Why Microsoft Surface Took So Long To Deploy 187
An anonymous reader writes "Nearly a year after all the fanfare unveiling a new touchscreen tabletop interface, Microsoft's Surface computer will finally appear in select AT&T stores later this month. Popular Mechanics tech editor Glenn Derene, who first introduced us to Surface in May, seems to have done a complete 180 in this rant, blasting Microsoft for being more obsessed with Surface's novelty as a magnet for image-conscious partners while messing up a rare hardware device — and, surprisingly, the simple software he was told came with it. From Microsoft's official excuse in the article: 'It's actually been a good thing for us,' Pete Thompson, Microsoft's general manager for Surface, told me. 'We were anticipating that the initial deployments were going to be showcase pilots using our own software applications on units to drive traffic. What our partners have decided is that they want to skip that stage and go to an integrated experience where they build their own applications. That's pulled the timeline until this spring.'"
civ4 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:civ4 (Score:5, Interesting)
A lowly developer that wants build a hobby project where anyone with a surface can play chess virtually against someone? Tough. Exorbitant license fees or no surface for you!
I remember in eighth grade trying to fathom how I would come up with $240 for a student license of Visual Studio! I can't imagine what these costs are going to be. And that's the sad thing, really, the neat stuff would all come from the hobbyists who still have an imagination that's not twisted towards profits.
Think what kind of senior project a graphical artist could make with one of these things! I'd go to an art show where you get to interact with the art any day.
To reiterate, I doubt your civilization 4 dreams will come true unless its creators decide the demand is big enough for them to drop megabucks developing another interface to the engine hoping that fans will splurge for the 'surface.'
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Re:civ4 (Score:4, Informative)
several researchers have been doing this for years. MSFT is just the first big name to commericialize it. other companies have been selling the same thing for years.
Also MSFT's table is useless in brightly lit rooms. It needs a darkened room in order to be seen clearly.
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But if it's just speculation, then, really, why?
Because the GP is correct. it DOES recognize Blue Tooth devices, and it does recognize WHERE you set them on the table. For example, you set your cell phone down, and it puts a "Drop Zone" circle around the phone so you can simply drag photos, contacts, etc, and drop them on the phone.
It uses cameras for this--to recognize objects placed upon it. And the software that
Re:civ4 (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure MSoft will also try to make a killing on the software, but there is still a pretty significant hardware cost here.
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To reiterate, I doubt your civilization 4 dreams will come true unless its creators decide the demand is big enough for them to drop megabucks developing another interface to the engine hoping that fans will splurge for the 'surface.'
Well, the video game industry is something like a $14 billion/year industry these days and developers have dropped megabucks into systems in the past that showed far less promise for gaming applications than the surface.
I do think the GP is being a little bit shortsighted though. The true potential of the Surface for gaming is not ports of old PC games, just like all those PS2 ports on the Wii are not utilizing the system's full potential either.
When I think of gaming on the Surface, I imagine something t
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Porn?
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I think you're a little confused here. This is Microsoft, not Apple. It's the Surface, not a giant iphone. Visual Studio might cost something (and there are, BTW, free versions of VS), but there's absolutely no licensing you need in order to develop for Windows (of the NT or Mobile kind). Get gcc, your favorite IDE, or just a HEX editor and start writing whatever you want.
I'm not familiar with Xbox 360 development but I'm pretty sure the conditions aren't an
Re:oblig (Score:5, Informative)
The product above is Mitsubishi's DiamondTouch screen. The folks who make it have released a Linux-compatible SDK. [merl.com]
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WRT Linux, however. Have the Xorg folks gotten around to incorporating multiple pointer devices yet? I know there was talk of being able to use tw
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WRT Linux, however. Have the Xorg folks gotten around to incorporating multiple pointer devices yet? I know there was talk of being able to use two mice, but the last time I checked the both controlled the same cursor.
The link in the post you responded to actually covers that. It's called MPX [unisa.edu.au]. I hadn't heard of it until now, so I can't say much about it - certainly someone else here is much more informed.
I'll have to keep an eye on this... I've been looking for a way to send input from a single keyboard to multiple windows in Linux, and haven't seen anything workable yet. It looks like this might address that as well eventually.
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I mean, you can set multiple BT devices on the table top, and it will put draw a "drop zone" circle around each one.
It's cameras are able to match a specific BT signal to it's physical hardware.
It's a bit more complex then you're giving it credit for.
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But no, we can't lock them up. Why use the big-empty case where our stock of PS3 stuff was for securing something. Heavens no.
