Microsoft's Surface To Come Out Sooner

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer announced yesterday that he intends to get Microsoft Surface (the fully touch interactive operating system and hardware) out to consumers sooner than originally promised. While MS's first intentions for Surface were to release to industrial customers first, such as restraunts and hotels, but it appears they are stepping on the gas to get Surface out to home consumers sooner than expected.

We were told that we should not expect to see Surface at home for a good 4-5 years back when they announced the Minority Report-inspired tabletop PC. Apprently, demand has been high from the consumer end, so Microsoft has decided to step up to the game and try to meet that demand before someone else does. My guess is that Apple's current multi-touch offerings and most likely Apple's future plans for multi-touch has spooked MS a bit and they don't want to be second to market with this technology. While the current multi-touch offerings do not match the ambitions of Surface, we have to wonder if the "speeding up" process will deminish any of the promised interactivity (I'm looking at you Vista). And it's really not that hard of a jump to say that Apple can perfect and expand on their current offerings to pop out a comparable system to Surface.

I'm excited about the idea of Surface, but I really want to see the execution before I make a dive into that commitment. Hopefully we can start seeing these within a year, but that might be pushing it. After all, from the sounds of it, all anyone is working on over at Microsoft is Windows 7. No date has been set for Surface, but we'll let you know if we hear something.

Microsoft wants to bring Surface home sooner [News.com]
[via: Engadget]