Microsoft Announces Surface Computer

May 29th, 2007 at 9:33 pm

Sounds super exciting! I’m sure someone has done this in past as art project of some sort but for MS to be making a product out of it is significant.

Just don’t give me a blue screen when I’m ordering dessert.

-Zaid

May 29th, 2007 at 9:54 pm

they gave a demo of this at CES in Jan of 2006 too. i dug up the webcast: http://www.microsoft.com/winme.....te_MBR.asx

looks pretty cool if you ask me

May 29th, 2007 at 9:56 pm

This is the future of computing - and illustrates the difference between Microsoft and Linux in terms of investments in innovation

May 29th, 2007 at 10:01 pm

btw..this is the original Jeff Han video from youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKh1Rv0PlOQ

May 29th, 2007 at 10:08 pm

I’ve been wanting to make an interactive touch-sensitive coffee table for about a year now. Problem is time (I’m not paid to do this), and funds (I’m not Microsoft). It would be a learning experience though, not something with the target of being mass marketed.

Cheap shot at Linux, there Search Engine Web. I’m not sure how this “illustrates the difference between Microsoft and Linux in terms of investments in innovation” since “Linux” isn’t a single company that can “invest” in things, so it’s really an apples to oranges comparison. Where are all the Microsoft Partners doing this kind of “investment in innovation”?

May 29th, 2007 at 10:18 pm

Awesomeness.

May 29th, 2007 at 10:22 pm

This technology has a tremendous business potential. iPhone is *NOTHING* compared to this!

May 29th, 2007 at 10:26 pm

Sony has a prototype.

Jeff Han has a prototype.

Apple certainly for hell has prototype.

Microsoft now shows off theirs.

This is now a question of who can get it to the average joe’s hands first. I give it 5 years.

May 29th, 2007 at 10:30 pm

So did Microsoft steal this from Jeff Han or license it? As if I have to ask.

May 29th, 2007 at 10:37 pm

Seems very cool though I bet Microsoft will somehow make this suck. There are so many ways they can make this good, easy to use and purposeful but I’m sure they’ll find ways to avoid them.

May 29th, 2007 at 10:46 pm

I can see something like this at uWink, Nolan Bushnell’s interactive restaurant. I’m very bullish on ubiquitous computing especially in social environments. Hopefully they will open up application development for this baby.

May 29th, 2007 at 10:50 pm

Very innovative. For once..a innovative idea from a giant. this shows that the company has still not lost its agility..

May 29th, 2007 at 11:08 pm

I wish this was announced on April 1st.

But, I remember reading it one of the books that Bill gates’ house walls were sort of computer screen and this surface computer seems like productizing the same giving it a commercial angle.

May 29th, 2007 at 11:13 pm

@Jan2x. This technology has been developing since 2001. Around the time when Apple released their first gen crappy ipods. I am sure MSFT has its load of patents. If they have the patent for object recognition, game over for apple

May 29th, 2007 at 11:40 pm

this announcement just sucked the wind out of iFanboys everywhere. imagine if apple had announced this and called it iSurface. Fanboys would be posting it on every blog as the second coming of christ.

redmond has some fight left, cupertino boys.

May 29th, 2007 at 11:56 pm

Glad to see it coming out of the lab. I’ve seen stuff like this since the 80s, but at very high price points. Bill Buxton made it much more affordable in the mid-90s. The folks at Brown University developed a lot of the UI principles in the late 90s. For some reason, Jeff Han’s slick demo popularized it. Now, MS thinks they’ve found a market where they can commercialize it. If OLEDs and a few other key techs drop in price, this sort of thing may become ubiquitous in 10 years.

May 30th, 2007 at 12:25 am

The truth about the fancy table.

May 30th, 2007 at 12:38 am

http://www.fatadam.com/2007/05.....t-surface/

I so want one of these things. They look awesome!

May 30th, 2007 at 12:40 am

seen this sort of technology floating around Cebit for a year or two now, but nothing as organised or fancy as this!

the wow starts now!

