9 ms·
Microsoft Surface Hub
- roozbeh18 11y agomicrosoft gave us 3 of these at 14k last year. since then it has been used as a giant monitor. video looks cool though
- saurik 11y agoSo... not good?
- noir_lord 11y agoThe idea is interesting but getting the software right will be really hard and without it been effortless everyone will end up sat back down taking notes and it'll become an expensive whiteboard/screen.
- swalsh 11y agoThis is very true, i'm imagining someone sitting at their surface "ummm wait, its not going up, oh oh my bluetooth was off"... "wait now it's saying I don't have permission to project on this screen" "oh you need to talk to Jim, he'll set you up an account" and then everyone huddles around the tiny tablet.
- Roritharr 11y agoI don't think this will be the case, as the Surface Hub supports so many graceful Fallback Options. It even works as a dumb Miracast Receiver, if all else fails.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- elorant 11y agoIs there an API for that?
- sz4kerto 11y agore/code has a recent review: http://recode.net/2015/04/29/the-new-world-of-whiteboards-from-smart-markers-to-surface-hub/ http://recode.net/2015/04/29/the-new-world-of-whiteboards-fr...
- teirce 11y agoThis is interesting. With the prevalence of windows in the corporate world, I could see this catching on. The biggest issues I think are going to be: the market share of W7 and under, and cost. I could also see it do horribly, ala the original Surface Table thing (did they even sell those?)
- douche 11y agoHa, I do remember seeing one of those Surface Tables once - it was a couple years ago at a Microsoft facility in Boston. Personally, I hate touchscreens. I recently went to Logan International in Boston, and discovered that the big boards with flight/gate listings had been replaced with wide-screen TV-sized touch screen interfaces. It took me almost five minutes to get into the touch screen interface, figure out how the search function was supposed to work, realize the search function was broken, and then scroll through the listings to find my flight. In ye olden days, I could have stood there looking at the board, and either seen immediately what my gate was, or waited thirty seconds or so for it to cycle to the second page if there were a lot of flights. Windows 10 actually does look very good. They've rolled back the blunders of the Win8 UI, which is really the only reason I can see for somebody not upgrading before. There's really no excuse for continuing to use Win7 or god forbid, XP for much longer.
- 0xffff2 11y agoWas your phone dead? I haven't actually looked at one of those arrival/departure boards in close to a decade.
- douche 11y agoSometimes analog is just quicker. There's nothing like getting to an area with shit wireless when you're relying on your phone. So I print out tickets, confirmation numbers, even directions and maps when I travel. My last trip I was kicking myself for not remembering a little bubble compass...
- bunderbunder 11y agoI don't clutter my phone with every single airline's app, electronic boarding passes often don't list the gate and never reflect status changes, and I don't get text updates when I'm traveling for work because our corporate booking system helpfully hard-codes my office phone in the contact information. Besides, even when the stars line up and my phone really does reliably give me updates on the flight status, digging it out of my pocket, unlocking it, etc is more hassle than glancing at a status board as I walk past.
- jsingleton 11y agoLet's hope it's better than the big touch screen the BBC were using during the election. Anyone know what that was running? Edit: May have been http://www.u-touch.co.uk/84-4k-multitouch-screen-ir/ http://www.u-touch.co.uk/84-4k-multitouch-screen-ir/ or http://www.idonix.com/projects/vizTouchScreen2011 http://www.idonix.com/projects/vizTouchScreen2011.
- duncanawoods 11y agoI assumed that was cgi - like a weather forecaster waving at a bluescreen. Did she have any way of choosing the seat? I think it may have been 100% controlled offscreen. Totally farcical UX - the screen had 3 functions yet she had to walk back and forth to slap a tile to switch them. Its a bad sign to measure Fitt's distance in meters! A remote would have been more sensible but it was for the pretense of being tech, not actual practicality.
