastic response to Windows 8. From our partners, our OEM partners, thousands of developers and literally millions of people, consumers who've downloaded our previews. Excitement is high with the new x86 NARM, SOC support, the new Metro user interface and the new store all getting very broad interest. Today, we want to add another piece, another bit of excitement and another piece to that Windows 8 story. At our foundation, Bill Gates and Paul Allen made a bet, a bet on software. At the same time, it was always clear that our unique view of what software could do would require us to push hardware, sometimes in ways that even the makers of the hardware themselves had yet to envision. That's the nature of the dynamic between hardware and software, pushing each other and pulling each other forward. In fact, our number one revenue product actually, the year I joined Microsoft, 1980, was a hardware product, something known as the soft card. Let's just take a little bit of a look back at the role of hardware at Microsoft. Microsoft's been making hardware for over 30 years. We have over 3,200 hardware patents. That's one every three days over our 30 years of history here in hardware. Think about a mouse. That was the first new type of input that you would interact with with a piece of software. It was so revolutionary for its time. Being able to work with the GUI and Word was why the mouse was invented. A piece of hardware that was so unique and so hard to find, Microsoft's like, oh, we can't get this. And we're going to have to do it ourselves. Number one selling keyboard, just so much built into it. They just are so instrumental to how you work with a computer. Xbox made a huge dive into the gaming market. The same thing we did 30 years ago about making software come to life, we're doing that today with the new products. Hit our stride for sure when it comes to innovation. It is still about wow. Developing products that are going to touch the customer in a meaningful way. I think the shapes are really cool. That's the first thing that attracts me to them. It's a constant evolution. That's what makes this place special. That is what drives us every day. That's why we come into work and we work so hard every day. I'm personally very proud of Kinect. We are responsible for an awesome experience. It wouldn't be cool if a gaming device could do that. We control it all, we design it all, we verify it all, we manufacture it all ourselves. I think it's about the desire to change the world. We can do something that not many others can do. What I see coming out of the hardware group today just blows my mind. As excited as I am about seeing people use our devices right now, I'm even more excited about the stuff we're developing for the future. We believe that any intersection between human and machine can be made better when all aspects of the experience, hardware and software, are considered in working together. Just let's take the mouse as an example. To be successful, Windows 1.0 really needed a mouse. So we built one. Early reviews of mice were not very positive as people struggled to understand the real value. In fact, actually it was so new that Canadian customs quarantined the Microsoft mouse at the border for four weeks thinking that it was alive. Our most successful hardware product has been the Xbox. And with Kinect, we have created a whole new user experience. And now developers are pushing Kinect, doing more exciting and even cooler things for both the game console and for Windows PCs. This combination of hardware, software and peripherals in the Xbox case work together to deliver an absolutely amazing experience. We see that sort of combination working also today in our PC ecosystem. We believe in the strength of that ecosystem of software and hardware companies that work together to deliver selection and choice that makes your Windows experience uniquely your own. Those partnerships are essential to the reimagination of Windows. We've worked with the component companies, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. Of course, the ultimate landing point of this PC experience is through our partnerships with OEMs, HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, Samsung, Sony, Lenovo, Toshiba and many, many more. They will deliver more PCs to market in the year 2013 than in any previous year. IDC estimates that number at over 375 million Windows PCs. That will ensure that software developers and content creators have a larger number of new systems to target with their Windows 8 applications than any other non-phone platform. However, with Windows 8, we did not want to leave any seam uncovered. Much like Windows 1.0 needed the mouse to complete the experience, we wanted to give Windows 8 its own companion hardware innovation. What is this innovation? It's something new, it's something different, it's a whole new family of computing devices from Microsoft. This is the new Microsoft Surface. It embodies the notion of hardware and software really pushing each other. People do want to create and consume. They want to work and they want to play. They want to be on their couch, they want to be at their desk and they want to be on the go. Surface fulfills that dream. It is a tool to surface your passions, to surface your ideas, to surface your creativity and to surface your enjoyment. I really want you to take the time today to get to know Microsoft Surface. So let's now learn more from Stephen Sinovsky and the Microsoft Surface team. Just as we've reimagined Windows, we also have a vision for reimagining the tablet. We see a tablet that is designed the way that Windows has been designed. We see a tablet that represents a unique vision for the seamless expression of entertainment and creativity. A tablet that works and plays the way that you want to. A tablet that's a great PC. A PC that's a great tablet. A new type of computing, Surface. Surface is a stage for Windows. Surface is designed for the software experience to have it take center stage. Surface is super thin at 9.3 millimeters. It's just thin enough for this full-size USB port. For peripherals or just charging your phone while you're at the hotel. The edges are beveled away at 22 degrees, so the PC itself fades into the background. It feels natural in your hands. Surface is the first PC with a full magnesium case. Through a unique process, the liquid metal is formed into an ultra rigid, yet ultra light frame. It is incredibly strong, yet it's airy at under 1.5 pounds, just 676 grams. And it's finely balanced. You know, we didn't stop there. The case is one of a kind. It's made from a physical vapor deposition process. It results in a permanent scratch and wear resistance surface. This vapor mag case is a first of a kind. And it accentuates the unique feel of Surface. Surface is of course great for entertainment. It has access to all of the Windows apps for music, for video, for Xbox and gaming. We can see here I'm running Internet Explorer. I can browse smoothly, see great pages using ClearType, and have a great experience just with all the, with browsing. It's 10.6 inch optically bonded widescreen display is custom designed for Surface. And of course people play games. I can go and play any of the interesting games that are in the Windows store. And I can use Surface for using all the sensors that are within Windows as well. Surface works for all of those games. Movies and entertainment look great as well. Oops. Hang on just a minute. There. Excuse me just a second. Surface works great for entertainment as well. In fact, I'm going to show here for the first time a very exciting new application. This is the Netflix application designed specifically for Windows 8. Now with the widescreen you get 30% more viewing area and no banding or letterboxing like you traditionally see. I'm happy to show this new Netflix application. Give you an early look how it's designed specifically for Windows 8 with semantic zoom. And Netflix will have this ready at the Windows 8 launch. I can go here and start a movie and see it stream straight to my Surface PC. Just like you would expect. Now to stream so well, Surface needs great Wi-Fi. Surface is the first tablet to incorporate dual 2x2 MIMO antennas. That means it provides the very best Wi-Fi reception of any tablet today. Surface is incredibly great for entertainment PC. And you know we're just getting started. Today when you have your tablet and you want to be entertained, you have to hold it. You're always sitting in an awkward position. Perhaps you have to choose from a seemingly endless variety of add-on stands and cases that solve a relatively simple problem. But by adding weight, adding thickness. What if I just want to watch a movie or listen to music and do something else? We think that this should be an integral part of the design. We think that a stand should be integral. So we built a stand into the device. This stand is made of the same vapor mag as the rest of the case. And it's completely integrated into the device. The hinge design is like that of the finest luxury car. And when not in use, it just fades away. No extra weight. No extra thickness. No separate add-on. It's integrated just like the software and the hardware integrated into Surface. And then once you have this kickstand, you can sit back and enjoy a truly hands-free experience. You know you could go and just put the Surface on a table, lay back and watch a movie. And that's really what entertainment should be about with the Surface. But you know Surface is designed to be mobile. We designed Surface to be rugged and move around. But with vapor mag and Corning Gorilla Glass 2.0, you do not need to worry at all. But we know many people prefer to have some sort of cover. A cover that helps to just act like an easy on-off switch at least. So Surface has a