“AT&T will soon be the first company to use Microsoft’s touch-enabled, tabletop Surface computers as customer-service kiosks in stores,” Elizabeth Montalbano reports for IDG News Service.
“The carrier said Wednesday that beginning April 17, Microsoft Surface computers will be set up in select retail locations in New York, Atlanta, San Antonio, and San Francisco,” Montalbano reports.
“AT&T plans to use Microsoft Surface computers to provide information to customers about mobile devices and other products being sold in its retail outlets… Customers also can view interactive coverage maps and use touch and hand movements to move and work with the maps to determine the coverage areas for their wireless service,” Montalbano reports.
“Depending on the success of the deployments in the first four cities, AT&T will decide where it will install them in other cities and markets,” Montalbano reports.
Full article here.
Exactly how much Microsoft is bribing AT&T to do this in four whole cities is unknown, but the sum would probably boggle the mind even more than the concept of installing 400-pound Big Ass Tables to do a tiny subset of what AT&T staff has been able to do for nearly a year simply by reaching into their pockets and pulling out their 4.8-ounce Apple iPhones.
So what happens when you put an iPhone on top of one of these things, besides evoking the strange mental image of Albert Einstein perched atop a brain-damaged mastodon?
Microsoft’s Big Ass Table:
Direct link via YouTube here.
[UPDATE: 6:39pm EDT: Changed headline from “stores” to “cities.”]
Albert Einstein perched atop a brain-damaged mastodon
I’m dying. That was too funny. LOL
How about Eva Longoria perched on Madea from “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.”
Is that accompanying photo what the Big Ass Table will actually look like?!
Paper notes and signs attached to the sides?!
Back-wrenching ergonomics of leaning across the substructure just to see the Big Ass Table’s display?!
Wow, Jonathon Ives must be quaking in his Alfred Sargents!
Hey, come onnnnn . . . I am definitely a customer for this sort of thing.
I mean, I have a real weakness for overpriced, underpowered things with big asses . . . that also suck!
Yeh-heh-heh-hehessssss . . .
Metaphorically, a MSFT fit: Overdone and ponderous.
Can I order one with casters, so I can bring it with me wherever I go?
Is that a gigantic iphone on top of the table?
It’s just what the MS organization expects from its dependents – bend over that table and take it! And say thank you…
Well, at 400-pounds, it won’t be dangerous in an earthquake so long as it’s on the ground floor so that’s Rob Enderle’s approval in the bag.
OK, let me get this straight:
“AT&T;plans to use Microsoft Surface computers to provide information to customers about mobile devices and other products being sold in its retail outlets…”
Ooooooook, sooooooo…. AT&T;will use Microsofts BAT (Big Ass Table) to provide information to customers about the iPhone?
That’s funny, right there!
Make that “four Big Ass whole stores…”
can’t wait to carve my initials in it.
This makes no sense. Why a table? It there an advantage to bending over and touching the thing. Why not an LCD screen on the wall. It’s just wierd. I wonder how much M$ is paying to get them installed. Maybe they are free as a “demonstration project.”
i cant wait to see the BSD on one of these in an ATT store. gonna be an epic photo-opp for the oh so ‘snappy’ iphone camera 😀
For someone as picky as MDN with the parsing of other peoples words (generally only those who don’t cheerlead for Apple), the title of the article is completely misleading. 4 CITIES, not 4 STORES.
Mentioned this 6 months ago to you fanbois, keep sticking your fingers in your ears and denying what others have. Just like a good lemming you are.
Man you do not learn from history, der Fuerher Jobs kept this attitude up in the 80’s and lost to Microsoft, and now you see the same again. Give up on the “we are better than you” and realize 90% of us dont really care.
People want want results, and Apple is giving them what 4 Products? Get real.
Does this mean that ATT will be using the MS_BAT to kiosk sell the iPhone? LOL… wait… ROTFL… wait–no there is not a adequate lol!
@ChrisM…
Yup, 4 cities. A total of 12 stores. So yes, MDN is wrong but the number is still pretty small. I wanted to say insignificant, but I really think this is a good application of the BAT. Anything to keep the sales droids away from the customer is a good thing in my book.
@Crash,
Tell ’em boy. In a few short months, Microsoft has managed to grab 100% share of table computing! And that’s in the US as well as in the world. If Apple keeps up that attitude, they might lose the market for chair computers to Microsoft as well. Then the ceiling computing and so on.
“For someone as picky as MDN with the parsing of other peoples words (generally only those who don’t cheerlead for Apple), the title of the article is completely misleading. 4 CITIES, not 4 STORES.”
Ditto, Microsoft really doesn’t need any special help looking bad, just give us the facts.
They are made by keebler elves.
Give it a few more days for that MS Big Ass to grow, and you’ll need half the continent to hold that gelatinous mounds of crap.
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I wander what will happen when 4-6 customers try to use it at the same time from diff sides?
Anyone in those four “lucky” cities with the cam? That would be awesome prank video, 4 guys fighting over the table’s desktop.
I agree crash. MS will have wrapped up the entire “big assed and useless” computing niche. Apple needs to make a giant 90 inch screen version of the iPhone. Maybe it will feature a multiuser (needed to touch two points at once) interface. Be just like that part in Big
Posted from my tiny ass iPhone.
I gotta say that the “Big Ass Table” video is one of my very favorite parodies of Microsoft crap. It does a brilliant job of showing why this is such a stupendously idiotic idea.
How does Microsoft stay in business?