Today at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, Microsoft will unveil Microsoft Surface, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a surface that provides interaction with all forms of digital content through gestures, touch and physical objects. Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.
The user interface works without a traditional mouse or keyboard, allowing people to interact with content and information on their own or collaboratively. Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that small groups can use at the same time.
“With Surface, we are creating more intuitive ways for people to interact with technology,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said. “We see this as a multibillion dollar category, and we envision a time when surface computing technologies will be pervasive, from tabletops and counters to the hallway mirror. Surface is the first step in realizing that vision.”
Surface also features the ability to recognize physical objects that have identification tags similar to bar codes. This means that when a customer simply sets a wine glass on the surface of a table, a restaurant could provide them with information about the wine they’re ordering, pictures of the vineyard it came from and suggested food pairings tailored to that evening’s menu. The experience could become immersive, letting users access information on the wine-growing region and even look at recommended hotels and plan a trip without leaving the table.
Surface computing at Microsoft is an outgrowth of a collaborative effort between the Microsoft Hardware and Microsoft Research teams. Surface computing, which Microsoft has been working on for a number of years, features four key attributes:
• Direct interaction. Users can actually “grab” digital information with their hands, interacting with content by touch and gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.
• Multi-touch. Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger like a typical touch-screen, but up to dozens of items at once.
• Multi-user. The horizontal form factor makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
• Object recognition. Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including the transfer of digital content.
Microsoft plans to ship Surface with a portfolio of basic applications, including photos, music and virtual concierge applications that can be customized.
Surface will be made available through a distribution and development agreement with IGT, a global company specializing in the design, development, manufacturing, distribution and sales of computerized gaming machines and systems products.
More information can be found at http://www.surface.com
“Microsoft Surface: Behind-the-Scenes First Look (with Video)” from Popular Mechanics, which includes interview footage with NYU multi-touch interaction researcher Jeff Han is here.
MacDailyNews Take: First of all, this is a press release released today by Microsoft PR flacks in an attempt to take attention away from Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the Wall Street Journal’s “D5” conference today. Now, this type of technology is the future, but we’ll be steering clear of Microsoft’s implementation simply because we want our stuff to work.* Also, carting around a coffee table would be a back-breaker.
* If Microsoft doesn’t like our statement about wanting our stuff to work and therefore avoiding Microsoft products, too bad; they’ve earned it.
This type of tech has been floating around for years. Who owns which patent for what, or even if there are any meaningful patents, is anybody’s guess at this point. The best-known researcher in this field is Jeff Han. Han is a research scientist for New York University’s (NYU) Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. We first covered Jeff Han’s multi-touch interface work last February with a direct link to video of Han’s UI and a link to Wired’s “Cult of Mac” coverage. At the time, we wrote, “This could change everything. Again.”
After Steve Jobs’ Macworld Expo keynote unveiled iPhone, with its multi-touch interface, Han has updated his website (http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/) with the cryptic blurb, “Yes, we saw the keynote too! We have some very, very exciting updates coming soon- stay tuned!”
Jeff Han presents his “Multi-Touch Interaction Research” work at the TED Conference 2006:
Perceptive Pixel, Inc. was founded by Jeff Han in 2006 as a spinoff of the NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences to develop and market the most advanced multi-touch system in the world. More info: http://www.perceptivepixel.com/
Related articles:
iPhone debuts third-generation PC user interface: Apple’s Steve Jobs changes the world – again – February 20, 2007
Researchers have bigger plans for ‘multi-touch’ beyond Apple’s iPhone – January 19, 2007
Video of how Apple’s rumored touch-screen Tablet Mac could work – February 13, 2006
Another reason Apple introd the iPhone so early.
I saw this EXACT same technology and tech demos from the NYU video on the internet a year ago.
I don’t see this going into homes anytime soon. Corporations maybe. But the price tag will put it out of reach of a majority of users. Not to mention that it would be running any variation of Windows.
Hello virus and something unexpected on your table top. Surprise there’s porn in the living room table.
