How Apple Almost Got Microsoft’s Kinect Game Controller

Leander Kahney (4:30 am PDT, Nov 05 2010)

How Apple Almost Got Microsoft’s Kinect Game Controller

In June 2008, on a flight home from Europe to San Francisco, I was given a fascinating demo of some jaw-dropping technology.

I was sitting next Inon Beracha, CEO of Israeli company PrimeSense, which had developed a low-cost chip and software to do 3D machine vision.

The system used a pair of cameras and an infrared sensor to highlight people and track their movements.

On his laptop, Beracha showed me videos of people waving their hands in the air to control Wii-like games. He showed people controlling TV programming menus by gesturing their hands in the air. And, most impressive of all, someone flipping through a photo slide show like they were Tom Cruise in Minority Report. It was so slick, I asked him if it was CGI. It was real, he said, and so cheap, the technology could eventually be found everywhere in the home, office and car.

Of course, PrimeSense’s system is at the heart of Microsoft’s new Kinect game controller, which is getting rave reviews and looks set to be a monster hit. It’s a “crazy, magical, omigosh rush,” says the New York Times‘ David Pogue.

And it almost belonged to Apple.


How Apple Almost Got Microsoft’s Kinect Game Controller

PrimeSense CEO Inon Beracha

On the plane, Beracha told me the technology had the potential to revolutionize all kinds of interfaces. Wii-like gaming was the most obvious example, but Beracha believed it would also replace remote controls completely and inspire all kinds of new automation systems for homes and workplaces.

The technology had been developed by a bunch of engineers in the Israeli military. They had recently hired him to shop it around Silicon Valley and find partners to commercialize it. It was hot. He had back-to-back meetings at all the big companies in the valley, and had already signed some leading names in gaming, tech and consumer electronics.

In fact, he’d already had several meetings at Apple. It was the first place he and his engineers thought of. “It was the most natural place for the technology,” he said.

Apple has a history of interface innovation, of course, and had recently introduced the iPhone with its paradigm-shifting multitouch UI. PrimeSense’s system went one step further: It was multitouch that you didn’t even have to touch. Apple seemed like a natural fit.

Yet the initial meetings hadn’t gone so well. Obsessed with secrecy, Apple had already asked Beracha to sign a stack of crippling legal agreements and NDAs.

He shook his head. Why didn’t he want to do a deal with Apple? No need. The technology was hot. He could sell it to anyone.

“Apple is a pain in the ass,” he said, smiling.

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53 comments »

  • 3jw

    i’m not trying to be a “pain in the ass” but it might be for political reasons.. i mean isn’t israel >= south african apartheid ….

    • Rayn

      great, more profit for the israeli army. they should be boycotted

      • Huhster

        Stop buying Intel based Macs then since the Core 2 was designed in Israel.

    • zahadum

      (sorry for all the typos: but the iPhone spellchtcker sucks & this mailform isn’t designed for mobile text editing :)

      er, the only institionalized racists in the middle east are the Arabs, not the isrealis!

      the charter of their political organizations is to “drive the Jews into the sea”.

      their culture of death actively celebrates the killing of innocent civilians.

      Recall that it is the Arabs – not the Israelis – who are the violent colonialists, historically spspeakung: they tool over the Levant several hundred years ago by violence when the Byzatine ernpire collapsed.

      If you are going to inject politics into this issue then at least be intellectual y honest enough to get the villains right!

      The palestianinians are the invaders, the ilsamistss are the terrorists, and they should count themselves lucky that the isrealis do not exercise the full moral right they have to defend their homeland by forcibly rnecting them from the Jewish homeland & dumping them onto the east bank (in Jordan) wjete they “belong”

      Yes, thine historical facts are an inconvenient truth to the communique & islamo-Tacitus — along with their fellow yravlers & whet Marx called useful idiots, ols sadly often ensconced right in the heart of the academy -

      • Eddy

        wow somebody needs a history course here
        but more importantly than that somebody needs to appreciate the value of human life over a friggin piece of land

      • Mansour

        Can you say this to any mid-easterner? Of course not! You try to make use of westerners’ ignorance about the region’s history for you propaganda. Now let’s come to the true history. Who invaded the peaceful Palestine and killed hundred of thousands of people? Who stole the homes and lands of others? Who keep tens of thousands of people in Nazi-like camps without trial? Who destroy homes, cut water pipes and poison crops? Who and who… The questions are endless but the answer is one; it is Israel.

