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Microsoft's Multitouch Coffee Table Display
longacre writes "Popular Mechanics takes the Microsoft Surface system for a hands-on video test drive. To be announced at today's D5 conference, the coffee-table-esqe device allows manipulation from multiple touch points, while infrared, WiFi and Bluetooth team up to allow wireless transfers between devices placed on top of it, such as cameras and cell phones. Expected to launch before the end of the year in the $5,000-$10,000 range, the devices might not make their way under many Christmas trees, but will find the insides of Starwood hotels, Harrah's casinos and T-Mobile shops."
This is so "Star Trek" to the geek in me. Finally, a way to use the computing processing power available in a method about anyone can use. Now to get it into a package that is thinner and doesn't require the supporting table.
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The ease of use that is apparent is key, the idea is there, its the software that makes it all the more so amazing. I cannot wait till this type of interface is the standard
on a side note, why did it take it 930AM EST to get this up on
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Interesting to see briefly a little on what's happened to Jeff Han (formed his own company producing multi touch displays for business and military, including wall sized as demoed in the vid, easy to do as it's a projection display) as well as more footage of Microsoft's new toy.
I find this very interesting from a marketing perspective. They are promoting this as if it was a product, and yet it isn't on sale - and even the implementations they are talking about (T-Mobile, Sheraton Hotels) are really trials with partners that won't be happening until the end of next year.
So what is this all about? The Vista and Office '07 launches haven't gone well from a marketing perspective - there has been a lot of press basically saying that Microsoft is losing its competitive edge. Couple that with the iPhone, and the fact that Apple is almost certainly going to be launching new products with multi-touch capabilities over the next year or so, and I think it is clear what is going on. Microsoft really want to improve their image in relation to Apple - they don't want Apple to be seen as the innovator and them as the company that's lost it.
Notice on the website that they have a section called "origins" giving the history of the technology within Microsoft - I think they are trying to reverse the image that they copy Apple. Now when the touch-screen iMac is launched (or whatever) Microsoft will have done a fairly good job at taking some of the shine off the launch, even though they don't have a consumer product in the area, nor will they have for some years.
Note, I am not saying that Microsoft are not serious about this as a product -- just that this news launch (about a product that doesn't exist) is all about addressing people's perceptions of the company, and trying to piss on Apple's fire a bit.
Apple has been patenting the hell out of the multitouch UI concept, and I can't imagine this is going to slip by Steve Jobs without a fight. Apple purchased FingerWorks and owns most of the concepts shown in that video.
Hidden in the recent demo for the Iphone was a glimpse of Apple's multitouch technology. If you knew where to look, it was hidden in plain site during the demo of the photo album and rolodex functions.
Microsoft were a big investor in The Island, and since this technology has been in secret development since 2001 (apparently under the codename Milan) it's not too much of a stretch to think that the interface from the 2005 film was directly inspired by this product.
If Apple can squeeze the same thing into a battery powered iPhone, why can't MS squeeze it into a Zune, instead of bolting a computer and a projector under my coffee table?
This is similar to having a coffee percolator that runs on a lawnmower engine.
I mean, Apple doesn't have nearly the manpower of Microsoft, yet they've got a product coming out next month that delivers this technology and fits it into your pocket. Someone at MS must be saying "Well, we tried, I guess."
Firstly, let me say I think the software demos look fantastic. However...
Is it just me, or does the choice of hardware technologies seem a bit, well, crappy? Back projection - that means the table itself is huge underneath - if you're eating in a restaurant you want a table you can streach your legs under.
And infa-red cameras tracking the movement..? Notice when they do the paint demo - it looks like the system isn't actually very accurate. They do blobby finger painting, but if I was going to buy ones of these I would want something I could draw fine, accurate lines on with a pen. And I'm not convinced of the idea of having to put barcodes on everything so the system can recognise them.
Surely a flat-screen technology (TFT, Plasma, whatever) coupled with one of the newer multi-touch sensitive technologies would be better?
This is actually quite interesting technology. It has been conceived before - but only that - conceived. This is one time Microsoft gets kudos.
Not quite. Even tho Microsoft was the first to market with something in the $10,000 range for places like Vegas. I wonder what the Blue Screens look like?
More info the MS product here, here and here.
I imagine that Jeff Han's own Fascinating multi-touch system just might not use Windows as a fundamental foundation. Don't forget about the 16 foot long interactive wall So I can imagine several patent fights coming out of this, even though the research lines are likely independent. Microsoft might even get accused of stealing somebody else's research, regardless of the facts.
Of course, this happens a little while after Apple revealed their own multitouch interface. Microsoft must hate that. After all, Microsoft can't get a patent on the use of fingers, even tho they can try.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I don't think anyone (including Microsoft) is saying they invented the technology. That doesn't make the product any less interesting. Sometimes it takes a big company to realize ideas of people who have little chance of bringing the idea to fruition. A table-top computer is hardly a novel idea, but something a lot of people have been waiting for a long time.