cover. We designed the cover to be an integral element of the PC. We built a magnetic connector into the device to hold it very securely. So let me attach the cover. Click. You heard that. It's solid. Click. Close the cover. It's integrated into the device. It's made from a fine Northwest Polartec. It feels great in your hand like a book. It just fits there. And when we looked at the whole Surface on the cover, we challenged ourselves to do more. This cover is just 3 millimeters. Combined with Surface, they're just over 12 millimeters. That's less than half an inch. And we said, why not do something with this Surface? Why shouldn't we just take this Surface and make it a full multi-touch keyboard? Woo! Woo! Yeah! Yeah! This touch cover is not just a full multi-touch keyboard, but it's a modern trackpad with left and right buttons. It even has the keys for the Windows 8 Metro style UI. This keyboard combined with the kickstand form the hallmark of just hands-on creativity. On average, typing is twice as efficient as typing on glass, and it's certainly more comfortable. Now, of course, the innovative on-screen keyboard in Windows is still there, and you can mix and match. The choice is really going to be yours. Just put them on the table, and you've got a great stand. Let me go over here and show you a different Surface. This Surface is connected to external HDMI. That's built into the device. I'm going to go here, and now I've got the touch cover connected. Now, with front and rear-facing cameras on this device, I can record a video. So I'm going to start the camera application. So now I can go here, and I could tilt this around and angle it so I could see it. This camera is angled at 22 degrees. By angling it at 22 degrees, everybody at the table, their head is perfectly framed into the picture. Or when I'm sitting at the seat, I can do a Skype call, and I'm perfectly framed. But this device also has Windows on it, or Office on it. So I go into the desktop, and here's Word running. Now, what's really neat is I could also have, using the multitasking capabilities, I could dock the camera app there, and now I can record a video or an interview and take notes. I could record myself and read from my notes. And that integration is really cool. In fact, I could even use the USB port and plug in an external speaker and microphone, even though it has dual-array mics and dual speakers built in, and I could get super high-quality recording. And so that's a quick look at Surface. Now, there's so much more to show you today. Now, imagine, if you will, that we took all of those capabilities of Surface, and we built them so that you could use all the applications that you're familiar with. You could use Photoshop, or you could use other applications. Those applications would be built using the latest of the Intel Core processor. Now, in addition to the Surface that we're releasing today for Windows RT, we also have a Surface that's designed with these latest Intel processors. So in addition to working on the NVIDIA ARM processor, we're also working on a Surface for Windows 8 Professional. I'd like to introduce Mike Angiulo now, who's going to come up on stage and show us a little bit of the next generation of Surface. Thank you very much, Stephen. I am proud to introduce you to another member of the Surface family. This is Surface for Windows 8 Pro. The Windows ecosystem has always been about choice, and for the millions of professional desktop users out there, people who use their PC every day to design and to create things, this is a great choice for you. It shares the same design principles that Stephen was talking about. It's a stage for Windows. It shows the same pride and craftsmanship. It's less than 2 pounds and less than 14 millimeters. It's a full PC. Now, this also has a clear type display. Stephen's PC had a clear type HD. This is a clear type full HD display. What that means is three things. It's a combination of a very specific pixel geometry, rendering, and an optical bonding process that together create the effect that your eye can't distinguish between the individual pixels at normal viewing distances, in this case 17 inches, less than arm's length. This clear type display also reduces Z height and conserves battery power. It has some of the other high performance features you saw too. It's got that 2 by 2 antenna technology. This is a first in tablets. It has dual high performance antennas and receivers so that you get the best Wi-Fi performance possible no matter how you hold it. It also has a chassis that's built out of that same durable and elegant vapor mag that enables features like the 0.7 millimeter thin kickstand, less than a millimeter. It's got the same compatible accessory spine that Stephen had, so if you take a touch cover like he had, it just clicks in. It clicks in the same. It has that same designed in feeling because the entire Surface family of products was designed together. Even closed like this, this is still less than 17 millimeters. This PC has specs that rival those of the finest Ultrabooks that have ever been announced. And it delivers the power and the flexibility that you would expect of a high end PC. This PC is powered by Intel's third generation Core i5 processor, the Ivy Bridge processor. This is their 22 nanometer process that results in a CPU that's faster, a GPU that has double the 3D graphics throughput, all while using less power than today's Core i5s. But with that power comes a unique design challenge. How do you design a PC that you might be holding in any different way or have a cover in the front and the back to integrate active cooling? There's no obvious place to put a vent. So here's our solution. This is called perimeter venting. You see this groove that goes all the way around the outside of the case? There's a good shot of it up on the screen. This allows air to be uniformly distributed across the entire PC when necessary in a way that you never block it with your hands. In fact, you never even feel it, which makes the PC really comfortable to hold, which is really helpful when doing things like flipping back your keyboard and taking notes with digital ink. Surface for Windows 8 Pro supports digital inking. Windows apps of all kinds can support inking. So here what I've done is I can go back to the desktop and show you what I launched. I launched the Windows Reader. And this is a PDF file of one of Stephen's blog posts. So you can see I can pan and zoom. What I can really do here is I can come and I could do ink. I'm going to come and say this is great. Now what you'll notice when I ink and I zoom in, as I zoom in, that ink stays smooth. That's because it's being sampled at 600 dpi, that's subpixel accuracy for ink. What that does is it keeps your handwriting very smooth and hopefully yours is a little better than mine. One of the neat things about this too is as I'm inking, from here I can see the tip of the pen almost feels like it's writing exactly on the screen. Since the screen is optically bonded, we've eliminated the layers in between the thin cover glass and the screen, so it feels like you're inking right on the page. The distance between the stylus and where I see the ink is only 0.7 millimeters. That's the thinnest and closest distance of any tablet PC, any inking tablet ever. Now one of the other things that's going on here is as I'm moving my hand, you see the page is not moving underneath my hand. That's because Windows has palm block technology. This Surface has two digitizers. It has one for touch and a separate one for digital ink. What happens is when I bring the pen close to the screen, Windows sees the proximity of the pen and stops taking touch input so my hand doesn't mess up what I'm writing. When I'm done with the pen, you can see the little magnetic charging connector there. It just clicks in. That's one of the cool things on Surface for Windows 8 Pro in inking. I got one. Thanks. The apps that I'm showing you, they look really great in the native resolution of the screen, the 1080 resolution. But if you want to unlock the highest possible resolutions that Ivy Bridge supports, even higher resolutions that are possible via HDMI out, we have DisplayPort. Now with DisplayPort, I can take this PC, I can dock it, and I basically have a full professional workstation with the power of a desktop PC. I have one here that's plugged in and synced up to the show monitor. This kind of a PC is powerful enough to run big applications, applications like Photoshop, Autodesk, SolidWorks, enterprise applications that require a TPM chip. In this case, I'm going to copy some high res photos onto the PC and edit them in Adobe's Lightroom. I'm copying onto the desktop. What you'll see here, this is a five second copy. That's a whole gigabyte. That's a whole gigabyte of pictures that just copied in five seconds. Service has support for really fast USB 3.0 and the new USB super speed drives. A gigabyte file copy in five seconds is five times faster than USB 2.0, which makes sense with this PC because you'll be using it to do big jobs, whether you're editing big photos like this or you're dealing with big video files or you're doing, in Steven's case, a big job might be typing a super long blog post that you may have read. Service is up for the task. Now let's say you are in fact doing one of those big typing jobs. You've seen already Steven talked a little bit about touch cover and the improvements it makes for typing. Let's say you're a really fast touch typist or maybe you just prefer the feel of tactile keys. Well, we've got another Surface choice for you. This is Surface Type Cover. It shares the same full pitch layout as touch cover, but what we've done is we've taken a key switch that has a one and a half millimeter travel and we've built it into the thinnest possible package so you can touch type. I can touch type on this as fast as I can touch type on any keyboard. Fully compatible with Windows. You see the shortcut keys here. It has a full modern track pad with clicking buttons and this completes the Surface family of products. I'd like to pull all the Surface family together all at one point. Panos, would you join us with the colors of touch cover? Surface for Windows RT, Surface for Windows 8 Pro, and a handful of the touch cover colors that we're going to have at launch. That's the complete Surface family. Thanks, Steven. Now that's how we feel too and Panos especially. Panos Panay is the leader of the team that created Surface and has some great stories and some more detail about the product and how it came to be. It's all yours. Thank you. Thanks. Super cool. Super cool. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I am unbelievably humbled right now and flattered to be up here. But truthfully I'm recognizing an entire team that's back in Redmond right now waiting to see your blog posts to see what you have to say. We have a team full of designers, development engineers, manufacturing engineers, hardware testers all working on these products right now as we speak. Before I get into what I'm going to talk about today I'm just going to show you a little bit more about the design, show you a little bit more about the culture of how these products were built because I think it might be interesting for you to hear that. I really want to share with you more of our team. So just watch this video really quick and I'll be right back. It's an incredible moment when an idea that we had after so many months working really hard turns into a product. We brought some of the best people at Microsoft together to make this awesome device. One of the things that really drives us isn't that oh what a great idea. It's what a great idea and we can build it. The collaboration between the disciplines was outstanding. We had a full blown team of researchers, engineers, user researchers, industrial designers, interaction designers that all worked together. We couldn't ask for a better team than what we have right now. Super important to not only care about the big idea but also to care about the smallest detail. It takes iteration to build the best device possible. Each time we made one of those revisions we got progressively better and better. Took months and months and months of prototyping. We found it pretty exciting, complex. The technology was amazing. You start to realize that what we're making here is really special. The first reactions will be wow. When you put the entire system together for the first time I think that was a wow moment. When you pick this unit up you viscerally understand that it's high quality. A PC that is everything you would want in a tablet device for consuming content. The next moment you can be crafting an email or writing a term paper. When you're able to connect some sort of user experience to bits all the way down to atoms. That's where you start really seeing new experiences evolve. I think you find that's a pretty powerful product. We're very proud of it. You're going to get to meet a lot of the people you just saw in the video in just a few minutes. They're actually backstage right now preparing to show you more details of the product and give you a few minutes to put your hands on it. Talk a little bit about the design. Let me start by doing that to just give you a quick preview of what you might see backstage in just a few minutes. You heard Stephen and Mike both say it. This was built as a stage for Windows 8. That was part of our core vision for the product. It was very important for us that we had the hardware fade to the background for this product. It was important so the Windows software could rise to the surface. It gives you the best experience possible when the hardware fades away. What comes to the surface is that entertainment piece you want when you're using the device. Note the chamfered angles on the side of this product. These are chamfered at 22 degrees. That's two things. One, it's a physical manifestation of the actual stage itself. You can see as it falls away just as we intended for the hardware to do. Two, it actually sits perfectly comfortable in your hands. Let me qualify something. I say perfectly a lot. I say perfect a lot. As part of our team culture, what was really important for us is we had so many parts of the design that had to be in detail and be simple and be right, that we always strive for perfection on every subcomponent of this product. It includes this chamfered angle. What it does is sits in your hand very comfortably in a way that when you hold it, it feels light, it feels airy. Most importantly, you can use it all day in comfort. It's really important when you talk about the hardware fading to the background that the hardware is not in your way to accomplish what you wanted to do. It's meant to move you forward, which we think this product does. Now, when we talk about hardware fading to the back, another thing that's super important is the seamless lines throughout the product. When you look at this product, you'll see lines going throughout it, every line calculated, every line built, formed perfectly on the device. But there's one challenge. Our vision for the product beyond being a stage for Windows was also that we had to bring creativity and productivity to folks such as yourselves. The opportunity to transform this device, if you will, to transition it to the state of getting things done. Putting this kickstand in the product flies right in the face of seamless lines and getting it perfect. But we really spent a lot of time here. We knew that if we did not get the kickstand perfect, this device would not work. We could not take any chances. Take a look at the three hinges that you see within this device. This is a really simple example of the details of the product. These are three custom-made hinges. Mind you, there are over 200 custom parts built from the inside out of this product to make it come to life. But these hinges, they were spec'd just as Stephen told you. They were spec'd to feel and sound like a high-end car door. When you close the device, the kickstand just goes away. It's not in your way. When you needed the device, it's there just in time. You want to get something done, just open it, and it feels great. The spec we created was around sound. We iterated over and over again in our anechoic chamber. This is a critical point. We really wanted to get the sound right so you get that visceral feeling, that emotional attachment to your product when you open this kickstand and close it. It makes it yours. It goes away when you don't need it, and it's there when you do. Now, we talked about VaporMag a few times. Let me bring VaporMag to life just a little bit here so you can understand a little bit more of what we did. VaporMag essentially becomes what lets us get our product design and create life out of it. You can see the breakout behind me. Let me just explain a few things that we have going on. I'm holding up my room key. It feels weird to hold up my room key, but if you look at this quickly, what you'll see is 0.77 millimeters of thickness. This is an important point. If you can't see it, that's all right. Same as a credit card. Pull it out. Your credit card is likely somewhere between 0.75 or 0.85 millimeters thick. It's just to illustrate a point. VaporMag is a process where we start with an ingot of magnesium, and we melt it down to a molten state. We then injection mold the magnesium through some tools, and we're able to actually mold the intricate details that are needed for surface. We mold down to 0.65 millimeters of thickness in any given part, 0.75. We mold to 0.65. This is important to understand because for us to get to the design we needed for this product, to get the kickstand integrated seamlessly and hold this line throughout the product, we had to be able to mold to those tolerances. Every micron matters within Microsoft Surface. We've actually stacked up every part from designing from the inside out so tightly in the product and so cleanly that even if you stuck a piece of tape in the middle of the device, it would bulge. It would bulge out. That tells you how strong this product is, how much strength comes with it, how light it feels in your hands. All those parts play into each other. The best part about VaporMag is not just that we can mold to 0.65 and get the intricate details like the 0.65 millimeter angles that go around the product, these radii. The best part is the smoothness of the finish that comes out of the tools. After approximately 152 steps to get the VaporMag looking just like you see now, you find that the surface finish on this product, and as Mike says, pride and craftsmanship, is perfect. It's seamless. It screams watch quality finish, and when you put it in your hands, it feels elegant. When you touch it, you're going to want to hold it, I promise you. Now, I'm proud of VaporMag, and I'm proud of the team for the product that they've done, but nothing stirs me more. Nothing gets me more excited than TouchCover. I really want to walk you through TouchCover for just a few moments. This is an important technology that came out of our group. I'm going to walk you through it in two ways. The first way is through the experience, and the second way I'm going to talk about is the technology. Let's do the experience first. Let me explain to you what we tried to do with TouchCover from the get-go. You'll notice I'm going to connect it now to my blue TouchCover. I just click it in as you would expect. The surface turns blue along with my TouchCover, and you have a beautiful integration of hardware and software. My surface knows what is connected to it. I can now bring to