May 30th, 2007 at 12:48 am

A: Microsoft is going to sell it to big companies first - great commercial applications for this kind of device, and its going to be relatively cheap (like $5,000-$10,000) each. Thats about as much as a pool table or slot machine. Its probably a better investment than a Segway! Plus, I’m sure microsoft is throwing the software development and maintence in with the deal to fuel early adoption

B: Eventually this device will become a platform (pardon the pun) for software development. The hardware (Table PC could be a name for it) would be manufactured by third-parties (like Dell, HP, etc.), the software operating system by Microsoft (Vista Table) and then eventually third-parties would create additional software (for example, a method to substitute zune in the ad with IPod all you apple fanboys).

Looking at the world of Star Trek and other Futurist’s visions, I don’t find it a far reach that in 2-3 years early adopters will have some version of this in their homes, and in 10-15 years something like this could replace the PC. I am not saying that everyone will have a fuss-ball table like PC in their homes, but some other device that features similar technology such as multi-touch and tagged recognition coupled with Wi-Fi Input/output.

May 30th, 2007 at 12:55 am

Apologies for the double trackback. Forgot to remove the trackback URL when making changes

As for the patent thing, I think it’d be fairly safe to assume that if Microsoft wasn’t the sole patent holder, that they would have licensed what was required. Especially considering their recent announcements in the Patent arena.

May 30th, 2007 at 1:25 am

this is a great step from ubiq window devices that I’ve been using and the multi touch seems awesome

May 30th, 2007 at 1:59 am

Am I the only person who’s completely underwhelmed by this? It’s a flat touch screen lying down rather than on a wall. Big whoop. Sure they’ll sell some to some fancy hotels and companies with more money than sense but I fail to see this as any kind of breakthru

May 30th, 2007 at 2:54 am

Awesome. MS is really innovative. Once again, i’ve got only one word “AWESOME”

May 30th, 2007 at 3:07 am

Nick, Simon - You are correct that touchscreen apps have been around for decades. I remember supporting Big Blue’s touchscreen monitors for a major pharma sales training operation in the late ’80’s combined with (Adobe) Macromedia Authorware. The technology works very well already. And, yes, they are very effective interfaces for people who are not comfortable with traditional computing.

The biggest innovation, however, is the multitouch UI which allows manipulation of objects and quicker navigation. Most existing commercial touchscreens are single touch.

May 30th, 2007 at 3:22 am

I think you are missing the point here, it’s not the technology, or the spec or anything technical that makes this stand out. Its the interface, the tactile sense of actually moving to make an input. Like the Wii is a movement based games console, the MS Surface is a gesture & touch based device. I for 1 am very excited by this, and as an educationalist see this being great in the classroom.

May 30th, 2007 at 3:38 am

This thing is great. They’ve taken all the best ideas out of the field of table-top human computer interaction and combined them into a really slick package. For those of you who are worried about the cost, Bill Buxton (interaction visionary guy) from MS is convinced that within 10 years we will be able to wallpaper our walls with computer displays as cheaply as we would with normal wallpaper.

Also, if you are interested in reading more about multi-touch systems, Bill has also written a 25 year overview of the field. There is a lot more to it than Apple, MS and Jeff Han:

http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

May 30th, 2007 at 3:50 am

Neil - And all a bit too quickly and easily for my liking. I’m very cynical about real world performance being anything at all like that.

May 30th, 2007 at 4:03 am

It reminds me of some of the screen you used to see at Epcot Center about 20 years ago. Except those were more standard vertical as I recall and I am sure this has much better than sensitivity than those did. All in all, a very interesting product for Microsoft’s first time out (even if my first thought when I read the headlines was Bill showed us this 18 months ago).

May 30th, 2007 at 4:12 am

Sorry just don’t see this as useful or super productive. Think about it two handed GUIs take double the interaction that we have now. Consumers want wii like interaction from their comfortable couch. Spinning pictures and objects is only eye candy and no more productive than traditional GUIs.

