Satya Nadella is dogfooding the Surface Duo and Neo, praises pen-first experience

Being the CEO of Microsoft has certain perks, including getting to try out the company’s recently announced dual-screen laptops and phone.

Satya Nadella said he wanted to carry around his Surface Duo and Neo everywhere, and shared some of his impressions of Geekwire, praising the device’s versatility and user interface.

He praised the device’s Pen-first “Moleskine-like” experience, saying it was an improvement on touch-first devices as it offered a real replacement for paper.

One of the things I like to do is I like to annotate, I like to write, here I’m able to read and communicate, even on a Teams meeting. That’s a game-changer for me. I want to do a lot of Teams meetings even on my phone. [With dual-screen devices] I can actually have the conversation happening in full video on one screen and on another screen, I can take notes on OneNote. And that combination is super productive.

The idea of a pen-first operating system is of course very similar to the Courier concept, but what little we have seen of Windows 10 X suggests that it is still large designed for keyboard, mouse and touch.

https://youtu.be/fssZICsV4Rg

The promotional video, for example, is notable for showing mostly touch-based interactions and only the use of the pen for annotation.

Contrast this with the concept videos for the Courier where the person was actually constantly holding the stylus in their hand.

Do our readers think Windows 10 X or even Microsoft’s version of Android can deliver on a pen-first promise? Let us know below.