But back on topic... yes. This is entirely possible. Surface can read small barcodes (both 1D and 2D) so just stick a barcode on the back of each card and there you go. Done and done.
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Frankly, I hate "collectible" games anyway, since it means either buying a ton of crap you don't want (and throw away) to get the good stuff, or paying someone else to do it for you.
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Dude! (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY [youtube.com]
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Simple (Score:2)
Not entirely dissing Surface (Score:5, Interesting)
He's not really criticizing MS, but more like chiding them gently. I'm a little underwhelmed by Surface. If you've ever had a coffee table that you can't put your legs under, you know how awkward they are to sit at. Plus, this price seems awfully exaggerated.
I like ROSIE's surface much more, although the direct screen (instead of projection) makes the resolution an issue, but hopefully that'll get addressed as hardware goes up.
Really, if you took a touchscreen laid flat, added a bunch of multi-touch capability and some touch tags for wireless pseudo-plugs, why couldn't this be built by anyone?
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Walking through a mall you see a digital sign, walk up to it touch it and it gives you more information. This is all available now, but things like surface get it exposed to levels that make decisions.
I work for a marketing company and as soon as surface was released our customers were asking for them. So I'd guess the interest is there. It's not specifically surface they want,
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Now that's just CrazyTalk. Talk.
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and, full size CAD with multi touch and hands-on drawing? awww yeah....
Craplets (Score:5, Insightful)
You can tell Apple's _customers_ are it's actual customers.** Microsoft's partners and developers are it's customers, and it shows.
Look at Windows Mobile: you get a reasonable platform that's perverted by hardware "partners" and their singular inability to write crash-resistant software, and then further mangled by the carriers, who seem addicted to penny-pinching revenue-ware.
Yes, it's "open" to developers, but as a manager of a fleet, the first thing I'd like to do is strip the device down to Microsoft's core platform, without the craplets the vendors see fit to add to it.
With Apple, you get a locked-down device. AT&T can't rebrand it (if they had their way, it'd be the "AT&T A7530", and it'd have six different ways for AT&T to sell me overpriced ringtones or web forms), nor can the Taiwanese hardware manufacturer load it with battery management software that misspells the word "Battery".
** you see this with free software as well, but the customer base isn't quite the same demographic as Apple's.
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Do you understand now?
Surface should be something similar: a zero-effort experience for the end user. Sacrificing usability so some geek can change themes (or worse, so a carrier can bitchslap
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Because the Apple name is so worthless? Please, AT&T would rather label all their phones Apple than AT&T. They paid a lot just for the name iPhone already.
Re:Craplets (Score:5, Insightful)
And vendor lock-in can definitely benefit the simplicity argument I just made. If your goal is simplicity, the fewer cooks at the pot the better.
Poo-pooing the idea without careful consideration is ill-advised.
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By which you mean just the iPod, right? Because with everything else, you're just paying more for less, and the simplicity doesn't make up for it.
Rob
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What, you've really never heard of Mac computers? You know, the ones that cost more than regular PCs despite having weaker specs, fewer upgradeability options, and less compatibility with third-party applications?
Beyond that, the other reply to my post listed a couple of other products that would fit the bill, like the MacBook Air.
Rob
Or the... (Score:5, Insightful)
He might also mean the:
Macbook Air, which forgoes a DVD drive to give you a much lighter and thinner notebook, better for traveling.
Or the Apple TV, which foregoes a tuner but makes it easier to get media directly to your TV over the internet with easy iTunes integration.
Or the iPhone, which makes smart phones that are much easier to use for most people.
Or OS X itself, which is basically UNIX with a simplified window manager which is easier to use than most traditional X windows managers (and that for most people does make up for the loss of flexibility).
In fact all Apple really does is look at how consumers are using something, and simply that thing in ways that most people can actually use it, and advanced users can tolerate it because in spite of simplicity it's doing programatically sophisticated things under the hood. You may disagree with Apple's choices of where to simplify but historically Apple has shown they make very intelligent choices, based on what people actually buy over time.
The same arguments apply for much of the software they write as well.
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Only the Haters (Score:2, Informative)
What makes your post even funnier is that only Apple haters think Apple is all about image. The rest of us just enjoy using the products and don't care what you, or anyone else, thinks about our image when doing so.
Only the Apple hater, in my experience, focuses on image
Only the Zealots (Score:2)
And only Apple zealots think that people who can see that the emperor has no clothes are haters. I don't care either way about Apple. In fact, I would recommend that people who don't know anything about computers use Macs, if only so that the Internet doesn't have to deal with as many botnets and zombie computers as it might. But that doesn't mean that it's not true that Apple is a company that is successful mostly
What is true... (Score:3, Informative)
Your repetition of something that simply isn't true doesn't make it true, either.
or that most of its products are hardly superlative.