I can see them adding some of these features to Windows but in reality it would only be eye candy and another $200 upgrade.

On the iPhone these features already exist somewhat because your hands are already near the screen in only makes sense on that kind of handheld device.

http://www.noheat.com

May 30th, 2007 at 4:42 am

Cool technology with great potential if done right as Jeff Han and iPhone have demonstrated, but with Surface…

Who’s gonna sit round a coffee table for any length of time? For me, it’s not the most comfortable way to interact with technology for prolonged periods. I guess if you get lower back pain using the thing you can look up the nearest chiropracter.

Plus, it runs on Vista! Call me INSANE but I’m not going to trust a publicly-used-Vista-running-table to manipulate and transfer data between devices.

May 30th, 2007 at 5:15 am

The new Microsoft hits again, w00t.

May 30th, 2007 at 5:48 am

While the Multi-touch aspect of this is certainly cool, I think that a lot of people have overlooked the wireless sync features among the various devices like the digital camera and the cell phone. If they could incorporate new wireless battery charging technology like this: http://www.splashpower.com/ it would be the ultimate way to interact with our gadgets. Maybe this is the answer to Mark Cuban’s recent concept of a downloadable music kiosk: http://www.blogmaverick.com/20.....ess-again/

May 30th, 2007 at 6:08 am

Wow, shows the depth of implementation behind Microsoft and the attention to details. I think it clearly shows that not everything is going to be slow and web based. In addition, that not everything nice in going to be Apple.

I am missing some Video Cam applications (multi-location collaboration) like being able to sit at my home provide my services, charge for my time by dragging the other person’s credit card - left on his/her table - to my cash register (kind of a BitWine Taskbar on steroids), not to mention the whole tele-working collaborative environment.

It seems that the HW setup maybe a bit expensive i.e. computer, cameras projector and the heat dissipation and noise associated with that. I am sure they will get over that hurdle eventually.

I think Microsoft is finally getting what Apple got long ago, it is not only what you can do with the computer (clearly the most important element) but, you need the “cool” factor attached to that to make many people really appreciate, and better connect with the application and the vendor.

May 30th, 2007 at 6:37 am

A gigantic piece of dedicated, immobile hardware that uses closed, proprietary software? No thank you.

If I wanted a huge piece of nostalgia hardware in my living room, I’d buy a Cray computer, replete with cooling fluid fountain, on ebay.

May 30th, 2007 at 6:52 am

I remember discussing something that looked very like this at HP Pinewood in 1979. The market was graphic designers.

May 30th, 2007 at 7:04 am

Perceptive Pixel technology being used by MS?

http://allanjosephbatac.com/bl.....pixel.html

OR are they competitors in this space?

May 30th, 2007 at 7:41 am

While this looks awesome, I cant help but to think of all the potential problems it might have because of Microsoft.

Despite that, at least MS is innovating.

May 30th, 2007 at 7:58 am

Sweet… but is it just a pipe dream?

I like the sync feature, but that could actually be implemented much better using “in the cloud” storage when WiMax (or some other ubiquitous cover-all internet) becomes a reality. When it boils down to it, that’s what this surface computer is really all about - syncing.

May 30th, 2007 at 8:03 am

I wonder if surface-to-ass syncing is possible? Gives new meaning to “you can shove those photos up your ass”

Okay, okay… I’m done

May 30th, 2007 at 9:10 am

I think another thing that is NOT mentioned here is how this device works - it works by using infra red sensors to detect objects on the screen.

This is a LOT more powerful than using traditional touch-screen overlays because they can be scratched. IE. Traditional touch screen puts a layer of touch sensing material that if you scratched its surface, it would get messed up. I think in this device, the surface is just glass and the sensor is underneath it, making it more impervious to scratches.

Anyways, everyone talks about Minority Report, but the “real” application that came to mind was in “The Island”.

May 30th, 2007 at 10:18 am

“This technology has a tremendous business potential. iPhone is *NOTHING* compared to this!”

