Microsoft Unleashes the (Surprisingly Good) Hype

It's time to retire the "Developers!" scream.

A new era of hypebeast has arisen at Microsoft, and it's about time. Watching yesterday's Surface Book launch event, I was dazzled by Panos Panay's powerful panache, far smarter and more product-focused than Steve Ballmer's Hulk-a-mania and much more entertainingly bombastic than Joe Belfiore's usual focus on clear detail.

Panay set the tone for a remarkably consistent event where Microsoft employees were either delightfully bizarre, or proclaimed nearly superhuman feats in support of their products. This sounds silly, but it's good. It was an hour of nonstop endorphins and surprisingly, wonderfully non-sexist testosterone, showing that Microsoft, once a dull plodding work-brand, can bring the thrill.

We started out actually killing imaginary robots on stage with HoloLens. Then we went to Lindsay Matese, a Microsoft Band presenter who runs ultra-marathons and who described a Crossfit-cult-like atmosphere on the Band team, with the team apparently only attracting people who like weekly group workout sessions.

The more I think about it, Matese's presence and positioning was key, even though the Band was the least important product at the show. The rest of the presentation was about to get very dudely, with Panay (shown above) shouting he was "pumped" and subtly emphasizing his virility by mentioning he has four children. Matese proved there's nothing gendered about the company's tone. Woman or man, you can get with the thrill and accomplish amazing feats with Microsoft.

After Matese, we had the peak of the insanity: a demonstrator who was basically Guy Fieri in a fedora. I kept expecting him to cover something with melted jalapeno cheese. Tying it all together was Panay, with his being "so pumped" and his "muscle wire" and his "most powerful laptop on the planet."

In this context, the happy but always composed Satya Nadella was the cooldown after the rave. (I have never been to a rave, so I'm stretching here, but I have watched 24 Hour Party People, so there's that.)

Bring The Thrill, Microsoft
Microsoft is finally out of the Windows 8 doldrums. Windows 10 is doing well, with more than 100 million installs and generally good reviews. The Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book look gorgeous. With Continuum, the company is actually acting as one, unified entity rather than as the bunch of backstabbing silos it was forced to become after the government's late-1990s antitrust action. Nadella's tone is one of control and joy, rather than Steve Ballmer's barely-under-control panic.

Microsoft is also attacking Apple where it's weakest. While the iPad is a spectacularly successful product, the past few generations haven't really brought the thrill; ditto for OS X El Capitan, which is mostly about performance improvements over Yosemite and making Macs work better with iOS devices. Apple's biggest potential new product this year is the iPad Pro, but Microsoft made its new products look a heck of a lot more pro.

Microsoft's hypebeasts couldn't convince U.S. carriers to sell Windows Phones, sadly, so Windows Phone will continue to fail. But one step at a time. Today showed that Nadella is doing a great job at one of his stated goals: to make Microsoft a brand you can love.