Microsoft on Tuesday at its Shanghai event unveiled the all-new Surface Pro device which will start shipping June 15. The Redmond giant also made some major announcements including a collaborative inking app, Microsoft Whiteboard, and a Surface USB-C dongle.
The new Microsoft Whiteboard app will offer collaborative capabilities for simultaneous inking between multiple people across the world. Microsoft also promises that this will support all future Windows 10 running devices launching later this year.
“With Microsoft Whiteboard, people will be able to collaborate on ideas and projects across an expanded set of ink-enabled Windows 10 devices later this year, with exclusive capabilities for Office 365 subscribers,” the company said at the announcement. The app will offer features like Pencil texture and new ink effects to Office 365 subscribers from next month. This will mean that the Whiteboard app will support inking in popular Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps.
Additionally, Microsoft has confirmed that it will release a USB Type-C dongle that can connect to the new Surface Pro as well as earlier versions of the Surface Laptops. The dongle will simply provide USB Type-C support to the Surface devices. The Verge quotes Panos Panay, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Devices, to say, “If you want to charge a device with a Type-C charger, you can. If you want to put data back and forth with a Type-C peripheral, you can,” says Panay. The dongle will be sold separately though there are no launch details including price.
Microsoft’s Shanghai event may have the Surface Pro as the main highlight though the new Surface Pen also received much accolades from the Surface team. The company claims that the new Surface Pen is the company’s “fastest pen ever”, and is twice as accurate as the previous version. The team at the event claimed that the new Surface Pen is “fast and supports fluid writing and drawing.” The company also announced that the new Surface Pen will be available in the Microsoft Office apps. The upgraded Surface Pen features 4096 levels of pressure and supports tilt sensitivity as well as 21 milliseconds latency.
The new Surface Pen will support tilt and shading which wasn’t possible with the earlier version. The new Surface Pen will be available in the coming weeks.
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