Well, things didn’t go over quite as planned for those of us trying to follow along the news coming out of Shanghai early this morning (beginning at 4am PT). There was, as announced, no livestream of the event from Microsoft, who instead promised a liveblog. Unfortunately that didn’t work either, and Microsoft watchers were force to scramble for alternate sources for the news.
We first found a link to a Tencent feed, but found that once the event started, the feed was blocked outside China (now there’s a twist). Resourceful Twitter users found another feed and we somewhat painfully followed along as best we could, as the webcast was overdubbed in Chinese, with the English sound turned down just low enough to make it really frustrating.
Still, there was some good information in the presentation, and if you want to watch it, Tencent has posted a rebroadcast of the event here: (note – the webcast follows about 90 seconds of Chinese language video ads, which is customary for videos such as this, we’re told). Just to add insult to injury, you’ll need to have Adobe Flash enabled for this to work.
Microsoft did eventually begin “live” blogging, about an hour into the 90 minute presentation, and to their credit, they started from the beginning, you can read through the not-so-live Windows Blog post here.
In case you’re wanting to catch up on the news but don’t have the stamina for all of this, Microsoft announced a Windows 10 version made specially for China’s government workers, that HoloLens Developer Kits will be made available as soon as tomorrow, that the Surface Studio and Surface Laptop will be coming to China (and a number of other markets) on June 15th, and the big news of the day, of course, that the new Microsoft Surface Pro will also begin shipping on that day.
Microsoft filled out the news with introductions of a new Surface Pen, new type covers, a new app called Microsoft Whiteboard, and new inking and drawing capabilities coming to Office.
So sit back, and cringe enjoy the rebroadcast, and let us know what you think of the day’s announcements in the comments below.