        Now let’s go little deeper in the history! Which state was planted in the mid-east like a cancer cell? Which state was formed like a sinkhole of Jews in the world? Which people exiled out of Europe into that sink because they were hated? Which state ignores the UN orders the most and use cheating and unethical political techniques? Which and which… The questions go on, but the answer is always Israel.

        I can go even deeper and deeper in history till the days of Moses himself and you would not see anything pleasant.

        Shalam!

      • lip

        Politically Arabs are the most racist but the people themselves are far from that…they are too poor for the most part and it wasnt until the last 50 years that arabs(bad term as most native Jews are also Arabs…not the imported ones from New York and east Europe that are causing all the problems in the middle east)…in the rich west where I live (Im Canadian), the jewish population is probably the xenophobic group in Canada…I would surmise this is the case in most countries as well.

      • SyriX

        first of all a really big and warm F***** Y****. Stick your head out of the sand and watch Israel ignoring every UN- resolution on Palestina issue that ever came out.

        One man knew how to deal with them jews.

      • Jurges

        I came for the Apple LoL story, I stay for the anti-semitism.

      • originaldna

        Are you serious, none of you people belong there? European or Asian. Go back a thousand years and that region was considered part of Africa. Greeks and Romans brought you into that region as slaves for their purpose; it’s time to leave it alone.

        Why are European Jews trying to take over a religion that they themselves converted into, it’s the same mentality with Christianity Not one person from the bible or the three major faiths came from Europe.

        And as for the chosen people crap. Israel has the second largest cancer rate on the planet, that’s a sign that they don’t belong there. See the haaretz.com for more info on it (Israel’s skin cancer rate second highest in the world) No amount of manipulation of the media will give you that birthright. face it the African is the first and will always be the first. sure our people are in a decrepit state at the moment, but misery visits all groups, and your group is in for it next.

        The people who you trample now will be smiling once America is no more. China who will be running things very soon already had some experience with your kind in the 8th century so don’t count on them for a welfare check for Israel because they have a long memory of your past deeds.

        …Now back to tech. :)

      • Albal

        wow, extremist right wing fanatic much? Blame the ‘sand negros’ on everything, and justify them being violently expelled from their homes in the 1950s, by something that happened under Roman biblical times? Your post is filled with so much historical inaccuracies and pure hate that I am literally speechless. Congratulations.

      • Alex

        Not giving this technology to apple is sure sad, since I’m sure Apple would have used it for astonishing products. But passing steve jobs tight grip on my product is something I’d always do. He’s known for being obsessed with perfection while regarding any social concerns of slamming people down publicly of which he thinks they underperformed.

        About this stupid reply:
        This one guy, who “knew how to handle them jews” is the biggest single pain in the ass of all history books. As a German I take it as an offensive, playing down the s***storm this guy brought to the people around here! Yes, Israel should take less a radical stand on the Palistinians but bad actions of a government don’t mean that you can degrade the worth of any israeli individual. People who think otherwise are the reason politicians are allowed to errect walls around the westbank. It’s their job to protect their people from radicals like you. If the isralis could, they would engage in better realtions to their neighbours, given the fact of how much economic opportunity is lost due to the political situation. I’m always amazed about the technological output this little country generates and wonder how much more it would, with open borders.

    • David

      This is a mac related site, please post your politically-biased hate-talk somewhere else.

  • Marc

    No of course it wasn’t. Don’t try to drag politics into this.

  • Barbara

    Maybe Apple is waiting for a more elegant solution before using this technology. The motion sensors, while a cool thing, are also a bit clumsy. Saying that, I have to buy a Kinect for my Xbox 360 this holiday season or there’ll be h-e-double hocky sticks to pay.

  • Mike

    Thank g-od for Israel
    They are the leading country in new technologies

  • JustSayin

    Sorry to say but most of the Kinect innovation is in software than hardware. We know how good Apple is in software. Just try iTunes.