Products are not successful when they are merely superlative. That gets you a little way, but you do not see the kind of share Apple has with iPods and music, without a hefty dose of solid usability behind it. You don't see the huge range of customer types that use the iPo
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Rob
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And for the other guy who said that it gener
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If there was any software that allowed for this sort of fusion that existed for anything as complicated and multifunctional as modern cell phones or personal computers, I would agree with you. But there isn't, certainly not including Apple's offerings, and that means that software on those devices has to be considered separately from hardware.
But it's designed by Apple, branded by Apple and runs Apple software. And the h
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Apple's customers want easy to use and stylish. They don't want bling, bells and whistles.
To use the oft-abused car analogy: if Apple designed an in-car electronics system, it'd have one knob, four buttons, wouldn't allow you to swap it out, wouldn't support many models of car and wouldn't have half the
You can thank Apple for the fall of DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
They are also the sole reason Amazon sells any big-label commercial MP3's at all.
Only by grabbing control of the DRM reigns away from the studios was Apple able to force labels into realizing DRM free music was good for them (it was the only way to illustrate to the studios that lock-in was a problem for studios as much as consumers).
Pray that Apple succeeds in the video market if you ever want to see DRM free video as a commercial product. This is less
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Oh, wow. Only a True Believer would claim that iTunes' use of DRM is a selfless learning aid for the recording studios instead of the grab for marketshare that it obviously is.
Also, lock-in is bad for consumers!?!? *gasp*
Rob
Two things in one (Score:2)
Only an Apple Hater would be so blind as to not see both can be true at once. I have no "Belief" in Apple, I need none - I have the evidence of what Apple has done, and what the music studios have done.
Unless you would care to hazard some other theory as to just why music companies would ever had sold DRM free music if they were not
Hmm.. theme ideas... (Score:5, Funny)
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considering the pounding the Enterprise bridge is expected to endure ... does anyone else think a touch sensitive interface is incredibly stupid?
LCARS didn't seem to have any visible interlocks or physical barriers.
one slip of your fingers brings downs the shields, puts the engines into reverse, and jettisons the warp core.
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Testing... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Great, now when I come home I gotta check my computer to make sure the cats didn't put kitty porn on it...
*HIDE*
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Not necessarily. From the demo video, it would seem the table has some degree of recognition, so it can tell what's touching it. As long as it's flexible enough, theres no reason why it couldn't do image recognition of the cat and refuse to respond to it. That reminds me of the Flo Control project: http://www.quantumpicture.com/Flo_Control/flo_control.htm [quantumpicture.com]
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I can think of many reasons why you want a system that could interact with a service animal or companion.
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Re:Testing... (Score:5, Funny)
while(!asleep()) {
eat();
breakSomething();
}
Expensive? (Score:2)
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Development (Score:3, Funny)
So, the delay was getting an SDK out the door? Holy cow, MS pumps out half a dozen SDKs a month, it took a whole year to create an SDK for a table? I'm guessing they didn't build this thing from scratch, either - it's probably
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A novel kiosk (Score:5, Interesting)
It may simply not be suitable for long-term use so they picked an application where people would interact with it and leave the store before they got tired of craning their necks and holding their arms up in the air.
Re:A novel kiosk (Score:5, Interesting)
There are all kinds of cool niche markets for this thing. Microsoft's creativity stifling bureaucracy is in full effect in marketing this thing.
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The original demo showed it recognising (some) cell phones placed on the table and so forth, but those were real live cell phones out of someone's pocket. Every cell phone I have seen at a store, AT&T or otherwise, is either behind glass or a tethered "dead" model. It simply won't be as easy as the customer helping themselves to cell phones and placi
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I'd like to be wrong, 'cause there's some cool stuff that flows from true object recognition.
Apple Lisa II, by MSFT (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like an Apple Lisa (pre-Macintosh, even more expensive, unreliable and pompous than a Mac) or the NeXT cube: great ideas, the first to bring them to market, but still not fit into a market niche. Market niche is what Microsoft does really well.
They will trot this out to try to gain the cool points, then find out a way to apply the technology to a tablet computer that also can prop itself up like a mini-table.
Roughly Drafted got it right (Score:5, Interesting)
I still think Roughly Drafted had it right in a post [roughlydrafted.com] last year.
