Microsoft updates firmware for Surface Book and Surface Pro 4, but power, display, and boot issues appear unresolved
but didn't fix the big problems with it (MSFT) Daniel Rubino / Windows Central : Microsoft pulls in an impressive $1.35 billion in revenue for Surface line Brad Bourque / Digital Trends : Lumia who? Microsoft's latest earnings release puts cloud in the spotlight Mike Brown / International Business Times : Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Q2 2016 Earnings: Revenue Beats Street On Strong Surface, Office 365 Sales Nancy Gohring / FierceCIO News : Finally, a Surface Pro 4 update that fixes major problems - for some Brad Bourque / Digital Trends : New Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 firmware updates cause more problems than they solve Andy Weir / Neowin : Microsoft rolls out firmware updates for Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book Eric Born / The Tech Report : Microsoft releases firmware updates for beleaguered Surfaces Tweets: Sameer Karmarkar / @samkya : Jeez... What's worse than being late to the market? Selling bad quality products after being late.. SMH http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft had already committed publicly to fixing the sleep and power issues on the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book by early 2016, and a week before this update the same outlets were documenting how [[a:863824|Intel display driver crashes, power management bugs, and boot problems were still lingering months after launch]]. This firmware drop was positioned as that promised fix arriving — but it lands without resolving the headline complaints.
The stakes are commercial as much as reputational: the same earnings cycle put Surface line revenue at $1.35 billion, so the devices carrying these defects are also the ones propping up Microsoft's hardware numbers.
First-order effects
- Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 owners get incremental firmware but remain exposed to the power, display-driver, and boot failures documented in prior coverage.
- Microsoft misses the 'early next year' window it set for the sleep-issue solution, extending the defect timeline on two flagship SKUs.
Second-order effects
- With Surface generating $1.35 billion in quarterly revenue, unresolved defects raise support costs and return risk on exactly the products driving the hardware beat.
- A follow-up patch becomes inevitable, forcing Microsoft into a visible multi-cycle repair cadence on devices sold at premium prices.
Third-order effects
- If the ship-then-patch pattern holds, post-launch firmware stability becomes a standing cost of Microsoft's premium hardware strategy — and a differentiator competitors can attack on reliability rather than specs.
The trend: Flagship PCs are increasingly treated as firmware-patchable products, stretching time-to-stable well past launch and making post-release quality a core part of hardware brand equity.