    • Hattis

      Sarcasm?

  • Tom

    So why skip buying Canesta for IP? Apple’s let Microsoft walk away with gesture tech, unless it’s got IP that is not known about, no?
    Interestingly, it seems that Kinect was a bit hamstrung by the XBox 360 unable to shoulder the computational load. In a way, PrimeSense would have made a lot of sense for either next generation, or the one after that’s ATV, or Mac mini. We’ll see how well Microsoft incorporates Kinect into Windows 8/9 – they could really do some impressive things with it.

  • Macso

    I like how this article is titled “How Apple almost got Microsoft’s Kinnect” When in fact Apple was really last in line since the seller was unwilling to sign all their NDAs and there were plenty of interested buyers. Nintendo’s president recently said they also turned down the chance to buy the technology.

    It also kinda of hints toward Microsoft just buying this tech and not developing it themselves, try to remember Apple bought their “paradigm-shifting multitouch UI” when they bought Fingerworks.

    • Mitch

      Actually, if you read the article, Apple had first crack at this. Mr. Beracha felt Apple was the logical landing spot for this technology. He simply lost interest when he was confronted with all of the flaming hoops Apple required him to jump through. It had nothing to do with Apple turning him down, or with another company making a better offer. But you are right. This tech was so hot that it was going to catch on with a big player regardless.

      While Apple’s secrecy has, no doubt, helped make it billions of dollars, it has also potentially cost the company billions. Some people/companies choose not to work with Apple based on all of the constraints. Those ideas land elsewhere. Just like this one landed in Redmond.

  • http://armchairtheorist.com Jonathan Wong

    PrimeSense only provides the visual hardware sensors; the software where the raw visual data gets translated into 48-point skeletal tracking comes from Microsoft Research. Wouldn’t of been easy for Apple to replicate that even if they bought PrimeSense.

    • vu

      hahaha. if i was jobs, i’d buy primesense and shut it down. no more chips for microsoft! no chips for you!

      • Adam

        Yeah… And don’t forget that apple will then be hit with the full power of the antitrust ion-cannon.
        PEW PEW!

  • jon

    I thought Microsoft was the only company that bought other companies to help them rip off the ideas of others. The only “miss” Apple had here was not buying Nintendo, who led this whole thing with the Wii.

    • Mitch

      Question: How is buying a company akin to ripping off their ideas? There are a lot of start-ups out there that are really just hoping that a big player will come and pay millions/billions for their ideas. That is how it gets to the masses. Smaller companies rarely have the resources to get their products into the mainstream. Microsoft, Apple, Google etc. step in and make these guys rich while popularizing the fruits of there labor. No ripping off involved. Big buyouts and often high paying jobs with the acquiring company.

    • TonyP

      Apple didn’t develop the touch technology in the iphone, they acquired it when they bought Fingerworks. Buying companies to acquire technology is a very old business in the computer world, and is something that apple, microsoft, dell, HP, compaq, IBM, intel and others use as a means of jump starting their R&D. Why reinvent the wheel when someone has already gotten the axle and rim ready to go! This is not a bad thing either, it’s just business as usual.

  • http://www.dorksandlosers.com Tan The Man

    Maybe Apple is waiting for 3D to take off.

  • Jim

    This is a gamer gimmick to sell more Xboxes (and is a big step up from the Wii). But there is no way I am waving my hands around in front of a camera to perform gestures for a computer…. The 3D space interaction technology does have a lot of other applications though, such as surgery, art (sculpturing), search interfaces, etc.

    As an aside, its not clear how far this went with Apple. Sounds like he didn’t get much further than the NDAs and you can bet there are 10 meetings a week with companies like this in Cupertino.

  • Ed H.

    And Digital Research said IBM was a pain in the ass with their NDAs. So IBM went to Microsoft for DOS. The rest is history.

    This sounds like they just didn’t didn’t want to sign an NDA. How much you want to bet Microsoft’s NDA was just as bad as Apple’s, they just had been asked to sign so many NDAs by then that they were willing to give in at that point?

