5 ms·

Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision

46 points by sajid 12y ago

jyzzmoe 12y ago
Remember the gorilla arm. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html
- noblethrasher 12y ago
  Something like gorilla-arm might be good thing: Humans probably aren't supposed to be sitting in front of a computer for hours at a time; gorilla-arm is just a non-dismissible signal that it's time to take a break.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    You can only go so long at a whiteboard, what saves us is that we usually spend more time taking than writing.
- Retra 12y ago
  Also: glare-free screens. I wonder how they solved that one?
- adevine 12y ago
  Yeah, looking at this, I got the feeling that it was more "How Hollywood wants the future to look" (see Minority Report) vs. what will actually be useful and, most importantly, economical.
- cwyers 12y ago
  Yep, touch screens got totally destroyed by this.
- jasonlotito 12y ago
  Ah yes, the failure of white boards to catch on.
mark_l_watson 12y ago
Very cool look at how human computer interactions may look like. I especially liked to "co working" segment in which the woman walked into a studio, and transformed a blank drafting table into her personal environment. I would personally feel better if future computing environments used open standards and be open source. I know that companies like Microsoft, Apple, etc. have the resources to do the R&D and produce products, but I don't want to see competing incompatible systems slow progress. I know it is a stretch to hope for, but this is why I favor open web standards to apps, even on small devices.
tdicola 12y ago
I'd love to know why companies even waste time making videos like these anymore. Looking back at past stuff (like the 'smart home' from Microsoft in the mid 90's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V_0xDUg0h0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V_0xDUg0h0) it's pretty hilarious how out of touch they are with reality.
- Retra 12y ago
  Think of how expensive all that stuff would be. And all the maintenance of learning it, upgrading it, and powering it... And for what, really? There's a reason video phones are not used today: it's unnecessary waste (in time and bandwidth) -- and also privacy violating -- when a text message will do just fine.
  - kevingadd 12y ago
    Skype and facetime get used a lot for video chat, though.
    - Retra 12y ago
      Not when you just want to say five words to someone. It is certainly not anyone's primary means of electronic communication.
      - akbar501 12y ago
        It depends on the person. I don't use video calls much, but my younger daughter considers video calls to be the default.
- leichtgewicht 12y ago
  Science fiction authors change the world with ideas (having ideas of how the world could be). Visualising/putting-in-words what you think the future could look like contributes to what the future will look like. I guess companies know about this and want to get ahead of the curve.
- 12y ago
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
It seems like most of the things demonstrated are changes to the gloss of interfaces, higher resolution etc... I don't see radical "productivity" improvements - eg. making input significantly easier through BCI. The touch options they show are a scaled versions (larger/more ubiquitous) of what we have now with stylus/touch input and wearables. For example, why is the big drafting table radically better than a tablet or wacom drawing pad and large monitor today? Saying nothing of the holographic 3D table without any HMD or the other "sci-fi" type stuff shown. I guess to me this looks nice and flashy and all but not really a breakthrough in ergonomics. Maybe I missed that somewhere.
- mc32 12y ago
  What struck me was that people were there almost as props. It was as if technology had advanced so much (information gathering and intelligence) that the people were more or less redundant and were 'doing things' just to act out our newfound purpose. Basically all the information was there and people more or less had veto power --yes or no. I know this is just conceptualization, but they may not be that far off. It looks fun and would appear that people would have lots more free time to do whatever, but for the most part things were done by machines for people.
  - AndrewKemendo 12y ago
    It looks fun and would appear that people would have lots more free time to do whatever, but for the most part things were done by machines for people. Is that not the "promise of technology?" That is a world I am trying to create - one where we work not out of necessity but out of passion, so I am fully behind that. I just didn't see anything in that video that blew my mind in that respect. I would love to see something projected which would reasonably leap us to the (next thing) the way the personal computer did 20 years ago. This MSFT thing falls short of that IMO.
    - mc32 12y ago
      Yes, that has always been the promise of technology, to deliver people from tedium. The unanswered question, if people aren't really needed to do 'work' (giving them the free time) where or how do people earn a living? Moreover, as machines/automation/computers make us more efficient, this hasn't translated into free time individually but rather made people previously employable, unemployable. So the free time that we might think is due us does't come to us, but is diverted to other people up to a point those other people aren't employed and the people who remain employed work just as long as before. So, i guess the hope is that as people become redundant at work, that there will be a mechanism to compensate people for their lost earning power. Keep in mind, it's not like the world would switch over on a Monday --it would be gradual and that means lots of people falling through the cracks, _if_ a solution was found.
