iPhone THIS, Baby - Microsoft Surface

[NoZed Avenger]

Microsoft has never particularly impressed me , except in regards to their size.


But this is intriguing:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html

One of Gattis's consumer pain points is the frustrating mess of cables, drivers and protocols that people must use to link their peripheral devices to their personal computers. Surface has no cables or external USB ports for plugging in peripherals. For that matter, it has no keyboard, no mouse, no trackball, no obvious point of interaction except its screen.

Gattis took out a digital camera and placed it on the Surface. Instantly, digital pictures spilled out onto the tabletop. As Gattis touched and dragged each picture, it followed his fingers around the screen. Using two fingers, he pulled the corners of a photo and stretched it to a new size. Then, Gattis put a cellphone on the surface and dragged several photos to it — just like that, the pictures uploaded to the phone. It was like a magic trick. He was dragging and dropping virtual content to physical objects.

[Phil]

Microsoft has never particularly impressed me , except in regards to their size. . . .

So size does matter?

[Starthinker]

Yeah, but does it come with Solitaire?

[opqdan]

I don't know if the article lists it, but the page for Surface is http://www.microsoft.com/surface

For a long time there has been interest in desktops where the icons/whatever iteract as real life objects. You could scatter a bunch of phots onto the desktop and then drag them all over the place, rearrange etc as if they actually existed in meatspace. The limiting factor in all of these designs was that they were developped so that the user needed to use a mouse. I firmly believe that out current way of using a desktop (with the addition of radial menus) is the best that we can get with a point and click interface. This Surface is pretty awesome though. I love that you can just set devices on it and it would know what they are, and in the case of something like a camera, setting it down automatically tosses its photos across the desktop.

I am super excited about this type of technology, a major paradigm shift in the way that technology is used in the home. I hope that MSFT can do a good job in making something like this affordable enough that it can become popular enough to make some major changes.

[Ratatoskr]

Is this the same technology that Jeff Han is working on?

You can see his great presentation at TED:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65

[NoZed Avenger]

So size does matter?


I certainly hope so.

No one loves me for my smartses.

[Phil]

I certainly hope so.

No one loves me for my smartses.

I love you just because you're you.

[aerosolben]

Is this the same technology that Jeff Han is working on?

You can see his great presentation at TED:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65
Some more in-depth information on both in the Popular Mechanics article on Microsoft Surface (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html).

It's the same conceptual space (multi-touch surfaces, which has been around for a long time), but it isn't clear to me if these are fully independent or if there has been some level of interaction. Despite similarities, I don't think it's unbelievable for them to be fully independent, since a lot of the foundational ideas didn't originate with them. The real innovation here is in how the surface is productized - Microsoft's leveraging of the table concept to interact with items placed on the surface strikes me as a great "user experience" innovation.

On a separate note, as I work for Microsoft, I've had the privilege of interacting with several prototypes (though not the most recent ones), and it is quite cool.

[Azure]

Is this the same technology that Jeff Han is working on?

You can see his great presentation at TED:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65

I hope he has a patent, dammit...or Microsoft is going to cry 'patent bitch, patent' 3 years down the road when this technology is up and running, away.

;)

[geni]

So going by the opening decription computers are going to be naturaly messy without the help of the people useing them?

[MortFurd]

As a "user experience" the table concept is a usability disaster.

It great for placing things on, but actually doing any work with the screen parallel to the floor is not going to happen.

Either the table is your sole means of interacting with the computer, in which case you'll be in loads of pain if you have to spend all dau everyday bent over the thing, or it'll be an addition to your regular keyboard, mouse, and monitor - and where are you going to park the table?

Cool technology (multi touch screens) combined with half baked crap user interface.

[aerosolben]

As a "user experience" the table concept is a usability disaster.

It great for placing things on, but actually doing any work with the screen parallel to the floor is not going to happen.

Either the table is your sole means of interacting with the computer, in which case you'll be in loads of pain if you have to spend all dau everyday bent over the thing, or it'll be an addition to your regular keyboard, mouse, and monitor - and where are you going to park the table?

Cool technology (multi touch screens) combined with half baked crap user interface.
First, I suggest you actually read the article to discover why your usability evaluation is irrelevant to the actual planned uses of the device.

Second, even if spending all day hunched over the device becomes reality, there's a simple and easy solution that artists and architects (people who spend their days hunched over tables) discovered hundred of years ago. Tilt it.

[ShowerComic]

Is this the same technology that Jeff Han is working on?

You can see his great presentation at TED:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65

It's similar. But Jeff Han has a different company.

[strathmeyer]

This really isn't anything new. The technology uses rear projection and a camera to film where you're touching, which is why it's a table and not something smaller. This is why all the demos are in dark rooms. Microsoft hasn't really done anything innovative, just put flashing lights on something ten years old that they don't plan on improving on and have no functional plans for.

Good luck tiltin' that table, aerosolben.

[webfusion]

As a "user experience" the table concept is a usability disaster.

It great for placing things on, but actually doing any work with the screen parallel to the floor is not going to happen.

Either the table is your sole means of interacting with the computer, in which case you'll be in loads of pain if you have to spend all dau everyday bent over the thing, or it'll be an addition to your regular keyboard, mouse, and monitor - and where are you going to park the table?

Cool technology (multi touch screens) combined with half baked crap user interface.


Apparently, you're not the only one who forsees major user interface problems --

http://i14.tinypic.com/2ur1h6t.gif


;)