- mark_l_watson 11y agoLooks nice, but cost may be a problem. At Google in 2013, there seemed to be one conference or small meeting room for every 7 or 8 people (I am guessing about these numbers, but hopefully close). Their meeting rooms had relatively low cost monitors that ran Google Groups. Shared Google Documents took the place of the collaborative surface on a Hub. I was in Mountain View and my team mates were in NYC so I used these meeting rooms for an hour or two a day. Pretty effective. As another guess, the Hub might increase the cost for each meeting room by $10K. A cheaper alternative might be really good screen sharing and group drawing access for Microsoft Surfaces. That might even be preferable as far as getting stuff done.
- eddieroger 11y agoI thought about cost first as well, and I imagine this isn't targeted at people who are picking Google Apps for cost reasons. I figured like most Microsoft products, this is focused on the Enterprise, and they'd be much happier selling 100+ at a discount than one or two to small or medium firms.
- ViViDboarder 11y agoA company could adopt them for specific meeting rooms. If you need it, book one of the capable rooms. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
- RandallBrown 11y agoWe have these fancy Cisco video conferencing systems in all of our conference rooms with MASSIVE TVs instead of projectors. I imagine they're at least 10k. The best part? They don't even work. The HDMI inputs never work and we always have to us VGA. The sound doesn't work at all. We brought in $20 Logitech speakers just to play a video. If the Surface Hub even sort of works it'll be worth it to most big companies.
- FlyingLawnmower 11y agoI wonder if this is poised to take on the ubiquitous smartboard found in high schools all across the country. Seems like a better mousetrap in that regard. That being said, I don't know anything about cost of either smartboards or the surface hub.
- NicoJuicy 11y agoI wonder what happened with Surface as a "product"... Ever since they used it for their tablet, i thought it would dissappear or receive a different name. I saw a demo of it several years ago and it was pretty impressive back then, detecting "Red Bull" cans + loading the appropriate app, playing chess, ... I found a link with some examples iwth it can do: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/pixelsense/applicationpages.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/pixelsense/applicationpages....
- macspoofing 11y agoIt was cool, but it was big and expensive and unfocused. Who was the target market for it? Microsoft sure as heck didn't know.
- bitwize 11y agoThey renamed it PixelSense because the name Surface was too good not to apply to a mass market tablet product.
- karmakaze 11y agoLooks expensive. I don't want one--it really only has value for multi-person use. Hence it's target and likely price.
- noteloop 11y agoOne of the cool things about the 84" version is that it does 4K at 120 Hz. This allows for much lower touch and stylus latency. It is likely using custom internal hardware like the 5K iMac to do achieve that refresh rate so you are probably stuck with the built in GPU. It is odd that the 55" is only 1080p when you have 55" 4K Vizio TV's going for $999.
- brianwawok 11y agoWhy does 120hz vs 60hz matter fo latency? Or 4k vs 1080p? Because for the old stuff.. we are talking a 1-2 second lag. 60hz vs 120hz is like 16ms vs 8ms per frame, which is not noticeable.
- Leszek 11y agoYou'd be surprised how sensitive we are to latency on input. Microsoft themselves did studies on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4
- fuzzywalrus 11y agoYou can visibly see and feel the delay on the Wacom Centiqs and they're 60 Hz. You adjust but it's not as ideal as there's mild tendency to under/over draw. This is probably less of a problem for a whiteboard but for art, its more problematic.
- lewisl9029 11y agoThat's probably due to input lag rather than refresh rates though. For non-TN screens, input lag (generally >30 ms) tends to dwarf refresh rate differences (16 ms vs 8 ms).
- samstave 11y agoThe 55" 4K has a lot of lag, and so not good for gaming or other high refresh needs... Looks pretty though. Source: I have one sitting on my desk.
- bitL 11y agoGive me Surface Desk and I might consider going back to MS again.
