Microsoft Scratches the "Surface"
Last week, Microsoft introduced a new kind of product called Microsoft Surface, a tabletop computing interface that responds to touch.
It's a neat concept, to judge from the demo Microsoft provided earlier this month. The hardware itself takes the form of a glass-topped table hiding a Windows Vista computer, a DLP projector and five cameras pointing up at the ceiling. Had it included a trackball controller, a few buttons and a slot for quarters on either end, I would have expected to play Ms. Pac-Man on it.
Instead, the Microsoft reps showed off how this technology would be used by some of its first adopters--hotels, cafes, restaurants, stores and casinos--starting this fall.
Surface's interface relies on those five cameras; instead of the usual touch-screen control, they detect when a hand or finger--or anything bright enough--touches the screen. The first demonstration was of a simple photo-editing application. I could rotate a photo by placing two fingers on it and twisting my hand, then enlarge it by spreading those fingers apart. (At one point, I managed to drag a photo into a corner of the screen and couldn't pry it loose.) One of the Microsoft reps also showed how he could apply visual effects to an image by picking up a regular paintbrush, "dipping" it into some onscreen ink and moving the brush as if it were over a physical canvas.
A second demo illustrated how T-Mobile would use this software to let customers pick out phones in a store: I could pick phones out of the available inventory, then select a couple to compare with a few taps of the screen. The idea here seemed to be saving the human sales reps for more complicated questions... but I wouldn't blame T-Mobile employees for being a little suspicious of Surface.
Next, we saw a "virtual concierge" interface Harrah's Entertainment could deploy at its casino properties. We could inspect a map of the dining and nightlife opportunities at Caesar's Palace in Vegas, then tap a restaurant to make a reservation. The demo featured a scary degree of personalization; when we, as a hypothetical Caesar's regular, selected Rao's for dinner, the screen displayed the last songs we'd played on the restaurant's jukebox. Apparently, what happens in Vegas stays in Harrah's Excel file.
A mockup of a Starwood Hotels interface let us transfer songs to a Zune music player with a few swipes of the screen (that, incidentally, was the first time in months that I'd seen anybody use a Zune.) A restaurant interface let us order drinks by sight and showed off some advertising possibilities: Placing a glass of Coke on the screen caused a "getting thirsty?" message to float across the screen, which struck me as a thoroughly Cheesecake Factory-ish touch. Finally, we could split the tab by throwing two credit cards on the table, then dragging items to each card.
The last demonstration was the most fascinating. It was a puzzle game that required me to put together 16 tiles, all showing fragments of the same video clip of a sports car on a race track. I had to rotate and flip each one to the right alignment, even as the scenery constantly changed. Somehow, I solved the thing in about two and a half minutes. And I felt like I'd just experienced something out of Star Trek.
At a price of $5,000 to $10,000 each, Surface computers are in no danger of showing up in homes anytime soon. But it will be interesting to see which companies adopt this technology... and whether they use it to replace human labor or to provide some otherwise-impossible service.
By Rob Pegoraro |
June 4, 2007; 8:31 AM ET
| Category:
Gadgets
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Posted by: j henson | June 4, 2007 09:50 AM
It is about time something radical came along in UI design and application techologies. Since the birth of PC's, we have been using a mouse, monitor and keyboard, that interface is old. Time for something new. Thanks to microsoft for pushing the envelope (yes I said it :))in UI design. Throw in something better from Apple and the Unix/Linux world and we are in for some exciting times!.
Happy computing.
Posted by: another_pov | June 4, 2007 09:54 AM
I just took a look at the website demo
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
It is touchscreen on steriods :).Me likes
Posted by: another-pov | June 4, 2007 10:02 AM
This looks like a sure winner for Microsoft. It allows people with child-like computer skills to leap over the skills divide and become part of the 'system'. Surely voice input will added later. All the skills that belonged to secretaries were put into the hands of neophyte computer users that ultimately afflicted all employees that needed those services and secretaries were done away with. We became accustomed doing it ourselves since it became a condition of employment but lots of folks were left out. Now, Surface appears to include the broadest array of people with the least skills. Wont this be like the machines that artificially produce the sounds of instruments such that careers in music are threatened? Careers may be threatened by Surface because intellectual competence is. People will be displaced by machines all the more. Life becomes reduced to those telephone decision trees. We all become equivalent to unthinking video game players, don't we?