Touche 12y ago
Chairs with no backs... I'll stay in the present.
interpol_p 12y ago
So Microsoft's vision of the future is for us to continue to be touching flat screens well into the future? Pinch to zoom, drag and drop. Those two gestures pretty much dominated their vision. There seems to be a lot of production value in this video, but it doesn't seem thought out. The interfaces just show drag and drop, and then items spouting animated complex information. There also seems to be a hell of a lot more screens in the future. It doesn't feel like anyone took a real world work or play scenario and thought it through from end-to-end with future technology. I don't know where future technology will take us, but I hope it reduces the amount of time we spend in front of screens. I hope it allows us to spend more physical time with the people we love, not just talk to them on giant Skype screens.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- mc32 12y ago
  As I said in another post, the video pretty much reduces people to a secondary role. It's not so much technology enabling us or aiding us, but more we supplement technology --but only because technology is allowing us to interact. The good is that people would have a lot of free time (presumably to do good things), the unanswered question, is now that most people are redundant, what do they do to earn a living? Magic? Bureaucracy?
  - interpol_p 12y ago
    I don't really think the video reduces people to a secondary role. It shows people driving the technology for the most part. My issue with the video is that the technology demonstrated within it doesn't seem to enable or aid any more than what we currently have. It just happens on more screens with more animation. I would like to see technology take our tasks from us. I love thinking, designing and creating things, but there is still so much tedium in implementation. To take that away would be to accelerate everyone's creative ability. If we had the ability to automate all tasks then we probably wouldn't need to earn a living. We would need a government could recognise that the value created by our technology should be distributed amongst everyone equally.
dogma1138 12y ago
While not to start a whole discussion about this, is MSFT vision of the future is one where women do all the work?
sumo 12y ago
A lot of what is shown is actually collaboration between 'Kat' and 'Lola' in real-time. Being able to input information from any device, view and present it on some other device, and of course also being able to convert any situation into a conference with someone else is really important and a great vision really. All of that is what we actually focus on at Collusion (https://collusionapp.com/ https://collusionapp.com/) which is free to use at the moment and does a lot of this in a less slick way. With the introduction of more and more large screen interactive devices, wearables, pen enabled devices and Virtual reality/AR options, we can open up more and more possibilities that are shown in this clip. Whats more is that augmented reality is shown a lot here which will become more and more prevalent as a way to blend productivity with the world around us, as well as generally making things more human/natural/fluid, which is also very interesting for the near future, though perhaps not the augmentation without a HMD anytime soon. As high production the video is and unrealistic or embellished some things might be, effortless and instant transition of information through our systems is certainly possible and I think very probable and I'm glad that MS is showing that in it's vision for productivity in the enterprise. Which is what this video is really about. Microsoft, with its connections to so many diverse electronics business's like Intel, Wacom and Samsung it could certainly deliver on many of these concepts into the future given the right software.
eranation 12y ago
This is all great, and really beautiful and well produced. What worries me, is that even today, with our simple 2D word / excel, people utilize about 10% of the feature in a good day, and it takes me a few google searches to find where microsoft has hidden "insert your favorite lesser known function here" in version X. New UX (and by new UX I mean things like holographic / hands manipulate augmented reality items on your HUD kind of UX) should not require user training. I watched this movie 2 times and I still don't understand what exactly they are doing (I get the idea, but if I need to answer a test on what apps they are using and what exactly each gesture means / does, you lost me... is she a publisher? a researcher? a biologist? a teacher? what's the connections between all these movies?) Having all this gesture based / 3D / eye movement / real objects interact with digital ones - this needs to be making life simpler to make use more productive. The challenge of the real UX designers of the future is how to make all this unbelievable enormous vector of inputs (mobile phones I'm looking at you too, most apps only evolved to a touchpad / touch screen gestures, mostly swiping with single fingers, how many apps really utilize multiple finger actions except zooming? how many really rely on "shake to send undo", it's