What to expect from Microsoft in 2024: Surface Pro 10, Surface Laptop 6 and Windows 12

2023 has been a mixed year for Microsoft with it, like many tech brands, focusing a lot on AI. That’s where it has had the most success, with its iterative updates to hardware far from setting the world alight. But, what about 2024? Let’s look forward.

2024 looks to be another bumper year for technology brands, with plenty of new software and hardware on the horizon to get our gadget fan juices flowing.

Microsoft, in particular, given its size, has a wide variety of potential goodness coming down the line. That just might be plenty of updates to its Surface range, new takes on its existing apps or more AI-related initiatives. Here are our thoughts on the coming year.

A big year for flagship Surface products

So, 2023 hasn’t been a big year for Surface, with devices like iterative upgrades to the Surface Laptop Studio 2 and Surface Laptop Go 3 being the main draw on the hardware front. The Surface Go 4 did come along too, but got little attention and was revealed as a business-focused offering this time.

Now, saying “a big year for flagship Surface products” does feel like we’re repeating something that we could’ve said every year for the last several, with iterative boosts being the norm for much of the Surface line. And, we’ve been begging Microsoft to update the design of the Surface Laptop for so long but those chunky bezels have long remained.

However, 2024 should be particularly special for the range with the Surface Pro hitting its 10th iteration, which will surely cause some confusion with the now-defunct Surface Pro X from a couple of years ago. It hasn’t been that long since Microsoft finally gave the Surface Pro a bit of a redesign, with the 8th iteration adopting a thinner design. However, this is going to be the Surface Pro 10, so Microsoft has to have something special planned to mark it, right?

Then, if you’re going to make this year special for the Surface hybrid device, why not finally jazz up the Surface Laptop? This year will be the Surface Laptop 6 and the 6th version of a design that has barely changed. It started as a stylish MacBook-like take on a Windows laptop and has slowly become outdated as time has moved on but the design has not.

The Surface Laptop line previously donned both AMD and Intel chips before dropping the former more recently so, if it is going big on Intel once again, we just might see the inbound Intel Core Ultra chips beef up the Surface Laptop 6. But, the Surface range is known to sport old generations of chips, so we might not get the new Meteor Lake-codenamed chips on Microsoft’s PC devices quite yet.

Windows 12 and Copilot

Rumours have been swirling over the last few months that we could see Windows 12 in 2024. A key report from Windows Central states that Microsoft moved to a three-year upgrade cycle for major changes to its operating system. So, with Windows 11 coming out in 2021, a 2024 release date makes the most sense for 2024.

But, what can we expect from Windows 12? There’s little in the ether about what’s coming but, given Microsoft’s AI push, you can bet it’ll incorporate that to its fullest. And, at the forefront of that is Copilot, Microsoft’s cloud-based AI assistant that can now be accessed across many Windows 11 PCs, with rollout ongoing. We’d expect to see Copilot’s integration with Windows apps become deeper and deeper as software creators get more time with the AI assistant.

Windows Central also reports this could take the form of an “advanced Copilot” that will learn your behaviours to best optimise your experience and tailor Windows search based on your usage. Further, a project codenamed “CorePC” aims to modernise Microsoft’s operating system by enabling better compatibility across both old and new technology, such as Win32 and Arm platforms.

More Microsoft apps

Microsoft’s focus may be on AI integration but it hasn’t stopped working on its products in its existing suite in 2023. We’ve seen the likes of Microsoft Loop – a Notion competitor – come to market as well as the transformation of Office 365 into Microsoft 365.

Expectedly, we know Microsoft Office 2024 is on the way next year (via XDA Developers) with it being available on Windows 11 developer channel right now. Microsoft also announced during its Ignite conference that it would be consolidating its planning apps in 2024 (via The Verge), with its Microsoft To Do, Microsoft Planner and Microsoft Project becoming a single Microsoft Planner experience. The launch of that is expected in the Spring and, of course, it is set to have deeper AI integration.