And aside from all of that. Is it something that people would even use in everyday life? I don’t think so.
How do you CTRL-ALT-DELETE on something with no keyboard?
Ok, so I’ve placed my glass of wine down on the ‘Surface’, it recognises what wine it is and shows me where it comes from, what hotels are in the area, and maybe information about flights to that area, etc.
How the hell do I take this info away with me..?
Maybe they’ll put a pad of paper and a pen on a table next to the ‘Surface’ coffee table for me to jot it all down…
MS knows that Apple will be talking about the same type of interface for Leopard in two weeks, so they wanted to beat them to the punch. The only problem is that Apple will ship Leopard in October and MS plans to ship it in Winter.
Typical that MS talks up a storm first and ships last…. It does look intriguing though.
—-glass of wine down on the ‘Surface’, it recognises what wine it is and shows me where it comes from, what hotels are in the area, and maybe information about flights to that area, etc.
– Lets me login in Expedia to get my Ticket..
– Login to my Email account to make Sure I got a confirmation for Flight and Hotel.
Sh** the woman I was with for dinner left about 15 minutes ago. Great, but at least I am going to France. Thank U Surface thingie !!
Actually, Jeff Han’s technology is going to Windows, not Apple. Apple is using another “unfortunately inferior” technology which I can’t disclose at this moment. You’ll all find out soon enough…
I love how its just a bunch of hot chics sitting around their living rooms playing with photos…. now tell me how many models you know who want to spend their time in their living rooms downloading photos from their camera ? They are goodlooking enough to have some bloke to do it for them ! with a crummy USB cable !
Not sure what they are trying to do here…. appears very rushed. Rather they have a problem and make greay technology to solve it they have stolen the technology and are trying to jam it into something where it doesn’t fit…..
You have found yet another way to bash microsoft. I come here for apple news not news on how much you guys hate microsoft.
Table computing. Neat. I thought Excel had been doing that for years.
This must be the new Origami! ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
I will lay you odds that Apple has multi-touch Mac systems ready for us to buy for practical use before MS and its partner start shipping what is obviously meant to be some vertical POS or game system designed for commercial clients.
And how illustrative of the difference in cultures at Apple and MS: When Jobs intros the iPhone he says, “Isn’t that cool?”; whilce announceing “Surface” Steve Ballmer says, “We see this as a multibillion dollar category…”
MS=Greed; Apple=Passion
I’m much more impressed with this technology. I think it represents the future of computing. I can easily imagine whole desktops (real desks, not computer desktops) being a display and having wall mounted mutitouch displays in every room. All wirelessly interconnected. And multitouch tablet computers with virtal keyboards that focus the touch contact point to the center of the fingertip and give you tactile feedback, perhaps through tiny electric shocks. The multitouch technology is incredibly intuitive and I think you can do almost anything with it, including virtual typing, drawing, web surfing, video conferencing, white boarding, and data transfer between all kinds of objects. Look at the Popular Mechanics linked video or the videos from Jeff Han referenced by MDN. It’s amazing stuff. And I think Microsoft deserves a little credit for innovation here (hard as that is to believe). No way they copied Apple this time. They’ve been working on this for 6 years and the technology seems to be quite different from the iPhone. Jeff Han deserves a lot of the credit for pushing multitouch displays, as far as I can tell, but MS seems to deserve credit for the idea of using barcodes to allow the multitouch surface to recognize objects placed on it. This makes wireless interconnections and data transfers between objects on the surface (and presumably objects on different surfaces in different rooms), incredibly easy. Of course, this is still vaporware, but having watched Han’s work with fascination for several year’s now, I have confidence that it can work. I said last year that Apple should have purchased Han’s fledgling company and I still believe it. I would hate to see MS take the lead in this area because it’s going to take off and MS has a record of only going halfway (at best) with any technology. It’s not going to happen in the next year or so but I bet it will within the decade.
Place your bets.
After how many minutes does multi-touch become multi-punch?
