Microsoft Surface - oooooohh shiny!!!

[Big Gulp]

Everything we saw done using Microsoft Surface in that video could be done faster and cheaper with a conventional interface.

And nobody is going to buy a coffee table for ten grand just because it can display photographs and play music.

You're neglecting the fact that this would be very useful for a large group of people; CAD users, graphic artsists, etc.

Sure it's a niche audience, but Adobe has made a shitload of money servicing that niche.  Likewise, something like the Wacom Cintiq would be damned useful to someone like me and a lot of other people.  The only reason I don't have one is that I don't have the $2500 to buy it, but would I love one?  Shit yeah.

I don't see how this technology would be any different.

[Morat20]

You're neglecting the fact that this would be very useful for a large group of people; CAD users, graphic artsists, etc.

Sure it's a niche audience, but Adobe has made a shitload of money servicing that niche.  Likewise, something like the Wacom Cintiq would be damned useful to someone like me and a lot of other people.  The only reason I don't have one is that I don't have the $2500 to buy it, but would I love one?  Shit yeah.

I don't see how this technology would be any different.

I've shown this to two teachers -- tie it into a wall projector, and they drool over the concept for use in teaching. For younger kids -- toddlers, kindergarten, first few years -- let the kids get their grubby hands on it. It's much more intuitive for a kid to reach out and grab something.

Like I said -- Microsoft is thinking big. What interests me isn't so much the coffeetable thing (although I wouldn't turn one down) -- but the fact that they seem to be integrating wireless from the get-go, not just to Microsoft stuff or PC peripherals, but anything capable of sending or recieving a wireless signal. I would bet you solid money -- it seems pretty obvious from the interviews -- that Microsoft's goal here is to provide an abstract backend for integrating all your wireless devices. Surface -- from the table to the multi-touch -- is just their first-cut solution to the situation.

It makes a lot of sense -- from the focus on multi-touch (you want it to be able to handle lots of inputs, from lots of devices, people, and fingers) -- to the fact that they've gone to all the trouble to tie in cameras and cell phones. Shit like flicking bubbles and sorting photographs, that's the's flashy pointless stuff. The real core of it is device interoperability.

They're trying to provide a hardware abstraction layer and command-and-control interface for every wireless device in your life. That's why they're doing it. Multi-touch is just a GUI choice, and flicking photos around -- that's just a 'gee-whiz' factor for the kiddies.

[Trippy]

And fine, trip, replace "stylus pad" instead of 'touch screen.' 

Stylus pad? Are you talking like a pen notebook? Mice are still better, though styli are in many ways more intuitive to use initially. Styli have an "acquisition" problem. When you let go of a mouse it stays where you put it. With a stylus you have to put it down somewhere but picking it back up and holding it in a pointing or writing position takes longer than reaching for a mouse. Or if you hold it between your fingers somehow when you aren't using it it's awkward to type and typing is much much faster than writing by hand. On my DS I usually "hold" it in my mouth if its a game that uses both the stylus and the buttons since that's faster than pulling it in and out of its slot constantly but that's still very awkward. The stylus has other issues as well like being forced into 1-to-1 tracking where the mouse can take advantage of acceleration to move an object farther faster.

[Venkman]

People think styli are good because pencils have been around forever. Handwriting itself is actually pretty inefficient. I type almost as fast as I talk though, and that's saying something. Basically, the only time typing doesn't work for me is when the UI requires that same keyboard, or typing at all. I keep thinking of building an outsized trackball so I could drive my character with my feet :)

They're trying to provide a hardware abstraction layer and command-and-control interface for every wireless device in your life. That's why they're doing it. Multi-touch is just a GUI choice, and flicking photos around -- that's just a 'gee-whiz' factor for the kiddies.

It's all of that and your coffee table. This is 5, 10 years out thinking, if you're eventually delivering a consumer proposition. But it's coming. Maybe it won't be as a table, but it will be as some countertop display, a fridge thing, all the areas you'd like to use something like this but which are currently dominated by different industries with different margins and different ways of measuring success. No normal middle class person would pay an extra $1,000 to have this on their fridge, for example.

