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Comment by aswanson | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft had the touch-surface interface back like a year before the iphone came out. But they rolled it out as a $10000 restuarant/menu interface instead of a computing/consumer device one. Classic good tech/bad customer targeting failure. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2007/may07/05-29ms...

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That Surface, the table thing, was based on multiple IR cameras tracking finger interactions. It was never miniaturizable to a portable device.

Not good tech, wrong market -- totally different tech, niche market.

(also it debuted 5 months after the original iPhone, for whatever that's worth)

I believe the current round of e-readers actually use IR-based touch sensors. Still wouldn't compete on a phone for marketing reasons (thanks to the need for a sunken-in screen), but definitely shrinkable.

They do! But those IR touch screens are actually different technology again from the quite literally cameras that the Surface used.

IR touch screens like the ones the Sony reader and Kindle use have been around for ages in POS machines and the like.

On the other hand the Surface (table) was using computer vision algorithms on realtime near-IR images of the table surface to recognize multiple touches and gestures.

I got to play with a Surface some time in 2008 and, surprisingly, found myself a little more enchanted than I was upon using the iPhone, which had come out the year before. At the same time I remember doing the weighing of utility: "Well, they've got some really nifty tech underneath and cool demo apps to show it off, but what would I truly use it for?" Cue thoughts about doing anything productive without a keyboard, etc.

Then again, I'm one of those no-nonsense people whose smartphone is just used 90% for Email & Web Browser.

I wouldn't be surprised to see them directly replace the old surface with the guts of the new one integrated into a 60" multitouch TV (for both table and on the wall use) and scrap the IR object detection for a kinect based solution. Of course this would leave them with the cost of a huge multitouch panel.

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