Why do you think it's such a big deal? First off, the latest Surfaces came in the middle of Intel's chip cycle. And now they are launching it at the beginning.

Why do you think it's such a big deal? First off, the latest Surfaces came in the middle of Intel's chip cycle. And now they are launching it at the beginning. That's how they are are able to launch with a "new" Intel chip - which isn't really new anyway, just a repackaged Haswell (2014 was supposed to be the year of Broadwell, not Haswell repackaged). Second, Sony and LG are already launching "new generations" 6-8 months later, too, with the Xperia Z2 and LG G3. Just because you put an incremental number at the end of the product, doesn't mean it's actually a "next generation" one. I doubt you'll see 1440p resolution and double the storage for the same price on this one for example. They were probably just working on Surface 2 and Surface 3 in parallel, too.