    • TonyP

      Money and how they were treated might be other key factors. Apple and Microsoft probably get dozens of companies trying to sell their products to them. IF apple already have something in the works, this would be a wasted effort and thus they wouldn’t be treated like anything special. Maybe Microsoft saw this as a chance to expand into a new market and treated them like potential new partners instead of one of the dozens of hopeful companies in the waiting room…we will never know unless one of the key players writes a book, hehe.

    • M. Dunn

      Hmmm. THAT’S what IBM wanted to discuss with Gary Kildall. I worked at DRI ’83 – ’86 and the story then was that Mr. Kildall was less interested in talking with IBM execs and more interested in R & D.

  • PK

    …and God said, let there be Kinects!

    and so it was written.

    Until….

    (several meetings late) Jobs said, “I agree with God however, please sign line seven and eight via electronic signature of our uber secret disclosure agreement or no deal!!!”.

    ;-)

  • Mark

    @Tom – “Interestingly, it seems that Kinect was a bit hamstrung by the XBox 360 unable to shoulder the computational load.”

    Actually, there was a controller chip/cpu of sorts in the Kinect. What the developers found was that the xbox could bypass the controller and handle the load with only about a 1-2% hit on the CPU in the xbox. They since removed the chip from the Kinect.

    So IHNI where you get that it’s hamstrung… And yes, this will be sold to a lot more than just 360 gamers, I can see a lot of people buying them to control the 3 major OS platforms as well. Somebody just has to figure out comms to the thing, and like you say Win7 and OSX will be a hell of a lot cooler… Maybe as much as Linux… LOL.

    • blandead

      it is much more than just 1-2% cpu hit the effective resolution the camera can capture without taking the other 98% of cpu had to be cut from 720p to some pretty crappy resolutions and it only supports 2 ppl max now. it was good with the chip, but xbox360 sucks too much to use it with software emulation. next gen will be fine, but the chip makes kinect cost too much especially when just being introduced. either they will put it back in if it gets popular enough or next-gen xbox will handle it as it was intended in first place with 4+ ppl at HD resolutions and max gestures there is def a limit atm especially since camera res is so small it cannot see as precise what gestures you are making so this also is crippling.

      • http://www.shokk.com/blog Ernie Oporto

        If they gave you the whole capability, Microsoft wouldn’t be able to sell you the improved version next year and the better one the year after that.

      • Bob

        The irony is killing me!

  • Simon

    I saw the same technology at the 2008 toy show in new york ( Javit center ) I guess Israeli Army must hang around toys show LOL

  • Rick

    Microsoft bought some of the technology, and some of it came from microsoft research which was doing almost the same thing.

  • luis

    i really don’t understand what’s will all this fuss about kinectic. sony playstation’s “eye toy” does the same for years.

  • http://www.youtube.com/retroact1ve T.L.

    Mansour, not all westerners are ignorant about the workings of Israel. I’m not sure if you are against jews or what… but I just want to say that before I even mention Israel I am not talking about all jewish people. When I say Israel I mean the government of it and nothing more. Having said that hell it goes as far back as how Israel was established. Where the support, money…etc came from. Where ever there are questions, wrong doings, and secrecy you end up at the door step of international corporations, and banks and the family’s behind these banks… not sometime, every damn time.

    This is not really a jewish issue, people should see people as just that people. These families and people behind these corporations and banks screw with the political process and infrastructure of all major nations, then work together to stop other nations from developing themselves… they screw over the people in major countries and sometimes with one decision. It’s quite telling that leaders in politics such as presidents for example are mere followers to heads of major corporations and banks, esp. when before they even are elected candidates sneak away to private meetings that house most of the worlds most powerful/wealthy people. Most people don’t even know that a very small percentage (around 1%) own 99% of the united states’ wealth, one could even venture that literally that figure is accurate globally (as in less than 1% own most of the worlds wealth). What is really disgusting is that nobody really gives a crap, and we are the subject of a massive joke.

