I can absolutely see some great uses for the surface technology. Unfortunately, none of the ones that make any sense to me, like military command and control, medical systems, large control systems for manufacturing or plant operations, high end design… are mass market ideas.

I think of myself as pretty much the ultimate geek. I sit here with three or four large displays on my desk glowing happy radiation at me. But I can’t for the life of me see dedicating a huge horizontal surface for UI: it is totally not ergonomic as a display, and it is incredibly wasteful in terms of space as a user interface for my purposes. I could see perhaps incorporating touch features into a future display, but it would be a novelty to me, not something truly of value. To me, the keyboard and mouse are far superior for data entry.

The one place I can see mass market use for a touch interface like this is in a small tablet computer or something like the iPhone. And there, to me, it is a compromise: there isn’t enough space for the better UI of a keyboard and mouse, so you turn your display into an input device as well.

I’ll probably be eating my words a few years from now, and the new Surface UI features in Windows 7 will be incredibly useful. But right now, all I see is a Big Ass table 🙂