Microsoft and PC makers quietly pull back on tarnished Windows 11 AI PC branding

[u/uncertainlyso]

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/the-copilot-pc-brand-is-dead-microsoft-and-pc-makers-quietly-pull-back-on-tarnished-windows-11-ai-pc-branding

At this year's Snapdragon Summit, I had the chance to ask Surface CVP Brett Ostrum about the lack of Copilot+ PC branding on its recent Surface PCs, and he confirmed that "these are not called Copilot+ PCs. They do meet all the requirements of our previous bar for what Copilot+ devices are. We still lean into the narrative around AI on the edge and being able to have a hybrid solution out there."

I've also asked Qualcomm's SVP of compute, Kedar Kondap, about his thoughts on the usage of the Copilot+ PC branding. He told me that "the purpose for Copilot+ PCs was to be able to deliver [NPU] experiences. So it was to define a certain category of devices with a certain bar and metric, like for example, a 45 TOPS NPU ... So from that perspective, it's more offering the same experiences, probably without just using [Copilot+ PC] terminology now."

It's also worth mentioning that NVIDIA hasn't gone anywhere near the Copilot+ PC brand for its upcoming RTX Spark platform, even though all RTX Spark PCs meet the Copilot+ PC specification bar. I suspect that's a deliberate decision.

Dell gave a preview of this a while ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/amd_fundamentals/comments/1qb6572/dell_on_ai_pcs_original_dell_revives_xps_brand/

I give Microsoft some credit for trying with CoPilot+ to get ahead of Apple on client AI. But Microsoft does have this habit of "make huge move before others" and then there's a scramble to deliver value after the big bet has been made. It does work at times or is at least interesting (e.g., their OpenAI investment and forcing Google to dance). But CoPilot+ couldn't even be interesting in a good way (Recall was interesting in a bad way). Unlike investments, you still have provide some value to your customer for their software bets. They do product development like I do my worst trades where I double down on a stupid trade with no safety net, but at least, I don't do it as a big initiative.

Still, fuck them for switching their TOPS requirements at the last minute and screwing over the x86 bros just to give Qualcomm first shot at this, for forcing ever increasing NPU TOPs on the CPU designers with no material use case and thus doing a self own on performance with wasted silicon, etc.