Microsoft Surface
Dean
Well that looks cool.
Microsoft obviously recognizes what more and more people are recognizing: the Personal Computer reached its apogee some time ago.
That's real innovation on their part. I'm impressed.
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That can't possible be a MicroSoft product. There's no error message visible.
For years I thought their base screen saver was a blue screen with yellow letters.....
The thing in the image won't ever work, though. There's no place to set your coffee mug. No coffee, no workee. It's a Navy thing.
Respects,
Now you not only have to worry about people crashing into your coffee table, but you have to worry about your coffee table crashing.
In fact, you put a small thermocouple in the mug, and a very short range wireless sender, and have the mug report the temperature to the computer, then have it display the temp on the surface next to the knowmug, with an alarm when your coffee gets cold, so you know when to go warm it up. Or even, since it's IR based, just read the temperature directly!
As with every single computer advance, the usefulness isn't going to be determined by the people who initially develop and market the things. It's going to be determined by the people who look at it, see a potentiality that is non-obvious but brilliant, and harness the unforseen power within the device to do what people didn't even know they wanted to do, but can't live without once shown to them. It's not going to be moving photographs around on the tabletop, no more than the rise of the PC in the 80's was driven by housewives storing their recipes on the computer. It's going to be new types of games, new types of interactivity, new types of productivity.
It doesn't matter what we think of it when we see it. It doesn't matter what the marketing zombies think. What matters is that flash of inspiration that SOMEONE gets when they look at it, at how they can use it to do something new and cool.
A PC without a keyboard is still a PC.
It's certainly cool, but I want the paper-thin screens to decorate my home.
This might also tie-in well with another phenomenon that's starting to be observed: That 'big screen' televisions aren't necessarily suited to home viewing. Given a large viewing area, people are more comfortable with multiple small items than one big one at a time. Even if they can't give their attention to all the things at once, they'd rather have multiple windows up. And generally, these take on the apparent size of paper at arms length: 8.5x11 for documents and such, larger for maps and large photos, etc. Maybe this kind of item would tie into a large display for a home, allowing close control for multiple windows.
Eric, I think one reason might be to allow you to control when the interface happens. Nothing would say that the only time it has to connect is when on the table. However, the point you make is one of the things that's dangerous about showing off things like this. Focusing on one minor point about an example, rather than viewing the underlying tech, or overall experience.
To even have this conversation properly you have to define what is a PC.
To my mind a PC without a keyboard, or a mouse, designed to have multiple people using it at once, and with most of its storage drawn from a network rather than a local drive, is pretty much stretching the definition of "PC" to the breaking point.
But hey, that's just me.
Not sure I agree that it is a "minor point." It speaks directly to the design philosophy of the MS team that developed this. If you are thinking in a truly wireless nature you build in the virtualization of the camera/phone/whatever in an icon-like form. The coolness factor of any wirelss devise in your house, at your fingertips, is far to great not to show off if you got it.
That said, maybe it isn't ready yet and MS calculates that unveiling that later, only after it is complete, is the right apporach. It goes against every part of their history, but maybe this will be the time they go against history.
One other thing about the device. Have you (not just Dan, here) ever sat on the edge of your couch and worked on a laptop for any length of time? Not exactly easy on the back.
Not quite, Dan. Try: As with every single
computeradvance, the usefulness isn't going to be determined by the people who initially develop and market the things. Computers are just a single example.As Heinlein once observed, who would've guessed the impact that a new transportation device (the automobile) would have on human mating habits? Yet the combination of freedom to travel and at least a modicum of privacy meant young folks with the urge to merge had a much easy time getting away from the prying eyes of parents.
Or an observation that I think I can claim is original with me: if you were designing a food preservation system, would you also design it to be a message center and art gallery? Yet in a vast number of American homes, that's exactly what the refrigerator is.
Inventors create potential. Users create utility.
Technology-wise, you don't. But that's the user interface paradigm they're working with right now, making the interaction seem "natural" to the user: I put down the phone to connect, I pick up to disconnect. The maket will tell whether this natural interface approach is a success. (Personally, I think it will be gangbusters.)
