During last weeks #MicrosoftEvent in New York City we were introduced to several new devices in the Surface line of products including Surface Studio, Surface Dial, and several Surface accessories.
We were told at that time the Surface Dial would be compatible with not only Surface Studio but also with any devices running the Windows 10 Anniversary Update and Bluetooth LE.
Turns out that is not necessarily the whole story.
According to The Verge, Terry Myerson revealed during an interview last week that firmware updates would be issued early next year for Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book that will enable the on-screen functionality of Surface Dial.
This is great news for anyone who has already invested in Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book and the key reason they will get this capability is the PixelSense displays on those devices. That is the same technology that is built in as part of the Surface Studio display.
The Surface Dial is already available for pre-order from Microsoft for $99 and will be available on 17 November to the general public.
There is already a list of apps that will be compatible with Surface Dial and others will be added over time as developers incorporate those dial capabilities into their apps.
Here is the list of apps that are ready for Surface Dial already:
- Bluebeam (Revu)
- Drawboard (Drawboard PDF)
- Mental Canvas (Mental Canvas Player)
- Silicon Benders (Sketchable)
- Smith Micro (Moho 12)
- Spotify (Spotify)
- Staffpad (StaffPad)
- Windows (All)
- Word, PPT, Excel (Office Win32)
- OneNote (UWP version)
- Windows Maps
- Plumbago
- Sketchpad
- Groove Music
- PewPew Shooter
- Microsoft Photos
- Paint
For anyone else who does not have a Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book but are running the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you will be able to use Surface Dial to interact with the dial based menus in the apps mentioned above and others as they come along however placing Surface Dial on your screen will not trigger additional capabilities.
But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.
