Is this the next best thing we were looking for?
Computers that can take dimensions of our clothes when we just walk into the shop and robots to hand in the shopped items... What is next?
Three things are surprising about Ballmer's announcement. First, Microsoft was able to keep the project a secret. Second, the first product will ship as early as this year. Third, Microsoft adds to the existing research on third-generation user interfaces the concept of recognizing objects.
Pundits, the press and users -- including me -- have been hard on Microsoft lately. And for good reason. Flaccid Vista sales and confusing Vista versions, high prices, lame initiatives like the Ultra Mobile PC and a general lack of innovation have given the company an increasingly bad reputation.
But Surface is a spectacular home run. The secrecy, the implementation, the rollout plan, the early marketing all impress.
Surface appears to give Microsoft an early lead in the next generation computing platform, and, significantly, it thrills partners like Intel and others. Surface craves massive computing power. It guarantees another decade -- or two -- of global demand for ever-newer, bleeding-edge hardware. And even though Microsoft will build the initial hardware itself (using partner components, of course), it's likely that the company will extend the platform to PC makers like Dell and HP.
1 comment:
What I like about this product is that the technologies behind it, or atleast the ideas behind it, are deceptively simple. Such an elegant use of existing technological ability to create a very exciting product. Somewat like how Apple shrunk the ipod into ipod nano...
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