Apple is incorporating "Multi-Touch" into the upcoming iPhone, but Microsoft has just taken it to a new level with Microsoft Surface.
If you've know me at all, you know I hate Microsoft.
Those are strong words, I know. But I do. Can't help myself. I've tried to stop. It's almost irrational at this point in my life. So this post would be hard to write if this weren't so amazing.
This is the first truly amazing thing I've seen out of Redmond in a long, long time. Popular Mechanics has a great behind-the-scenes first look in video form. I've watched it several times and am still shaking my head. I had to delay my drive this morning to write about it.
"Gattis took out a digital camera and placed it on the Surface. Instantly, digital pictures spilled out onto the tabletop. As Gattis touched and dragged each picture, it followed his fingers around the screen. Using two fingers, he pulled the corners of a photo and stretched it to a new size. Then, Gattis put a cellphone on the surface and dragged several photos to it — just like that, the pictures uploaded to the phone. It was like a magic trick." - from Popular Mechanics.
I put up a video from Perceptive Pixel's Jeff Han at JustDugUp.com a while back, but the Surface computer takes this to a new level by recognizing objects placed on the surface. Right now this is only being built for commercial use, but I can see this in a large real estate office without any stretch of the imagination. Price? $5,000 - $10,000. As Jeff Han says, eventually this will trickle down to affordable home use. The iPhone will be the first common example of this in smaller format, but the form factor on this new device is what really makes it special.
If you don't do anything else geeky today, go watch these demos.
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