Microsoft, It’s Time to Bring the Thunder(bolt) (Premium)

 

I get a lot of questions about Microsoft's (lack of) support for USB-C/Thunderbolt 3. And while I don't have any answers---about Microsoft's strategy, the timing of said strategy, or the "why" of this slowness---I do have the solution. And that is for Microsoft to transition its entire Surface product line to USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 as soon as possible.

Microsoft's inability to deliver on what the rest of the industry long-ago embraced is troubling.

And yes, I've been on this quest for a while.

Almost a year ago, I noted that In Product Design, Fear is Not a Virtue (Premium). Since then, the firm has updated its Surface Pro and Surface Book lineups, and only the latter includes a USB-C port. But it's not based on Thunderbolt 3 technology, so it's as out-of-date as the ancient Surface Connector that Surface devices still use, inexplicably, for power and expansion.

Several months before that, in late 2016, I also wrote about the industry's embrace of USB-C/Thunderbolt 3. This technology does it all: It provides power, data video, and expansion capabilities. It can be used to drive two 4K displays at 60 Hz (something no Surface PC do today), or to add an external GPU to an otherwise pedestrian PC, turning it into a true gaming PC. And it does all this from a single plug. In the personal technology space, this is as close to a real miracle as you'll ever find.

But let's go back to 2015. Back then, I pointed out that premium PCs like the then-new Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book needed to support the latest technologies, and their lack of USB-C support was a huge mistake.

The arguments for USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 are so obvious and so overwhelming, I have a hard time understanding any opinion to the contrary. And yet haters and Microsoft sympathizers will complain that USB-C is a mess, that there are still compatibility issues or even power issues so serious that using the wrong combination of power adapter and charging cable could fry the PC.

Bullshit. Every (other) PC maker on earth has figured this out. Lenovo, for example, touts the "anti-fry" technology in its ThinkPads, which, by the way, also deliver fast-charging capabilities over USB-C while keeping the PCs safe from this red herring.

And the lack of USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 has materially undermined Microsoft's latest Surface PCs. The 15-inch Surface Book 2, with its gaming-class dGPU, draws so much power while gaming that the PC cannot stay charged while it is plugged in. It is not possible to overstate how pathetic that is, and the culprit is, of course, that underpowered, USB-based Surface Connector. Had Microsoft simply added a real USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 port to the device, this never would have happened. And Microsoft would haven't yet another PR embarrassment to manage.

(Regardless of the seriousness of this Surface Book 2 charging problem, we've reached the apex of how much power you can deliver over Surface Connector/USB.)

Getting the Surface lin...

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