He might be hired specifically as a change-maker and last ditch effort. If he was getting stonewalled by the AI-drunken fools at Microsoft, he probably thought to himself, “Yeah! I’ll show them how pumped I can make them!”
First, Microsoft’s legal team leaks and now their AI team leaks. Man, between this madness, heads are going to be rolling right and left this week I bet.
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Could be. The timing of that Reuters article (then discussed on Ars Technica) is weird. Initially I thought Panos had enemies who want to make his move look bad, but the Reuters article says they interviewed 15 current and former employees, which makes it sound like this was longer in the making. Definitely interesting times!
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Posted in the other thread too, but the latest is Panay is going to Amazon for another try at a phone, likely looking at least somewhat like a Duo 3.
I take that with a huge grain of salt but OTOH ecommerce continues to grow by leaps and bounds on mobile.
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Alexaphone - “Mr. Bezos come here, I want you!”
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Event link:
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FYI - that is the video replay of the event - it goes live tomorrow morning 10:00 EDT (there are some sites live blogging - Engadget, etc. where you can read about what M$ censors out on the video…)
Tomorrow morning right? Everywhere I see Sept 21st, not 20th.
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Yep - tomorrow morning - and I’m not the only disillusioned Windows watcher:
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The guy is more optimistic than most of us:
Good pointm, despite ultimate insiders Rubino and Bowden say “No 2023 Surface Pro 10 for you!”
Call me naive, but I always have a problem when a device like SP 8/9 or SLS 1/2 is compared to anything Apple as an example of underwhelming specs and lack of innovation. The reason I became interested in the Surface line up was Apple
a) forcing everyone into an upgrade spiral, courtesy of Apple silicon,
b) failing to cater to the 2-in-1/convertible market.
I would have been thrilled had Apple decided to introduce a pen enabled iMac, or MacBook. I see it as a lack of innovation that they didn´t.
Regarding the departure of Pannos Panay: I´m not enough of an expert to comment on this intelligently, but whatever consequences this move may have for MS´ Surface line up in the future, I doubt it will have any influence on what is being introduced tomorrow.
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Agreed. And while the Engadget article that Dale posted is very critical of MS, the author doesn’t come up with anything he actually wants but isn’t getting out of surface devices.
The whole lineup is already quite good, with the main things I’m hoping for being better screens and lower weight, courtesy of some future successful switch to powerful ARM CPUs.
Hell, if they just keep stuffing ever more powerful CPUs/dGPUs in the SLS every year I’d already be pretty happy, no Panos needed. 
Although not a DIRECT result of Panos’ departure, I’m convinced what is being introduced had a significant impact on his decision to leave. From day one, the charge for Surface (and defense of its existence to their OEM’s) was to create aspirational devices to demonstrate what could/should be in the Windows device universe. It started that way, and now it is a just an iterative development process for those initial introductions.
Surface’s biggest failure has been to carry forward the Courier concept - with both Surface Duo and Surface Neo (and before that Surface Mini) being spectacular crash and burn demises. Just keeping up with the next to latest processors IS NOT aspirational development, thus no real need for Surface in the market, which is probably what Nadella and the rest of the board are thinking.
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Presented by someone that got one day to prepare and one to practice. Knowing he/she is a pinch hitter. Snooze fest anyone?
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As true as all of this is, the after market has only attenpted to recreate a version of the Surface Pro, leaving the more innovative designs like the Pro X, Duo and Go series to languish on the vine. If Microsoft stops developing these models, they are likely to be religated to the dustbin of history.
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The depanosing of the event itself might turn out to be a good thing. I found Panos’ faux-Jobs attempts at presenting impossible to watch. I’m hoping for a factual presentation.
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Not to put too fine a point on it, but Microsoft itself relegates those to the dustbin.
That’s pretty much the whole reason why I tuned in. 
Look at how he handles tablets!
Name one other presenter who literally hugs his devices…
That’s love!
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I agree with @Bishop on this one. Surface RT was an utter disaster ($900M write-off) and Surface 2 was not much better. Only with the coming of Surface 3/4 did M$ “get it” and then we had to wait for Surface 8 for it to be refined. Nadella strangled Surface Mini in the cradle, Duo was orphaned quickly (why the H did it take so long to even get an Android OS update) and Neo never even made it out of the lab…the desktop Studio was an amazing design - but terrible internals and no real successor…but we are all supposed to be good little soldiers at M$ marching to the AI drum (well, not Panos)…
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