interweb ink
news from around the web from people addicted to tech

Microsoft Surface.  Yeaaaaah. You remember that right?

Well, Surface has decided to emerge again from the depths of obscurity, this time demonstrating pen and photoshop touch functionality through an application called Manual Deskterity.  While I don’t contest that touch is a must have feature right now, the reality is that Apple and its iPad are drinking some serious milkshake in this space.  After all, who wants to buy a piece of furniture to run apps off of it?  This isn’t to discredit the concept entirely, as an intelligent surface could be really cool.

*Could* being the operative word.

If it automatically and non proprietorially expanded the functionality of hand held or tablet devices on its surface, that would be cool.

If surface automatically recognized me when I walked up to it irregardless of coffee shop and it pulled up my settings when I wanted to use it, that would be some hardcore cloud computing crack.

But touch enabled photoshop? Cracker, please.

Don’t get me wrong, by providing a large work surface and eliminating pen discrimination, many digital media artists would gladly wrestle a velociraptor just to get their pens back. Barehanded even. But so far, Apple has defined its niche in the creative space for some time now. The immutable laws of marketing are providing some pretty hardcore odds to overcome.

There are benefits to large stationary touch enabled surfaces. But perhaps the true test of usability for platforms like Microsoft Surface and their developers will be their ability to condense their hardware and software into a thin film that can be applied to any public surface.  I wonder when they will be demonstrating that, because that would be pretty revolutionary.

To that end, my feeling is that Surface R&D needs to submerge a bit longer, and perhaps use its periscope to see where the trends are before purging the ballast tanks over touch and pen enabled photoshop. Its a good thing that Manual Deskerity is looking to expand to other platforms, because I foresee a serious pivot in the future.