Microsoft Scratches the Surface

I say three because Microsoft hasn't discussed a scratch-and-sniff Surface. Taste is a possibility because the visuals are so compelling some people might just lick the screen. Yuck.

For anyone who missed today's announcement, later this year Microsoft plans to release a touch-, device- and object-sensitive table called Surface. First-generation devices would be deployed mostly for business-to-consumer services. In three to five years—plenty of time for the next version of Windows—Surface products should be available for the home.

Surface is one potential future already envisioned in the past. A few years ago, a friend lamented, "When are we going to have computers like Star Trek?" Surface, and some of Microsoft's other works around user interfaces, is bringing Star Trek a whole lot closer. Star Trek computing has very little to do with pens, keyboards or mice. The user interfaces are tactile, visual and vocal—touch, see and speak.

Human beings are tool users and experience and manipulate the world through five senses. Hands and fingers are especially important. How important is touch? Walk through a mall and watch how people interact with items for sale. First they look, and then they touch. For retailers it's an irritating experience, all that touching. People examine as much with their hands as their eyes.

The underlying biological mechanisms of hand movement are complex, but the complexity is largely hidden from people. By contrast, complexity too often defines technology and the accompanying user interfaces.

The mouse and keyboard are unnatural user interfaces. There is nothing in human biological or cultural experience that equates to either device. The keyboard is a particularly unnatural construct, in which organization is based on the number of times letters are likely to be used.

Related user interfaces are unnecessarily complex, too. Copying addresses to my cell phone is multistep process that requires making a wired or wireless connection with a PC and manipulating software with keyboard and mouse. Surface computing's promise, assuming Microsoft delivers: Sync by simply setting the phone down on a tabletop and, in some cases, giving a simple vocal or finger-pointing instruction.

Good user interfaces build on the familiar—and there is nothing more familiar than me, myself and I. See, say, hear and touch. Apple's approach with iPhone is similar—making the phone a more natural extension of the hands, fingers, eyes and mouth. Successful user interfaces of the future will have similar attributes.

My colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is much more skeptical of Microsoft and Surface. In a column today he wrote, "Touch-screen fans have been saying for 30-plus years now that touch computing is easier, that it's natural—it's not and it isn't. If it were either of those two things, we'd all be using them by now. We're not."

On the contrary, touch screens are widely used in ATMs and other interactive commercial-to-consumer devices. Microsoft's target for its first surface computing table is the same kind of companies that use or could use touch screens.

What about all those Palm Treos out there? Treo is too big for my tastes, but most every Palm lover I meet is hot on the touch screen.

Touch screens have their place, but within limits. Microsoft promises much more. In a brilliant move—or perhaps fatal character flaw, depending on the outcome—Surface uses Windows Vista. Microsoft's operating system brings jack-of-trades versatility to Surface, which uses cameras to detect fingers and hands, devices, and objects. Surface can be many things to many people.

"We're giving consumers intuitive control over information with the flick of a finger or the wave of hand," said Kyle Warnick, Microsoft's senior marketing communications manager for Surface.

Multitouch is another distinguishing characteristic from typical touch screens. Rather than responding to one finger or one touch, Surface can take simultaneous input from multiple sources. Suddenly, the surface is a canvas for the fingers to manipulate.

Steven uses the "Milan" code name when referring to Surface. Maybe he meant Midas and his touch of gold that destroys everything.

Surface will be more than the first-generation table Microsoft will release this year. Microsoft is investing heavily in developing new user interfaces around the three familiar senses. If the end user can speak, see and touch, future Surface products can overcome some of the fatigue issues associated with touch-screen efforts.

Microsoft is going to have to make huge investments—extending the technology to new device categories and capturing supporting applications and services—if Surface is going to succeed.

Assuming Surface is the beginning of Star Trek computing, Microsoft would be the Federation, I guess. So, what does that make Linux?

Related:

• Surface Signals a Sea Change, Microsoft Watch, May 30, 2007
• Microsoft's Milan: Look, Don't Touch?, eWEEK, May 30, 2007
• Microsoft Skims the Marketing Surface, Microsoft Watch, May 30, 2007
• New Q1 Arrives in Q2 and Q3, Microsoft Watch, May 7, 2007
• Microsoft Poised to Rule Entertainment, Devices World: Part 3, eWEEK, May 3, 2007
• Microsoft Poised to Rule Entertainment, Devices World: Part 2, eWEEK, May 3, 2007
• Microsoft Poised to Rule Entertainment, Devices World, eWEEK, May 3, 2007
• Tell Me About Dial Tone 2.0, Microsoft Watch, March 15, 2007
• Where's the 'You' in iPhone?, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 10, 2007
• Apple's Son of Newton, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 9, 2007
• How Microsoft Wrapped the 'Ribbon' in a Bow, Microsoft Watch, Dec. 3, 2006