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Microsoft launches coffee-table computer

A super-expensive, corporate clients only, touch-sensitive coffee-table shaped computer.

Users operate the machine using their fingers, eliminating the need for a keyboard and mouse. I’m sure any resemblance to any products recently launched by competitors is purely coincidence (*cough* ripoff!).

I’m also pleased there’s now something cripplingly expensive for me to spill coffee on.

UPDATE: My endlessly knowledgeable visitors have pointed out that both Apple and Microsoft are ripping-off the work of Jeff Han.

May 30th, 2007 by graeme |

4 Responses to “Microsoft launches coffee-table computer”

more info here: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

both this and the iPhone UI are ripoff’s off Jeff Han’s work: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65

senior on 5-30-2007 at 9:58 am

Ya! I’ve seen some videos of Jeff Han’s stuff and that is crazy awesome! I think it will be quite a while before that becomes a standard though… the ‘keyboard/mouse’ navigation system is pretty embedded right now and the hand navigation is fundamentally much different.

The Forbes on 5-30-2007 at 10:41 am

Yeah, hand/stylus based interaction isn’t good for most tasks, as it is suited for coarse-grained interaction.

Things that require precise interaction (like targeting tasks (ie. small buttons) and tunneling tasks (ie. menus)) need to use muscles with fine motor control — ie. not your full arm. It’s also much more efficient to slightly move your wrist on a mouse to throw the cursor across the screen, compared to manually reaching over and touching an icon.

Touch displays have also not taken off due to an unfortunate side effect known as “gorilla arm” — try using one of these things for more than a few minutes and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.