- bane 11y agoWe were just talking about the need for "better whiteboards that aren't SmartBoards(TM)" at work. Whiteboards can be incredible collaboration tools, but capturing that back out to the team can be tough. Coincidentally, we've also started giving out Surface Pro's as work computers and to the person they absolutely love them. As always, software will be the problem, so if the software is well thought out this could be awesome. edit thanks for the downvote? what did you disagree with?
- dworin 11y agoI agree about software - one cool thing is that there are a number of apps where the traditional PC or tablet is actually a sub-optimal user experience and they've focused on them - for instance, Stormboard is in their demo, and it works OK on PC, but would be a lot better on something like this.
- bane 11y agoYeah absolutely. For a while it was a struggle to get whiteboards where I work. Our facilities manager wondered what the trouble was since all our machines could connect to the projectors that were in every room and we could just show slides. Turns out they had fundamentally misunderstood the mode of communication that whiteboards enable and how it's different than slides.
- webjprgm 11y agoSimilar for scratch paper. Whiteboard is just a collaborative version, but in both cases you are working out incomplete ideas to arrive at a sketch of a plan. It is only necessary to capture the final plan. <rant> On that note, here's a rant about iPad used for scratch paper: I sometimes try to use an iPad for scratch paper but it doesn't really work out the way I want. Requirements: - Scratch paper doesn't need to persist very long, just while I'm still in the middle of working it out. - The final result needs to last until I'm done taking the actions it describes. - It needs to be easy to find the scratch papers for projects I'm currently working on. They need to still be editable in that case too. What I get instead is: - "Notes" organization with multiple pages in a notebook and folders, but the interface to organize and navigate between these isn't very good. I often don't bother to organize because of that. It also makes it hard to remember which notebook has the thing I want. - Pencil and paper is still better than finger or passive stylus due to palm detection, line width, accuracy, and the need to zoom and scroll due to those problems. An active stylus can help but I don't currently own one. - Too many choices of software, so I stick with the one I have now instead of buying them all to try them all. None of them sound like what I want from their descriptions. - On active styluses, same problem. Too expensive to buy them all and try them. Reviews focus on the wrong things. It is either talking about writing words for a note, in which case the reviews usually say it doesn't matter what features the stylus has, or it is about art. I want to draw simple sketches of flowcharts, UI, etc. which is kinda like drawing art but not so picky about certain features. - Partly due to organization issues, I tend to not delete old scratch notes from the iPad. Even something email-like with an "Archive" button or moving to a "Read Mail" folder would help. - Most of the software that I've tried does not easily sync with a PC/Mac. It might have an export to PDF / PNG option but that is a one-way export. - I do not want a subscription cloud service for my scratch paper notes. I don't want a subscription cloud service at all, thank you very much. </rant>
- LukeHoersten 11y agoMicrosoft is just crushing it with their visual design work lately. I have to admit, I'm impressed and re-thinking my opinion on MS.
- DasIch 11y agoSo they bolted the table to a wall?
- henshao 11y agomy thought exactly.
- thinkling 11y agoThere might be a software component to this.
- parkovski 11y agoYeah exactly everyone at Microsoft is so dumb. Literally all 100000+ people that work there are in the bottom 1% of intelligence worldwide. Probably because they don't use Linux. Everyone knows that just typing ls in bash boosts your IQ by over 9000 points immediately. Why is this attitude so widespread? Edit: oh no guys my internet points! Gimme back my internet points!
- DasIch 11y agoIt's not that I believe Microsoft to be dumb. However the entire page makes it seem like what they've done is somehow incredibly innovative even though it is clearly not.
- jmkni 11y agoWhy isn't it falling to the ground though? Unless they used some sort of bolt-like technology to keep it up there...interesting...
- samstave 11y agoThey are using a fastenating technology to mount to the wall.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoNo, the interactive touch-screen tabletop computers that used to be called "Surface" are now "PixelSense".
- untog 11y agoI get why they called it the Surface Hub but I initially assumed that it would be a docking station for a Surface tablet.
- joshuaheard 11y agoMe, too. I love Microsoft but they need to hire someone better to name their products.
