The future?
To do things on Surface’s tabletop screen, you reach down, touch it and push it. To make the image you see on the screen bigger, spread your fingers. To make it smaller, squeeze your fingers together. To move something into the trash, push it into the trash with your hand. And it allows what Microsoft calls “Multi-Touch” and “Multi-User” interaction — namely, more than one person can interact with it at a time. Try that with your home computer.
One of the most revolutionary aspects of Surface, though, is its natural interaction with everyday objects and technologies. When you place your wi-fi enabled digital camera on the table, for example, Surface ‘sees’ the camera and does something extraordinary: It pulls your digital pictures and videos out onto the table for you to look at, move, edit or send. Images literally spill out in a pool of color.
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3 comments:
Check out this link from a company called Perceptive Pixel:
http://www.perceptivepixel.com/
Don't know if this machine has the same guts as the Surface, but I'm hoping it's a competing technology... that'll push things forward more quickly. They both look very very cool.
Yeah, that's pretty cool and I , too, hope it's a competing technology. However, and I hate to ask this, but don't you think the entire user process will need to be simplified before the average person will be able to use? I know it looks pretty simple as it is, but, well, you know what I'm saying. ;-)
I dunno about the whole simplification thing... on the one hand, I think that kids will probably have no problem at all picking up the more complex interfaces because they seem to be able to pick everything up easily. Adults will have more trouble, with the folks who can't program their VCRs being completely lost. So a simplified paradigm will probably be necessary for the older masses.
I see this as an industry-wide problem, because I've been extremely underwhelmed at the progression of user interfaces. As an example, look at one of the most popular sites... MySpace. Not a whole bunch to do there, and an absolutely terrible presentation of what little there is. Compare this with, say, the iPod. Again, not a whole lot to do, but at least the process is much more intuitive. However, if you'd introduce more user options to the iPod, you'd introduce the requirement for more user interaction and all that intuitive simplicity goes out the window.
So I agree that a more suitable interaction paradigm would be hugly beneficial, but I doubt anything good will come.
What I'd really like to learn is whether or not the Surface runs on Vista. Now that would be groovy. "Just watch as I place my camera on my new Surface and it extracts the pictures. Waitaminnit... 'cannot recognize camera'??? 'Segmentation fault'???? Oh no, it's rebooting!!!"
Heh.
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