I take it you’ve used both devices?

May 30th, 2007 at 10:58 am

There is only one killer app that this thing needs to sell:

Audio/Video Mixing Board

Once they get that on there these things will sell!

May 30th, 2007 at 11:27 am

This is a great step forward to more flexible computing. If MS succeeds with this it could do a lot to prevent to prevent repititve stress injuries while making computing a more physically beneficial activity.

As much as i dislike MS appropriating others ideas, I’m crossing my fingers on this one and hope it gains immediate traction like the Wii and flat panel tvs.

May 30th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

This is super cool… MS has finally started doing some real innovation again!

I was especially impressed by the fact that they’ve finally learned from apple and have started focusing on user experience… also check PopFly-their mashup tool.

The only thing MS needs to change now are bad business practices (like ignoring google tools in PopFly)… they should seriously start playing fair and people might just start loving them again.

May 30th, 2007 at 5:37 pm

For all those Microsoft Haters (or iFanBoys out there)

Microsoft is loved by every human in the world other than your 100 friends who are also iFanBoys and those 100 iFanboys have 99 friends similar to your list…that makes a grand total of 101 geniuses who hate Microsoft and think that they are not innovative….

Surface Rules…

May 30th, 2007 at 8:32 pm

This can be more interesting if they develop a ‘portable’ one. It is amazing though.

May 30th, 2007 at 10:12 pm

@J Crowley

Ass, Transformer is coming out on 4th July. You will definitely see something more innovative than in Minority Report.

May 31st, 2007 at 1:52 am

Not all that innovative. Surf YouTube for “reac table.”

May 31st, 2007 at 7:02 am

The demo site is impressive, but they make it look too flawless. They show a group of friends coming over and slapping down their Zunes and trading songs like they were flicking soap bubbles. Considering that Leprosy is more popular than Zune (I’ve never even seen two Zunes in the same zip code), I suppose you can flick songs to yourself. But, it’s definitely a cool demo. It just kind of smells like a Segway scooter though — very cool, but nobody’s going to actually pay to own one. You’ll probably just see them in hotels and restaurants.

My major question would be what OS does this thing run? If it’s got Vista blood in it, I’d be very wary. But, if it is something completely new, it begs the question as to how Vista can ever realistically move to multi-touch.

I think what’s interesting to note, particularly from reading Bill Buxton’s history of multi-touch, is that Apple purchased FingerWorks a few years back — which was a pioneer in multi-touch technology.

Clearly Apple has already put the basic multi-touch funtionality into the iPhone, but I think what’s more striking is that Apple is clearly priming OS X’s interface for multi-touch effects (Spring-loaded folders, the drag-drop effects on and off the Dock, fast-user switching effects, graceful widget-flips, OpenGL, WebKit, etc.). It looks as if Apple has been building the multi-touch effects into OS X for years.

I’m fairly certain that Vista does not have what it takes to do multi-touch interfacing cleanly — it’s too clunky and really solely engineered for mouse interfacing. Plus, Vista can barely even talk to Zune’s properly half the time. My guess is that Microsoft will go after the “clunky restaurant table market” and Apple will actually create portable OS X multi-touch computers that ditch keyboards and mice altogether.

May 31st, 2007 at 1:21 pm

Does anyone remember Apple’s Knowledge Navigator?
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WdS4TscWH8

June 1st, 2007 at 5:36 am

good but not much impressive

June 6th, 2007 at 2:18 am

Hi,
I am jai from CNS Infotech Delhi INDIA.
well, I was just using it as an example. My point was more that this idea has been floating around in scifi in general for quite a while. I wonder if/when there will ever come a point where the line between science fiction and science fact no longer exists. Of course, a touchscreen table from Microsoft isn’t exactly a giant leap in that direction, but it brings the idea to mind.

June 7th, 2007 at 11:17 am

This really isn’t that innovative.

These guys built their own system in just over two years. The entire project is open source and your can build your own own multi-touch, object positioning and orientation surface using off the shelf parts.

http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/?media