still not catching on... now add all the new inputs we saw in the videos, and add Microsoft's new holographic vision, people will go to a mental institute just to turn on a word processor) The more options we will have to do something the more confusing it will be. And yes, even if kids learn it at school, no technology will have high adaptation rates if it much harder than a mouse click or a keyboard type (or a touch screen tap / swipe which are very small gradual and natural evolutions of the mouse, and only the swipe / tap / double tap / pinch to zoom really caught up out of a myriad of other possibilities) Also the 2D UX in the video, instead of making sense is just beautiful, and so damn confusing, I have no clue what actual ACTIONS these people do, except joining some project together, wasn't sure if it was a biology project, an aquatic one specifically, an education one, or a non profit one. (but perhaps this is just poor editing) In one sentence - if this is the future, it's beautiful, and so darn confusing. All people with SaaS here know what I'm talking about - getting users to read a red blinking note and press a button that says X will still get users who simply don't get it. no go get them do a 3D gesture that will launch a floating globe hologram without a 2 hour training... that's the real challenge IMHO.
- exocortex 12y ago
milesf 12y ago
Ever notice how companies like General Motors & Microsoft like to make "concept" stuff like this, while companies like Apple and Tesla don't bother? Who's actually delivering on great stuff? Companies that talk about it, or those who just clam up and get to work?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
nartz 12y ago
I like seeing this kind of thing out of microsoft - tons of smart people there. Although, how about first things first, and allow excel to handle more than a million rows?
frik 12y ago
Bill Gates last vision video "information at your fingertips" (1995): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XxeY-OchwY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XxeY-OchwY It shows a wallet PC (=smartphone), digital currency (like BitCoin), touch screen, digital personal agent (next-gen Siri/Cortana/Watson), database based filesystem/shell (like Windows Cairo & WinFS - vamporware).
snarfy 12y ago
The future is full of smudge marks.
shogun21 12y ago
Interesting how it compares with their earlier vision of 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gEWoVCl-xU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gEWoVCl-xU). Seems to be fewer screens in the new one.
- stanley 12y ago
  I was thinking the same thing as I was watching it. The interaction hasn't changed as much as the form of the screen itself has become more versatile.
dsg42 12y ago
So, a lot of the comments here are misunderstanding what this video is, and focusing on parts that don't matter. First, here are the last two editions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gEWoVCl-xU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gEWoVCl-xU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0 In addition many commenters are getting distracted by the nature of the displays, the lack of focus on people, and the level of automation in the software. This video is made by Microsoft's Office team, and the key idea here is the content of the productivity scenarios they've expressed. And truthfully, they've made some fairly successful predictions in past videos, including items like Skype automatic translation, services like PlateJoy, natural ink processing... So what are they actually predicting here? Here's what I spot in order: Augmented reality in work scenarios (diving) Gesture control in augmented reality Sharing of what you personally see 3D printers in the classroom Pannable panoramic video recordings Trivial sharing between computers Flexible screens Perfect wireless coverage Advanced budgeting assistance High quality freelancer-project matching Use of pens on touch screens for writing and more Automatic advanced data-visualizations (the types of things that are custom made at the moment) An armband device using hand gestures instead of touch. 24 hour coworking spaces available on short notice. Easy window organization Do not disturb for all incoming contact Automatic diet tracking Even better contextual video Advanced job performance analysis Looks like a pretty cool and not unreasonable list of predictions to me. They're not saying that this is what this WILL look like, just what it might look like. And honestly, I think we will see at least 50% of those items in the next ten years.
ksk 12y ago
As long as the vision doesn't contain annoying online advertising I'll take it. The video was neat, but how close are we to solving the battery problem? I'd like a laptop that can last a week. Or charger tech that can charge a day-long device in under 2 minutes. Thank you very much.
- eru 12y ago
  If you took a current generation battery, and paired it with current generation processors, but dialed the performance to early 2000s---we might get there already? (People did good work with that level of performance. And even with much less.)
  - ksk 12y ago
    Good point.
ArekDymalski 12y ago
What baffles me when I look at all these futuristic interfaces is that they do not take into consideration the most productive combination: keyboard+mouse+voice+3D depth. It would allow you do many things at once and as a result save time. Limiting users to gestures on flat surface looks nice and easy but isn't the fastest way to interact with stuff on the screen.