life the vision that is TouchCover for this product, the vision that lets you produce content when you want it, how you want it, as fast as you've always done it. That's what this product was designed for. Let me give you one more second on this on a little bit of the experience. The thing that was so critical for us in creating TouchCover was that it had to be three millimeters thin. This essentially is at odds of any other keyboard you've used and still have a great typing experience. It also had to be a cover you wanted to connect, something you always had with you, something that gave you confidence, just like the kickstand, to bring this product to life. We designed a flux fountain and magnets in this product. That's a combination of alignment and clamping magnets. You could actually never miss connecting this device. You can't miss. We force you to not miss. We do that to give you confidence. You close it. It feels like a book. We designed this organically like a book. We wanted it to feel just like that. What has more covers on it than books themselves? This spine feels like a book. When you put it in your hand and you walk away with your product, you'll hold it like a book. When you carry it against your books, it'll feel like it's another book. It's just light enough and it feels just perfect. Now, that said, I think you're going to fall in love with TouchCover. I know I have. I mean, I am seriously in love with it. Outside of my wife, TouchCover is number two. It's very important to me. Now, I never want to take TouchCover off. I'd argue that you don't need to and you never have to. You saw Mike move his TouchCover to the back. When he did that, I'm sure every single one of you thought, like, wait a minute, how do you move it to the back? Well, TouchCover is pretty smart. It has an accelerometer built into it. The moment you fold it back, we know you fold it back. We know when you're not using it and it's turned off for you. So, you never have to take it off. And underneath your fingertips, it feels great. So, now you've got a comfortable device with TouchCover that's yours. It's personalized to you. You saw the beautiful colors that we have coming to market. And essentially, what's brought to you is an experience like none other with TouchCover and Surface together. Now, I showed you the experience, but I want to just show you the technology because it really is important that you understand it. And quite frankly, we have a bit of a mad scientist who many of you know named Stevie Batiste. Stevie actually invented TouchCover. The fact that we have 30 years of input experience using mice and 15 years creating keyboards, we really understand how to create a great typing experience. We also knew that if we brought you TouchCover and TouchCover wasn't any good, boy, what a breaking moment. But we've actually evolved this technology to a point through Stevie and his work to come to a place where we've brought you an experience that's amazing at typing. There's actually seven layers squeezed in, pressed right into TouchCover to keep it three millimeters thin. Now, that's super thin, but critical for you to have a great experience when folding it back. Let me explain to you how the technology works just ever so slightly and quickly. So, what you're going to see is I'm going to put my hands down on this machine here. What you're seeing is this is Surface for Windows RT. And my hands are down on TouchCover. You'll notice that my hands are laying flat on TouchCover right now, yet nothing's happening. If this was, in fact, a capacitive screen or the phone you might have in your pocket or some other device you might have, the keyboard would take up half the screen and you put your fingers down and it would look something like that. Now, that's me actually pressing on TouchCover, and it knows the grams of force coming off my fingertips onto TouchCover. Why is this critical? When you type in touch type speed, you have to find your home position and rest your hands. To do that, your keyboard can't fire when you put your hands down. It's comfortable. You can rest your hands. And note as I put pressure on the J key how the pressure goes up as I push harder, and as I release, the pressure comes off. It's actually measuring every gram of force coming off my fingertips. And as I start to type, it knows how many keys I've hit. This keyboard actually measures ten times faster in scanning from a keyboard matrix than any keyboard guaranteed that you use today. It is super fast and brings great, great opportunity for you to be productive and get stuff done. Obviously, I have a lot of pride in this product. I hope you love it. I can't wait for you to get your hands on it back there, and I really mean that. Steven, thanks for having me up here today. That was a moment for our team, for sure. I do want to talk a little bit about some availability and pricing information and things like that that I know people want to know. Surface for Windows RT, and I still say there will be much more information available on the web and available shortly. So Surface for Windows RT will be available in both a 32 and a 64 gigabyte model, and will be priced like comparable tablets that are based on ARM. Surface for Windows 8 Professional will come in 64 gigabyte and 128 gigabyte storage models, and will have a retail price comparable with competitive Ultrabook-class PCs. Additional specifics on pricing and packaging will be announced as we get closer to retail availability. Now, of course, retail availability for the Surface PCs will be around the time of – will be – for the Windows RT PC will be at the time of the Windows 8 general availability, and for the Windows 8 Pro about three months later. Surface will be available through the Microsoft physical stores here in the U.S., and will be available through select online – through the select online outlets of the Microsoft store as well. So welcome, everybody, to Surface. I just want to invite Steve Ballmer back up on stage one more time, and thank you. Thank you very much. I want to thank Steven and Mike and Panos and their team. This has been an unbelievable journey. We've invested significantly, as you can see, in talent, in time, in capital to bring the Surface to market. I was asked in the last few days here, why now? Why now? We took the time to really get Surface and Windows 8 right, to do something that was really different, and really special. We're very proud – very, very proud – of the Surface, just like we're very proud of Windows 8. Because of Windows 8 – because of Windows 8 – the Surface is a PC. The Surface is a tablet, and the Surface is something new that we think people will absolutely love. We really want those of you here to have a chance to see and touch the Surface, and talk with some of the people who are involved in designing the product. We have several stations set up next door, where you can see the work that went into the creation of the Surface, and we hope you'll stay and join us for that. Today has been fun for us to put on for you – very, very exciting. I want to thank you all for being part of today's event. Thanks. Microsoft Mechanics www.microsoft.com Microsoft Mechanics www.microsoft.com
 Well, good afternoon and welcome. I certainly want to thank everybody for joining us for today's event.
 The past several years have seen great change in the industry and great innovations coming from Microsoft.
 We've helped usher in a new era of cloud computing. We've embraced mobility.
 We're redefining communications and attempting to transform entertainment.
 In all that we have done, Windows is the heart and soul of Microsoft. From Windows PCs to Windows servers to Windows phones and Windows Azure.
 Windows has proven to be the most flexible, general purpose software ever created, spurring on an ecosystem of unrivaled success.
 When Microsoft was founded, our vision was bold and broad, a computer on every desk and in every home.
 And while certainly we are optimists to the core, Windows has exceeded even our most optimistic predictions.
 It now powers well over one billion PCs from desktops to laptops to ATMs to NASA workstations and more.
 In homes, in businesses, in schools and in governments literally around the world.
 With Windows 8, we've reimagined the Windows product.
 We reimagined Windows from the chipset to the user experience to power a new generation of PCs that enable new capabilities and new scenarios.
 We approached the Windows 8 product design in a forward looking way.
 We designed Windows 8 for the world we know, in which most PCs are mobile and people want access to information and the ability to create content from anywhere, anytime.
 People want to do all of that without compromising the productivity that PCs are uniquely known for.
 From personal productivity applications to technical applications, business software and literally millions of other applications that are written for Windows that work perfectly on Windows 8.
 We're incredibly gratified by the enthusiastic response to Windows 8.
 From our partners, our OEM partners, thousands of developers and literally millions of people, consumers who've downloaded our previews.
 Excitement is high with the new x86 NARM, SOC support, the new Metro user interface and the new store all getting very broad interest.
 Today, we want to add another piece, another bit of excitement and another piece to that Windows 8 story.
 At our foundation, Bill Gates and Paul Allen made a bet, a bet on software.
 At the same time, it was always clear that our unique view of what software could do would require us to push hardware,
 sometimes in ways that even the makers of the hardware themselves had yet to envision.
 That's the nature of the dynamic between hardware and software, pushing each other and pulling each other forward.
