
Microsoft Surface Hub - SanderMak
https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-surface-hub/en-us
======
bane
We were just talking about the need for "better whiteboards that aren't
SmartBoards(TM)" at work. Whiteboards can be incredible collaboration tools,
but capturing that back out to the team can be tough. Coincidentally, we've
also started giving out Surface Pro's as work computers and to the person they
absolutely love them.

As always, software will be the problem, so if the software is well thought
out this could be awesome.

 _edit_ thanks for the downvote?

what did you disagree with?

~~~
stephengillie
Thinking back to college, a fully-drawn whiteboard is only somewhat useful.
What's most important is the presentation - what the person is saying while
they draw, the order the drawings are made, and how they connect.

The real value is in the presentation.

When you get a picture of the whiteboard, it doesn't just give you that static
info. It helps you remember the presentation the way that a photo of home
brings back the smells of home.

But a dozen minutes of meeting that record someone's whiteboard presentation,
is a lot to store for later review. How do we automate the pulling of
important, informative parts out of a video?

~~~
mscman
> The real value is in the presentation.

This is true sometimes, but if it's a design discussion and you're
whiteboarding how something should be laid out, or even steps of what's
completed and what's left, just a snapshot of the final state of the
whiteboard is tremendously useful. It prevents the need for another person
jotting down everything that was written up on the board.

~~~
seanflyon
A time-lapse would be great as well.

~~~
stephengillie
So a GIF (or PNG) of the time lapse, as well as a still image of the final
frame?

~~~
seanflyon
I was thinking of something with a slider so you can find that diagram someone
drew in the middle of a discussion last week.

~~~
stephengillie
You should see what Imgur has done in merging GIFs and WEBM videos. Every GIF
has full video controls, including a slider and a play/pause button.

So basically if we just hosted the timelapse on Imgur...

~~~
arey_abhishek
We've made a board that can achieve the playback. Made a quick demo video of
our first prototype. Would love any more ideas!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmVtfF6pIo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmVtfF6pIo)

------
chasing
The devil's in the user experience details.

"Steve, can you pull up the thing?"

"Yeah, I added the thing to the thing but it didn't show up."

"Did you push the button?"

"What button?"

"To put the thing in the thing you've got to push the button."

"Oh, okay. Wait. The thing just disappeared."

"It might have to sync."

"I just got an error."

"Fuck it. Can someone just mirror their laptop screen up here?"

~~~
doty
> "Fuck it. Can someone just mirror their laptop screen up here?"

(Scene repeats.)

~~~
WalterGR
I would love to read a study of how many person-hours of productivity are lost
annually to people waiting for laptops and projectors to cooperate so that the
meetings can begin.

------
noteloop
One of the cool things about the 84" version is that it does 4K at 120 Hz.
This allows for much lower touch and stylus latency. It is likely using custom
internal hardware like the 5K iMac to do achieve that refresh rate so you are
probably stuck with the built in GPU.

It is odd that the 55" is only 1080p when you have 55" 4K Vizio TV's going for
$999.

~~~
brianwawok
Why does 120hz vs 60hz matter fo latency? Or 4k vs 1080p?

Because for the old stuff.. we are talking a 1-2 second lag. 60hz vs 120hz is
like 16ms vs 8ms per frame, which is not noticeable.

~~~
fuzzywalrus
You can visibly see and feel the delay on the Wacom Centiqs and they're 60 Hz.

You adjust but it's not as ideal as there's mild tendency to under/over draw.
This is probably less of a problem for a whiteboard but for art, its more
problematic.

~~~
lewisl9029
That's probably due to input lag rather than refresh rates though. For non-TN
screens, input lag (generally >30 ms) tends to dwarf refresh rate differences
(16 ms vs 8 ms).

------
untog
I get why they called it the Surface Hub but I initially assumed that it would
be a docking station for a Surface tablet.

~~~
joshuaheard
Me, too. I love Microsoft but they need to hire someone better to name their
products.

~~~
delecti
They also need to stop slapping the product name "Surface" onto everything.

~~~
coolnow
Why? I think it was pretty clear that the Surface brand is Microsoft's entry
into touch-based computing, which this product also heavily utilises. But hey,
i'm not the typical obtuse HN reader.

~~~
13
You don't remember Microsoft Surface, the coffee table touch computer?

~~~
coolnow
Yes i do, and i also remember when they didn't release it for the wider
market.

------
edgyswingset
I'm excited to use this in the future, mainly because the OneNote integration
looks really slick, and OneNote is incredible. If this could get integrated
with Outlook (e.g. you accept a meeting and your AD user account is
automatically included into the session with any permissions taken care of)
that would be superb.

------
mark_l_watson
Looks nice, but cost may be a problem. At Google in 2013, there seemed to be
one conference or small meeting room for every 7 or 8 people (I am guessing
about these numbers, but hopefully close). Their meeting rooms had relatively
low cost monitors that ran Google Groups. Shared Google Documents took the
place of the collaborative surface on a Hub. I was in Mountain View and my
team mates were in NYC so I used these meeting rooms for an hour or two a day.
Pretty effective. As another guess, the Hub might increase the cost for each
meeting room by $10K.

A cheaper alternative might be really good screen sharing and group drawing
access for Microsoft Surfaces. That might even be preferable as far as getting
stuff done.

~~~
eddieroger
I thought about cost first as well, and I imagine this isn't targeted at
people who are picking Google Apps for cost reasons. I figured like most
Microsoft products, this is focused on the Enterprise, and they'd be much
happier selling 100+ at a discount than one or two to small or medium firms.

