Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 7th Nov 2009 00:24 UTC
Whether you like Microsoft or not, the Redmond giant does have one thing going for it: the company's research division. Working together with several universities and other institutions, Microsoft Research works on the soft and hardware of the future, ranging from research operating systems to insanely cool things like what Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie showed off during the Microsoft College Tour '09 (more videos).
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Member since:
2006-02-26
You should also visit http://www.oblong.com to read about g-speak and the people who were the actual technology advisors for Minority Report and who have been working on this technology for well over a decade.
This is the kind of stuff we should be working towards and reading Kroc's "What Would Make Your Perfect OS?" thread left me rather depressed by the fact that most people seem completely satisfied with the current WIMP paradigm and large, monolithic applications.
A bit of an aside...
The fact is that UNIX got it very right with the idea of having numerous small, simple programs that can be chained together to operate on data and produce results. It's just that so far, that concept is stuck in the CLI and no one has been able to translate it to the graphical world. My instinct tells me that our UIs and our methods of physical interaction with our computers have been the limiting factors in this area.
g-speak attempts to address these problems by following the UNIX philosophy, using small tools and even including complete network transparency for all the X-lovers out there. I'm not sure if the Microsoft solution approaches it in the same way, but it's nice to see them exposing people to the possibility that there may be better ways to interact with a computer.
Unfortunately, we'll never see this actively pursued by Microsoft because it is financially detrimental for them to do so. Anything that breaks WIMP will effectively end their domination of the desktop market, and in fact, may destroy the "desktop" market altogether.