 In fact, our number one revenue product actually, the year I joined Microsoft, 1980, was a hardware product, something known as the soft card.
 Let's just take a little bit of a look back at the role of hardware at Microsoft.
 Microsoft's been making hardware for over 30 years.
 We have over 3,200 hardware patents. That's one every three days over our 30 years of history here in hardware.
 Think about a mouse. That was the first new type of input that you would interact with with a piece of software.
 It was so revolutionary for its time.
 Being able to work with the GUI and Word was why the mouse was invented.
 A piece of hardware that was so unique and so hard to find, Microsoft's like, oh, we can't get this.
 And we're going to have to do it ourselves.
 Number one selling keyboard, just so much built into it.
 They just are so instrumental to how you work with a computer.
 Xbox made a huge dive into the gaming market.
 The same thing we did 30 years ago about making software come to life, we're doing that today with the new products.
 Hit our stride for sure when it comes to innovation. It is still about wow.
 Developing products that are going to touch the customer in a meaningful way.
 I think the shapes are really cool. That's the first thing that attracts me to them.
 It's a constant evolution.
 That's what makes this place special.
 That is what drives us every day. That's why we come into work and we work so hard every day.
 I'm personally very proud of Kinect. We are responsible for an awesome experience.
 It wouldn't be cool if a gaming device could do that.
 We control it all, we design it all, we verify it all, we manufacture it all ourselves.
 I think it's about the desire to change the world.
 We can do something that not many others can do.
 What I see coming out of the hardware group today just blows my mind.
 As excited as I am about seeing people use our devices right now,
 I'm even more excited about the stuff we're developing for the future.
 We believe that any intersection between human and machine can be made better
 when all aspects of the experience, hardware and software, are considered in working together.
 Just let's take the mouse as an example.
 To be successful, Windows 1.0 really needed a mouse.
 So we built one.
 Early reviews of mice were not very positive as people struggled to understand the real value.
 In fact, actually it was so new that Canadian customs quarantined the Microsoft mouse
 at the border for four weeks thinking that it was alive.
 Our most successful hardware product has been the Xbox.
 And with Kinect, we have created a whole new user experience.
 And now developers are pushing Kinect, doing more exciting and even cooler things
 for both the game console and for Windows PCs.
 This combination of hardware, software and peripherals in the Xbox case work together
 to deliver an absolutely amazing experience.
 We see that sort of combination working also today in our PC ecosystem.
 We believe in the strength of that ecosystem of software and hardware companies that work together
 to deliver selection and choice that makes your Windows experience uniquely your own.
 Those partnerships are essential to the reimagination of Windows.
 We've worked with the component companies, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.
 Of course, the ultimate landing point of this PC experience is through our partnerships with OEMs,
 HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, Samsung, Sony, Lenovo, Toshiba and many, many more.
 They will deliver more PCs to market in the year 2013 than in any previous year.
 IDC estimates that number at over 375 million Windows PCs.
 That will ensure that software developers and content creators have a larger number of new systems
 to target with their Windows 8 applications than any other non-phone platform.
 However, with Windows 8, we did not want to leave any seam uncovered.
 Much like Windows 1.0 needed the mouse to complete the experience,
 we wanted to give Windows 8 its own companion hardware innovation.
 What is this innovation?
 It's something new, it's something different,
 it's a whole new family of computing devices from Microsoft.
 This is the new Microsoft Surface.
 It embodies the notion of hardware and software really pushing each other.
 People do want to create and consume.
 They want to work and they want to play.
 They want to be on their couch, they want to be at their desk and they want to be on the go.
 Surface fulfills that dream.
 It is a tool to surface your passions, to surface your ideas,
 to surface your creativity and to surface your enjoyment.
 I really want you to take the time today to get to know Microsoft Surface.
 So let's now learn more from Stephen Sinovsky and the Microsoft Surface team.
 Just as we've reimagined Windows, we also have a vision for reimagining the tablet.
 We see a tablet that is designed the way that Windows has been designed.
 We see a tablet that represents a unique vision for the seamless expression of entertainment and creativity.
 A tablet that works and plays the way that you want to.
 A tablet that's a great PC.
 A PC that's a great tablet.
 A new type of computing, Surface.
 Surface is a stage for Windows.
 Surface is designed for the software experience to have it take center stage.
 Surface is super thin at 9.3 millimeters.
 It's just thin enough for this full-size USB port.
 For peripherals or just charging your phone while you're at the hotel.
 The edges are beveled away at 22 degrees, so the PC itself fades into the background.
 It feels natural in your hands.
 Surface is the first PC with a full magnesium case.
 Through a unique process, the liquid metal is formed into an ultra rigid, yet ultra light frame.
 It is incredibly strong, yet it's airy at under 1.5 pounds, just 676 grams.
 And it's finely balanced.
 You know, we didn't stop there.
 The case is one of a kind.
 It's made from a physical vapor deposition process.
 It results in a permanent scratch and wear resistance surface.
 This vapor mag case is a first of a kind.
 And it accentuates the unique feel of Surface.
 Surface is of course great for entertainment.
 It has access to all of the Windows apps for music, for video, for Xbox and gaming.
 We can see here I'm running Internet Explorer.
 I can browse smoothly, see great pages using ClearType, and have a great experience just with all the, with browsing.
 It's 10.6 inch optically bonded widescreen display is custom designed for Surface.
 And of course people play games.
 I can go and play any of the interesting games that are in the Windows store.
 And I can use Surface for using all the sensors that are within Windows as well.
 Surface works for all of those games.
 Movies and entertainment look great as well.
 Oops.
 Hang on just a minute.
 There.
 Excuse me just a second.
 Surface works great for entertainment as well.
 In fact, I'm going to show here for the first time a very exciting new application.
 This is the Netflix application designed specifically for Windows 8.
 Now with the widescreen you get 30% more viewing area and no banding or letterboxing like you traditionally see.
 I'm happy to show this new Netflix application.
 Give you an early look how it's designed specifically for Windows 8 with semantic zoom.
 And Netflix will have this ready at the Windows 8 launch.
 I can go here and start a movie and see it stream straight to my Surface PC.
 Just like you would expect.
 Now to stream so well, Surface needs great Wi-Fi.
 Surface is the first tablet to incorporate dual 2x2 MIMO antennas.
 That means it provides the very best Wi-Fi reception of any tablet today.
 Surface is incredibly great for entertainment PC.
 And you know we're just getting started.
 Today when you have your tablet and you want to be entertained, you have to hold it.
 You're always sitting in an awkward position.
 Perhaps you have to choose from a seemingly endless variety of add-on stands and cases that solve a relatively simple problem.
 But by adding weight, adding thickness.
 What if I just want to watch a movie or listen to music and do something else?
 We think that this should be an integral part of the design.
 We think that a stand should be integral.
 So we built a stand into the device.
 This stand is made of the same vapor mag as the rest of the case.
 And it's completely integrated into the device.
 The hinge design is like that of the finest luxury car.
 And when not in use, it just fades away.
 No extra weight.
 No extra thickness.
 No separate add-on.
 It's integrated just like the software and the hardware integrated into Surface.
 And then once you have this kickstand, you can sit back and enjoy a truly hands-free experience.
 You know you could go and just put the Surface on a table, lay back and watch a movie.
 And that's really what entertainment should be about with the Surface.
 But you know Surface is designed to be mobile.
 We designed Surface to be rugged and move around.
 But with vapor mag and Corning Gorilla Glass 2.0, you do not need to worry at all.
 But we know many people prefer to have some sort of cover.
