Microsoft announces Milan
I am quite impressed…
Multitouch displays have been popping up more and more recently, from the homemade one developed by students at UBC to the showcase of one at TED and now this one that offers not only multitouch, but wireless interactive technology. It amazes me how far computing is going and makes me wonder if the stuff we see in movies will be viable and prevelent within my lifetime. Of course, with all the great new technology, one must be slightly worried about hacking issues. Course, at $5,000 to $10,000 a pop, I don’t think we’ll be seeing these tables with widespread influence quite yet. Now, all eyes are on the iPhone!
Oh, and a side note, look at the giant multitouch world map that Han has in the video. Totally amazing.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:10 am
I’ve more or less felt a big ol’ giant “meh” since this sucker was announced. Microsoft has had demos of the weird “contact-activated wireless” for awhile now, as well as the whole “surface computing” concept. It’s interesting that they’ve gotten to the point of a single-ish device with a coherent price tag though. The upwards-projecting emitting display is also far better than the downwards-facing projector they’ve used in the past.
My big gripes:
- Their multi-touch action is somewhat inferior to the rest of the field. They’ve got themselves some buggy UI software to fix (surprise!!).
- The table design is lame. Understandable given the hardware they’ve built to capture touch information, but still lame.
- Will it support wireless power? If a device is touching the table, it should be getting its batteries charged. I feel like this is a no-brainer.
- No mention (that I’ve seen) about wireless (or other) APIs and protocols. They better be open, standardized, and royalty-free. Hopefully these people are of similar smart-mind as the HDPhoto people.
At the very least, it’ll be very interesting to see how all this rolls out.
Go Jeff Han!!
June 17th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Always nice to hear an outside voice from someone with more knowledge of the field than I^^
Also, I might be involved in working on a touch screen display in a couple weeks. Will let ye know if I do!