46 points by sajid 12y ago

Remember the gorilla arm. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html

noblethrasher 12y ago
Something like gorilla-arm might be good thing: Humans probably aren't supposed to be sitting in front of a computer for hours at a time; gorilla-arm is just a non-dismissible signal that it's time to take a break.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  You can only go so long at a whiteboard, what saves us is that we usually spend more time taking than writing.
Retra 12y ago
Also: glare-free screens. I wonder how they solved that one?
adevine 12y ago
Yeah, looking at this, I got the feeling that it was more "How Hollywood wants the future to look" (see Minority Report) vs. what will actually be useful and, most importantly, economical.
cwyers 12y ago
Yep, touch screens got totally destroyed by this.
jasonlotito 12y ago
Ah yes, the failure of white boards to catch on.

mark_l_watson 12y ago

Very cool look at how human computer interactions may look like. I especially liked to "co working" segment in which the woman walked into a studio, and transformed a blank drafting table into her personal environment. I would personally feel better if future computing environments used open standards and be open source. I know that companies like Microsoft, Apple, etc. have the resources to do the R&D and produce products, but I don't want to see competing incompatible systems slow progress. I know it is a stretch to hope for, but this is why I favor open web standards to apps, even on small devices.

tdicola 12y ago

I'd love to know why companies even waste time making videos like these anymore. Looking back at past stuff (like the 'smart home' from Microsoft in the mid 90's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V_0xDUg0h0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V_0xDUg0h0) it's pretty hilarious how out of touch they are with reality.

Retra 12y ago
Think of how expensive all that stuff would be. And all the maintenance of learning it, upgrading it, and powering it... And for what, really? There's a reason video phones are not used today: it's unnecessary waste (in time and bandwidth) -- and also privacy violating -- when a text message will do just fine.
- kevingadd 12y ago
  Skype and facetime get used a lot for video chat, though.
  - Retra 12y ago
    Not when you just want to say five words to someone. It is certainly not anyone's primary means of electronic communication.
    - akbar501 12y ago
      It depends on the person. I don't use video calls much, but my younger daughter considers video calls to be the default.
leichtgewicht 12y ago
Science fiction authors change the world with ideas (having ideas of how the world could be). Visualising/putting-in-words what you think the future could look like contributes to what the future will look like. I guess companies know about this and want to get ahead of the curve.
12y ago

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

It seems like most of the things demonstrated are changes to the gloss of interfaces, higher resolution etc... I don't see radical "productivity" improvements - eg. making input significantly easier through BCI. The touch options they show are a scaled versions (larger/more ubiquitous) of what we have now with stylus/touch input and wearables. For example, why is the big drafting table radically better than a tablet or wacom drawing pad and large monitor today? Saying nothing of the holographic 3D table without any HMD or the other "sci-fi" type stuff shown. I guess to me this looks nice and flashy and all but not really a breakthrough in ergonomics. Maybe I missed that somewhere.

mc32 12y ago
What struck me was that people were there almost as props. It was as if technology had advanced so much (information gathering and intelligence) that the people were more or less redundant and were 'doing things' just to act out our newfound purpose. Basically all the information was there and people more or less had veto power --yes or no. I know this is just conceptualization, but they may not be that far off. It looks fun and would appear that people would have lots more free time to do whatever, but for the most part things were done by machines for people.
- AndrewKemendo 12y ago
  It looks fun and would appear that people would have lots more free time to do whatever, but for the most part things were done by machines for people. Is that not the "promise of technology?" That is a world I am trying to create - one where we work not out of necessity but out of passion, so I am fully behind that. I just didn't see anything in that video that blew my mind in that respect. I would love to see something projected which would reasonably leap us to the (next thing) the way the personal computer did 20 years ago. This MSFT thing falls short of that IMO.
  - mc32 12y ago
    Yes, that has always been the promise of technology, to deliver people from tedium. The unanswered question, if people aren't really needed to do 'work' (giving them the free time) where or how do people earn a living? Moreover, as machines/automation/computers make us more efficient, this hasn't translated into free time individually but rather made people previously employable, unemployable. So the free time that we might think is due us does't come to us, but is diverted to other people up to a point those other people aren't employed and the people who remain employed work just as long as before. So, i guess the hope is that as people become redundant at work, that there will be a mechanism to compensate people for their lost earning power. Keep in mind, it's not like the world would switch over on a Monday --it would be gradual and that means lots of people falling through the cracks, _if_ a solution was found.