Microsoft is by no means the only one thinking this way. As I said earlier, Philips and Mitsubishi are doing a lot here too. However, because Microsoft has a lot of different points of contact with a lot of different consumers and therefore a lot of different UI experiences, they are best poised to deliver a solution that can work for a lot of different consumers. That's the key. You don't throw this thing at Circuit City and hope for the best. You create the need first.

[Morat20]

Microsoft is by no means the only one thinking this way. As I said earlier, Philips and Mitsubishi are doing a lot here too. However, because Microsoft has a lot of different points of contact with a lot of different consumers and therefore a lot of different UI experiences, they are best poised to deliver a solution that can work for a lot of different consumers. That's the key. You don't throw this thing at Circuit City and hope for the best. You create the need first.

That's why they're marketing it first to Casinos and certain resteraunts -- get people used to it, to playing with it. Five years down the line, when prices have come down, the early adopters will be familiar with it

And they're betting that proliferation of wireless devices will continue. I really see this as Microsoft's view of the long-term. It'll be interesting to see if Apple can win this -- the iEverything versus the Microsoft Hub.

I'd put the money on Microsoft, simply because I suspect their approach will simply engulf anything Apple does. You'd have your iEverything, and your nifty table that allows you to set it down and toss stuff back and forth between yours and a friends, and control your TV, and setup your TiVo, etc, etc, etc.

[squirrel]

Microsoft is by no means the only one thinking this way. As I said earlier, Philips and Mitsubishi are doing a lot here too. However, because Microsoft has a lot of different points of contact with a lot of different consumers and therefore a lot of different UI experiences, they are best poised to deliver a solution that can work for a lot of different consumers. That's the key. You don't throw this thing at Circuit City and hope for the best. You create the need first.

That's why they're marketing it first to Casinos and certain resteraunts -- get people used to it, to playing with it. Five years down the line, when prices have come down, the early adopters will be familiar with it

And they're betting that proliferation of wireless devices will continue. I really see this as Microsoft's view of the long-term. It'll be interesting to see if Apple can win this -- the iEverything versus the Microsoft Hub.

I'd put the money on Microsoft, simply because I suspect their approach will simply engulf anything Apple does. You'd have your iEverything, and your nifty table that allows you to set it down and toss stuff back and forth between yours and a friends, and control your TV, and setup your TiVo, etc, etc, etc.

As an Apple fan I'd agree provided Microsoft gets there before two things happen:

1.) Apple brands and makes a commodity of it - not likely to happen in the commercial environment given Microsofts timetable
2.) Microsoft doesn't let the media companies take DRM to an extreme. I laughed at the demo video of two women swapping music - if that thing's anything like Vista that's not happening. Microsoft needs to reassert the technologies and consumers right in the handling of media.

But yeah, Apple will be hard pressed to be the iCool provider of this technology in the same timeframe unless MS fucks it up badly.

[Morat20]

As an Apple fan I'd agree provided Microsoft gets there before two things happen:

1.) Apple brands and makes a commodity of it - not likely to happen in the commercial environment given Microsofts timetable
2.) Microsoft doesn't let the media companies take DRM to an extreme. I laughed at the demo video of two women swapping music - if that thing's anything like Vista that's not happening. Microsoft needs to reassert the technologies and consumers right in the handling of media.

But yeah, Apple will be hard pressed to be the iCool provider of this technology in the same timeframe unless MS fucks it up badly.

Apple seems to have created an interesting niche for itself -- they seem to have a lock on intuitive hand-held devices. The iPod -- and from the looks of it, the iPhone -- squeeze in a huge amount of functionality in very simple interfaces. (Others have managed it, but Apple seems to get there first and get it right). Microsoft, on the other hand, leans towards the big, super-powerful, bulky side of things.

They're trying to branch out, but in the end -- Microsoft seems to think they'll make a lot more money being the backend EVERYONE uses rather than trying to make serious roads into grabbing market share for the front-end devices.

Microsoft has so much freakin' money that they can't help but keep trying to penetrate the MP3 market, the Console Market, the games market.....

I agree with you on DRM, but I suspect Apple's new DRM-free stuff might end up finally breaking that from the other direction.

