Microsoft Surface
Everyone who knows me knows I have little love for Microsoft. In general, their products are low quality, poorly designed, crammed with useless features, overpriced and bent on preserving their monopoly status. Well, today I’m forced to rethink my image of Microsoft.
Surface is a table-top multi-touch computer. Now, that’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before, on YouTube videos and science fiction movies. We all knew it was coming. What is really refreshing to see with Microsoft’s version is the interface. It’s clean, it’s smart, and it’s obvious. They did a really, really good job. I am, quite honestly, floored that this coming from the same people who brought us Office. Congrats, Microsoft — good work! I really hope this technology takes off — it really will revolutionize a lot of the everyday aspects of our life.
Now if we find out that once it comes out that it’s also secure and uses open protocols and standards, I’ll really be blown away.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:04 pm
it’s cool, but i’d rather worry about the patents microsoft might hold on this.
i think this would be the open or diy version. i think it’s mostly free.
http://mtg.upf.es/reactable/?software
June 1st, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Sorry to hear that, i really don’t think is a good idea to let Microsoft to monopolize everything with this old idea from startrek and i think this is another thing that is going to delate the humanity development.
This makes me really Sad, I hope the mankind make a stand against them and don’t get blind by this Magical Screen as they call it.
June 2nd, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that Microsoft monopolize anything. Nor that other companies not enter this space. I’m just very impressed that Microsoft was able to pull of this elegant of a design. It’s very atypical of them. One of the other aspects that really makes me happy about Surface is that it seems to be using a lot of the same gestures as the iPhone (and other tabletop computing platforms). This means that a de-facto standard is being established for what these gestures mean — which is a very good thing from the perspective of an interface designer working in this space, as it allows people to become familiar with a system and apply that knowledge somewhere else (preferably on an open version of this device).