Surface PC: Microsoft rediscovers innovation

At The Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference earlier this year, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer surprised everyone by unveiling a new product called simply "Surface", a product that the company describes as being "the first in a new category of products that offers users a completely intuitive and liberating way to interact with digital content, and blurs the lines between the physical and virtual worlds".

The Surface is certainly interesting: with no keyboard and no mouse, users simply use their fingers to grab, move, rotate, and expand objects on the horizontally mounted tabletop screen, just as if they were real 3D objects. This new user interface is characterised by minimal use of icons, by the use of gestures, 3D imaging, physics, multitouch — the capability to react to multiple concurrent inputs — and by the ability to recognise and interact with real-world objects and devices.

What Microsoft's chief executive unveiled is the first commercial example of the new, and long-awaited, third-generation user interface. The first generation was the basic command line used in early DOS-based PCs, and dated from the earliest days of computing. The launch of the Apple Mac in 1984 saw the arrival of the second generation of graphical user interfaces, based on mouse, icons and windows. Now, with the Surface, we are looking at the third generation.

Is Surface, with its third-generation user interface, the future of personal computing? And, after 23 years of using an interface pioneered by Xerox and Apple, has Microsoft at long last seized the innovation leadership with this third-generation user interface?

What is Surface?
Scattering a pile of objects, be they photographs, documents, coins, or the contents of a pocket or handbag, onto a tabletop and then examining them and sorting them into piles with your hands is, after all, a very natural and intuitive way of dealing with, and extracting, information from real-world objects. It is also something that we can do collaboratively with others.

It is, therefore, not surprising that Microsoft has sought to emulate this process by designing a computer interface that relies upon the user's fingers to move and manipulate data, images and documents displayed upon the screen, without the need for mouse or keyboard.

There is no doubt that Surface computing is an intuitive way to interact with digital content, and it certainly blurs the lines between the physical and virtual worlds. Placing a finger on an image allows you to slide it across the screen just as you would slide a photo across a tabletop. Placing two fingers on opposing corners of an image allows you to enlarge it or reduce it by simply moving your fingers further apart or closer together.

But what really makes Surface special, according to Microsoft, is that it has been optimised to recognise up to 52 different touches and/or objects at the same time This means, for example, that you could, in an extreme case, have as many as 26 people using the system at the same time, each using two fingers, and the system will register the movements of all of the 52 fingers. More commonly, most of the available touches will be used by objects placed on the screen surface.

This means that the Surface is optimised for multi-user collaborative environments, such as a corporate meeting room or a sales counter. It is a 360-degree user interface and allows one person to select and slide a digital object over to another, just as one would pass a paper document across a table.

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The ability to recognise objects is another unique feature. Place an object carrying a domino tag (a small bar code allowing devices to be recognised by the Surface PC) on the screen and the system will recognise that object and surround it with an on-screen glow. Since the device incorporates both Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11b wireless-communications capability, it is also possible for the Surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including the transfer of digital content.

This means that the user will be able to wirelessly sync a mobile phone, media player or camera with the Surface computer by simply placing the device on the screen. Putting a wireless communications-enabled camera onto the Surface screen will start an auto-sync, and the photos will be downloaded from the camera and spread out across the Surface screen for all to view, select and manipulate.

The object-recognition capability could also be used as part of a payment process. Placing a credit card onto the Surface screen on top of a displayed product will initiate a process whereby it is read and verified and the payment made to buy the object.

But an object need not be a communicating digital device, it could be a simple real-world tool, like a brush for use in a paint program. Choose the real brush of the size and type you want, dip it into the virtual palette of paints displayed on the screen and paint, in exactly the same way that you would paint with a brush on paper. Change to a differently sized or shaped real brush and get a differently sized and shaped stroke.

Indeed, an object need not even be a tool; it could be just an everyday object. For example, if the Surface is used as part of a bar top...