Oops: MS Launches Huge Multitouch Display Years Away From Home Use
10:51 pm, May 29th, 2007, Pete Mortensen
Remember that totally awesome touchscreen demo at huge scale that had broad applications such as natural photo sorting and editing and fingerpaints? Well, in advance of the D Conference today, Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to launch a product line that is…exactly that demo. They call it Surface, and if it lives up to the demo videos on the official site, it will be spectacular in use.
T-Mobile, Harrah’s Entertainment and others plan to roll them out very quickly. You might be playing with one in a few days. So what’s the problem? Why isn’t Apple panicking? Because this is as far from a consumer application as you can get. A 30″ touchscreen display built on a coffee table in the living room is years away from being something people will buy.
Granted, Apple’s multi-touch product, the iPhone, is also very high-end, but a $600 phone is closer to reality than the Future Table 6000. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure that Microsoft will make money from this selling to stores and casinos. There are many people looking for an interactive table for what I would assume is at least $10,000, if not more. But this is like a new pinball machine, not a technology that will make an impact at home for years to come.
It is an amazing demo, but it’s far from ready for prime-time. This is for an exciting display in a store. The fact that MS isn’t talking about rolling this technology to other platforms yet indicates that they’re not playing for those markets. And I will pit the iPhone or a touch-enabled iPod against a to-be-announced Surface Zune any day. If anything, launching this way is a sign that Microsoft knows it doesn’t have a product to compete with the iPhone ready to go. So they brought out the circus edition of the technology.
I’m sure the clowns and the elephants are psyched.
Microsoft Surface: multi-user touch table [MacNN]
Technorati Tags: iphone, microsoft, surface
Posted by Pete Mortensen in Hardware | Comment on this article
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“So they brought out the circus edition of the technology.”
Circus edition? How so? In the videos I’ve seen, Gates and others clearly demonstrate its retail use and promise them in stores by November. Just because it’s not immediately available for home use is a pretty bad argument as to why this product isn’t pretty damn exciting. As soon as a decent consumer price point exists, these will go on the market, just like most other new technology products.
You guys say Apple isn’t panicking, but it’s sound like a pretty quick dismissal of an impressive piece of technology.
Matt, on May 30th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Surface has nothing to do with iPhone and vice versa. Totally different markets.
On the phone side, Microsoft doesn’t have to compete with iPhone. Do you realize how many models of Windows Mobile based smartphones are available around the world? It’s up to the OEMs to customize their phones if they wish.
Ironically, most were going away from touchscreens the past few years, because customers demanded hard buttons instead. If you’ve ever reached in your pocket to do something with your phone sight unseen, you know what I mean.
Kev, on June 1st, 2007 at 8:06 pm
While it may be true that this is far from mainstream, if you watch the D5 interview with Steve and Bill, you can just see a slightly upset Jobs when they mention the Surface demo/technology.
My initial feeling is that Steve has something equally or even more amazing in the works, but he’s not releasing any info per his accustomed silence and/or he’s waiting to build it into something main stream, yet it killed him that the spotlight went to Microsoft and if he releases something similar Apple will appear the copycat this time around.
d0b3rmann, on June 10th, 2007 at 9:14 am