Are Apples breaking Windows again?
For a long time electronic companies have made computers. Toshiba, Sony and Panasonic have been doing a good job with their computers as electronic companies can do. For a while now the tables are turning. Dell, Microsoft and Apple are just a few who have entered the consumer electronic market. But the head to head battle that has been going on for thirty years is Apple and Microsoft. They are taking the battle out of the office and dorm rooms and into your living room and morning commute.
So the question really is, which products are better? I can be opinionated, but lets look at some interesting things. Microsoft has announced a new computer called “Surface” today. Now this is a very cool and new wave of computing that has been in development for a long time. The demo this morning on NBC was almost a large scale version of the iPhone demo done in January by Apple’s Steve Jobs. Now all will agree that this type of touch interface will be the next jump in the industry and both parties have the approach.
Apple approach: Building something small, a portable computer for the size of your hand. The iPone is the start of many things to come that uses this new Touch Screen technology. The iPhone which is coming out in June has been known and talked about since January when it was first revealed. Now the interface allows multiple touching, increase pictures, select and move things around by touching. The first consumer product with this technology will be the iPod.
Microsoft approach: Now since everyone knows about the iPod it was only a matter of time that other companies use this technology and take it in other directions. Now Microsoft’s “Surface” is a pretty big computer under a table. This will be the first of a generation of table-top computers with full interaction. The table-top or ‘Surface’ would interact instead of a keyboard and mouse. Now touch screen computers have never been very popular because multi-touch wasn’t around. Now Microsoft’s approach is to give this to companies, restaurants and other service like industries. The demo Bill Gates gave was a restaurant, the menu in front of you and you visually select you meal. Then when paying you place you credit card on the table, select the items you want to put on the credit card and drag them over.
Overall the technology for a more hand friendly interface is here. We will be interacting with our computers and gadgets in a whole new way with this and many other new technologies on the way. The thing is its the same based technology and both companies will package it with a different name and brand. This is what makes things confusing in the wonderful world of Tech.
Apple will make it to the consumer market first with a portable version of this technology we may say they started this new trend. Since there won’t be a consumer version of ‘Surface’ for many years Apple has plenty of time to create a consumer multi-touch entertainment computer that works great with Apple TV and the iPod. I personally think that Microsoft is still playing catch-up to Apple’s baked goods.
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