Posted by: Mac McPhillips | June 4, 2007 10:24 AM
I'm pretty sure this is the interface the iPhone uses, suitably scaled up.
Actually, the iPhone uses a scaled down version. I saw a demo of this online somewhere a few months ago, being used with Macs.
Posted by: wiredog | June 4, 2007 10:27 AM
One video interview/demo of Surface said that "the government" uses even larger versions of this multi-touch touchscreen technology already.
Posted by: 23112 | June 4, 2007 12:14 PM
I like how the intro on the Microsoft Surface site touts the technology as "A new way to live in the digital world" that "isn't new after all."
That seems to sum up Microsoft's product development methodology - take someone else's idea and try to market it as their own innovation.
Didn't we see this already with the iPhone? At least the iPhone can fit in my pocket!
Posted by: J Powell | June 4, 2007 01:35 PM
Microsoft has been developing this product since 2001 when the ipods started selling...get your facts right before u go on flamin others.Apple is no god.
Posted by: Me | June 5, 2007 09:32 AM
The difference between a touch screen and Surface is that Surface can read/scan i.e. Barcodes, Credit Cards, etc. etc.
A Touch Screen can only allow a user to execute an option that is presented. Surface makes this intuitive...
This is an extremely innovative new interface...
Posted by: CM | June 5, 2007 11:14 AM
The difference between a touch screen and Surface is that Surface can read/scan i.e. Barcodes, Credit Cards, etc. etc.
A Touch Screen can only allow a user to execute an option that is presented. Surface makes this intuitive...
This is an extremely innovative new interface...
Posted by: CM | June 5, 2007 11:14 AM
The difference between the Surface and a touch screen technology like the iPhone uses is that the latter allows for only one point of contact (i.e. finger) in order to manipulate the UI. The Surface can handle dozens of points of contact, so not only can you use all of your digits to manipulate the UI, but so can another person on the other side of the table.
Posted by: JD | June 5, 2007 01:08 PM
I like it very much. Lower the price soon.
Posted by: Matthew Dumas | June 5, 2007 09:46 PM
Does anybody know if the iPhone can handle TV. I mean it can do everything else you need. but the latest craze on cell phones right now is live TV. I'm wondering, can it work with slingbox? And can I go to ESPN and watch video content? If it can then they have a sale!
Posted by: Brian G. | June 6, 2007 05:03 PM
Yawn, Microsoft and Google were pushing mobility. Why would Microsoft have the consumer sit around their PC coffee table?
Does someone else own the connection between the mobile device and the physical world to get instant information?
With a web enabled mobile device and Qode, a consumer / web user could click on a, 1D, 2D, UPC, QR, slogan, logo, trademark, keyword, RFID, etc. and get price comparison, location, watch a preview of a movie, get a schedule, get a coupon, click on link of a short story (like the WSJ) that goes to the whole story, concert tickets, sent instantly back to me on my mobile device.
So how innovative is Microsoft and their new Surface PC table?
Qode, a mobile platform, offers one click to content.
Check out Mobile Code Consortium, MC2.
Check out www.qode.com.
Best of all I am mobile.
Who will be the first to uncover the real story?
Posted by: swampthing | June 6, 2007 10:45 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
Am I missing something really important here? How is this interface significantly different from a touch-screen monitor? What is the point? You talk about Palm being idea deplete, I think Microsoft is well on the way there as well. They seem to be attempting to utilize Apple and other companies' elegant and sensible design concepts but have no idea how to apply them to product. I would mourn the demise of Palm, unfortunately, at this point I wouldn't bat an eye at the loss of Microsoft.