A couple of days ago I ragged on Microsoft for announcing what everyone else was about to ship just as they usually do when caught on the hop.
That said, the Scobleizer has a heap more detail on Surface
• There are a few roadblocks to getting one of these in your home. First, it’s expensive to build one because it needs holographic glass, an enclosure, a projector, two cameras, and a computer.
• Second, they still are working on software so that it actually does something beyond the whiz-bang demos they showed off this morning on stage.
• The demos you are seeing of photos flying out of a digital camera when placed on the device? That requires that digital camera to be synced and “tagged†with a bar code. The table can see bar codes on things, but you’ve gotta stick a bar code on them first.
• Some of the scenarios I saw demoed included scanning of paper and documents. That isn’t yet included in the current version.
Not quite as wiz-bang is it? I honestly don’t see why this will take the world by storm, why popular mechanics is so enthralled with it. A company with bazillions of dollars which has allegedly been working on this since the early 90s has only managed to outshine Jeff Han now? A year after his multi-touch quicktime movie did the rounds? I reckon it took them a year to knock up a demo? (and would it be prudent to ask where all the money went for surface computing since the early 90s if this is all they have to show for it)
As someone in Scoble’s comments put it:
Let me see. Microsoft didn’t make the software. I suppose they didn’t make the hardware either, unless the mouse and keyboard team got involved, right?
Or is it this?: $6 billion to make videos of products that don’t exist.
Quite.
Another comment:
Does it say “End of line†in a menacing deep voice when it shuts down? I’d love to watch Tron on it if that’s the case.
OK. If it has that, I’m buying two.