Practical Technology: Microsoft's New ... Table?
At the MoviesOk, first of all, I love to see Hollywood's predictions borne out in reality-especially when it comes to cool gadgets. Do you remember Spielberg's futura noir adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story entitled "Minority Report"? You know, the one where Tom Cruise's character (Precrime Chief Jon Anderton) manipulates images, video, and text with his special gloves on a gigantic screen?
Well, Microsoft (MSFT) has a few tricks up its sleeve- and you don't even have to wear special gloves! Bill Gate's recent appearance on the Today show debuting Microsoft's "Surface" demonstrated the technical wizardry that is taking the fiction out of science fiction. Gates demonstrated how restaurants and "other retail partners" may soon be filling orders by touching the screen and selecting a dish, drinks, or desserts and sending them out to order. Ok, we see touchscreens all the time in restaurants now, so what's the big deal?
Well, jaded reader, how about the ability for customers to pay their bills by putting their credit cards (probably modified from today's standard issue plastic) on the screen's surface and dragging over icons of what they ordered to the appropriate credit card? No more awkward exchanges over who'll pick up the check and no more crazy mathematical schemes (hey, anything that saves me having to use my phone's tictacs keys to enter numbers into a tiny calculator is welcome in my book)! Plus, the waitstaff could likely benefit from newfound tactile payment applications, since Surface automatically calculates the tip for your party, making the generosity of a bar or restaurant's patrons easier to manifest.
Photos: Easy as 1, 2, 3
Another neat trick is the apparent ability for anyone to use a wifi-enabled camera to directly transfer photos to the computer via touchscreen. Gates 1) snapped a picture, 2) placed the camera down on the touchscreen surface, and 3) automatically had the touchscreen's computer display, copy, or move the pictures onto the touchscreen. Not too technically impressive (you can accomplish the same thing by merely having a button on the wifi-enabled camera send the pictures over to a regular wifi-enabled PC nowadays), but visually impressive and a definite step in the right direction for tech-challenged folks (here's looking at you, Dad).
Surface's behavior closely mimicks how one would flip through photos on a real table. Flipping through photos onscreen simply means dragging photos with a finger, sliding one on top of another, or moving a whole pile at a time. This behavior has been displayed previously, but only in technology demos.
Follow the Leaders
Microsoft isn't the only one trying to come up with new ways for us to poke and prod our data, however. In the late 90's, Sony (SNE) demonstrated a more primitive version of a touchscreen interface with clear plastic blocks colored by the receptacle on a touchscreen computer, but I haven't seen anything from Sony in this field for a while. Apple Inc's (AAPL) iPhone, due out in late June 2007, has been heralded as a major advancement in how we interact with our little electronic helpers. Users of both Microsoft's touchscreen table and Apple's iPhone have the ability resize a picture by pinching or otherwise manipulating a picture to resize it. Prada's phone and its ilk have ramped up efforts to steal Apple's thunder with similar products, but it remains to be seen if touchscreens (which have been with us for a while) will be a staying force in computer design or a passing fancy.
Any early-adopter who remembers the dominance of the PDA and its heyday in the 90s probably forgot where they put theirs after that old Palm lost its sparkle. I still have mine, but that's another story... Outside of medical school and some industries requiring vertical computing, PDAs have slowly been replaced by smartphones.
Fad, Flop, or the Future?
Only time will tell if Microsoft can predict the public's taste for this piece of technology enabled furniture. Well, that and your wallet's appreciation for a major diet- the table currently runs around $10,000. Oh, and you probably don't want to spill any of your latte on it. After all, this ain't your grandfather's coffeetable.
See it for yourself: Link
posted by Unknown @ 4:07:00 PM
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