So by now, we’re all familiar with the rumored Surface PC – or at least those of us who like to avoid sub-rock dwellings are – an all-in-one which Microsoft is expected to reveal at a press event on Wednesday, and now the trademark grapevine has provided a possible name for the hardware: Surface Studio.
This is according to a Dublin-based attorney who specializes in trademarks by the name of Brian Conroy, informally known as the ‘Trademark Ninja’, who has proved a reliable source for guessing the monikers of upcoming products in the past. (Indeed, at the end of last week, Conroy revealed the name of the OLED touchbar that’s rumored to be destined for the MacBook Pro – it will apparently be called the Magic Toolbar).
At any rate, the ninja’s latest spot is a bunch of trademarks filed by a Slovenian company – via a major Eastern European law firm which has previously applied for trademarks on behalf of Microsoft in Slovenia – for the Surface Studio, Surface Dial and Dial.
It all sounds very odd, and indeed it all is very odd, but the upshot is that either this company is frankly being a bit bonkers wasting money trying to secure trademarks it clearly won’t get on a brand Microsoft owns (Surface), or that said company (which is in fact owned by the aforementioned law firm) is some kind of super-stealthy method for Microsoft to get trademarks on these names without flagging anything up to the press or leaking the name of its PC.
Conroy himself admits that this would be a strange way of going about pre-launch subterfuge for Microsoft, and it doesn’t really fit with the way the software giant normally operates. But then, alternative explanations seem less likely still. Needless to say, this remains fairly dicey speculation.
Studio-on-your-desk
However, as The Verge, which spotted Conroy’s post, points out, a report from ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley (a very reliable Microsoft source) a couple of months back mentioned Microsoft’s all-in-one PC as carrying marketing blurb to the effect that it’s capable of turning your desk into “a studio” – which lends more weight to the Surface Studio name.
It also has a likely ring to it, at least for us, anyway.
Interestingly, Conroy also picked up on trademark filings for Microsoft Paint 3D, which marries with a previously leaked video of a preview of the new version of Paint, showing that the app gets all sophisticated with new 3D painting tools.
And there was a trademark application for Surface Laptop as well, but this is highly unlikely to refer to an actual product (like, say, a non-convertible straight notebook – which would be pretty much unthinkable anyway), and is most probably just Microsoft covering its trademark bases.
As to what the Surface Dial could be (if anything), who knows. If we had to guess – and we don’t, but we’re going to anyway – we’d say perhaps it might be a bundled piece of software for the Surface PC. Er, Surface Studio (maybe). Or maybe some manner of wearable.
All clear? What do you mean, no? At least we’ll find out the truth about all this come the day after tomorrow.
