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Wow, incredible! The only thing though is that I wonder how long it will take Microsoft to actually commercialize something like this, or if someone will swoop
by steve8918 15y ago
Wow, incredible! The only thing though is that I wonder how long it will take Microsoft to actually commercialize something like this, or if someone will swoop in an eat their lunch.
If I remember correctly, they had the multi-touch Microsoft Surface years ago, but I didn't see them produce anything, until Apple came out with the iPhone and subsequently the iPad. Now everyone thinks that Apple invented that user experience from scratch. Bill Gates has talking about tablet computing for a decade, but it was Apple that actually made it a reality.
I wonder if they will make the same mistake again with this amazing technology (although they did get out the Kinnect which itself is a sweet piece of technology in its own right).
- palish 15y agoI completely forgot about that interactive table thing 'til now.
- Someone 15y agoiPhone announced: early January 2007 Microsoft Surface announced: late May 2007 iPhone shipped: end of June, 2007 Microsoft Surface shipped: mid April, 2008 (all according to Wikipedia)
- Dn_Ab 15y agoIn reading this I was curious as to why your timeline struck a note of discord with my memory banks. In particular, the fact that the linear ordering placed on my temporal estimates of when I became aware of the existence of each object as a notion was swapped with the implicated ordering you gave! So I checked wikipedia myself and the history revealed that I was in fact not mistaken, wikipedia agreed with my dismal estimation of the past i call memory. the surface reached public awareness before the iphone =) Over the next year, Microsoft built more than 85 early prototypes for Surface. The final hardware design was completed in 2005. I suppose the lesson here is that a novel way of interfacing with something is not in and of itself sufficient without something meaningful as the product of this new interaction.
- Someone 15y agoI am not claiming your memory is false (and I know my memory is 100% built on a Wikipedia lookup I did today), but I think that Wikipedia reference is mostly built on http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/surfacecomputing/docs/SurfaceHistoryBG.doc http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/surfacecomputin.... That has a 2007 publication date. I also cannot find a link predating 2007 mentioning Microsoft Surface or its earlier name Microsoft Tabletop. Because of that, I am not convinced that Microsoft Surface "reached public awareness before the iPhone". So, please educate me: where/when/how did that happen?
- steve8918 15y agoHere is an early prototype back in 2006. http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/laurafoy/a-peek-inside-microsoft-research-reveals-tom-cruises-technology-today http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/laurafoy/a-peek-inside-micros...