- lojack 11y agoI assumed it was an app store for Surface apps.
- 11y ago
- brador 11y agoEveryone seems to be missing a huge market for these: Schools. I can see it improving the collaborative learning experience. But in my opinion, this makes remote teaching in first world schools a viable possibility.
- taco_emoji 11y agoThere's been players in that space for years now: http://education.smarttech.com/en/products/4000-series http://education.smarttech.com/en/products/4000-series
- brador 11y agoSmart boards are nice but they're not collaborative right? That's the killer app with this.
- penprogg 11y agoI don't know about the newer smart boards but the old ones sucked hard. This windows surface device seems like it will be using an actual digitizer and it wont be using a projector.
- locustreign 11y agoMS's previous enterprise offering in this space was the SMART Room System for Lync. It worked really well...as long as your collaborators were also on Lync. No standards based video conference connectivity, and good luck if you tried to use the system for an external collaboration/training/demo (pick your flavor of WebEx, Google Hangouts, etc.). With Lync being absorbed into Skype for Business I hope they will approach these new offerings with less of a silo type mentality. The tight integration with a Surface looks great, but what happens when someone brings in an iPad?
- jbob2000 11y agoMy highschool had SmartBoards in every classroom. There were only a handful of teachers who knew how to use them. The rest just used it as a projector screen. Rest assured that the same will be said for the Surface Hub; good teachers will use it appropriately, bad teachers will just put slides up on it.
- tammer 11y agoI've always thought Apple's missing a huge opportunity by not releasing 30-40 inch iPads. Think about it: ultimate tabletop gaming, makes smartboards obsolete, interactive movable secondary television, revolutionary sign/kiosk system, ideal office workstation, innumerable app-enabled uses...
- chasing 11y agoThe devil's in the user experience details. "Steve, can you pull up the thing?" "Yeah, I added the thing to the thing but it didn't show up." "Did you push the button?" "What button?" "To put the thing in the thing you've got to push the button." "Oh, okay. Wait. The thing just disappeared." "It might have to sync." "I just got an error." "Fuck it. Can someone just mirror their laptop screen up here?"
- k_bx 11y agoI very much agree. Skype itself is, unfortunately, too much problems sometimes. I really hope #1 priority in this thing would be its stability.
- doty 11y ago> "Fuck it. Can someone just mirror their laptop screen up here?" (Scene repeats.)
- WalterGR 11y agoI would love to read a study of how many person-hours of productivity are lost annually to people waiting for laptops and projectors to cooperate so that the meetings can begin.
- edgyswingset 11y agoI'm excited to use this in the future, mainly because the OneNote integration looks really slick, and OneNote is incredible. If this could get integrated with Outlook (e.g. you accept a meeting and your AD user account is automatically included into the session with any permissions taken care of) that would be superb.
- jbob2000 11y agoHow would this compete with HP's Slate 17? It's an android tablet-desktop thing. $450! http://store.hp.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/us/en/pdp/desktops/hp-slate-all-in-one---17-l020 http://store.hp.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/us/en/pdp/desk...
- pjmlp 11y agoIt is nice that the original Surface lives on. I really liked their idea back when the Surface was introduced, specially that .NET was the main programming stack. Now it would be WinRT/.NET, most likely.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoInteresting, I keep thinking I'll build something like this, although I note that Seiki discontinued their big 4K screen. The key for me in previous "smart boards" has always been that drawing on them has been like drawing on a tablet, which is to say the "ink" is way behind the pen when it comes to updating the display. It is the same experience on a slow timeshare system where you're typing doesn't get echoed for a dozen or more characters. And when composing text, you at least have a moderately easy way to back up and correct but when drawing not so much. That and the occasional sample glitch that suddenly has the pen making a mark 2 miles off screen you get this weird across the screen line.
- yarrel 11y agoA big thank you to the Microsoft social media team currently targeting HN for this and your other fine submissions.
