Microsoft announces Multi-Touch coffee table

Microsoft announced its first device which uses the Multi-Touch technology also present in the iPhone. It's not a digital media player, it's not a mobile phone, it's neither a TabletPC, it's a coffee table!

As a pretty impressive video posted on PopularMechanics.com demonstrates, this is what we could call a digital table. Code-named Milan, the device consists of a table with a large multi-point input touch display on the top of it and a computer with wireless capabilities behind the display.

The system running this device has very similar look and touch-gestures to the iPhone's (e.g.: the same two-fingers movement to resize a picture). This appears to be a prototype though.

In addition to Multi-Touch which is rebranded Microsoft Surface, the device can detect objects that are placed on it and interact with them. For example if you have taken a picture with your digital camera, you place it on the table and the photos automatically appear, then you can drop these pictures with a move of the finger to another device such as a mobile phone.

Although the day of the iPhone's introduction Apple said that it holds over 200 patents covering the technologies used inside the device, Multi-Touch is not an Apple technology and the company has no exclusive contract with its maker, PerceptivePixel. It will however be quite a challenge for competitors to produce portable devices with that same technology and with so well made user interfaces and it's probably where Apple's 200 patents are focusing.

The history may be repeating itself as over 20 years ago, Apple and Microsoft based their desktop computer user interface on Xerox' works. The difference is that this time, PerceptivePixel will probably make money from the technology they invented as opposed to Xerox which had donated its revolutionnary mouse-controeld user interface to Apple.