I enjoy the fact that I have both a CD drive and a DVD drive on my tower. That lets me use one as a cup holder while using the other as more or less intended.
Respects,
If I can write code for it with the same tools I use on my PC, I dont care what you call it. I only care what I can do with it.
That won't be the usage scenario. I know they're showing off coffee tables now; but wall screens, board room tables, drafting tables, kiosks, and others will be much more popular.
If they had a wall-mounted version available today running Vista in the $5K range, I would have it on order as fast as I could save up the $5K. The engineering potential is huge.
I have never really seen a useful implementation of the "group computer". I personally don't like anything that isn't wildly unique that I have to wait to use.
Whatever. It seems to be 95% hype and 5% innovation.
...
I'll be more enthused about Surface once I see it in the real world, with real world applications, not a canned set of demos.
Shiny potential in a demo combined with marketing language doesn't convince me of much these days (remember when Tablets were going to take over the world?); show me some concrete and we can talk.
(Like getting the photos off that camera; if it's bluetooth, they're ignoring pairing, AND the slowness of a BT connection. If it's 802.11whatever, they're ignoring the complete ass-ness of setup, and for the phone demo, that most phones don't have 802.11.
I had to laugh at their music-related features. More flash than usability in the UI (And, Jesus, "everyone can be a DJ"? like they can't NOW?)
Their music sharing interface, while interesting looking... I can't buy that they'd actually do it in a useful way, given how crippled they've had to make music sharing on the Zune.
If you can copy music to "a friend"'s device by dragging from a special Music-mode interface (rather than a generic file interface representing the disk), 10:1 it'll be "3 plays or 3 days" or the equivalent, and thus utterly useless.
Not because I think MS is evil, but because their licensing agreements with the music industry won't permit them to do it the cool, useful way.
Which brings up the other thing they didn't show, or I missed in the demo ... how do you tell it what you want to do?
How do we get to fingerpainting mode? Tell it you want to listen to music? If I just set my phone down, does it assume I want to see pictures, copy music, or do the "concierge" thing?
Heck, how does it know which side of the table I'm at, or do I have to rotate every damn interface so I can read it right-side-up?)
It's got potential, but the devil's in the details, and I want to see one in use before I laud it.
Putting a device on the surface or not is merely a change in software. Of course, if you know it's going to be on the surface when you're interfacing with it, you won't have range or signal problems. But I can't see anything that would prevent having a persistent avatar of a camera or video or MP3 player on the surface, maybe with even DVR capability that stores content to that location, and then when the device is in range, transfers data. It's a user limitation, not a hardware limitation, and that's why I say it's a minor point for discussion of the technology proof of concept.
Martin, you're right that it's not just computers.
You're treating this like they're releasing it next week. They aren't. It's a proof of concept idea to show the possible interoperability between a surface driven I/O device and it's uses as a media hub. Of course the actual demo's not that impressive, because they're only showing us the things they've thought up at the moment, and let's be frank: computer hardware and software developers are not the ones thinking outside the box for new uses. They're the ones who are looking at ways to extend new tech to older uses, but in ways that expand the future uses of that technology. That's why I mentioned the 'recipe storage' idea from so long ago.
Engineering design meeting. Drawing the design interactively with the group. Abso-freakin'-lutely. I would use one today if I could.
You don't get apps until you get the tech. And the apps are already there, because it's a Vista machine under the hood. I'm telling you, Tablet UML would be incredible on that device. Inkon Logbook would be even better. Windows Workflow designer will be a whole new tool on the surface computer.
Sorry, we can't even hold a discussion until you clear up that misconception. Tablets are everywhere. The Tablet naysayers were wrong, and they're more wrong every day. Dell, by the way -- Dell, the company everyone pointed to as proof that Tablets were a fad because Dell didn't make them -- has announced their first Tablet for this fall. They've also been quietly selling Motion Tablets on their web site for around a year.
It's Vista, man. There will be a way to call up a traditional UI for when you need it.
Good grief, the whole Xerox SPARC/Lisa/Mac/Windows paradigm was built around a virtual desktop where you could touch stuff. Here's a real desktop. It will work like one.
