[geeks] Microsoft Surface...

[Mark]

On 31 May 2007, at 16:48, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

>>  C'mon guys, they got the product done first for a change, give em  
>> some credit...
>
> No, they didn't.
>
> The idea actually goes back to US Navy displays from the late 50s.
>
> It is a very old idea.

US Navy displays do not constitute a consumer product...

> Just because they polished it up doesn't make it an innovation.

I said multiple times that it wasn't totally original, but the way  
the pulled it off was innovative, and very impressive.

> This is neat, but I guarantee Microsoft will screw it up.
> For one thing, it will require their software to work.
> You see, they already *have* screwed it up... :)

Maybe they will, or already have, but the fact remains they produced  
something impressive, and that's a start. 5 years ago they couldn't  
even manage that much!

> Aside: I don't really care if anyone has "innovation".  What I  
> really care
> about is "things that work".
>
> Innovation be damned, just please create something that works well,  
> OK?

That's true to an extent, but TBH I'm sick of the industry as it  
stands. No one side of the Personal Computer argument has a tangible  
advantage if you weight up the odds. Someone needs to bust the model  
open totally and do something so flat-out cool that it blows the rest  
away. That is when innovation makes everyones life better instead of  
these incremental teeny baby steps that software companies preach are  
'revolutionary innovations'. We're still using the same WIMP  
interfaces they started out with in the 70s at Xerox. Very little has  
changed since the internet in the 90s. Sure we do more stuff on the  
internet and we do more stuff than ever faster than ever with PCs but  
we haven't really changed the way we ACTUALLY DO IT. There's so much  
room for improvement, and with the modern levels of technology we  
have fewer and fewer excuses not to go forward, to actually improve,  
tangibly, how we use computer technology and leverage the power of  
computing. In essence it's a balance of your ideas, that stuff should  
'just work', and of the idea of actually improving and innovating  
better ways to do stuff in order that it 'just work' even better, and  
more intuitively.

-- 
Mark Benson

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