“A group of academics will be among the first people outside Microsoft to see Sphere, a spherical surface computer developed by Microsoft Research,” Ina Fried reports or CNET News.
MacDailyNews Take: If this were any other company, we’d swear this was a joke, but this is what happens when “Microsoft Research” strays from its primary focus: 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014.
Fried continues, “The sphere-shaped, multitouch computer is similar to the tabletop Surface computer that Microsoft announced last year… This incarnation, however, remains a project within Microsoft Research and the company has no current plans to bring it to market.”
MacDailyNews Take: We can’t wait for Microsoft’s Big Ass Toilet Seat. Now that would sell – to women (guys would leave it up all the time). If it offered the gals some haptics, the lines would stretch for miles.
Fried continues, “Bill Gates has talked about a vision for surface computing that stretches far beyond the high-end commercial applications of Surface and in several years’ time would have many, many of today’s surfaces becoming computerized, both at home and at work.”
MacDailyNews Take: Because he’s such a visionary (dripping with sarcasm).
Full article here.
Todd Bishop reports for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “Sphere will be shown Tuesday at the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit alongside other projects from Microsoft and university researchers.”
Video: Microsoft’s Big Ass Ball:
Direct link to video here.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers too numerous to mention for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Steven P. Jobs on a popsicle stick! After they reverse themselves and bring it to market, Microsoft is going to corner the entire novelty world globe market which is worth… wait for it… ONE MILLLLLION DOLLARS!
At this rate, “Vanquishing the Borg” is going to be easier than we thought.
Go, Ballmer, Go! Shovel that filthy lucre into your giant cash furnace, you sweaty SOB!
[Originally posted at 1:03pm EDT. Updated: 3:31pm EDT with new photo illustration and some additional “Takes.]
HAHAHA! What a fantastic picture to start off this article… One of your best, MDN
Man, that was lame.
This is the Big Ass Table shaped so you do not have to lean over it, showing your crack to the world. It is still pretty impractical and expensive. Its form factor limits rather than liberating the technology.
M$ is still growing. They added 12,200 employees in 2007 alone. They are building a new campus in Redmond and taking over office tower space in Seattle. More and more people are working there. My question is, on what are the working? Are there new innovative products coming out. Nope. Haven’t seen any for a very long; well never really. Unless you count figuring out how to copy what already exists.
This is the company that took CPM and made it their operating system. Took Word Star and made it Word. They took VisiCalc and made Excell. They took MacIntosh and made it Windows. They took Playstation and made it Xbox. They took iPod and made it Zune. Still waiting for some innovation here.
Better Title:
Microsoft Prepares Death Star 1.0
Consider this: all Microsoft has to do now is figure out a way of projecting images onto non-solid surfaces (eg. thin air) and you’ve got the rough basis for the holographic projection device that animates Rimmer and other holograms in the Red Dwarf series.
@The Great Apple Fanboy Massacre
No I dont walk around with a Cinema display you dickweed. Thats a retarded question, I cant get a power cord long enough.
Does the Sphere of Turd run on Vista or Bob?
When you don’t have big balls you try to create them and pretend they are yours.
Cheers!
whatever happened to Gates’ vision of the Big Ass House?
Perfect gift for the Type A asshole who has everything:
“Hey guys. Come into my living room and check out my new balls.”
This just in: Microsoft employees hired to demo the Sphere are known affectionately by their work mates as “Sphere Queers.”
Okay last one. Where is Ampar when you need him?
“You know only two things come from Redmond. Spheres and Queers.”
@therepguy: noooo, whats next is the amoeba…
Big ass toilet seat would actually be kinda funny. Each time one sits, the toilet seat changes colors.
Even funnier if it were on Jackass with the T*rd on the toilet seat stunt.LOL
Merlin is line for one.
They’re pricy because they only come in pairs.
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Hang a pair from the ceiling of a Bob’s restaurant so the customers can play with Bob’s big greasy balls while eating a Bob’s Big Boy…
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There’ll be a scaled-down version that will be sold as ben-wa balls. It will display images of Paris, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Moscow, etc, all while doing… what a ben-wa ball does… “Let your junk see the world without ever leaving the comfort of your own bedroom!”
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Well this product is aboviously a complete PoS.
However, it did get me thinking. It would be cool if some one made a sphear like this that was clear and filled with some kinda gas or liquid that you could project holograms onto. Then you could actually see three dimentional objects and such.You could even display 2D images the way this thing does.
Of course this would stilll be a niche product but far more useful then this stupid thing.
I used to think that one day this monolith of a company would see the danger, wake up and use its entrenched power to simply stamp out Apple’s (and indeed others) undoubted technical and innovative superiority. I now realise that this company truly doesn’t have any idea what it should do to compete let alone extinguish opposition any more and this ‘demonstration’ simply confirms the inevitability of their eventual demise in my mind.
The technology on show here could easily have been produced ten years ago, the difference is that no one then would have been desperate enough, or have enough useless time on their hands to have bothered. Could you just see the uneveness in the movement when he touches it, so perhaps it is a demonstration from ten years ago escaped from the archives.
One can’t fail to feel the embarassment of the presenter as he tries his best to big up a purpose for this junk. One moment he is saying that it offers open interaction between a group of people then totally contradicts himself by claiming it offers privacy form others. No irony then in suggesting implicitly that while the pictures on the sphere can move the people themselves must be totally static. Hey is this Microsoft’s alternative to legs or a craning neck perhaps? Or maybe they just intend to own the planetarium market, you know those places that have been using similar technology for decades without this blue sphere of death.
This… this… this is almost… too… funny… for… words!
I suppose MS had that all important Gypsy Fortune Teller market in mind when they came up with it.
“Loook into mzy Big Ass Ball and zeeee your futuure – it… it zeems you vill incounter a blue szreen, and be control alt deleted!”
Joking aside, what were MS thinking? Has a giant glass ball honestly got the potential to replace, say, the PC? It doesn’t seem useful as an information kiosk…
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ The Great Apple Fanboy Massacre
“Apple did not invent multi-touch, idiot. Research these things before your start spewing nonsense.”
Maybe you should learn to read first. Please show us where karrde97 claimed that Apple invented Multi-touch.
The comment was:
“Didn’t Apple patent the hell out of it?”
Which is true. You buffoon.
Steve Jobs=Cube
Ballmer=Ball
I think they should mount the Sphere on a spring, like a bobble head doll. Or like Steve Ballmer; take your pick.
“Which is true. You buffoon.”
That pretty much put an end to his foolishness.
I didn’t read all of the comments to see if this was mentioned… but if it crashed you would get a blue ball of death instead of a blue screen of death! LOL
MDN,
Please run that Old Spice ad nonstop. Zowy!!!