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Promised Microsoft Tablet 'No Thicker Than Sheet of Glass'
Barence writes Microsoft will deliver a touchscreen PC that is 'no thicker than a sheet of glass' within the next three years, according to the company's principal researcher. The device will be the next generation of Microsoft's Surface project, which currently houses a touchscreen PC in a deep cabinet that uses cameras to detect hand gestures and objects placed on the screen. According to Microsoft's Bill Buxton, 'Surface will become no thicker than a sheet of glass. It's not going to have any cameras or projectors because the cameras will be embedded in the device itself.' Microsoft is developing a new screen technology to make this possible. 'The best way to think about it is like a big LCD where there's a fourth pixel in every triad. So there's red, green, and blue pixels giving you light, and a fourth pixel which is a sensor that will capture stuff,' Buxton claims in an interview with The Globe and Mail."
I'll believe it when I see it. Otherwise it's just vaporware that will clog blogs with nonsensical hype.
Now you understand the use of convincing your population that giving volumes in ping pong balls, areas in stadiums and data volume in libraries of Congress is perfectly fine.
Marketting: So, how thick will it be?
Development: X cms thick
Marketting: Cool, that's almost as thick as the glass in my family picture frame, "No Thicker Than Sheet of Glass" - perfect
Development: Uh, but won't that be ambigious - and since the majority of people who are going to care enough to read this are going to have more intelligence than a potted plant - and actually question how thick the glass will be... won't this make us look like a bunch of idiots?
Marketting: Sheet of Glass! Perfect.
or is MS so much at their wits' end that they don't even know which feature to hype for their "we'll do that in 3 years, honest, you can stop buying iPads now" PR campaigns ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
A stupid press release all round
It wasn't a press release. It was an interview with Bill Buxton, a well-known pioneering computer scientist (SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award, Chief Scientist at Alias Wavefront and SGI, pioneered multi-touch interfaces in the '70s, now a principle researcher at Microsoft Research). When the press interviews well-known scientists, it is customary to ask about what new things are coming in the next few years.
If they use a x86 to compete with the ARM tablets it will have shorter battery life and run hot. If they use ARM (or something else giving good mA/mips), then people won't understand why it can't run their Windows software. If it looks and feels like Windows (and actually code wise, is Windows) but can't run Windows software, people won't like it. The platform is Windows software. It's the closed source curse, you are stuck on the hardware and API things are compiled for. Of course their is byte code, but then they will be competing again other tablets of similar spec, but with their apps byte coded while the others (Apple/Linux) are native. If that happens, bet MS's own apps are native for each platform, but they advice developers to use .NET to cover all MS platforms. But even then, are most consumers going to understand the difference between .NET apps and native apps? This to me has all the marks of a money blackhole while they try and complete in the tablet space.
You know, there was a time when Microsoft was able to kill a company with a vaporware announcement like that. Anyone remember how they announced "Pen Windows" to strangle Go PenPoint in the cradle?
PenPoint was a nice bit of work. Those guys knew what they were doing.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Not commenting on this potential vaporware, but embedded cameras in LCD screens might single handedly make video conferencing pleasant. Presently, the distance between the camera and screen mean video chatting is essentially an exercise in watching another person watch their computer while having a conversation with you.
Apart from latency / bandwidth issues, I think that is the largest thing that has prevented video chat from taking off. It's not at all like talking face to face with a real human being.
Indian or African?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
>I don't remember that Microsoft published anything really new the last decade or so.
You should not blame Microsoft for your bad memory.
So you think just because there isn't a "Press Release" headline, that statement in the interview was done on a hunch and not effected by the marketing department in some way?