Frankly, I think the movie and music industries need to step back from DRM and realize the money is shifting to on-demand, and will continue to do so as bandwidth grows to support it. I get my DVDs from Netflix, but it's going to be a hellava lot more convienent when I can simply log on, grab the movie I want to watch, and stream it directly to my TV. Probably using my Magic Microsoft Coffee table. :)

(Tangentially: WHY do the cable company DVRs suck so badly? Ignoring their shitty hardware, they act like they're about five generations behind TiVo. Power flickers fuck them up seriously, their programming is shitty, their GUI is shitty -- same goes for their goddamn on-Demand services, which require navigating the slowest and shittiest-laid out menu in all the fucking land. Why do they suck so hard?)

[Big Gulp]

Apple seems to have created an interesting niche for itself -- they seem to have a lock on intuitive hand-held devices. The iPod -- and from the looks of it, the iPhone -- squeeze in a huge amount of functionality in very simple interfaces. (Others have managed it, but Apple seems to get there first and get it right). Microsoft, on the other hand, leans towards the big, super-powerful, bulky side of things.

That's one of the reasons I can't stand Apple; their focus on "consumer" items.  God forbid you allow any expandability into your line up or actually allow your users any real choice, That is Not the Apple Way.  They simply don't want you to actually use your computer the way you want, and in ways they haven't forseen.  Or if you do have that need they'll make you pay through the nose for it (the MacPro lineup).  This is boutique computing at it's worst.

Fuck Apple and fuck Steve Jobs in his pretentious little douchebag turtleneck.  I just wake up every morning thanking God he didn't have the business acumen of Gates when it mattered.

[Abagadro]

If you gave every business in the world today a bunch of computers with uber touchscreen/voice/3D/whatever technology, about 99.9% of them would shove them into the closet untouched.  They'd be too smart to waste time and money retraining all their employees to use completely unfamiliar interfaces that aren't going to increase productivity one bit.

Have you ever worked in corporate America? This is what they spend half their time doing. Constantly training people on stuff to try to increase productivity, regardless of whether it makes any sense. Probably paid a consultant 100k to tell them to do it too.

[Morat20]

Have you ever worked in corporate America? This is what they spend half their time doing. Constantly training people on stuff to try to increase productivity, regardless of whether it makes any sense. Probably paid a consultant 100k to tell them to do it too.

At least you're not stuck going to a damn "time managment seminar" because your boss's boss (who signs off on your performance review) can't tell the goddamn difference between "Difficulties estimating development time for projects" and "Inability to manage time".

No kidding. I'm not the only one (we use evolutionary development cycles, and for our smaller projects our milestone timelines we establish ourselves based on experience with the relevent module), and our version of "difficulty estimating time" is "Generally off by about 15% one way or the other, generally are too pessimistic". So we're alll going to learn about how if you have a jar, and a bunch of big rocks and medium rocks and sand, to put in the big rocks first.

Thank fucking God. That'll help me to better estimate how long it'll take to code in a customer-requested feature that I know will be respecced by said customer at least 4 times during the process. Maybe I'll use the big rock to brain the customer.

[Simond]

At least that comment had a specific date when it became obsolete after which it became "Amiga sucks, my Atari rules you all. Jack Tramiel for president" :-D

That specific date being 'the twelfth of Never', yes?
(Never give in, never surrender!)


So if MS makes this take hold...does that mean that the Trauma Centre games will be ported to the PC? Or that Kirby Canvus whatnot? :)

[DarkSign]

This means the Scientology has officially merged with MicroSoft:

[Merusk]

So they just did an event on the Surface pro 4. Shit is goddamn phenomenal. 16gb, 1tb drive and they were running a solidworks model of the pro on it. Very nice.

Also announced a Surface Book, direct competition to the Macbook Pro. Reversable screen. Also very sexy.

[Yegolev]

Reversible.

[HaemishM]

Pedant. 

[Trippy]

Nice necro.

[Merusk]

We have a thread for everything. I'm not starting a new one. 😺

[apocrypha]

The Pro 4 looks awesome, would love one, but even the base m3 is $900 so I'll probably just stick with the cheap (oh so cheap) Chinese imitation tablets I've been using for the last couple of years.

[Ironwood]

I'll let you know when MS send me my freebie.

 

[Merusk]

Heh, feel free to send me it if you don't want it. 

We preordered a Pro 4 and a Surface Pro for testing this afternoon. They cost less than the laptops we're using and look to be as powerful on spec. It'll be nice if they're actual production-level machines as advertised.