Ever felt like your coffee table was just too stupid for words?This is kind of old news (I first saw the video about a month ago), but I just came across another picture gallery of Microsoft's new "Surface" and decided I'd put it up for your perusal. Apologies for being a tad stale. Anyway, Surface is a computer disguised as a coffee table, and it's got some pretty sweet-looking tricks up its sleeve. You can see a video with a few demonstrations of Surface's capabilities here and a pretty decent gallery here. (Note the pictures in the gallery involving credit cards and how we might one day be able to use them alongside smart surfaces...it looks dope.)
I don't know how widespread the appeal of a computer like this will be, but I want one. Unfortunately the going price at release will be something like 10 grand, so I guess I'll have wait a bit. It seems likely that smart surfaces will begin to gain more widespread appeal in homes and businesses, and this computer might represent a true revolution in computer interface technology. I've even read it compared to the advent of the personal computer, but that was pretty effing gigantic, so I guess we'll have to wait and see. For now, I highly encourage you to watch that video. It's crazy.
posted by dan @ 11:10 AM
4 Comments:
i'm no scientist, but isn't this some of the same technology used by the iphone?
Yes, it is. "Multi-touch" technology is the general name, I think, meaning that you can touch the screen in two places and it doesn't freak out like, say, your laptop's touch-mouse, which begins to immediately malfunction if it's touched in two locations.
You probably noticed the similarities in how you resize things, right? Pulling apart with your fingers to make something bigger and pushing them together to shrink it back down...I'm sure both are techically patented, so there's got to be some difference, but you're right that it looks the same. The "Perceptive Pixel" guy in the video says something about using this technology for government (read: military) applications for some time, doesn't he? You'll have to remind me, I watched it without sound at work today and haven't heard it in a while.
aside from the novelty of having a computer table i fail to see how this could be a revolutionary product.
the technology it utilizes is of course revolutionary. multitouch surfaces will change UIs for sure, but i don't think a coffee table will be what changes it.
why would you want to constantly have to look down to use your computer? and what happens when you spill a drink on it?
when your computer crashes you now have a ten THOUSAND DOLLAR COFFEE TABLE.
this seems like a good thing for places like restaurants to invest in, but otherwise i don't see it being marketable to anyone interested in personal computing.
the multitechnology is the really big deal but the table seems gimicky to me.
Certainly the physicality of the computer is an issue. The fact that this product looks like a coffee table seems completely inconsequential to me, probably for the same reason that it seems gimicky to you. It probably just seemed like the best model for demos. True, this first model looks like a coffee table, so that's what people are calling it, but I can envision any surface at any height employing this kind of technology.
And when your computer crashes, are you left with a thousand dollar paper weight? No, you fix it. Just like you'd probably fix your sweet coffee table computer. At least this would still be a coffee table...reminds me of that Mitch Hedberg bit about how the best thing about escalators is that when they break they just turn into stairs. "Sorry for the convenience."
I think the truly revolutionary thing could be that if surfaces like this started showing up in your workplace, home, etc, the idea of someone "interested in personal computing" would change totally. It would all of a sudden become much more difficult to determine when you're personal computing, and when you're not. You wouldn't, for instance, have to be sitting in front of a computer to be, well, using a computer. Just like when the personal computer came out you no longer had to be sitting in front of a terminal at a machine the size of a refrigerator to be using a computer. It's that much more difficult to draw the line.
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