Microsoft Takes Aim at Apple with MacBook Pro “Break Up” Campaign, Offers Up to $1,000 Trade-In on Surface Laptop Ultra

Microsoft is getting cheeky with its new Surface Laptop Ultra campaign, and Apple’s MacBook is clearly the target. The company is now telling MacBook owners to “break up” with their laptops, offering up to $1,000 toward the switch to its new high-end Surface.

The timing is hard to ignore. Just today, Microsoft announced a starting price of $2,599.99 for the Surface Laptop Ultra, its most powerful Surface laptop yet, with NVIDIA RTX Spark hardware aimed at local AI and demanding 3D workloads.

The campaign appears designed to make the Surface Laptop Ultra look less like another Windows laptop and more like Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s high-end MacBook lineup. Whether MacBook users are actually ready to walk away is another question.

However, Microsoft has plenty of ammunition for the pitch. The Surface Laptop Ultra combines high-end graphics, local AI capabilities, Windows software and a magnetic USB-C charging system, while Microsoft is also highlighting its ability to maintain performance on battery. And then there is that up to $1,000 trade-in offer. That could make the switch look considerably more tempting for MacBook owners sitting on an older machine.

Microsoft clearly knows exactly who it is talking to here. The Surface Laptop Ultra is expensive, but the company is betting that its combination of NVIDIA graphics and local AI can give professionals a reason to reconsider their usual MacBook upgrade.

It will be interesting to see whether the “break up with your MacBook” tagline will remain a cheeky marketing stunt or actually convince some longtime Mac users to make the jump.