With touch sensitivity and an interface straight out of "Minority Report," is the new Surface table PC a computing revolution, or a glorified coaster? Philip Berne breaks down our impressions of the surprising new device.
Microsoft today officially announced a product it had been previewing for many months, the Surface table PC. The Surface is basically a PC housed in a coffee table with a 30-inch touch screen monitor sealed behind acrylic. The touch screen can handle multiple inputs at once, and includes cameras placed under the unit to identify objects placed on its face, including bar codes on cell phones or larger objects like drinking glasses. The Surface is a very cool looking, futuristic gadget that seems to spring, literally, from a science fiction film. Though its cost may be prohibitive at the moment, Microsoft is claiming that within three to five years, the price will come down to consumer levels, but will consumers ever want or need a device like this? We think that in retrospect, ten years from now, we're going to consider this a silly question, because the Surface computer represents a few welcome leaps in technology that we think are inevitable.
It's all about the interface
The Surface represents a leap forward in interface design. Never mind that Apple, with its iPhone, was leaping in the exact same direction. The point and click paradigm of the modern OS is becoming more archaic, and we think Mark Bolger, the Director of Marketing for Surface, put it nicely when he said the interface is "not a touch screen, it's a grab screen." Which sounds more, well, human: moving a tiny device around a tabletop to remotely control an arrow, or reaching out and grabbing your photos, manipulating them with your fingers? With innovations not only in multi-touch sensitivity, but also in the way we interact with computers in general, we think interface design is turning a significant corner, and we expect interface concerns to surpass hardware specs in importance to the consumer in the years to come (if it hasn't already). If computer makers want to invade the living room, the kitchen, the laundry room, etc., they need to create products with which people enjoy living, not just tools that help you get things done. Tools are for the office and the garage. With its luscious interface, we could easily imagine Surface in our living room, our kitchen and our children's rooms. We could imagine the technology everywhere.
Too expensive for today?
Though it may still be difficult for some to imagine shelling out $10,000 for another computer in the living room, in fact the cost is not so exorbitant. Between the cost of a 30-inch monitor, the PC driving it, the touch sensitive technology, and all the software, we could easily imagine spending close to $10K, so the price seems reasonable for what you're getting. Still, we think that the Surface, and products like it, will soon become so ubiquitous that the cost will bundle into whatever else you're buying. For an extra $1,000, couldn't you slap one of these onto a refrigerator? When the price drops to under $5,000, we could easily see replacing our media center PC with a Surface device. It wouldn't be our work computer, we would still need a serious machine for Word processing and budget-crunching. But it would be harder to imagine a future without the ever-present touch screen and graphical interface technology that the Surface heralds than a future with it. Surface may flop. Its price tag may keep it from widespread adoption, and Microsoft could simply ditch this cool product in favor of another that makes more money. It happens all the time in consumer electronics, just look at Sony's impressive, but doomed Aibo. Still, if it flops, we think it will be because the idea came before its time, and not because there was a flaw in the idea itself.
Looking ahead
As fans of unique, niche operating systems like Palm OS and Mac OS, innovation from the Redmond behemoth is just as exciting to us because there is so much financial muscle and technical expertise behind it. We are fans of real, feasible innovation, and the Surface is not simply a concept idea from Carnegie Mellon professors or Sony's skunkworks. It is an actual product brought to market. The iPhone has made this an exciting time for consumer electronics, as competition has been seriously ramped up and manufacturers are falling over themselves trying to introduce a competitor. We're tired of the feature race, where companies try to cram every imaginable existing feature into a smaller, thinner device. What you get, as with the Nokia N95, is a device that can do everything you've ever seen a phone do. That's a great device, but we're excited about the Surface because it does things we've never seen before, and opens up possibilities for innovation.
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