    As far as Israel goes, it’s intelligence assets are built right into our communication infrastructure… once again another thing not too many people realize and nobody gives a crap. Yeah I agree that instead of our presidents having to pledge their allegiance to Israel even when they are only candidates for the presidency, they should laugh and say why again are we giving you billions of dollars a year? Why are we backing you with weapons, stealth jets…etc Why are we helping you take out your enemies again? The same should go to all other countries. We should promote trade world wide (including cuba) and we should have alliances with none.

  • Mark

    The flood of comments and the article from people who have no idea about what Kinect really is and how it was developed. Just to enlighten you – Microsoft (its research unit and different product groups) developed the natural user interfaces for almost 10 years and when it was a time to come up with a new Xbox UI it was natural to use computer vision tech. There were several companies that could do chips + CMOS that provide depth + color vision. One of those companies was PrimeSense and was selected by some reason (they could’ve bought other tech with equal success BTW). The tech that is now known as Kinect is may be 10% of what Primesense provided. The rest (actual meat of the full body tracking) was done 100% by Microsoft. Even if Apple got the technology for 3D cameras they would not know what to do with it without the rest of NUI IP. So all these talks like “Microsoft got Kinect because Apple was pain” is all BS and has no ground in reality.

    If you are interested in even better technology for 3D cameras search for “Canesta” – the startup that Microsoft just bought. This purchase seals their lead in the NUI space for years to come…

    • Sean

      Thanks that was really informative. Unbelievable that many of the comments have gone to ridiculous politics that most readers don’t care about. Same thing to whoever pulled away from the fanboy BS enough to remind people how a startup works. Generally, your #1 (realistic) goal is to be bought out by a big player.

      Its fairly well known that at this point, a lack of innovative ideas and large profits has left microsoft, google, and apple with a serious problem of having too much cash on hand, and trying to decide where/how to invest it. Its good to see an innovative idea pay off, seems like a good buyout. I hope they have some interesting innovations to change how users interact with home entertainment.

  • Aisha Akbar

    Leave religion out of tech.

    Mohammad the Bedouin

  • Crunch

    Hey dick-heads…This is NOT a political forum. Pack up your Israeli/Arab there-will-never-be-peace-in-the-so-called-middle-east and shove it…all the way up it (as if it’s going to fit anyway)

    At any rate, the Kinect looks pretty impressive. One un-boxer-type reviewer says that it’s fairly heavy, so hopefully it packs enough punch to kick as$-holes like the aforementioned even harder.

    (Sorry, I’m just not a gamer haha)

  • willtur

    Jurges says:
    November 6, 2010 at 8:48 am I came for the Apple LoL story, I stay for the anti-semitism.

    hilarious comment

    For the views of both sides,I am certain most folks would do best to get their information on the Palestine-Isreal conflict elsewhere and not from comments in an off topic post. But seriously get it somewhere and do the research not just a sound byte you heard or a regurgitation of someone elses thoughts.

  • Truthbringer

    Hey looser’s, find a anti zionist site or something to have your little petty arguments. None of you seem to have an unbiased view, you all come across as unintelligent biggots. How stupid all of you are pretending to understand a complex rivalry that goes back thousands of years, none of you scratch the surface. You sound like a bunch of uninformed whiney schoolkids. Get a life, this is about apple not your ignorant views. Hope your all half Arab half Jews in the next life biggots!

  • Nic W

    Apple are not the pain in the ass, Steve Jobs is the pain in the ass.

  • brent

    Wow, how sad this is, a commentary on technology denigrates, into a squabble over arabs vs isreal.

  • Bob

    How about someone moderate all those Jews vs Arab comments outta here (including this one!)

  • Tony

    Microsoft v Apple boring. Arabs v Jews important but not for here.

    New user interfaces – good fun. Kinect is kicking off the next phase in people interaction and system control. The product will be judged by the public as effective or not and there is bound to be further developments – there always is. Judge it for what it is and not for what it isnt.

  • Darwin

    This article is alot of nonsense. It’s just link bait with no facts. This technology at the time Apple looked at it was a long way from being what Kinect is today. Apple didn’t see a use for it and they don’t need or want something like Kinect now. Not to mention there is plenty of similar technology available.

  • Anonymous

    Apple is a cult alright. Waiting for the government to step in and break it up.

About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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