The whole experience was probably best summed up by Amanda who, when asked why it was taking us so long to get the machine up and running, and why we all looked so unhappy, replied “Oh, it’s just so…Microsofty.”
This is exactly the problem with this device. My memories of my five minutes with one:
1) From a distance: It looks like a giant iPod touch under glass. They are better replicas of iPods than the giant LCD/Plasma screens with an iPod-alike shell at the front of the Apple store.
2) Up close: You can tell it's DLP projected. The image quality was a sizable step down from the gorgeous LCD of the iPod. I think it would have been better to work with a plasma vendor to make a plasma with a thick glass surface.
3) First touch: The top, maybe 1mm or less, of the glass top is soft. You _really_ get the feeling that you could damage it with your fingernail or a tile cup coaster, or other things you could reasonably expect to do to a table top. To their credit, the one I looked at was absolutely pristine, so perhaps it's a perception thing.
4) Other: The stupid white Windows mouse pointer was always on and dead center on the screen. The whole time. It didn't follow the touches, which would have felt unpolished but understandable, it just stuck out like a scab. This kind of thing has to make Steve Jobs cackle with glee.
Overall it looks like a solution in search of a problem, and I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would pay that kind of money for something so superficially polished but so lacking in technical engineering.
2) It has to be DLP projected - there's an infrared camera below the screen that captures your touches - which means that there can be no obstruction between the camera and the table top (like, oh, say, a plasma screen).
3) This is a pliant silicon surface and necessary with the sort of tech that Microsoft is implementing. This is somewhat sad, since hobbyists (look up NUIGroup if you are interested) have gotten better results with a pure glass surface (which obviously takes a lot more punishment).
This is the difference between Apple and Microsoft - attention to detail. MS will get the core bullet point features working, but when using it there are so many rough edges and little things that irk you that ultimately you have a negative experience, despite the fact that the machine is perfectly functional.
This is somewhat sad, since hobbyists (look up NUIGroup if you are interested) have gotten better results with a pure glass surface
I think this is what bothers me most about it. There are probably at least a dozen different ways to achieve a display of this type and it seems like this one is compromised in each dimension. This would be entirely reasonable for a hobby project or a Google 20% time style corporate internal project, but it's way short for something with a nearly $20k price tag and tons of very self-flagellating promotion.
In MS's defense these new methods for multi-touch were not known (or even invented) when the Surface was in the initial design stages - the multitouch field is evolving radically month-to-month, it's impossible for a commercial product to keep up.
The most interesting sensing method IMHO right now is the combined emitter-receiver package, where light reflected from touches induce back voltages on the LEDs serving as backlights themselves. This is pretty elegant, and would allow us to use far superior display technology like plasmas and LCDs, not to mention allow the whole thing to finally approach flat screen TV thickness.
It's pretty expensive though - imagine an array of pure-white LEDs big enough to cover your 65" plasma TV... and the electronics to process all of this data.
Yeah, I have no doubt that the device is somewhat unintuitive to setup, but given the size of the machine it wouldn't take them half an hour to physically search it for a place to plug it in.
I believe AT&T has them as kiosks in the stores, and specially tagged demo phones that can interact with the screen (e.g. place the phone on the surface and get its specs, along with price plans, etc)
It's cool stuff, and as a point-of-sale thing can seriously boost marketing. It just doesn't seem like MS should be someone tackling a project that requires immaculate usability.
I used one of these at The Sprint store in the Power & Light district in Kansas City. It was infuriating. It seemed like everything happened about 2.5 seconds after you had touched it. I walked off after about 30 seconds.
big in-store interactive displays. in this instance since they're talking about real estate, probably some sort of listing browser they can throw in the lobby or take to the mall or whatever they want.
This is exactly the problem with this device. My memories of my five minutes with one:
1) From a distance: It looks like a giant iPod touch under glass. They are better replicas of iPods than the giant LCD/Plasma screens with an iPod-alike shell at the front of the Apple store.
2) Up close: You can tell it's DLP projected. The image quality was a sizable step down from the gorgeous LCD of the iPod. I think it would have been better to work with a plasma vendor to make a plasma with a thick glass surface.
3) First touch: The top, maybe 1mm or less, of the glass top is soft. You _really_ get the feeling that you could damage it with your fingernail or a tile cup coaster, or other things you could reasonably expect to do to a table top. To their credit, the one I looked at was absolutely pristine, so perhaps it's a perception thing.
4) Other: The stupid white Windows mouse pointer was always on and dead center on the screen. The whole time. It didn't follow the touches, which would have felt unpolished but understandable, it just stuck out like a scab. This kind of thing has to make Steve Jobs cackle with glee.
Overall it looks like a solution in search of a problem, and I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would pay that kind of money for something so superficially polished but so lacking in technical engineering.