- jongalloway2 11y agoYou can see the previous submissions for the OP here: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=SanderMak https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=SanderMak Doesn't look like a social media team.
- GrinningFool 11y agoI think you significantly overestimate the size and composition of HN's audience.
- callesgg 11y agoI assume the UI will suck and it will be almost unused at any place that purchases one, cause of it.
- ekianjo 11y agoThey forget to mention one critical feature: it includes free NSA spying for all your critical projects. Not sure that's something you want to do if you are a foreign (i.e. non American) company.
- moey 11y agoWhy isn't Microsoft ever transparent about the cost of their devices before release dates? In my opinion their product announcements would have much more attention and excitement if they gave a date and a price. But most of the time it's just, oh look there gonna release something sometime soon for some price. One can't even decide if it's in their budget.
- saurik 11y agoMicrosoft announces things while they are still finalizing, or even sometimes while still designing, what might not even always become a product: this gives them a chance to get feedback from potential clients as part of large semi-public beta programs and back room negotiations. They probably do not know when it will be ready, nor have they yet decided how much it will cost.
- neovive 11y agoThis looks quite promising. What piqued my interest was the section that said "Universal apps built for Windows 10 shine on Microsoft Surface Hub and scale to the large screen." Looking further into Universal Apps for Windows 10 leads to http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/03/02/a-first-look-at-the-windows-10-universal-app-platform/ http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/03/02/a-first-loo... which details the vision for the platform. That page mentions: "... Windows 10 will make it easy for you to create a Windows app that packages your website for publishing to the Store. Once installed, your website can update and call Universal APIs from JavaScript, creating a more engaging user experience." Could someone more familiar with Universal Apps shed more light on this? It sounds interesting, but I'm trying to figure out if this is similar to Chrome Webstore Apps or Hyrbid Mobile Apps wrapped in Web UI's (e.g. Cordova).
- petemill 11y agoA web developer can create a package for a website that is deployed to the store. Each time a user opens this app it's loading the content from your web server - so different from a native / html wrapper. Furthermore your JS on your live site, when the site is run from this app, can do something like: if (Windows) { ...call native APIs... }. This likely also means you can use iOS objective C or the android API for apps on the display since they are all supported on Win10 now.
- sudioStudio64 11y agoAnything that fixes the first ten minutes of every meeting nonsense where everyone trys to get the AV figured out. Anything.
- nathankunicki 11y agoSo the Surface has come full circle? This is basically the original Surface. Which is great, by the way. Merely an observation.
- robterrell 11y agoSounds like this is the result of Microsoft's acquisition of Jeff Han's Perceptive Pixel?
- paulus_magnus 11y agoMy pet project Writelive offers a similar experience today: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.writelive https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.writelive write / draw on Android tablet & show via web, collaborate in real time & more http://write-live.com/d/dba21681-8d3f-4fbe-8b4b-e5c1983df934 http://write-live.com/d/dba21681-8d3f-4fbe-8b4b-e5c1983df934 http://write-live.com/d/538254c5-7d31-41f2-83bb-bcd0a7cee7ab http://write-live.com/d/538254c5-7d31-41f2-83bb-bcd0a7cee7ab http://write-live.com/d/8f9b7846-a7b9-4e5c-b704-dad9aa87d14e http://write-live.com/d/8f9b7846-a7b9-4e5c-b704-dad9aa87d14e http://write-live.com/d/7e0ba663-14b7-4ffd-ac9f-b26eb8d47d6e http://write-live.com/d/7e0ba663-14b7-4ffd-ac9f-b26eb8d47d6e use mouse / wheel to zoom/pan
- epsylon 11y agoI'm curious nobody mentioned the problem that is Skype. For many companies, NSA snooping means that Skype cannot be used for any sensitive stuff (which translates into a defacto company wide ban).
- arey_abhishek 11y agoHackernews, we've made a whiteboard which lets you broadcast everything you write with a normal marker to a mobile device. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmVtfF6pIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmVtfF6pIo