 A cover that helps to just act like an easy on-off switch at least.
 So Surface has a cover.
 We designed the cover to be an integral element of the PC.
 We built a magnetic connector into the device to hold it very securely.
 So let me attach the cover.
 Click.
 You heard that.
 It's solid.
 Click.
 Close the cover.
 It's integrated into the device.
 It's made from a fine Northwest Polartec.
 It feels great in your hand like a book.
 It just fits there.
 And when we looked at the whole Surface on the cover, we challenged ourselves to do more.
 This cover is just 3 millimeters.
 Combined with Surface, they're just over 12 millimeters.
 That's less than half an inch.
 And we said, why not do something with this Surface?
 Why shouldn't we just take this Surface and make it a full multi-touch keyboard?
 Woo!
 Woo!
 Yeah!
 Yeah!
 This touch cover is not just a full multi-touch keyboard, but it's a modern trackpad with left and right buttons.
 It even has the keys for the Windows 8 Metro style UI.
 This keyboard combined with the kickstand form the hallmark of just hands-on creativity.
 On average, typing is twice as efficient as typing on glass, and it's certainly more comfortable.
 Now, of course, the innovative on-screen keyboard in Windows is still there, and you can mix and match.
 The choice is really going to be yours.
 Just put them on the table, and you've got a great stand.
 Let me go over here and show you a different Surface.
 This Surface is connected to external HDMI.
 That's built into the device.
 I'm going to go here, and now I've got the touch cover connected.
 Now, with front and rear-facing cameras on this device, I can record a video.
 So I'm going to start the camera application.
 So now I can go here, and I could tilt this around and angle it so I could see it.
 This camera is angled at 22 degrees.
 By angling it at 22 degrees, everybody at the table, their head is perfectly framed into the picture.
 Or when I'm sitting at the seat, I can do a Skype call, and I'm perfectly framed.
 But this device also has Windows on it, or Office on it.
 So I go into the desktop, and here's Word running.
 Now, what's really neat is I could also have, using the multitasking capabilities, I could dock the camera app there,
 and now I can record a video or an interview and take notes.
 I could record myself and read from my notes.
 And that integration is really cool.
 In fact, I could even use the USB port and plug in an external speaker and microphone,
 even though it has dual-array mics and dual speakers built in, and I could get super high-quality recording.
 And so that's a quick look at Surface.
 Now, there's so much more to show you today.
 Now, imagine, if you will, that we took all of those capabilities of Surface, and we built them so that you could use all the applications that you're familiar with.
 You could use Photoshop, or you could use other applications.
 Those applications would be built using the latest of the Intel Core processor.
 Now, in addition to the Surface that we're releasing today for Windows RT,
 we also have a Surface that's designed with these latest Intel processors.
 So in addition to working on the NVIDIA ARM processor, we're also working on a Surface for Windows 8 Professional.
 I'd like to introduce Mike Angiulo now, who's going to come up on stage and show us a little bit of the next generation of Surface.
 Thank you very much, Stephen.
 I am proud to introduce you to another member of the Surface family. This is Surface for Windows 8 Pro.
 The Windows ecosystem has always been about choice, and for the millions of professional desktop users out there,
 people who use their PC every day to design and to create things, this is a great choice for you.
 It shares the same design principles that Stephen was talking about.
 It's a stage for Windows. It shows the same pride and craftsmanship.
 It's less than 2 pounds and less than 14 millimeters. It's a full PC.
 Now, this also has a clear type display. Stephen's PC had a clear type HD. This is a clear type full HD display.
 What that means is three things.
 It's a combination of a very specific pixel geometry, rendering, and an optical bonding process that together create the effect
 that your eye can't distinguish between the individual pixels at normal viewing distances, in this case 17 inches, less than arm's length.
 This clear type display also reduces Z height and conserves battery power.
 It has some of the other high performance features you saw too.
 It's got that 2 by 2 antenna technology. This is a first in tablets.
 It has dual high performance antennas and receivers so that you get the best Wi-Fi performance possible no matter how you hold it.
 It also has a chassis that's built out of that same durable and elegant vapor mag that enables features like the 0.7 millimeter
 thin kickstand, less than a millimeter.
 It's got the same compatible accessory spine that Stephen had, so if you take a touch cover like he had, it just clicks in.
 It clicks in the same. It has that same designed in feeling because the entire Surface family of products was designed together.
 Even closed like this, this is still less than 17 millimeters.
 This PC has specs that rival those of the finest Ultrabooks that have ever been announced.
 And it delivers the power and the flexibility that you would expect of a high end PC.
 This PC is powered by Intel's third generation Core i5 processor, the Ivy Bridge processor.
 This is their 22 nanometer process that results in a CPU that's faster, a GPU that has double the 3D graphics throughput,
 all while using less power than today's Core i5s.
 But with that power comes a unique design challenge.
 How do you design a PC that you might be holding in any different way or have a cover in the front and the back to integrate active cooling?
 There's no obvious place to put a vent.
 So here's our solution. This is called perimeter venting.
 You see this groove that goes all the way around the outside of the case?
 There's a good shot of it up on the screen.
 This allows air to be uniformly distributed across the entire PC when necessary in a way that you never block it with your hands.
 In fact, you never even feel it, which makes the PC really comfortable to hold, which is really helpful when doing things like flipping back your keyboard
 and taking notes with digital ink.
 Surface for Windows 8 Pro supports digital inking.
 Windows apps of all kinds can support inking.
 So here what I've done is I can go back to the desktop and show you what I launched.
 I launched the Windows Reader.
 And this is a PDF file of one of Stephen's blog posts.
 So you can see I can pan and zoom.
 What I can really do here is I can come and I could do ink.
 I'm going to come and say this is great.
 Now what you'll notice when I ink and I zoom in, as I zoom in, that ink stays smooth.
 That's because it's being sampled at 600 dpi, that's subpixel accuracy for ink.
 What that does is it keeps your handwriting very smooth and hopefully yours is a little better than mine.
 One of the neat things about this too is as I'm inking, from here I can see the tip of the pen almost feels like it's writing exactly on the screen.
 Since the screen is optically bonded, we've eliminated the layers in between the thin cover glass and the screen,
 so it feels like you're inking right on the page.
 The distance between the stylus and where I see the ink is only 0.7 millimeters.
 That's the thinnest and closest distance of any tablet PC, any inking tablet ever.
 Now one of the other things that's going on here is as I'm moving my hand, you see the page is not moving underneath my hand.
 That's because Windows has palm block technology.
 This Surface has two digitizers.
 It has one for touch and a separate one for digital ink.
 What happens is when I bring the pen close to the screen, Windows sees the proximity of the pen and stops taking touch input so my hand doesn't mess up what I'm writing.
 When I'm done with the pen, you can see the little magnetic charging connector there.
 It just clicks in.
 That's one of the cool things on Surface for Windows 8 Pro in inking.
 I got one.
 Thanks.
 The apps that I'm showing you, they look really great in the native resolution of the screen, the 1080 resolution.
 But if you want to unlock the highest possible resolutions that Ivy Bridge supports, even higher resolutions that are possible via HDMI out, we have DisplayPort.
 Now with DisplayPort, I can take this PC, I can dock it, and I basically have a full professional workstation with the power of a desktop PC.
 I have one here that's plugged in and synced up to the show monitor.
 This kind of a PC is powerful enough to run big applications, applications like Photoshop, Autodesk, SolidWorks, enterprise applications that require a TPM chip.
