No, Microsoft hasn't suddenly transformed its 30-inch, multi-touch Surface into a
big-ass cellphone. It has, however, chosen AT&T to launch the world's first Surface into retail. Shoppers in New York, Atlanta, San Antonio, and San Francisco will be treated to what amounts to the novelty (at least initially) of learning about a device (Samsung BlackJack II, pictured) by simply placing it atop the Surface. They'll also have the ability to explore interactive coverage maps. Later, users will be able to drag ringtones, graphics and video and drop it into "the phones." Note their use of "the" and not "your" phone in the press release. Nevertheless, we're happy to see Microsoft get the technology out the door on its
long march towards consumerdom.
Update: Interestingly enough, AT&T's flagship iPhone
will not be one of the
first phones demonstrated on Surface. Perhaps AT&T / Microsoft worry that the multi-touch collision would create
strangelets.
posted Apr 2nd 2008 12:57AM
Makes me question what might happen if you set an iPhone atop the Surface. :-)
The earth explodes.
Talking about the iPhone, AT&T seems to be awfully fond of exclusitivity.
Who can blame 'em? I were 1 femtogram more geeky, I'd go to an AT&T story to test this out.
Did Microsoft dress those people too?
Bacteria trap!
lol. I was actually thinking, this may well be Microsoft's first Virus free product, but as you've just mentioned, it certainly wont be :)
Probably because the iPhone has such a worthless Bluetooth stack.
well as soon as apple comes up with something useful besides eye candy and decides to start playing with others...
Ummm. Sprint beat them to it. They have a store by the Sprint Center in downtown Kansas City that has this. You can put music discs on there and it puts up spinning records. You can then mix the records.
Sweet.
Oh yeah. And you can do phone stuff too, but where's the fun in that?
Bah, when I was at the Sprint Center last that store was closed. :-(
This kind of screen & phone system is nothing new. Like someone said Sprint has something similar and so does T-Mobile and by far T-MObile's store is the coolest. T-Mobile's new stores with the screen thing and fanciness basically looks like an Apple Store mixed with a lounge.