Cameras pick up your hands, and figure it out from there.
We've had touchscreen systems for years. In fact they're very popular in point of sales as you really don't need a keyboard or mouse for those. The prime positive there is reprogrammability. Some of the older touchscreen systems had the screen defined in cells of some sort with a dedicated region for each cell. These newer terminals seem to be more free-form; consider it the difference between a text-only word processor and an HTML word processor. You can use the code to make the screen behave nearly any way you like.
You can even see the Windows top-right set of boxes (minimize, maximize, close) on some screens, but it's bloody hard to touch-click on them due to the screen bezel. :) I guess this would be a PC by Deans subjective definition, but I prefer a more basic linguistic concept: a PC is a Personal Computer. Hence a point-of-sale system isn't a PC even though it uses a version of Windows. Similarly, a music player is not a PC, nor is a game box.
In fact you might be able to differentiate by design: a PC is a general-purpose device. Just about anything elese you can mention is a dedicated device: a POS, inventory system, iPod or Blackberry.
Has anyone else here (besided me, at work) ever tried typing via a "virtual" keyboard? At one level, it's lovely because it vastly simplifies special orders or explanations. Instead of trying to anticipate every possible outcome (a futile task) the keyboard provides a general-purpose solution. This virtual keyboard, alas, is terrible for writing anything more complex than a text message. The goobers on Star Trek might enjoy enjoy tapping away at a (tactile-ly) featureless surface, but as a touch-typist, it drives me crazy.
Certainly there are applications where that interface is preferable. But as I asked above, who would want to (say) blog via a touch-screen keyboard?
Another factor to consider relating to Martin's idea (kiosks, etc) is cost. True, LCD screen prices are plummeting, but I have to wonder the premium incurred by adding touch-screen technology? Will we see a similar drop in prices to the point where there is not a significant cost difference (to a business anyway) between a touchscreen and an LCD/keyboard combo?
People have been going on about the end of keyboards since at least the Newton came out. Everybody remember that "next new revolution?" Yeah... The reason that PDAs generally don't have keyboards is that they're little. Even there we're seeing more PDA and PDA/phone combos with itsy little QWERTY keyboards on 'em.
The only real ergonomically new input device invented after the keyboard has been the mouse, and its cousin the trackball. You can even fold in touchscreens, as they're all just different ways to point at something in a simple manner, and even a good-quality mouse is a lot cheaper than a touchscreen. It also depends on the task. Some things are more suitable to keyboard control, while others are more suitable to alternative methods. Take gaming consoles for example.
And when those came out, most current users scoffed: "I can do all that with a keyboard and menus!" They didn't grasp the vision. Same thing happens with every new UI paradigm.
Something doesn't have to be new to be valuable. Ink and gesture and voice are as old as history, but they're changing who can use computers in their work.
No, that's the DMV. It sounds a lot cooler than it actually works too.
Then I poked around some more, via other articles and comments to them, and found out that Microsoft's Surface, while cool and maybe adding to the art in some respects, apparently builds on other work on similar multi-point touchscreen input processing.
Which is not automatically bad; there's a lot to be said for getting something to market and helping to create a demand and further progress. It's just amusing where all the publicity eyeballs are being directed.
When I was doing VB support, I got a call one time from someone programming for touch screen input. It was interesting, as I'd never given any thought to it before that. Tapping or pressing a spot on the screen is processed as a mouse click. Makes sense.
In effect, the input to Surface and things like it would be like having multiple mice hooked to a computer and using them at once, but more neatly, if that's the right word, than crudely moving one mouse in each hand.
The biggest thing driving this kind of development is the increases in processing power we're still seeing. We can fit so much computational ability in such a small physical AND thermal space that we're able to use the excess for things that we'd never thought of before. Maybe this is exactly the kind of thing we need multi-core processors for: one running the UI, one running the content, for example.
You don't say...
I have a laptop, am using it right now. I use it for surfing, writing, and games. Now, writing - being a forty-one year old male with a bad back I prefer to use it sitting up. To facilitate typing, I put a 1"x1" dowel under the back. It lifts the keyboard so the typing is easy on the wrists (side benefit is the bottom is off the table and kept much cooler to the touch).