Touche 12y ago

Chairs with no backs... I'll stay in the present.

interpol_p 12y ago

So Microsoft's vision of the future is for us to continue to be touching flat screens well into the future? Pinch to zoom, drag and drop. Those two gestures pretty much dominated their vision. There seems to be a lot of production value in this video, but it doesn't seem thought out. The interfaces just show drag and drop, and then items spouting animated complex information. There also seems to be a hell of a lot more screens in the future. It doesn't feel like anyone took a real world work or play scenario and thought it through from end-to-end with future technology. I don't know where future technology will take us, but I hope it reduces the amount of time we spend in front of screens. I hope it allows us to spend more physical time with the people we love, not just talk to them on giant Skype screens.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mc32 12y ago
As I said in another post, the video pretty much reduces people to a secondary role. It's not so much technology enabling us or aiding us, but more we supplement technology --but only because technology is allowing us to interact. The good is that people would have a lot of free time (presumably to do good things), the unanswered question, is now that most people are redundant, what do they do to earn a living? Magic? Bureaucracy?
- interpol_p 12y ago
  I don't really think the video reduces people to a secondary role. It shows people driving the technology for the most part. My issue with the video is that the technology demonstrated within it doesn't seem to enable or aid any more than what we currently have. It just happens on more screens with more animation. I would like to see technology take our tasks from us. I love thinking, designing and creating things, but there is still so much tedium in implementation. To take that away would be to accelerate everyone's creative ability. If we had the ability to automate all tasks then we probably wouldn't need to earn a living. We would need a government could recognise that the value created by our technology should be distributed amongst everyone equally.

dogma1138 12y ago

While not to start a whole discussion about this, is MSFT vision of the future is one where women do all the work?

sumo 12y ago

A lot of what is shown is actually collaboration between 'Kat' and 'Lola' in real-time. Being able to input information from any device, view and present it on some other device, and of course also being able to convert any situation into a conference with someone else is really important and a great vision really. All of that is what we actually focus on at Collusion (https://collusionapp.com/ https://collusionapp.com/) which is free to use at the moment and does a lot of this in a less slick way. With the introduction of more and more large screen interactive devices, wearables, pen enabled devices and Virtual reality/AR options, we can open up more and more possibilities that are shown in this clip. Whats more is that augmented reality is shown a lot here which will become more and more prevalent as a way to blend productivity with the world around us, as well as generally making things more human/natural/fluid, which is also very interesting for the near future, though perhaps not the augmentation without a HMD anytime soon. As high production the video is and unrealistic or embellished some things might be, effortless and instant transition of information through our systems is certainly possible and I think very probable and I'm glad that MS is showing that in it's vision for productivity in the enterprise. Which is what this video is really about. Microsoft, with its connections to so many diverse electronics business's like Intel, Wacom and Samsung it could certainly deliver on many of these concepts into the future given the right software.

eranation 12y ago

This is all great, and really beautiful and well produced. What worries me, is that even today, with our simple 2D word / excel, people utilize about 10% of the feature in a good day, and it takes me a few google searches to find where microsoft has hidden "insert your favorite lesser known function here" in version X. New UX (and by new UX I mean things like holographic / hands manipulate augmented reality items on your HUD kind of UX) should not require user training. I watched this movie 2 times and I still don't understand what exactly they are doing (I get the idea, but if I need to answer a test on what apps they are using and what exactly each gesture means / does, you lost me... is she a publisher? a researcher? a biologist? a teacher? what's the connections between all these movies?) Having all this gesture based / 3D / eye movement / real objects interact with digital ones - this needs to be making life simpler to make use more productive. The challenge of the real UX designers of the future is how to make all this unbelievable enormous vector of inputs (mobile phones I'm looking at you too, most apps only evolved to a touchpad / touch screen gestures, mostly swiping with single fingers, how many apps really utilize multiple finger actions except zooming? how many really rely on "shake to send undo", it's still not catching on... now add all the new inputs we saw in the videos, and add Microsoft's new holographic vision, people will go to a mental institute just to turn on a word processor) The more options we will have to do something the more confusing it will be. And yes, even if kids learn it at school, no technology will have high adaptation rates if it much harder than a mouse click or a keyboard type (or a touch screen tap / swipe which are very small gradual and natural evolutions of the mouse, and only the swipe / tap / double tap / pinch to zoom really caught up out of a myriad of other possibilities) Also the 2D UX in the video, instead of making sense is just beautiful, and so damn confusing, I have no clue what actual ACTIONS these people do, except joining some project together, wasn't sure if it was a biology project, an aquatic one specifically, an education one, or a non profit one. (but perhaps this is just poor editing) In one sentence - if this is the future, it's beautiful, and so darn confusing. All people with SaaS here know what I'm talking about - getting users to read a red blinking note and press a button that says X will still get users who simply don't get it. no go get them do a 3D gesture that will launch a floating globe hologram without a 2 hour training... that's the real challenge IMHO.

