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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

Sure

The same company that can't consistently release a successful operating system (unless you redefine success to fit Windows Visa performance) is capable not only of delivering a revolutionary user interaction paradigm with its Surface and of creating the ultimate videogame experience with Project Natal, but also steal Apple's cake by launching a tablet before their arch-nemesis can even announce theirs.

Or would it be simpler to explain Microsoft is just again using vaporware to create confusion in markets it is not ready to enter with a product, but that they feel are strategic to the maintenance of their monopolies?

On the other hand, if they are dedicating so much of their brainpower to Surface, Natal and Courier, this could explain Vista and Windows 7.

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None of their demos are particularly outlandish. Surface has been duplicated n times; Microsoft has had the best, most polished implementation, that's all. If you look at the real Natal demos, they're certainly doable for a big company like Microsoft. This tablet also isn't anything new; multi-touch PCs have been around for a while.

I'm not even particularly impressed with their interface here. It doesn't have the consistency of design that Apple's does, and it doesn't look particularly intuitive. That doesn't mean that it's vaporware, however; in fact, it probably means the opposite.

Anyway, Microsoft's operating systems are more successful than everyone else's anyway. Windows 7 looks like it will be successful even relative to other Windows releases, no matter what you think of it. The buzz is right, and people are impressed.

Wasn't Surface a duplicate of the Perspective Pixel work? I certainly remember seeing YouTube videos before Surface was announced.

Work on Surface started around 2001 (as far as I remember). Jeff Han presented his work in 2006 at TED. So both were most likely developed in parallel.

> Microsoft is just again using vaporware

I've used NATAL. It's not vaporware.

If they can pull off a Milo and Kate, they are wasting their (and our) time with Windows versions while they could start selling a pocket version of HAL-9000...

As for the controllerless controller, have they set a release date yet? Until they do so, I will say it's vaporware.

And the same goes for the dual-screen tablet. I think they were aiming towards murkying up the waters of an eventually successful XO2 laptop and ended up with the perfect Newton killer.

>have they set a release date yet? Until they do so, I will say it's vaporware.

Okay, fine, but that's not a useful/meaningful definition of vaporware.

I certainly have my doubts about Milo. That's being developed by Lionhead though - Peter Molyneux is well known for making unrealistic promises.

When you announce an incredibly amazing product that clearly blows what your competition has currently shipping without even as much as a launch date plus or minus a year, it's vaporware.

The effect is twofold: it inhibits sales of the competition (who would want a Wii/360 when they could buy an Xbox 360 now and expect this mind-blowing Natal by Christmas?) and takes space on specialized media, limiting the free promotion their competitors could have gotten had Microsoft stuck with realistic products.

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