 In this case, I'm going to copy some high res photos onto the PC and edit them in Adobe's Lightroom.
 I'm copying onto the desktop.
 What you'll see here, this is a five second copy.
 That's a whole gigabyte.
 That's a whole gigabyte of pictures that just copied in five seconds.
 Service has support for really fast USB 3.0 and the new USB super speed drives.
 A gigabyte file copy in five seconds is five times faster than USB 2.0, which makes sense with this PC because you'll be using it to do big jobs, whether you're editing big photos like this or you're dealing with big video files
 or you're doing, in Steven's case, a big job might be typing a super long blog post that you may have read.
 Service is up for the task.
 Now let's say you are in fact doing one of those big typing jobs.
 You've seen already Steven talked a little bit about touch cover and the improvements it makes for typing.
 Let's say you're a really fast touch typist or maybe you just prefer the feel of tactile keys.
 Well, we've got another Surface choice for you.
 This is Surface Type Cover.
 It shares the same full pitch layout as touch cover, but what we've done is we've taken a key switch that has a one and a half millimeter travel and we've built it into the thinnest possible package so you can touch type.
 I can touch type on this as fast as I can touch type on any keyboard.
 Fully compatible with Windows.
 You see the shortcut keys here.
 It has a full modern track pad with clicking buttons and this completes the Surface family of products.
 I'd like to pull all the Surface family together all at one point.
 Panos, would you join us with the colors of touch cover?
 Surface for Windows RT, Surface for Windows 8 Pro, and a handful of the touch cover colors that we're going to have at launch.
 That's the complete Surface family.
 Thanks, Steven.
 Now that's how we feel too and Panos especially.
 Panos Panay is the leader of the team that created Surface and has some great stories and some more detail about the product and how it came to be.
 It's all yours.
 Thank you.
 Thanks.
 Super cool.
 Super cool.
 Thank you.
 Thank you for having me.
 I am unbelievably humbled right now and flattered to be up here.
 But truthfully I'm recognizing an entire team that's back in Redmond right now waiting to see your blog posts to see what you have to say.
 We have a team full of designers, development engineers, manufacturing engineers, hardware testers all working on these products right now as we speak.
 Before I get into what I'm going to talk about today I'm just going to show you a little bit more about the design, show you a little bit more about the culture of how these products were built because I think it might be interesting for you to hear that.
 I really want to share with you more of our team.
 So just watch this video really quick and I'll be right back.
 It's an incredible moment when an idea that we had after so many months working really hard turns into a product.
 We brought some of the best people at Microsoft together to make this awesome device.
 One of the things that really drives us isn't that oh what a great idea.
 It's what a great idea and we can build it.
 The collaboration between the disciplines was outstanding.
 We had a full blown team of researchers, engineers, user researchers, industrial designers, interaction designers that all worked together.
 We couldn't ask for a better team than what we have right now.
 Super important to not only care about the big idea but also to care about the smallest detail.
 It takes iteration to build the best device possible.
 Each time we made one of those revisions we got progressively better and better.
 Took months and months and months of prototyping.
 We found it pretty exciting, complex.
 The technology was amazing.
 You start to realize that what we're making here is really special.
 The first reactions will be wow.
 When you put the entire system together for the first time I think that was a wow moment.
 When you pick this unit up you viscerally understand that it's high quality.
 A PC that is everything you would want in a tablet device for consuming content.
 The next moment you can be crafting an email or writing a term paper.
 When you're able to connect some sort of user experience to bits all the way down to atoms.
 That's where you start really seeing new experiences evolve.
 I think you find that's a pretty powerful product.
 We're very proud of it.
 You're going to get to meet a lot of the people you just saw in the video in just a few minutes.
 They're actually backstage right now preparing to show you more details of the product and give you a few minutes to put your hands on it.
 Talk a little bit about the design.
 Let me start by doing that to just give you a quick preview of what you might see backstage in just a few minutes.
 You heard Stephen and Mike both say it.
 This was built as a stage for Windows 8.
 That was part of our core vision for the product.
 It was very important for us that we had the hardware fade to the background for this product.
 It was important so the Windows software could rise to the surface.
 It gives you the best experience possible when the hardware fades away.
 What comes to the surface is that entertainment piece you want when you're using the device.
 Note the chamfered angles on the side of this product.
 These are chamfered at 22 degrees.
 That's two things.
 One, it's a physical manifestation of the actual stage itself.
 You can see as it falls away just as we intended for the hardware to do.
 Two, it actually sits perfectly comfortable in your hands.
 Let me qualify something.
 I say perfectly a lot.
 I say perfect a lot.
 As part of our team culture, what was really important for us is we had so many parts of the design that had to be in detail and be simple and be right,
 that we always strive for perfection on every subcomponent of this product.
 It includes this chamfered angle.
 What it does is sits in your hand very comfortably in a way that when you hold it, it feels light, it feels airy.
 Most importantly, you can use it all day in comfort.
 It's really important when you talk about the hardware fading to the background that the hardware is not in your way to accomplish what you wanted to do.
 It's meant to move you forward, which we think this product does.
 Now, when we talk about hardware fading to the back, another thing that's super important is the seamless lines throughout the product.
 When you look at this product, you'll see lines going throughout it, every line calculated,
 every line built, formed perfectly on the device.
 But there's one challenge.
 Our vision for the product beyond being a stage for Windows was also that we had to bring creativity and productivity to folks such as yourselves.
 The opportunity to transform this device, if you will, to transition it to the state of getting things done.
 Putting this kickstand in the product flies right in the face of seamless lines and getting it perfect.
 But we really spent a lot of time here.
 We knew that if we did not get the kickstand perfect, this device would not work.
 We could not take any chances.
 Take a look at the three hinges that you see within this device.
 This is a really simple example of the details of the product.
 These are three custom-made hinges.
 Mind you, there are over 200 custom parts built from the inside out of this product to make it come to life.
 But these hinges, they were spec'd just as Stephen told you.
 They were spec'd to feel and sound like a high-end car door.
 When you close the device, the kickstand just goes away.
 It's not in your way.
 When you needed the device, it's there just in time.
 You want to get something done, just open it, and it feels great.
 The spec we created was around sound.
 We iterated over and over again in our anechoic chamber.
 This is a critical point.
 We really wanted to get the sound right so you get that visceral feeling, that emotional attachment to your product when you open this kickstand and close it.
 It makes it yours.
 It goes away when you don't need it, and it's there when you do.
 Now, we talked about VaporMag a few times.
 Let me bring VaporMag to life just a little bit here so you can understand a little bit more of what we did.
 VaporMag essentially becomes what lets us get our product design and create life out of it.
 You can see the breakout behind me.
 Let me just explain a few things that we have going on.
 I'm holding up my room key.
 It feels weird to hold up my room key, but if you look at this quickly, what you'll see is 0.77 millimeters of thickness.
 This is an important point.
 If you can't see it, that's all right.
 Same as a credit card.
 Pull it out.
 Your credit card is likely somewhere between 0.75 or 0.85 millimeters thick.
 It's just to illustrate a point.
 VaporMag is a process where we start with an ingot of magnesium, and we melt it down to a molten state.
 We then injection mold the magnesium through some tools, and we're able to actually mold the intricate details that are needed for surface.
 We mold down to 0.65 millimeters of thickness in any given part, 0.75.
 We mold to 0.65.
 This is important to understand because for us to get to the design we needed for this product, to get the kickstand integrated seamlessly
 and hold this line throughout the product, we had to be able to mold to those tolerances.
 Every micron matters within Microsoft Surface.
