Microsoft’s fall event 2022: all the news from the online Surface event

Workspaces is a new feature coming to Microsoft Edge designed to make it easier to organize and share the dozens of browser tabs that you use on a daily basis. The feature has been popping up in Edge’s early preview builds for over a year now, but Microsoft is offering more detail on it today as part of its Ignite conference alongside new security and shopping features for its browser.

Screenshots of Workspaces in preview show how users can create groups of tabs by clicking an icon to the left of the tab row. They can add tabs and name and color-code each group. They can then access, edit, and open previously created groups from that same icon. If you’ve ever used a tab manager add-on like OneTab, then Workspaces seems like a neat, integrated version of this software with more management options.

As part of today’s Ignite conference, Microsoft is launching a new workplace app specifically designed to help with the challenges of hybrid working. The app is called Microsoft Places, and the company says it’s launching “soon” in beta. 

A screenshot of the app published by Microsoft today shows a dashboard view that tracks what percentage of your team is due to be in the office on a given day and lets you list where you’re working in a given week. As well as tracking people’s locations, the app is also designed to help you organize your work around them by giving “insights and guidance” on travel time as well as helping people navigate to work locations within offices themselves.

Microsoft is rebranding its built-in Office apps on Windows to Microsoft 365. While the existing app is mainly used for quick access to Office apps, this new Microsoft 365 one is designed to really leverage Microsoft’s Graph network to provide additional apps, relevant documents, and a feed of meetings and information that might be useful to plan a day ahead.

This new app won’t be limited to Microsoft’s commercial customers either, as consumers and students will also be able to take advantage of it. It will include the regular access to Office apps, a feed of recent documents and files, and the ability to browse by meetings.

Microsoft is launching Microsoft Teams Premium today, a new offering designed to boost its chat and collaboration app with some AI-powered smart features. The biggest addition is a new meeting recap feature that essentially adds an AI virtual assistant to each meeting to share highlights and automatically capture all of the important parts. It’s like having your own assistant to take notes for you, even if you’re not there.

“Today you get a meeting recap, after a meeting you get a recording and the transcript so you can get all that information, but you spend a lot of time sorting through the information to find ‘what’s pertinent or relevant to me,’” explains Nicole Herskowitz, general manager for Microsoft Teams, in an interview with The Verge. “What intelligent recap does is it breaks the meeting up into intelligent chapters.”

Microsoft has wrapped up its 2022 Surface event, where it showed off its new Surface Laptop 5, Surface Pro 9, and Surface Studio 2 Plus. The company also showed off new accessories and software, including a Designer app powered by Dall-E 2.

In case you didn’t catch today’s live event, you can read about the headline announcements here. We’ve also gotten hands-on looks at all three devices, which you can check out on our site.

Apple Music is finally arriving in the Microsoft Store today. Xbox users will be able to access it immediately, and it will also arrive on Windows next year. Both Apple Music and Apple TV will be available in preview versions soon for Windows, allowing Apple subscribers to access music and TV shows natively on Windows without having to use web versions or the pre-existing iTunes app. Microsoft is also integrating iCloud photos into its built-in Photos app on Windows 11.

A new update will see iCloud photos appear in the main Windows Photos app, making it easy for iPhone owners to find photos from their devices on a Windows PC or laptop. All Windows users need to do is install Apple’s latest iCloud Windows app to get this integration, and it’s available to Windows Insiders right now.

Microsoft has announced that its range of Adaptive Accessories will be available to purchase starting on October 25th in select markets. The Adaptive Accessories were first announced in May and are designed to address common issues that can prevent people from getting the most out of their PC, especially if they have difficulty using a traditional mouse and keyboard.

The wireless system includes a programmable button, an adaptive mouse, and the Microsoft Adaptive Hub, which connects up to four Microsoft Adaptive Buttons to as many as three devices. The mouse is a small, square-shaped puck that can clip into a palm rest with a removable tail and thumb support. The mouse and button can be customized using a range of modular components, enabling users to find the best fit to suit their usability requirements. For example, the adaptive buttons let you add eight programmable inputs to your computer, allowing them to be used as a joystick or D-pad.

It’s been a long time since Microsoft updated its Surface Studio line of all-in-one PCs. While rumors had suggested a Surface Studio 3 was on the way, Microsoft is debuting its Surface Studio 2 Plus today instead — an upgrade on the Surface Studio 2 that launched four years ago. It includes some important upgrades on the inside, but the exterior is practically the same, and it all starts at an eye-watering $4,299.

The Surface Studio 2 Plus will ship with Intel’s 11th Gen Core i7-11370H processor, a chip that’s rapidly approaching two years on the market. We’re about to enter Intel’s 13th Gen era, so it’s hugely disappointing to see Microsoft not move to 12th Gen H series chips or wait for Intel’s latest and greatest.

Microsoft is refreshing its Surface Laptop lineup today with new Surface Laptop 5 models. While the company has offered AMD and Intel chip options for the Surface in the past, this year’s models are pure Intel with the addition of Thunderbolt 4 support.

