Microsoft devices used to be a joke. Even putting those two words together — Microsoft and devices — would elicit a giggle. After all, Microsoft was good at making software, not at making gadgets.

Now, however, there’s been a change.

Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times’s technology columnist, recently visited Microsoft’s hardware lab at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. His conclusion is that Microsoft is now producing some of the most innovative personal computers in the industry, surpassing hardware rivals like Apple.

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This is not a joke. Sure, Microsoft still has a long way to go to catch up to Apple in PC hardware. But over the past two years, Microsoft has made many advances in PCs, such as its Surface line of computers.