exocortex 12y ago

milesf 12y ago

Ever notice how companies like General Motors & Microsoft like to make "concept" stuff like this, while companies like Apple and Tesla don't bother? Who's actually delivering on great stuff? Companies that talk about it, or those who just clam up and get to work?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

nartz 12y ago

I like seeing this kind of thing out of microsoft - tons of smart people there. Although, how about first things first, and allow excel to handle more than a million rows?

frik 12y ago

Bill Gates last vision video "information at your fingertips" (1995): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XxeY-OchwY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XxeY-OchwY It shows a wallet PC (=smartphone), digital currency (like BitCoin), touch screen, digital personal agent (next-gen Siri/Cortana/Watson), database based filesystem/shell (like Windows Cairo & WinFS - vamporware).

snarfy 12y ago

The future is full of smudge marks.

shogun21 12y ago

Interesting how it compares with their earlier vision of 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gEWoVCl-xU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gEWoVCl-xU). Seems to be fewer screens in the new one.

stanley 12y ago
I was thinking the same thing as I was watching it. The interaction hasn't changed as much as the form of the screen itself has become more versatile.

dsg42 12y ago

So, a lot of the comments here are misunderstanding what this video is, and focusing on parts that don't matter. First, here are the last two editions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gEWoVCl-xU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gEWoVCl-xU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0 In addition many commenters are getting distracted by the nature of the displays, the lack of focus on people, and the level of automation in the software. This video is made by Microsoft's Office team, and the key idea here is the content of the productivity scenarios they've expressed. And truthfully, they've made some fairly successful predictions in past videos, including items like Skype automatic translation, services like PlateJoy, natural ink processing... So what are they actually predicting here? Here's what I spot in order: Augmented reality in work scenarios (diving) Gesture control in augmented reality Sharing of what you personally see 3D printers in the classroom Pannable panoramic video recordings Trivial sharing between computers Flexible screens Perfect wireless coverage Advanced budgeting assistance High quality freelancer-project matching Use of pens on touch screens for writing and more Automatic advanced data-visualizations (the types of things that are custom made at the moment) An armband device using hand gestures instead of touch. 24 hour coworking spaces available on short notice. Easy window organization Do not disturb for all incoming contact Automatic diet tracking Even better contextual video Advanced job performance analysis Looks like a pretty cool and not unreasonable list of predictions to me. They're not saying that this is what this WILL look like, just what it might look like. And honestly, I think we will see at least 50% of those items in the next ten years.

ksk 12y ago

As long as the vision doesn't contain annoying online advertising I'll take it. The video was neat, but how close are we to solving the battery problem? I'd like a laptop that can last a week. Or charger tech that can charge a day-long device in under 2 minutes. Thank you very much.

eru 12y ago
If you took a current generation battery, and paired it with current generation processors, but dialed the performance to early 2000s---we might get there already? (People did good work with that level of performance. And even with much less.)
- ksk 12y ago
  Good point.

ArekDymalski 12y ago

What baffles me when I look at all these futuristic interfaces is that they do not take into consideration the most productive combination: keyboard+mouse+voice+3D depth. It would allow you do many things at once and as a result save time. Limiting users to gestures on flat surface looks nice and easy but isn't the fastest way to interact with stuff on the screen.