Surface took longer, was more expensive, and is uglier than the iPhone. The iPhone uses real touch sensitivity, while Surface uses cameras and a projection screen. Surface had interesting tricks like identifying objects, but it did that through essentially 8 dot bar codes.
So here we are, a year later. Surface has been no where to be seen. It is now coming to 4 AT&T stores in large cities, where it will do next to nothing.
You can compare phones. Neat. A normal kiosk could do that (as the article points out). The more interesting abilities of Surface (like collaboration and such) won't come out in that. You can only compare two phones at once? There are only 8 or the (what, 20+) phones AT&T sells that will work with it? And how long before people steal some of the special phones (with the magic bar codes or whatever) thus rendering it a big expensive table? Or will those phones be tied up with leashes also?
It's a semi-interesting technology, that isn't going anywhere because of the management. Is anyone surprised? This is how basically every tech demo ends up. We never see it, or it gets managed to death.
They should have just started selling them to the (business) public at a high price with an SDK and just let people figure it out.
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The iPhone uses real touch sensitivity, while Surface uses cameras and a projection screen.
What kind of fanboy nonsense is this? Is there some kind of platonic ideal of touch sensing technology? In what conceivable way is touch sensing by capacitance more "real" than touch sensing by infrared image processing? If it senses touch, it's "real" touch sensitivity, no?
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I understand why they did it, to a degree. Making touchscreen that large is probably very tough.
My point was that Apple engineered a complete little device in a short amount of time, and Microsoft pieced a bunch of off the shelf hardware together in a empty box and decided to charge $10k for it.
It's simply that Microsoft took the easy way out, engineering wise, compared to what Apple had to go through to get their touchscreen right. MS's job wasn't easy. I'm just questioning the amount of time and money i
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It's Roughly Drafted fanboy nonsense. That's really all that needs to be said.
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One amusing note: AT&T's Surface software is NOT iPhone compatible.
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Apple had the easier job. They already had a bunch of fan bois lined up to buy the phone as soon as they hit the shelves, and they introduced it into a culture obsessed with the newest, shiniest gadget. On the other hand, Microsoft now needs to convince people that they actually want this piece of crap that they created.
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So you think it was easier to make a full, working, cell phone, that thin. Even through it had a revolutionary interface, had to be approved by AT&T, sold to actual customers, OKed by the FCC, etc.
Microsoft just had to say "we're going to sell this, it's experimental".
Apple doing a full consumer product had a tougher time.
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If you didn't get the joke, look up "contextual reframe".
Rome was not built in a day (Score:4, Interesting)
How badly do we need multitouch for e-mail, web browsing or posting on slashdot?
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You mean the IBM 5100 [wikipedia.org]? My folks had one doing number crunching for multi-currency sales and inventory back in 1975.
That year I only used it to play games, but later I learned about programming by printing some of those programs and figuring out how to convert the code to work on my Apple ][.
Drafting table (Score:2, Insightful)
I do think it could be nice as a drafting table, however.
Surface (Score:2)
It can read a dot or bar code.
No need for Bluetooth to interact with ordinary physical objects.
The "surface" could be sheet glass or plastic purchased from Home Depot.
The core tech - the video camera - is ridiculously cheap. Use "solid state" projection and you have a very rugged and reliable device that could be installed damn near anywhere.
In principle, Surface should be scalable to any size, shape, angle or placement you find useful or decorative.
The OS is off-the-shelf Windo
Somehow, I imagine something like this happend: (Score:2, Funny)
"A table?"
"Yeah, it does all of these neat things. It can recognize objects, respond to Bluetooth devices, run
"Thats it? Look, if you can make people pay a subscription fee to use software they have written for it or to use any software outside of the OS we might talk. It jus
Build your own... (Score:3, Informative)
There are lots of research labs working with low-cost multi-touch-sensitive tables. At this point, one can practically build such a table for a few hundred dollars (plus a computer).
I literally spent today demonstrating my lab's table. An early prototype is shown at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doK66IYG0Ug [youtube.com], and instructions for building one are at http://open-ftir.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]. Unfortunately the pictures and video from today's open house are not up yet, but they should be shortly (search for "Equis lab").
There are also lots of free libraries for handling the input. Mine (EquisFTIR) happens to be Windows-only and aimed at Microsoft XNA developers. There are lots of portable ones, often built on Intel's OpenCV library: check out http://nuigroup.com/ [nuigroup.com] for more information.
Couple the table with some object-recognition libraries, and you could probably build yourself a Surface-equivalent with a few hundred dollars and nothing but FOSS.
Re:April Fools is over (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nothing at all.
The tabletop is just a tabletop - used as a rear projection screen.
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