“Microsoft is announcing today a new direct-manipulation concept and user interface targeted at the gaming and hospitality industries. The system uses projectors and cameras beneath a translucent flat surface to give user the appearance of seamlessly manipulating both real and virtual objects in the same environment,” Carl Howe writes for Blackfriars’ Marketing.
Howe writes, “Make no mistake: multi-touch and direct manipulation interfaces like Milan (Microsoft’s development code name for surface computing) are very cool. In fact, that’s one of the reasons the consumer market is so excited about Apple’s iPhone: it will be the first multi-touch direct manipulation device available to consumers. But as with many concept demos, the devil here is in the details, and Microsoft’s surface computing initiative is very different from — and probably will never compete with — the technologies Apple is introducing in the iPhone.”
Microsoft’s technology:
• Depends on cameras and projectors for its magic
• Focuses on large interactions instead of small
• Doesn’t fit in the PC ecosystem
Howe asks, “So surface computing isn’t the iPhone or a PC technology. Does that matter? After all, Apple isn’t doing anything with multi-touch for computers, is it?”
“Well wait a few weeks and you may be surprised at how much Apple is doing with multi-touch,” Howe writes.
Full article here.
Other than the link up to devices how is this any different than what Jeff Han has demoed? Sure you can shove your pictures around the table but how useful is that? What happens once you go away? How do you archive and search through thousands and thousands of files? If the underlying software and more traditional elements are no good then all this whizz bang interfacing is worthless. And what chance is there that it’ll be any good, it’s running windows after all and vista is still average at best.
Also, syncing your devices by just placing them down may be very intuitive and visual and cool but syncing devices on Windows is a pain with established technology, why should adding what amounts to pretty pictures make it any better or reliable?
Apple’s iPhone: it will be the first multi-touch direct manipulation device available to consumers.
SORRY CHARLIE, TOMTOM GPS HAS HAD THIS FOR YEARS
Seems to me that this is just some novelty, niche item from Microsoft. A proof-of-concept at best and if I wanted that, I could just go watch Minority Report again. The iPhone will have widespread use from consumers and businesses (except ones where cameras are banned of course). Microsoft Surface may sound cool, but be mostly useless. The cancer of Windows is spreading once again. I don’t see much need to worry, even if people think “Microsoft has a Surface so it’s better than Apple”. Microsoft is and always will be a software company. I see no reason why the division that made the Zune and XBox will suddenly create some smash hit hardware item.
P.S. I wanna know what happens if someone sits on one.
Here is another (real) multi touch device.
http://www.jazzmutant.com/
It runs Windows Vista, so what’s the point? Anything Windows Vista touches will be a failure.
Its going to be multi-touch iMacs. Why do you think Leopard was pushed back?
I remember seeing a video of Bill Gates demonstrating a mock-up of this concept a couple years ago. Apparently they were actually developing it. My first thought was “ooh, my aching back,” because you have to lean over it to use it. I’m sure this will have its uses, but probably fewer of them than Microsoft thinks.
Imagine, some time in the foggy future, I’ll have to reboot my living room furniture!
The multi-touch technology that Microsoft is using is different from Apple’s. This is conceptually the next step. It’s not an original idea and no one stole it from anyone else. The proof, however, is not in the concept, it is in the engineering and the realization.
If you haven’t already seen this in action, check out “Reactable”. A surface controlled digital musical instrument.
Very cool:
MW – ‘believe’
I don’t want a muti-touch iMac-who the hell sits close enough to their display to touch it?
Why would I want to spend hours with my hands and arms raised up in front of me, waving them around(new fitness program?)?
For small portable devices such as a cell phone or tablet computer, great.
For a desktop-nope, unless the manipulations are done with a tablet device on the desk/tray where the mouse would be..
I can just imagine….
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”LOL” style=”border:0;” />
Set you cell phone down on the “Surface” and while your contact list is uploaded a nasty Win virus is downloaded. Of course, the virus won’t do anything to the OS X iPhone, only Win Mobile phones.
Here comes Mac with dual isight cameras and stereo vision LCD?
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-978499.html
“I wanna know what happens if someone sits on one.”
Surface will automatically tell you what note and tempo you just farted on the table, and offer you music from Zune Marketplace based on the data you have just, ahem, provided.
Or, maybe Surface will start playing Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd?
Watch out Nitendo Wii, padless 3D video game is coming! No more flying game pad hitting the TV. How about an air guitar that makes sound (or may be not)? Electric organ with printed keyboard? Now anyone can pretend to be a conductor and hear a computer generated orchestra play? Fly on Google Earth? Jump around the spreadsheet with hand gesture? Typing on air? Many possibilities.
Lights and cameras?
More likely smoke and mirrors!
I do remember all those table based arcade games in bars that were all the rage for 6 months some 15 years ago, after which the novalty wore off and people got pissed off being asked to move when others wanted a go and the practical implications begun to dawn. Funny how MS always wants to build Titanic whenever it seees Apple designing a state of the art cruiser.
great, with that MS surface finally my table can crash.
This reeks of “OH F*CK, we must put out something cool too” .
MS had to put this vapour out for two reasons: to stop getting sued by Apple by pretending they invented it in multi-touch 2003 on paper and to get the bleeding edge to wait just in case Surface is better than Leopard. Didn’t work with Vista, won’t work with Surface.
Apple stock is going up because MS is ‘endorsing’ Apple’s future. If the interface changes radically, everybody will have to be retrained, get new PCs and write new apps, so you might as well change to Apple!
My guess is the demos on MS’ site are actually running Unix, not Vista! They even have a New Zealander acting as the pseudo Jonathon Ive!
Touché
Well if artist start using this we will be seeing a lot more finger paintings in adds.
Projectors and cameras? Is it steam-powered too?
Touch me – spread your fingers apart – make me big.
Well, the MS approach is big and heavy and complicated. Not ready for prime-time. Han’s approach was brilliant in its simplicity. He uses a sandwich of glass that uses light refraction, when the glass is pressed that allows the screen to determine location. Brilliant, and so un-MS.
Well, the MS approach is big and heavy and complicated. Not ready for prime-time.
Just like anything else from MS.
The only thing missing from Surface is the MS-standard five-year delay.
Microsoft Surface may sound cool, but be mostly useless.
Surface is barely cool, and completely useless.
So what kind of business is going to invest five figures per customer in a drink tracker and kick-ball simulator?
Bars and Hotels? Forget it.
Cruise ships? Maybe.
Disney? NO WAY. At least not with Jobs and Pixar in the picture.
Surface is yet another MS solution looking for a problem, the product of too many internal meetings and PowerPoint slides. It’ll soon take its place of dishonor among the rest of MS’s turkeys.
More signs of Microsoft’s bankruptcy of ideas… the technology behind this is so clunky, that you really wonder what patents MS was skirting around (and who owns those patents!). Multitouch is the only stand out here, and that’s not MS’s baby. And the financial returns from the hotel/gaming industry (in the unlikely event they take it up to any extent) to a giant like MS are mere table crumbs.
R2
Where’s the FUD about fingerprints and how it’s worthless if you break the screen?
Funny Stuff, R2, and pretty much bang on.