This would be a useful addition to my computer because I could touch the screen (N.B.: make it a cleaner-friendly screen else the first spill or the oils on my finger are going to screw the interface up) to highlight what I want. But then, my wireless mouse does the highlighting pretty good right now.
It is an interesting tool to use, for maps and drafting, and other direct applications; and as others have said, it will get developed as it actually rolls out and is used by many. I don't think James Watt foresaw what his improved steam engine for pumping out a mine was going to do.
Umm... I have a tablet. Little T tablet. It uses a pen-shaped stylus and is pressure- and angle-sensitive. I have one at work, too, and I've just noticed that I have, in the last few months, worn down the nice new tip we put on it to an angle. Yeesh.
As for artist Tablets, they do exist and have for at least half a dozen years. It's like taking the Wacom tablet and putting the screen where you're drawing, you know, like a real sketchpad. Highly expensive, but very useful when you're in the right field.
(And my home tablet was a Christmas present, and I thought I didn't need it. Two weeks of use was all it took to make me swear off the mouse for art!)
A touchpad is just a mouse (x,y coordinates) by any other name... You engage imput via a touch-sensitive screen as opposed to a serial/USB device, but the result is the same.
Martin raises some good points, but it's late over here right now. I will observe I have reservations about using a fictional sci-fi character 300 years from now as a paradigm... :)
As for other earth-shaking new paradigms, how about:
-the Dvorak keyboard
-voice recognition (ok, maybe the hardware is finally feasible here)
-handwriting recognition
-biometric recognition
-virtual reality
-virtual reality "avatars"
-Microsoft Bob
Oh, God, no. That's exactly like the early mouse scoffers who argued they could do anything with keyboard and menus that they could do with a mouse. It's simply not true.
Hand a 5 year old a computer, a mouse, and a paint package. The 5 year old will maybe fiddle with it for a while, but probably won't get interested. It ain't natural. Hand a 5 year old a Tablet PC and Windows Journal, and don't count on getting your Tablet PC back for a few hours. My nieces universally declared it the funnest coloring book they ever had. The difference between mouse-on-table-maps-to-dot-on-screen and pen-on-screen is night and day.
The mouse and keyboard are great solutions to certain kinds of problems, but not the right solutions to everything. And the pen beats the mouse at almost everything.
Trek has a long history of inspiring engineers to new inventions. As a requirements analyst, I find the beauty of Trek is they don't have to make the tech work. They just envision how people will use it. You have no idea how hard it can be sometimes to get users to give you a vision of how they would use new tools. They can usually describe what they do now. They can sometimes describe new things they might do with existing tools. But to ask "How will you work with this new tool?" can be amazingly frustrating. The Trek writers and producers did a great job of depicting the tech in use. Then the real engineers say "Why not?"
And the producers and writers had a habit -- sometimes strong, sometimes weak -- of talking to engineers and futurists to try to get an idea of what was out on the fringes of the drawing board. Geordi's graphical programming of the ship with drag and gesture and voice command is a paradigm many of us have been touting for decades. The Trek writers just gave us a brilliant envisioning of it. When I see how Geordi works, I say, "Yes, I can work that way!"
Please. The number one "proof" that that was "earth-shaking" was a poorly constructed Navy study, run by a guy named Dvorak. Not all of us were taken in by him.
I'm using it now. It's indispensable for some tasks. And don't take my word for it. Remember Dean wrote on it a couple of weeks ago?
I use it every day. It works great!
I was using it every day on my old computer. My Gateway doesnt have that software; but my Toshiba's "password" was me signing my name; only instead of my name, I used a simple UML diagram of an Actor, a navigable association, and a Use Case. In other words, a stick figure, an arrow, and an ellipse. I had lots of friends try to copy it to get in. They never could. Yet it let me in on the first try nearly every time, and always on the second.
Well, these were never seriously put to use by any mass market system. The hardware's just not there. And I don't find them all that compelling, anyway. But Second Life and Warcraft and such show that lots of people like inhabiting virtual worlds.
