“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.
wait a few weeks? o don’t make me more excited for wwdc!! i’m wetting my pants here!!
Apple is doing a lot more with it!
multi-touch imacs???
Is it just me or does this “new” Microsoft technology seem like something out of the 1980s? It has to have FIVE projectors to work?!
I don’t know, ladies and gents. Not many people really need a cell phone, but everybody is just a’salivatin’ for a tabletop PC in the living room! This Microsloth thing is gonna be HUGE!
[Wink, Wink]
This shit is disgusting. Everybody on these blogs ejaculating over a concept car.
These are the same people complaining that they couldn’t go without a physical keyboard when Steve Jobs said it was dead in January.
Where’s the FUD about fingerprints and how it’s worthless if you break the screen?
When I was in California about a year ago I walked into a music store in the mall (maybe Specs?) and they had on the floor a silver screen (kinda like a movie screen) that we could step on.
There was a projection on that screen of some balls. The projector was in the ceiling of the store. If you kicked on of the balls, it would bounce like crazy against the “walls” of the screen as well as the other balls.
The gadget was very cool.
Anyone know the name of the company that makes it?
Anyway, what Microsoft is touting here sounds like a more advanced (or maybe its are ripoff) of this same thing.
My MBP uses multi-touch on the trackpad and I love it.
Yeah M$’s stuff that the main stream media was all a gush today uses projectors and cameras beneath a translucent flat surface and what not, but it still uses Windows!
Their stuff is never any good anyway. Bill Gates is the Devil! Zune sucks, Windows is crap!!
I multi-touch myself all the time. If I had to rely on Microsoft, I’d blue screen right before orgasm.
Running those graphics, cameras, projectors etc must be taking about 10 Wintels and 10’s of gigabytes of memory to prop up Vista.
I doubt even then it’s reliable. I wouldn’t connect my iPhone to it that’s for sure!
[smartass alert]
It reminds me of those touch-sensor control panels in Star Trek: TNG. No wonder they had to separate the ship and abandon the thing so often.
I guess the BSOD wasn’t so easily seen on the screen, since blue screens become transparent on the film.
That’s enough MultiGirl…
It’s already in leopard. This is obvious.
Lights and Cameras? corny.
Whatever. Microsoft can barely get Vista to work. And that’s JUST the software.
Now we are talking living room furniture. I don’t see Microsoft pulling this off anytime soon. Software, cameras, furniture, mirrors. Oh and LOTS of smoke.
So, maybe Microsloth knows what is coming and in Leopard and is putting out this vapor product to steal the news and hope the dummies react to real Apple products with, “Oh Microsloth has a whole table like that at casinos. Well, they will be coming out with it.”
Keep them confused and offer a “standard” application. Back in the dark ages they used to say, “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM products.” Same idea here. Cover anything new and innovative with promises. Play up how confusing and dangerous it all is. Sell them expensive mediocrity.
I guess this means the world will some day experience the Blue Surface Of Death. Such riches, the future holds.
Infomercials:
What you describe sounds like something a company called Reactrix provided. Not sure if its the same, but here’s a link for you.
http://reactrix.com/
Microsoft marketing folks come up with the most creative names–Microsoft Surface?!?
My kid steps on the moving balls, etc. at the Mall and has for several years now. The projector is on the ceiling, though. Could M$ get us any more excited with their scenerio of a wine selection list with the picture of the orchard it came from?? That is a real revolutionary genius idea, Ballmer.
Take a 30″ Apple Cinema Display with multi-touch and lay it flat on a table – surface computing!
It’s like those projectors at the mall. It projects onto the floor, say, a picture of balls and when you step on one it jets around the perimeter of the projected image and reacts like you kicked a real ball, LAME.
MS over hypes it’s products, Apple shows you what it’s products can do and the product itself excites people. It turn the media can’t stop talking about such products. 3 months of free publicity, wait until people get their hands on it, it’ll be a feeding frenzy.
@MulitiGirl
LMAO! 😀
If you read the product offerings or view the demonstrations you may notice that some of the ‘cooler’ features like ‘painting’ on the surface, ‘drink’ identification at the bar, and probably the cell phones and cameras have an additional hardware requirement. Those devices have to be outfitted with RFID chips and possibly other electronics in order to work with the ‘surface’ device.
While it would be interesting to see information about the drink I just ordered, it will put an extra burden the staff at the hotels and restaurants for them to tag each of the meals and/or drinks. There are also additional hardware requirements to tag these items as well as a requirement for the hotel/restaurant to imbed RFID chips in their plates and glasses.
Anyone who tells you that this system will cost 5 to 10K is not giving you the full story. There will be other devices required to support the ‘surface’ technology as well as a good deal of additional effort on the part of the wait staff to implement it properly. I can just hear the complaints now… I ordered the Won Ton Soup but the table is telling me that I am eating cheese cake!
I wonder if the table will also read the RFID chips on your credit cards and just automatically start draining your accounts?
Isn’t this a version of some research work we saw posted last year on YouTube?
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….
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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.
Okay, I have to admit, I actually thought this might be cool. I watched some of the demos and thought that it was an interactive/reactive touch sensitive surface. Now I am hearing about projectors and cameras? What the Hell? Guess I’ll have to do some reading.
You should’ve seen Shepard Smith of Fox News drooling over this MS “Surface” just now. It was sickening.
“Forget everything you know about computing. Microsoft has just thrown out the keyboard and mice altogether, and replaced it with a brand new technology they’re calling the ‘surface’. And you’ve never seen anything like it.”
I wanted to puke. He was especially impressed with the part that showed a person resizing a photo “interactively” with two hands(!) by just dragging the corners closer together of further apart.
Uh, yup, never seen anything like that at all. Unless you saw the Steve Jobs keynote over four months ago – you’ve never seen anything like it.
Man, all MS has to do is drop a turd and so many people start going on and on in breathless amazement. Funny, they were never interested in this technology when it was being demoed by that Asian dude that’s been working on this stuff for years now.
The liklehood the microsoft will really launch a product like this (and me stable and working) is just as likely for me or anyone to own a trained monkey to wipe their butt and that monkey to have come from ones butt..Somewhat neat idea..dated technology..like one of those first generation vcrs that came out in the early eighties..in fact i think that what is being demonstrated is the box from my old vcr from the eighties I gave to goodwill..Glad Microsoft found a good use for it…dam……i just read the system crashed on that product and they cant show it on tv anymore today…now if my monkey woudll hurry up and get back her and finish wiping!
This product will be used in SOME limited commercial applications in it’s present form. They’ve already inked deals with Sheraton Hotels…But it’s mostly a technology prototype since it uses FIVE (count em) FIVE projectors.
At a cost of $10,000 it brings to mind Ballmer’s comments about the iPhone. It’s the most expensive personal (impersonal?) computer in the world. Especially in it’s stock form. What about upgrades, graphics cards, bigger hard drives, more RAM, can you plug anything into it or is it ONLY wireless?
Like I said..it’s meant only to garner press attention.
It’s Microsoft’s lame imitation of Steve unveiling the iPhone 6 months in advance. They KNOW Leopard is a game changer…as is the iPhone…they had to do something….Too bad it’s with a product only big business can afford and only a few of THEM will buy.
Never gotten off on Vista. Definitely not satisfying! Now OS X is a gift that keeps on giving!
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Dude, R2 is right on. I completely think that Apple’s going to come up with something much better… Maybe not now, but far away, apple is going to make a tabletop computer. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride, because Microsoft’s products suck!!! Their will be no comparison when Apple’s product comes…