Microsoft hasn’t fully explained why it’s dropped AMD from its Surface Laptop lineup, though. “We focused on shipping Intel 12th Gen,” says Pete Kyriacou, vice president of program management at Microsoft. “We’re great partners with AMD, we continue to work with them on longer term projects but for Laptop 5 we don’t have AMD models.”

Microsoft is adding AI-generated art to its suite of Office software with a new app named Microsoft Designer.

The app functions the same way as AI text-to-image models like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion, letting users type prompts to “instantly generate a variety of designs with minimal effort.” Microsoft says Designer can be used to create everything from greeting cards and social media posts to illustrations for PowerPoint presentations and logos for businesses.

Microsoft is combining its Surface Pro X and Surface Pro lines into a single product this year, the Surface Pro 9. After 10 years of the Surface 2-in-1 concept, you’ll now be able to pick between an SQ3 Arm-powered processor with 5G support and Intel’s 12th Gen Core processors. And for the first time, you’ll also be able to pick colors that extend across the entire Surface Pro 9 exterior, not just the Type Cover.

The choice between processors might actually be difficult this year simply because, for the first time, the Surface Pro 9 with SQ3 is the only model with built-in 5G support. Microsoft won’t be offering 5G on its Intel Surface Pro 9 line, so you’ll have to go Arm if you want the mobile connectivity option. That’s been a tradeoff in the past based on app compatibility and performance, but both have come a long way since the initial Surface Pro X.

Microsoft is introducing two new Teams-certified accessories to improve hybrid meeting setups: the Microsoft Audio Dock and the Microsoft Presenter Plus remote control. 

The Audio Dock is a pill-shaped all-in-one speakerphone system with a passthrough PC charger and four different ports (HDMI, USB-A, and two USB-C) designed to help reduce desktop clutter. You can connect up to two monitors with HDMI and USB-C connections, with the passthrough charger supporting up to 60W of power, which is enough for most modern laptops. It provides dual forward-facing microphones with noise-reduction capabilities, and there’s an integrated mute control atop the device that clearly indicates your microphone status to spare you from any embarrassing mishaps in whatever meeting app you prefer. It’s certified for Microsoft Teams, though, so you get an integrated Teams button to quickly join meetings and raise your hand.

Microsoft’s fall Surface event is set to happen on Wednesday, October 12th at 10AM ET, 7AM PST

If you’re planning to tune in live, the best place to watch is from the official Microsoft landing page, which doesn’t offer much in the way of details but gives you the option of adding a convenient reminder to your Outlook calendar.

Cisco’s video conferencing hardware will be updated to let users set Microsoft Teams as the default video conferencing software, the two companies have announced. Initially, six devices will be certified to work with Teams in the first half of next year, including the Cisco Room Bar (a combined speaker and webcam), the 55- and 75-inch versions of the Cisco Board Pro (a freestanding screen designed for video conferencing) and the Cisco Room Kit Pro.

Cisco’s press release stresses that its own Webex video calling software (which it paid billions for a little over a decade ago) isn’t going anywhere. “The devices will continue to support joining Webex meetings with all the features and functionality customers enjoy today,” the release notes. But building in native support for Teams and allowing it to be set as the default recognizes how many businesses are entrenched in Microsoft’s ecosystem and rely primarily on its software for video conferencing.

It’s easy to forget now, but Microsoft’s first Surface was a huge risk. By diving into the PC market, Microsoft was competing with its Windows partners. By combining laptop and tablet, it was trying to create an entirely new device category. And by designing new software for Arm-powered Windows computers, it was betting that the mobile era would change the way laptops work and the way people use them.

Microsoft didn’t get it all right, and it took a couple of years for the Surface line to really hit its stride. But a decade in, you can’t argue with the results: the Surface worked. Not only did the whole “attach a keyboard to your tablet and now it’s a laptop” idea become commonplace around the industry, but Surface also became a big business for Microsoft. The Surface Studio is still one of the most ambitious desktop PCs ever made, and even the more straightforward Surface Laptop is a winner. The Surface Pro 8 is a bit expensive, but it’s one of the best Windows PCs you can buy.

We’re crawling ever closer to finding out what new products will be announced at Microsoft’s Surface event, set to take place on October 12th at 10AM ET. Microsoft’s Surface range encompasses phones, laptops, hybrid 2-in-1 tablets, and desktop computers, so there’s a good variety of hardware that could make an appearance. 

While we can make a few safe assumptions regarding what will and won’t be shown off (we’re sadly not anticipating a new Surface Duo foldable), Microsoft may still have a few surprises in store, given that this year marks the 10th anniversary of Microsoft’s first-ever Surface product that was released back in October 2012. 

Microsoft is holding a Surface event next month. The software giant is officially labeling the event “Microsoft Fall 2022 Event,” where it says it plans to “talk about devices.” The Microsoft event will kick off at 10AM ET on October 12th, just before Microsoft’s Ignite conference begins.

Microsoft’s invite to the event includes a wallpaper-like image with watercolors and “save the date” written by what is likely a Surface Pen. The invite comes just hours after rumors of Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 devices emerged. Microsoft is reportedly planning to offer a Surface Pro 9 with the option of Arm or Intel processors, potentially meaning the end of the Surface Pro X line.