October 2015 was an unusually active month for hardware and platform launches. Android Marshmallow shipped to Nexus devices on October 5. Apple released the iPad Pro on November 11 after announcing it in September. Microsoft launched the Surface Book on October 26, its first attempt at a full laptop rather than the convertible tablet form factor of the existing Surface line. Each of these on its own was a normal launch event. Together they pointed at a convergence happening across categories that had been distinct for years.
The Surface Book was particularly notable because it represented Microsoft moving directly into laptop hardware against its own OEM partners. The product itself was technically interesting. The screen detached from the keyboard base. The hinge mechanism, which Microsoft called the dynamic fulcrum hinge, was unusual but functional. Performance specs were competitive with high-end laptops. The price was high enough to position the product against the MacBook Pro rather than against more affordable Windows laptops.
The strategic logic was that Microsoft needed to demonstrate what Windows 10 could be on premium hardware. Windows had a long-standing image problem in the high end of the market, where Apple had consolidated significant share through the consistent quality of MacBook hardware and the OS X ecosystem. The Surface Book was not going to outsell MacBooks, but it could serve as a reference design that influenced how OEMs thought about Windows laptops, and as a marketing demonstration that Windows could compete in categories where it had been losing ground.
The iPad Pro was Apple’s parallel move from the other direction. Larger screen, Apple Pencil support, an optional keyboard cover that turned the device into something approaching a laptop. Apple was hesitant to call the iPad Pro a laptop replacement at launch, but the product features and the marketing both pointed at exactly that question.
Android Marshmallow’s contribution to the convergence was more subtle. The OS-level features for permissions, file management, and external storage support reflected an Android maturation that increasingly aimed at productive computing rather than just consumer mobile use. The Pixel C tablet that Google would later launch was part of the same broader pattern.
What October 2015 captured was the beginning of a long convergence between mobile and traditional computing form factors. Each company was attacking the convergence from a different starting point, but they were all aiming at roughly the same destination.