See One, Do One, Teach One

When I grabbed my key to our room in NYC, I noticed the Microsoft Surface ad:

Explore our neighborhood with a touch.
Experience Microsoft Surface in our lobby.

Our lobby actually had two surface systems being used as coffee tables.  The first one we found was actually turned off.  Even after finding and flipping the hidden power switch, nothing happened.  As we were walking out, I noticed the surface “water attract” screensaver running on another device.

Control–

Manipulation of the objects on the screen were very intuitive.  My 2 year old was clicking and moving objects easily.  My 6 year old figured out how to resize very quickly.  Controlling the surface was very similar to iPhone controls.   

Applications–

Our device had only three applications:  pictures, music, and maps.

The pictures application mainly showed off pictures of the hotel properties.  The pictures were easily resized and manipulated with your fingers.  In fact, my kids were all resizing and moving pictures at the same time.  Johnrchang has a good flickr pic of this surface application:

The music application was a little more clunky. All the album covers could dragged out a list.  Clicking them flipped the album to show which songs were available inside.   Dragging these songs to a playlist started playing the songs.

The maps program was probably the most impressive.  It was started up in a full screen Microsoft Virtual Earth view of our current location.  By dragging and resizing, MightyQ started a nice impromptu tour of the city.  When the city roads did not demonstrate things very well, a flip into satellite view helped greatly.  One could zoom out as far as looking at the earth as a globe.  I think Q was disappointed that he could not tour the kids around the solar system as well.  Here is a tech-recipes flickr pic of my son manipulating the map:

Impressions–

To me this was one of the the most impressive things Microsoft has designed in a while.  Several visual bugs destroyed the illusion sometimes, but for the most part, the graphics and controls were great.  In the end, however, it really felt like playing with a giant version of the iPhone.  Whether built by Microsoft, Apple, or many other companies, I have no doubt that one day we will see surface-like devices everywhere. 

microsoft surface