If you haven’t seen a Surface Studio or worked with one, let me just quickly summarize it:

It’s got an impossibly thin, tilting 28-inch touch screen that you can view like a traditional desktop screen or tilt downward with a gentle push to use in draft mode, as seen above.

You can touch or draw on the screen with your finger or the handy Surface Pen, and you can interact with the screen using the Surface Dial (more on those in a minute).

That means the Surface Studio is an interactive desktop that makes being creative a far more intuitive and functional experience.

In other words, it’s what the iMac should be.

Unfortunately for Apple, the iMac is still a traditional desktop, and that’s simply not good enough any longer.

Creative professionals like photographers need innovative products to make their jobs easier, and the Surface Studio delivers better than the iMac on just about every single measure.

If you aren’t convinced, have a look at the hands-on review by BoredAtWork in the video above and check out my in-depth review of the Surface Studio.

Microsoft Has Changed the Way You Interact With Your Work

In years past, the headline above would have been something written about Apple, but here we are using that kind of praise for Microsoft products.

The truth of the matter is that the way you interact with a Mac today is the same as you did five years ago (save that lame touch bar thing).

But with Microsoft, you have a whole slew of new ways to interact with your work.

As mentioned before, the entire Surface line of products from the Book to the Studio have touch-enabled screens.

That’s enough right there to prove that Microsoft has the innovation edge over Apple.

But it’s not just that the screens are touch-enabled — it’s that you can use the Surface Pen to do anything from making incredibly precise edits to your photos to writing yourself a quick note.

This functionality is certainly impressive in that you can do a wide variety of tasks with the Pen. However, the fact that it looks and feels like an actual writing utensil takes advantage of the familiarity of traditional writing and stylus usage to make the user experience with the Pen natural and intuitive.

Add in different Pen tips for various uses, a right-click button on the Pen shaft for quick navigating, and over 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity, and you’ve got yourself one incredible creative tool.

What better way to edit your photos?! See the Pen in action in the video above.

But don’t think that the Pen is the only innovative tool Microsoft has developed to enhance your user experience.

The Surface Dial, though at this point perhaps not as useful for photographers as the Surface Pen, is still an awesomely powerful tool.

The Dial is essentially a wireless control knob that allows you to access menus, change screen views, change the volume, and a whole other host of things with a simple turn.

It can rest on your desk next to your machine, or you can actually attach it directly to the Surface screen for an even better( and more futuristic) work experience.

But the Dial is no gimmick; it provides instant and precise results regardless of what you’re doing. You can even use it as an Undo tool in Photoshop!

See the Surface Dial in action in the video above by TechCrunch.

Microsoft is Pushing Hard for the Pro Market