Potential Microsoft Multitouch Mistakes
When Microsoft initially came out with their Multitouch technology, there were a number of people that were extremely excited. While there is still some debate as to who exactly came up with Multitouch technology in the end, the enthusiasm for Multitouch products was felt for all of the companies that came out with them. This is why both the Apple iPhone and the Microsoft Surface were well received within the framework of the technology community.
However, as time has passed and Microsoft has gone on to develop their Surface family of products and propose newer and better hardware with each passing press conference, a number of Redmond strategists and other technology buffs have begun to comment on the fact that Microsoft might be shooting themselves in the foot in the future when all of the chips were on the table.
They cite as a reference for this the comparison between the iPhone and the Surface. In the case of the former, not only did Apple create a product for mass consumption, but at the same time they created a number of applications suited for that product that people could actually use far better with Multitouch than they could in any other way.
The Surface Computer on the other hand, is not a product that can be mass produced and mass purchased at the moment. The first incarnations of the Surface were tens of thousands of dollars and even many larger companies balked at using them in industries like hospitality where they would be very welcome indeed. Surface is still a problem in terms of price and unless Microsoft pulls off a miracle in the upcoming months, it is likely to remain that way for awhile.
And instead of developing applications that can use Surface’s advanced hardware in the way that Apple did for the iPhone, Microsoft has instead continued to allow their hardware development to leave their software development in the dust, creating excellent pieces of technology that are extremely under-utilized in terms of what they can do because of a lack of software. Surface, for example, uses the same Windows Vista operating system that conventional PCs use. This makes many Surface products little more than normal PC monitors with touch-screen capabilities; novelty items that do not really bring anything that big to the table.
These are concerns that Microsoft will very likely have to address if they want Multitouch to work for them and for their customers and seeing how they address these concerns in the upcoming weeks, months and even years will be interesting to watch.
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Comments
Any way its a great move from Microsoft. There no doubt that it will change the future of interface in entertainment as well as education, business and all kind digital media. This will make the complicated and time processing tasks into more user friendly.
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Sai Bpo Services Uk Ltd.
I don’t know why you would think that MS Surface is just a fancy display device connected to a regular PC. It is true that it is powered by Vista, but every other multi-touch device is powered by a regular OS as well, whether it is Windows, Linux, or OS X. Beyond that, Microsoft has been pushing very hard to not position Surface as just a display. There have been zero demos of Surface that showed a Vista interface, and in fact unless you are a Surface software developer, you’ll never see the regular Vista on Surface. It has it’s own front-end that uses multi-touch and all of the related new UI concepts.