Dear Microsoft,
Fire you OS designers and have your visualization department do the OS interface instead.
… No, scratch that.
Dear Apple,
Hire Microsoft’s visualization department.
About Me
This is Binary Bonsai, the online journal of Michael Heilemann — a 31-year-old former Computer Game Developer, Interface Design Enthusiast and Film Lover — coming to you out of CPH, DK. It contains thoughts on games, interface design, movies, books, science fiction, blogging, music and various other subjects as befits the author.
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I like the concept, but I think that if the future looks like this it sure seems tiring. also the interfaces seem a bit cluttered, but beautiful none the less.
Scratch that, MS should just spin off the visualizations department into a film production company and let them make special effects for computers in science fiction films.
I think Steve Jobs comments on concept cars from a few years back applies to this sort of futurist eye candy visualizations.
Its the sort of thing we’ll be looking back on in fifty years and wonder what happened to the promises. Sort of like the mass produced flying car or personal jet pack promised back in the 1950s. Futurist visualizations are tasty geek-porn and that is generally all they come too.
Besides, chances are Apple already has products in beta testing that beat the pants off anything MS is daydreaming about. ;-)
Not a dig at you, Michael, but more the general attitude that Microsoft doesn’t understand what looks great or works smoothly:
Microsoft’s insistence that backwards compatibility is king is what keeps a lot of the old UI idioms around. It’s also what keeps Microsoft at 95% of the PC market.
To realise a beautiful new idea, you have to abandon the old ideas. But in the real world, especially that of business where a new PC investment can end up costing billions, legacy apps and hardware remains. Microsoft understands this – not better than Apple – just differently. To Apple, everyone should upgrade their entire software stack once every 3 years. And that works for individual users, but not for where the money – and the market – is.
Also, this previs movie wasn’t done inhouse at Microsoft at all, but outsourced out. So it’s not a matter of one department in MS getting it and another not; simply MS paying a visualization studio to daydream and slap their logo on it.
what IS Microsoft good at? Coming up with great concepts but never being able to release a equally as satisfying end product?
from The Road Ahead to this cool screen, MS is all about envisioning the future, lacking the ability to bring it to the end user (something i think apple does a lot better)
Well, I’m not suggesting they take these interfaces verbatim, that would make no sense, as they are to usability what the flux capacitor is to science. I’m merely suggesting that the feel and look of them are vastly superior to anything Microsoft has ever done (the NXE coming relatively close), and since they seem rather anxious to make their OS’ look and feel suave, they ought to take a leaf out of their own book, so to speak.
Indeed. But at the same time, aside from making interface aestheticists drool, videos like the one above are obviously also made to inspire MS themselves, more than they are to predict anything.
Well, ~88% and dropping, which you can interpret whichever way you want; but it ends up supporting my view either way :)
It makes good sense though, the way Microsoft is doing business. They’re in many ways a company struggling with their own conservative nature, and in no way is it easy to turn that big a ship around. But I believe — like Apple of course — that the current idioms can be pushed much further away from their roots than they are from version to version, without alienating people. And I think at least party of MS believes that as well (Surface). The question is if they’re willing to push it far enough?
There’s a huge difference between a purely pragmatic interface (any normal phone) and am inviting interface (the iPhone or Surface). And the video above is just filled with those kinds of ‘want’ moments, where I don’t care what exactly it does, I just need to use it. And while I know I’m a huge Vista Whinertm, Vista has exactly none of those moments, which I think is worrying.
And as I said, MS have certainly shown that they’re interested in making their interfaces drool-worthy, not only with the touch, but on a much smaller scale with the flourishes of Vista. Purists can think what they will about Aero, but people ‘get’ glass, shadows and indicative movements, even if it’s a half-hearted effort.
We may be some years away from discardable techno coffee cups, but the video shows how a lot of the things OS X and Vista already docan evolve and grow, especially now that screen-real estate is less and less a problem on workstations and around the house.
And sure, the video is replete with homogeneous and monolithic designs that are what makes the whole thing seem so carefree and inviting; something which seems an impossibility in the real world, where developers everywhere seem to do their very best to make Windows look as bad as possible. But that’s as much MS’s own fault as it is the developers, for promoting the idea of backwards compatibility the way they do.
Anyway, I love the idea that Microsoft could do something like this in real life for once, and not merely as a way to redress their somewhat tarnished image.
Yeah, I kinda figured, but then I’d have researched who made it, so I could make a specific reference to them; and I’m way too lazy to do that :)
Oh, and I guess this fits in here as well:
I had a similar thought when I saw that video: “Microsoft, please steal your own concept.” But we all know they won’t. That would be too easy. This is marketing only and not one iota of it will reach a product.
I think you’ll find this lifehacker post interesting then:
http://lifehacker.com/5170413/the-windows-2019-desktop
Some crazy desktop modder managed to mimic aspects of the interface shown in that video.
I’m quite suprised at Microsoft. I remember seeing the MS Surface tech/concept videos and had the feeling this is MS trying to woo people with eyecandy. But seeing the product see the light of day suprised me even more, and it’s made apprechiate MS as a company who can create great products, even though it takes them a while to do it. Like you mentioned, they really need to give their concept dept more hands on input to the actual UI, rather than make pretty videos show casing the future.
Microsoft is doing well with their concept of delivering crappy software escorted by phenomenal marketing since like 20 years.
So what’s Microsoft good in?
Appraising people’s needs!
But doesn’t the web, with all it’s different interfaces, mean that (future) business people can adapt to whatever you throw at them?*
What do you mean?
anyone seen Apple’s Futureshock, its done the rounds but here we go again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WdS4TscWH8
cute stuff from microsoft too.