I work in the A&E field, and having a drafting board like this (though with a stylus) would be _very_ cool, indeed. Bump up that resolution (150-200dpi, like my laptop) and make it in a 16:10 with 26" or 32" vertical dimension and it would be a lot like drafting on paper. The extra real estate with a 16:9 would allow a real size "sheet" of space with room on the side for toolbars and/or palettes. I drool just thinking about it.
Oh, sure, you'd need an insane adapter to drive it (with about 4800x7680 resolution - QuadHD), but that's just the way things are. Now that I come to think of it, it might be useful for digital photo/image manipulation. At 200dpi, you could work with the images from the newest Hasselblad digitals at 1:1 pixel mapping. And, hey, if you've got $32k to drop on a camera body, you may as well pony up for the post processing, right?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Many things look quite impressive in the context of a demo. The MIT Media Lab has been pulling off absolutely stunning demos for... is it a decade now? Very few of them have led directly to anything real. There's no way to tell whether this is the sort of thing like Clippy that is an impressive demo but not a useful product. But the comment that "the company's unofficial Surface showman, Jeff Gattis is a clean-cut fellow who is obviously the veteran of a thousand marketing seminars" is not confidence-inspiring. It would be much more impressive if they had demonstrated the product by letting half-a-dozen people, with no training, who had never seen the product before, try to use it.
There are some very obvious practical issues. With a vertically-oriented touchscreen, the issue was what sort of gadget you could use to prop your hands so that your arms wouldn't be trembling an aching in half an hour.
WIth a horizontally-oriented table-sized touch screen, the obvious issue is that if you put it under a thick sheet of Lexan it won't be touch-sensitive any more... and if you don't put it under a thick sheet of Lexan it won't be touch-sensitive for long.
It would be an interesting contest to see whether one of these $10,000 gadgets lasts longer in a typical American home or in a "Starwood hotel, Harrah's casino or T-Mobile shops." I figure a week, tops, before someone spills a cocktail on it or tries to see whether they can operate it with their butt.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Ah yes, I'd forgotten about Origami - how quickly that disappeared. And didn't they announce that shortly before Jobs announced the iPhone?
Perhaps Apple fanboys should take this as being a sign that Apple is going to announce something really big at the WWDC in a couple of weeks time!
"What is interesting is the application (implementation, and that anyone could write apps for it (as opposed to iPhone, for example)." ...and for the multitouch implementation to track more than two inputs (as opposed to the iPhone, for example) and use a screen larger than a postage stamp (as opposed to the iPhone, for example).
Apple is using multitouch as a gimmick to create buzz. It doesn't actually do anything useful.
Not that this multitouch stuff doesn't have a potential as a technology, but Microsoft certainly didn't pioneer this technology, it's been in the works by various researchers for ages. And I think it's great. Honestly though, I think a coffee table has to be one of the worst uses for it at the moment. Maybe if it cost nearly nothing, it'd be a nice addition to the electronic household.
It'd probably work better as a worksurface rather than a coffee table at the moment. As in, a worksurface that you sit at, put papers on and has a laptop with a screen on too. It'd be great for managing the link between your work system, laptop and so on, taking quick notes and syncing your mobile phone, but it's just so expensive. I, and many people I know, prefer typing. Microsoft so desperately wants to rid the world of the keyboard but nothing I've seen comes close to a keyboard in terms of usability and speed.
I think it'd also be useful for graphics artists if they can make the visibility better.
Though, I do like the coffee table picture transfer thing. If they linked that into a media centre PC so that you put a camera on it and the display with the TV on says "Saving pictures from camera..." and then just let you be until "Press red to view the pictures". I think the coffee table screen is a bad idea at the moment though.
There are applications for this sort of thing, but finger-painting isn't it.
Given that the basic property of this device is that output resolution is good and screen size is large, and input resolution is poor but you can use multiple touches, an obvious application is video editing. An interface for quickly putting together a news show would find a high-end market. There are tools for this now, like Avid NewsCutter, but they rely heavily on keyboard commands and have too many modes.
The big advantage of multi-touch is that it's a way out of the mode limitations of a single-pointer interface. Right now, your options are usually verb-object (get into mode, select thing), or object-verb (select thing, go to menu to indicate what to do with it.) This breaks down when you need to talk about more than one thing at a time. With multi-touch, there are more options.
Somebody will probably do a DJ console with this interface.
I disagree with the statement that the ideas have only been demonstrated too. We have been working with vendors for the last 3+ years on a multi-touch table and about 1.5 years with a multi-user, multi-touch video wall. We use Google Earth, Satellite ToolKit (STK), and a collaboration application (mark up of imagery related data) on both of them. I was very surprised to see Microsoft touting this when we have been working with this technology from multiple vendors now for a while. The only new feature as you mentioned is the wireless transfer of pictures to the device with it recognizing where the device was on the screen, and I'm not sure that it is very useful. When I transfer data, I want to store it in a directory structure or a database system rather than where I set the camera.
They do this with regular magnets in cows to make the small pieces of metal that they eat all get clumped together so that they can be removed with a simple surgery rather than individually.
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