Even if I'm not a huge Microsoft fan I have to admit, that Microsoft has become the leader of truly innovative products again.

Let's take a look at latest products of the Microsoft:

Surface Book

A perfect match of laptop + tablet device that doesn't look like a crap. To be honest, the design of the product reminds me of Macbook Pro/Air - especially the Microsoft's shiny logo on the lid. This product has all the must-have-in-my-next-device sparkle properties: i7 processor, 12GB of RAM, good GPU, 512GB SSD, long on-battery life, backlit keyboard and detachable screen/tablet feature. I only wish that the price will get lower in the meantime, because now it's pretty high, even for such great piece of hardware.

For more information, go to the Microsoft's website.

Continuum

As a addicted Windows Phone(7 & 8, now waiting for 10 mobile update) user I can't wait for this feature. This can be funny a bit, because I use Linux as my prior system, but I have also a Windows installation on remote HDD for some rare tasks.

Smartphone with liquid cooling system.. wait, what?

I think the title says it all. I haven't heard anything crazy like that before.

Augmented reality on the next level

I remember the first time I've seen the promo video of the HoloLens product - I was amazed like a little kid, who unpacked the Christmas gift and found a Famicom console in the beginning of the 90's.

I see various great use-cases for this device and I can't wait for this product become mainstream like PCs in our flats.

As a programmer, I'm a bit afraid about difficulties associated with application development for this kind of platform - I hope Microsoft will deliver proper developer-friendly tools as a solution.

Design

To be honest I'm very happy that Microsoft takes inspiration from the best products on the market (Surface Book vs Macbook, Lumia 930 vs iPhone 4/5 etc.) and sets its own trends such Lumia's colorful unibody design or classic Surface product line.

And the last, but not the least: the software design. Microsoft was the first company that has introduced and implemented in the greatest way the flat design.

Let's face it - apple screwed up totally their flat-or-not-flat design - especially on mobile - it's just ugly. It was the one of the reasons, why I've switched back to Linux - OSX's design also began to suck lately.

I've seen also couple pretty nice custom themes for android, but only Microsoft gives us the beautiful OS out of the box (especially on mobile - I'm a big fan of tiled-based interface elements :) ).

Summary

Some people hates Microsoft, other hates Apple - personally I think I'm in the middle of that world.

I admire previous generation of apple products, but really don't like current one. On the other hand I was pretty uncertain about Microsoft products (beyond WP and Lumia family ;) ) but now I'm really impressed with the direction which seeks company from Redmond.

But hey, in the end I'm just a regular Windows Phone user, who uses Linux (Elementary OS) as a primary desktop system and develops mobile applications, mainly for Android and iOS - that's pretty common platform combo, right? :)

-- ł.