 We've actually stacked up every part from designing from the inside out so tightly in the product and so cleanly that even if you stuck a piece of tape
 in the middle of the device, it would bulge. It would bulge out.
 That tells you how strong this product is, how much strength comes with it, how light it feels in your hands.
 All those parts play into each other.
 The best part about VaporMag is not just that we can mold to 0.65 and get the intricate details like the 0.65 millimeter angles that go around the product,
 these radii.
 The best part is the smoothness of the finish that comes out of the tools.
 After approximately 152 steps to get the VaporMag looking just like you see now, you find that the surface finish on this product,
 and as Mike says, pride and craftsmanship, is perfect.
 It's seamless.
 It screams watch quality finish, and when you put it in your hands, it feels elegant.
 When you touch it, you're going to want to hold it, I promise you.
 Now, I'm proud of VaporMag, and I'm proud of the team for the product that they've done, but nothing stirs me more.
 Nothing gets me more excited than TouchCover.
 I really want to walk you through TouchCover for just a few moments.
 This is an important technology that came out of our group.
 I'm going to walk you through it in two ways.
 The first way is through the experience, and the second way I'm going to talk about is the technology.
 Let's do the experience first.
 Let me explain to you what we tried to do with TouchCover from the get-go.
 You'll notice I'm going to connect it now to my blue TouchCover.
 I just click it in as you would expect.
 The surface turns blue along with my TouchCover, and you have a beautiful integration of hardware and software.
 My surface knows what is connected to it.
 I can now bring to life the vision that is TouchCover for this product,
 the vision that lets you produce content when you want it, how you want it, as fast as you've always done it.
 That's what this product was designed for.
 Let me give you one more second on this on a little bit of the experience.
 The thing that was so critical for us in creating TouchCover was that it had to be three millimeters thin.
 This essentially is at odds of any other keyboard you've used and still have a great typing experience.
 It also had to be a cover you wanted to connect, something you always had with you,
 something that gave you confidence, just like the kickstand, to bring this product to life.
 We designed a flux fountain and magnets in this product.
 That's a combination of alignment and clamping magnets.
 You could actually never miss connecting this device.
 You can't miss.
 We force you to not miss.
 We do that to give you confidence.
 You close it.
 It feels like a book.
 We designed this organically like a book.
 We wanted it to feel just like that.
 What has more covers on it than books themselves?
 This spine feels like a book.
 When you put it in your hand and you walk away with your product, you'll hold it like a book.
 When you carry it against your books, it'll feel like it's another book.
 It's just light enough and it feels just perfect.
 Now, that said, I think you're going to fall in love with TouchCover.
 I know I have.
 I mean, I am seriously in love with it.
 Outside of my wife, TouchCover is number two.
 It's very important to me.
 Now, I never want to take TouchCover off.
 I'd argue that you don't need to and you never have to.
 You saw Mike move his TouchCover to the back.
 When he did that, I'm sure every single one of you thought, like, wait a minute, how do you move it to the back?
 Well, TouchCover is pretty smart.
 It has an accelerometer built into it.
 The moment you fold it back, we know you fold it back.
 We know when you're not using it and it's turned off for you.
 So, you never have to take it off.
 And underneath your fingertips, it feels great.
 So, now you've got a comfortable device with TouchCover that's yours.
 It's personalized to you.
 You saw the beautiful colors that we have coming to market.
 And essentially, what's brought to you is an experience like none other with TouchCover and Surface together.
 Now, I showed you the experience, but I want to just show you the technology because it really is important that you understand it.
 And quite frankly, we have a bit of a mad scientist who many of you know named Stevie Batiste.
 Stevie actually invented TouchCover.
 The fact that we have 30 years of input experience using mice and 15 years creating keyboards,
 we really understand how to create a great typing experience.
 We also knew that if we brought you TouchCover and TouchCover wasn't any good, boy, what a breaking moment.
 But we've actually evolved this technology to a point through Stevie and his work to come to a place where we've brought you an experience
 that's amazing at typing.
 There's actually seven layers squeezed in, pressed right into TouchCover to keep it three millimeters thin.
 Now, that's super thin, but critical for you to have a great experience when folding it back.
 Let me explain to you how the technology works just ever so slightly and quickly.
 So, what you're going to see is I'm going to put my hands down on this machine here.
 What you're seeing is this is Surface for Windows RT.
 And my hands are down on TouchCover.
 You'll notice that my hands are laying flat on TouchCover right now, yet nothing's happening.
 If this was, in fact, a capacitive screen or the phone you might have in your pocket or some other device you might have,
 the keyboard would take up half the screen and you put your fingers down and it would look something like that.
 Now, that's me actually pressing on TouchCover, and it knows the grams of force coming off my fingertips onto TouchCover.
 Why is this critical?
 When you type in touch type speed, you have to find your home position and rest your hands.
 To do that, your keyboard can't fire when you put your hands down.
 It's comfortable.
 You can rest your hands.
 And note as I put pressure on the J key how the pressure goes up as I push harder, and as I release, the pressure comes off.
 It's actually measuring every gram of force coming off my fingertips.
 And as I start to type, it knows how many keys I've hit.
 This keyboard actually measures ten times faster in scanning from a keyboard matrix than any keyboard guaranteed that you use today.
 It is super fast and brings great, great opportunity for you to be productive and get stuff done.
 Obviously, I have a lot of pride in this product.
 I hope you love it.
 I can't wait for you to get your hands on it back there, and I really mean that.
 Steven, thanks for having me up here today.
 That was a moment for our team, for sure.
 I do want to talk a little bit about some availability and pricing information and things like that that I know people want to know.
 Surface for Windows RT, and I still say there will be much more information available on the web and available shortly.
 So Surface for Windows RT will be available in both a 32 and a 64 gigabyte model, and will be priced like comparable tablets that are based on ARM.
 Surface for Windows 8 Professional will come in 64 gigabyte and 128 gigabyte storage models, and will have a retail price comparable with competitive Ultrabook-class PCs.
 Additional specifics on pricing and packaging will be announced as we get closer to retail availability.
 Now, of course, retail availability for the Surface PCs will be around the time of – will be – for the Windows RT PC will be at the time of the Windows 8 general availability,
 and for the Windows 8 Pro about three months later.
 Surface will be available through the Microsoft physical stores here in the U.S., and will be available through select online – through the select online outlets of the Microsoft store as well.
 So welcome, everybody, to Surface.
 I just want to invite Steve Ballmer back up on stage one more time, and thank you.
 Thank you very much.
 I want to thank Steven and Mike and Panos and their team.
 This has been an unbelievable journey.
 We've invested significantly, as you can see, in talent, in time, in capital to bring the Surface to market.
 I was asked in the last few days here, why now?
 Why now?
 We took the time to really get Surface and Windows 8 right, to do something that was really different,
 and really special.
 We're very proud – very, very proud – of the Surface, just like we're very proud of Windows 8.
 Because of Windows 8 – because of Windows 8 – the Surface is a PC.
 The Surface is a tablet, and the Surface is something new that we think people will absolutely love.
 We really want those of you here to have a chance to see and touch the Surface,
 and talk with some of the people who are involved in designing the product.
 We have several stations set up next door, where you can see the work that went into the creation of the Surface,
 and we hope you'll stay and join us for that.
 Today has been fun for us to put on for you – very, very exciting.
 I want to thank you all for being part of today's event. Thanks.
 Microsoft Mechanics
 www.microsoft.com
 Microsoft Mechanics
 www.microsoft.com