Microsoft Discontinues Surface Studio 2+
Microsoft has discontinued its Surface Studio 2+, marking the end of the company’s only direct competitor to Apple’s iMac, leaving a gap in the Windows ecosystem for high-end all-in-one PCs.
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First introduced in 2016, the Surface Studio formed an attempt to challenge Apple’s hold on the creative professional market. Its standout feature was a 28-inch 4.5K PixelSense touchscreen mounted on a unique hinge that allowed the display to tilt into a flat, drafting-table position. Paired with accessories like the Surface Dial and Surface Pen, the Studio was designed to attract graphic designers, illustrators, and video editors. Despite its innovative design, the Surface Studio struggled to gain significant traction due to its steep price point, which started at $2,999 for the original model, and its reliance on hardware components that were frequently a generation behind current industry standards.
It was an iMac competitor in that it was all-in-one, but given the price and marketing focus it seems like more of a professional-level product like the Mac Studio. Apple has since discontinued its own large-screen all-in-one and refocused the iMac line toward the lower-end, e.g. 24-inch displays and less connectivity and RAM.
For years, Apple fans have looked at the Surface Studio longingly, wondering what a version of a tilting Mac desktop could look like.
I guess if Apple makes something like this it will be an iPad.
Previously:
- iMac 2024
- Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs
- Mac Studio 2023
- Microsoft Suspends Development of Touch-friendly UWP Office Apps
- Mac Users Switching to Surface
Update (2024-12-09): Sebastiaan de With:
RIP to the Surface Studio. I owned the first version and loved it, but Windows was a terrible OS for it. Incredible hardware.
The Surface Studio, though, only ever used H-series CPUs; the 27-inch iMac and iMac Pro were much beefier. The difference is even more stark with RAM — 32 GiB ceiling on the Studio even in the 2022 model, whereas the iMac went up to 128, or even 512 for the Pro.
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The other uphill battle, though, was software. The Studio came out at peak “UWP will be the new way to write apps, and they’ll run on desktop, tablet, phone, Xbox, HoloLens”, and that ecosystem simply didn’t materialize.
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"marking the end of the company’s only direct competitor to Apple’s iMac"
Oh please. If it doesn't run macOS it's not a direct competitor.
@Nathan_RETRO Exactly. macOS is what makes a Mac a Mac. It’s the foundation—the cake—and the hardware is just the icing. I’d run macOS on any hardware, no matter how mediocre, just to have the macOS experience. On the flip side, I wouldn’t care to run Windows or Linux on Apple hardware—or even the ‘best’ hardware by any other metric. It’s the software that defines the experience. That’s the key differentiator, and without macOS, it’s not a direct competitor.
