But does it do the dishes?

So, Microsoft has announced another new product that seems like an answer to Apple — the Microsoft Surface. (Read about it here and see a demo.) I’m not one of the Apple fan boys who makes this leap, however, because Microsoft has been obsessed by “computing surfaces” for a very long time; they even have a demonstration house in Redmond that features smart countertops in the kitchen, where recipes are projected and users can interact with the house.

This technology has gone absolutely nowhere in at least a decade. Still, that doesn’t diminish the sheer neat factor. The connectivity of it alone is beautiful; the demo shows how easily and intuitively it works — set a wireless digital camera down on the surface, and the photos in the camera “spill out” onto the surface. There is the obligatory stretching and rotating of photos, a demo we’ve all seen too many times now; but then set a cell phone down on the surface and one can flick the photos into it, all wirelessly. (Of course, this is all an extra step — why can’t I just beam the photos from the camera directly to the phone; and when the photos are on the Surface, what else can I do with them? How do I store them, categorize them, or print them?

Here’s where I bash Microsoft.

While the development of the technology may have nothing at all to do with Apple, they have missed the boat once again in making the technology both usable and acccessible to everyone, two places where Apple always succeeds.

The iPhone will put multitouch technology in the hands of many users in just a few weeks. The Microsoft Surface will… well, I’m not sure what it will do, considering that it will pop up in casinos and hotels sometime in the unknown future.

As many people have noted after viewing demos of multitouch techology from Jeff Han (one of the top men in this field), one simply doesn’t want to spend hours in front of large displays — either vertical or horizontal — using their hands to manipulate it. It isn’t an efficient method of interacting with the computer. I think that Microsoft’s Surface is significantly flawed because of this problem, and perhaps that is why they are positioning it as a marketing device for the hospitality industry. It will draw people in the same way a table-top video game does. One must sit down at the Surface and manipulate the table top, which doesn’t bode well for long term use every day. The iPhone is a small, handheld device which, while one wouldn’t want to use it for hour upon hour, is not made for such sustained use.

One more major difference: the Surface seems almost like an overly complex device, using a computer, rear video projectors, and multiple internal infrared cameras to detect touches on the screen — a Rube Goldberg device compared to the iPhone, which uses a simple LCD screen with a touch-sensitive layer. Perhaps there is a reason for the low-tech complexity of the Microsoft device, but it just seems to me that it could have been engineered a little more elegantly. Another example of old tech dressed up — evidently the devices that one can place on the Surface must include a special bar code, which is read by the infrared cameras inside the table. It’s just scanning barcodes! Why in the world doesn’t it use Bluetooth or some other wireless link to determine the device and how to interact with it; using barcodes means that the Surface will not interact with any device that it hasn’t been programmed to recognize.

Here’s one more major difference between Apple’s outlook and Microsoft’s: employment. Apple’s devices never seem to be designed to remove people from the equation, whereas Microsoft’s always seem to have been created to automate something and put people out of work. Note this point in the Popular Mechanics article:

You could, for instance, walk into a T-Mobile store, pick up a phone you’re considering buying and place it on the Surface. The table could then either link with the phone via Bluetooth or scan a code imprinted on the packaging to identify it. Suddenly, the phone is surrounded by graphical information (pricing, features, etc.). After selecting a service plan and any accessories, you just run your credit card through a reader built into the table (or, when RFID cards have become the norm, just slap your card on the tabletop) and your new phone is paid for. By the time you open the package, everything is set up — all without talking to a single employee.

It’s easy to dismiss the concept as pure novelty — and at first it may well be. But ask yourself: When was the last time you made a bank withdrawal from a human teller? The Surface machine is networked and infinitely flexible. You could use it to order food in a restaurant. While you wait, you could play games or surf the Internet, and then eat off its surface. And every table in the joint could be a jukebox, a television or a billboard for advertising. (You didn’t think advertisers would miss out on this, did you?)

That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? And I’m not just talking about the line “eat off its surface.”

Oh, and Microsoft is still obsessed with recipes in the kitchen:

And once you’ve gotten used to ordering calamari through a tabletop at your favorite eatery, you may want to use it to call up recipes on your kitchen counter. Surface machines will cost $5000 to $10,000 at launch, but as prices fall, similar devices may find their way into the home.

I think that Microsoft is sort of stuck in the 1950s with their attitude toward computing, they want a computer in every room of the house and are constantly evoking that old image of the harried housewife in pearls who needs the kitchen of the future to help her with her recipes.