Microsoft always has great mockups and demos…
As much as I love the iPhone concept, a drive to surface baseed computing isn’t the exclusive domain of Apple. Microsoft has been touting large panel touch displays for some time now - it’s one of Bill Gates’ pet projects.
Well at yesterday’s session of the “All Things Digital” conference outside of San Diego, they finally make a concrete announcement in this area - a technology called “Microsoft Surface”.
Microsoft produced a couple of excellent demo videos highlighting what Surface is and what they would like to accomplish with it. This one provides a good overview:
In essence Surface is a touch sensitive 30-inch display that can also recognize physical objects or tagged devices like phones, cameras, or credit cards that can transmit data to the device for manipulation on the surface.
Surface was demoed to C|NET’s Ina Fried in this video, offering a few more details about the device:
It is expected that Microsoft will roll Surface out by the end of the year, but it will be limited to commercial venues like hotels, resturants, and stores.
Where Vista was frankly a big yawn, Surface is actually pretty hot - all the more so if it really is close to done and can make it into production this year.
It’s the first exciting technology I’ve seen from Redmond in quite a while…
That said, it isn’t a technology that will reach consumers directly - at least not in the short term. And this is where Microsoft and Apple always seem to diverge.
Apple - with it’s iPhone - is focused on bring touch computing directly to end consumers. I would expect to see touch move in to other product sets as well - perhaps in a new generation of the iMac or as a step up from the iPhone in an ultra-mobile laptop of some kind. Apple knows the value of building an ecosystem around consumers, and will want to leverage this technology in ways that foster that.
Microsoft is focused on the big corporate end of this technology. They are only delivering to “institutions” and will need to develop their ecosystem around manufacturers - camera and phone makers, credit card providers, etc. It will only make it to consumers indirectly.
As much as I like what Microsoft is showing with Surface, I think Apple is better positioned to get this right, and to get consumers interested in it.
However it turns out, computers will be getting a whole lot more accessible…
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