“a $5,000 subsidized touchscreen coffee table, with NO Keyboard!” bwahahahaha
“With Surface, we are creating more intuitive ways for people to interact with technology,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said. “We see this as a multibillion dollar category, and we envision a time when surface computing technologies will be pervasive, from tabletops and counters to the hallway mirror. Surface is the first step in realizing that vision.”
we are creating = we negotiated one of our tricky partner deals for some tech and are using some others patents
we see this as a multibillion dollar = our no.1 priority is making money, well sales at least, XBox is in a multibillion dollar category too
Steve better get this in his hallway mirror quickly so that it can lie to him just like he does to everyone.
I just don’t see any practical use for this. I think it’s just M$ trying to “wow” people again without actually producing something that can be used. Typical.
To MacDoc,
Hmmm, yea, MS has been working on this for years. And all they have is a way to buy stuff, get ads pushed on you, etc.
Could this be neat stuff, YEP. But Microsoft just said, DRM is the ONLY way to go. IF you put your pictures on it, does it lock them up?? I went to the web site and got tons of neat FUD. “MS owns the world and you had better get on board.” “Yep, hear that before. Its due soon. Trust us. “
I do see MS buying out the professor, they have tons of money to throw around but actually making this usable to the average user, nope, and NOPE not on vista. Vista is still struggling to make video work smooth and if I try to do more than one thing at a time on my XP machine, it crashes every time.
It will be interest to see how the next few years play out. Microsoft has tons of money to waste, and waste it they will. Its in their genes. LOL
“Surface” is just a slick video at this point. Much like Cairo, I don’t expect M$ to do much with this.
Well, they might sue other companies that actually produce the same technologies.
I have to confess that I see more in this than just a MS ploy. Yes, i get it we all hate to see MS do something of value, but you all have to admit that this is the future of computer interaction. We are in the very first stages of an evolution in computing. Put aside the BSOD comments and really think about what is being delployed here.
The scary thing about MS is their developer following. If this devices comes down in price, like HDTVs have, and software developers, like C#, or VB.net guys can program to this thing – the implications are very good for MS.
Let’s hope that Apple has something similar in mind. Personally, I don’t want to just see photo’s managed on this thing. I want to play games on it. I want to see it in classrooms, I want it to replace the way we work with information.
At the very least, MS has finally brought a good idea out of its research labs. let’s hope there’s an Apple response .
Betcha MDN won’t be posting this today:
“Apple shares hit new all-time closing high – again”
Hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it.
At the meeting in Carlsbad, Gates will show his coffee table sized touch screen today. Jobs should show off his hand held touch sceen, (iPhone), today.
Seems a lot of posters are missing something important here. MS may resemble a big lumbering corporation at times, but it is (initially) aiming this at the business sector. Just like with its Office software, it is integrating itself into a market sector that will make home users dependent upon it. Surface is practical for a lot of business uses; businesses can afford the high cost of the initial technology and that will lead to more efficient and smaller applications of Surface. Imagine no more turning pointing during presentations, but the use of a small handheld device that lets a speaker manipulate his presentations by hand; I think something like that would actually make an audience feel more involved with the presentation.
While some of the ‘rehearsed press release MSNBC presentation’ of Surface was irritating, it does appear to an interesting development. Much of the written release exposes some of the usual MS overkill – using Surface to tell me where my wine came from, pics of its orchard even, and then buying tickets to wine country on impulse…give me a break. And as usual MS is missing (seemed to anyway) a main attraction for something like Surface; group interaction.
Still, as many posters have pointed out, we have to consider the underlying software behind all this – Vista/microsoft. If Sufrace is prone to the same crashes as MS software in general, it’s dead on arrival. How many customers are going to wait for a reboot?!?!?!?!
Apple’s much rumored tablet will have many of the same capabilites as Surface (or iPhone), but its targeted market is on a more personal level – the individual user. MS has engineered a device aimed solely at busineeses, while Apple goes after the individual user. Apple misses the boat again. It’s going to be interesting to see Apple’s response.
Who wants to wait hours for a table while people play with this. Will the restaurants have to double there food cost t serve half as many people?
But very interesting interface.