There was a flurry of activity a few months ago regarding the secret Microsoft product release planned for Wednesday morning by the same team that worked on the Xbox™ and the Zune™ devices. Blogs and technology sites were out in full force with predictions and well-crafted rumours, building hype for what was thought to be an updated version of the Zune™ music player. Instead, Microsoft® made press everywhere double-take and scratch their heads wondering what a touch-sensitive table could possibly mean.
- Photo – A simple photo editor where photos can be resized and dragged about.
- Paint – A painting program that works much like finger paint.
- Games – A puzzle game was shown, where pieces of glass illuminated with fractions of an image by the screen can be moved around and solved
- Restaurant – Drinks are recognized when they are placed on the table, dynamic payment methods (dragging and dropping meal items to various credit cards placed on table to split bills, etc.), virtual ordering.
- Music – Users can dynamically flip through music, buy it, and drag-and-drop it to their portable music players.
While dragging around photos will become mundane after half an hour, the Microsoft® Surface™ looks quite promising for developers and consumers alike in the ability to produce quite a large variety of applications that take advantage of its user interface. Having a Surface™ in the living room would brighten up the atmosphere, eating on a Surface™ in a restaurant would make ordering, waiting for, and paying for meals much easier, and buying products in-store would be made much easier for the consumer if placing something of interest on the Surface™ would provide information and specifications.
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