Give them a break already. The project manager on that one married the boss. Might've colored some marketing decisions. And besides, you've never had a really cool idea that no one else appreciated?
Your rebuttal regarding the child and a paint program is perfectly true, but misses the point. I'm talking about how things work behind the scenes. I don't doubt a touch-screen version of your example would prove to be equally intuitive.
But. The point is that internally they're both the same. The application and the OS really don't need to know how the coordinate was input; they don't "care" about that. They just need the new (or updated) x,y pair. That's it. Doesn't matter to the program how that data was input.
And, no, I never said you can do anything with a keyboard that you can with a mouse. I just said that just about any pointing device invented since the mouse has merely reproduced the ability to move the cursor around and select things "just like a mouse." No new paradigm there.
I repeat: nearly every single new pointing device after the mouse replicates mouse behavior: all of them provide a way to give the application input to move the cursor on the screen, and make a selection by pointing. A pen is just the same as a touch-screen, except you use a stylus instead of a finger. They're both the same as a mouse (in terms of input and selection) except the mouse requires your finger to touch a mouse button instead of the screen.
Delta X, delta Y, select. That's it. Once you get past how those three variables are actually input, everything else is procedurally the same.
Nope. When users are speaking, they follow different strategies than when they're typing. Typing users lean more toward precision. Speaking users lean more toward brevity. Typing users can see what they typed, and easily back up and correct. Speaking users have to rely on memory for what they've spoken; and since memory can be flawed, you have to be ready to interact with them in short bursts and then give them feedback, review, and correction mechanisms.
Blogging isn't speaking, even though they both use words. Typing isn't conversing.
If you don't take into account how a tool is used, you fall into "all you have is a hammer" thinking. Early mouse-based programs were really just mouse-based ways to do menu selections, so they were "the same" as keyboard approaches. Then people started writing apps where the keyboard just wasn't practical.
Don't just see the system's view. See the user's view. They're the ones who write the checks.
My original thread related to several inventions, each of which was expected to introduce a new paradigm. Each failed in that expectation.
I listed several examples as evidence of this, and you object (in seratim) to all. Apparently we are talking at cross-purposes.
My original thesis was that -more than once- technological innovations have been acclaimed as new paradigms. For every cited example, this has turned out not to be the case. In fact, for every cited example (except perhaps voice recognition) has just provided a new instantiation of providing applications with deltaX, deltaY screen coordinates, and a selection mechanism. No new paradigms required.
Now you, Martin, have responded with specific examples how my provided examples are wrong. I have never claimed that the ideas/techniques were wrong, poorly-concieved, or wrong. I just said they weren't new paradigms. Old wine, new bottles, and all that.
I have never said that (say) voice recognition is in some way infeasible or a bad idea. I just pointed out that wasn't the Next Killer App. Nor was it the Next Ground-Breaking Interface. It just helped a specific group of people with specific needs and requirements. Just as things like touch-screens, tablets, and other goodies have provided specific advantages in specific circumstances.
My thesis is that no one has, as yet, provided a truly new paradigm to replace the keyboard/mouse PC interface for general use. In other words, general-purpose requirements trumps niche requirements. This, I believe, leads back to Dean's questions about what a "PC" is. I still say that that a "PC" is a "personal computer," and the distinction between "computer" and dedicated device is that the dedicated device is precisely that, and the "computer" is general purpose. Let us also note that the term "personal" is relevant. Hence dedicated terminals should not be considered "PCs" as they are designed to a very specific and narrow purpose.
Good Lord, we are such geeks... Heh.
I can use keyboard and mouse sitting down at a table or on a bed. I can use ink and gesture practically anywhere, and voice everywhere. People have to learn the niche skills of mouse and keyboard; but above the age of two or so, we all can speak and draw, because it's how we communicate with each other.
And before you write off Tablets as merely substitute mice, I suggest you write some Tablet PC code. You'll find out just how wrong that is. I can't do with a mouse what I can with a pen. And where they do overlap, the pen is loads easier. Easier is a new paradigm.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.