The new Surface Book got lost in the shuffle this week. Understandably so. It did, after all, get third billing at Microsoft’s own event in New York this week, owing to the flashiness of the Surface Studio and Windows 10 Creators Update and all of the 3D content creation that brought with it. And then, of course, Apple happened.
But Microsoft’s not one to give up the spotlight for too long. The company’s tossing a little shade the MacBook Pro’s way with a trade-in program, that lets users “trade up to pen and on-screen touch.” Essentially, the company is offering MacBook owners $650 toward a Surface Pro or Surface Book, if they trade in their Apple laptop.
Sure, it’s all promotion, but it’s the sort of gag that affords the company opportunity to showcase its perceived advantages over Cupertino as the company looks to appeal more and more toward creatives – a category long dominated by Apple.
According to the company, “97-percent of people that have a Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book use on-screen touch input regularly,” a metric its happy to point out as Apple continues to eschew touch on its own computers, even going so far as creating another input method in the form of the new Touch Bar that sits between the display and keyboard on the new MacBook Pros.
The trade-in runs through November 10th at Microsoft’s retail and online stores in the US.