------
noir_lord
The idea is interesting but getting the software right will be really hard and
without it been effortless everyone will end up sat back down taking notes and
it'll become an expensive whiteboard/screen.

~~~
swalsh
This is very true, i'm imagining someone sitting at their surface "ummm wait,
its not going up, oh oh my bluetooth was off"... "wait now it's saying I don't
have permission to project on this screen" "oh you need to talk to Jim, he'll
set you up an account"

and then everyone huddles around the tiny tablet.

~~~
Roritharr
I don't think this will be the case, as the Surface Hub supports so many
graceful Fallback Options. It even works as a dumb Miracast Receiver, if all
else fails.

------
sz4kerto
re/code has a recent review: [http://recode.net/2015/04/29/the-new-world-of-
whiteboards-fr...](http://recode.net/2015/04/29/the-new-world-of-whiteboards-
from-smart-markers-to-surface-hub/)

------
DasIch
So they bolted the table to a wall?

~~~
parkovski
Yeah exactly everyone at Microsoft is so dumb. Literally all 100000+ people
that work there are in the bottom 1% of intelligence worldwide. Probably
because they don't use Linux. Everyone knows that just typing ls in bash
boosts your IQ by over 9000 points immediately.

Why is this attitude so widespread?

Edit: oh no guys my internet points! Gimme back my internet points!

~~~
DasIch
It's not that I believe Microsoft to be dumb. However the entire page makes it
seem like what they've done is somehow incredibly innovative even though it is
clearly not.

------
neovive
This looks quite promising. What piqued my interest was the section that said
"Universal apps built for Windows 10 shine on Microsoft Surface Hub and scale
to the large screen."

Looking further into Universal Apps for Windows 10 leads to
[http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/03/02/a-first-
loo...](http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/03/02/a-first-look-at-the-
windows-10-universal-app-platform/) which details the vision for the platform.
That page mentions: "... Windows 10 will make it easy for you to create a
Windows app that packages your website for publishing to the Store. Once
installed, your website can update and call Universal APIs from JavaScript,
creating a more engaging user experience."

Could someone more familiar with Universal Apps shed more light on this? It
sounds interesting, but I'm trying to figure out if this is similar to Chrome
Webstore Apps or Hyrbid Mobile Apps wrapped in Web UI's (e.g. Cordova).

~~~
petemill
A web developer can create a package for a website that is deployed to the
store. Each time a user opens this app it's loading the content from your web
server - so different from a native / html wrapper. Furthermore your JS on
your live site, when the site is run from this app, can do something like: if
(Windows) { ...call native APIs... }.

This likely also means you can use iOS objective C or the android API for apps
on the display since they are all supported on Win10 now.

------
teirce
This is interesting. With the prevalence of windows in the corporate world, I
could see this catching on. The biggest issues I think are going to be: the
market share of W7 and under, and cost.

I could also see it do horribly, ala the original Surface Table thing (did
they even sell those?)

~~~
douche
Ha, I do remember seeing one of those Surface Tables once - it was a couple
years ago at a Microsoft facility in Boston.

Personally, I hate touchscreens. I recently went to Logan International in
Boston, and discovered that the big boards with flight/gate listings had been
replaced with wide-screen TV-sized touch screen interfaces. It took me almost
five minutes to get into the touch screen interface, figure out how the search
function was supposed to work, realize the search function was broken, and
then scroll through the listings to find my flight. In ye olden days, I could
have stood there looking at the board, and either seen immediately what my
gate was, or waited thirty seconds or so for it to cycle to the second page if
there were a lot of flights.

Windows 10 actually does look very good. They've rolled back the blunders of
the Win8 UI, which is really the only reason I can see for somebody not
upgrading before. There's really no excuse for continuing to use Win7 or god
forbid, XP for much longer.

~~~
0xffff2
Was your phone dead? I haven't actually looked at one of those
arrival/departure boards in close to a decade.

~~~
bunderbunder
I don't clutter my phone with every single airline's app, electronic boarding
passes often don't list the gate and never reflect status changes, and I don't
get text updates when I'm traveling for work because our corporate booking
system helpfully hard-codes my office phone in the contact information.

Besides, even when the stars line up and my phone really does reliably give me
updates on the flight status, digging it out of my pocket, unlocking it, etc
is more hassle than glancing at a status board as I walk past.

~~~
taco_emoji
You don't need separate apps. I use this one:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flightawar...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flightaware.android.liveFlightTracker)

(Though as I said in another comment, I still check the boards when they're
close by, just to be sure.)

------
NicoJuicy
I wonder what happened with Surface as a "product"... Ever since they used it
for their tablet, i thought it would dissappear or receive a different name.

I saw a demo of it several years ago and it was pretty impressive back then,
detecting "Red Bull" cans + loading the appropriate app, playing chess, ...

I found a link with some examples iwth it can do:
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/pixelsense/applicationpages....](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/pixelsense/applicationpages.aspx)

~~~
bitwize
They renamed it PixelSense because the name Surface was too good not to apply
to a mass market tablet product.

------
FlyingLawnmower
I wonder if this is poised to take on the ubiquitous smartboard found in high
schools all across the country. Seems like a better mousetrap in that regard.
That being said, I don't know anything about cost of either smartboards or the
surface hub.

------
pjmlp
It is nice that the original Surface lives on.

I really liked their idea back when the Surface was introduced, specially that
.NET was the main programming stack.

Now it would be WinRT/.NET, most likely.

------
paulus_magnus
My pet project Writelive offers a similar experience today:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.writelive](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.writelive)

write / draw on Android tablet & show via web, collaborate in real time & more

[http://write-live.com/d/dba21681-8d3f-4fbe-8b4b-e5c1983df934](http://write-
live.com/d/dba21681-8d3f-4fbe-8b4b-e5c1983df934) [http://write-
live.com/d/538254c5-7d31-41f2-83bb-bcd0a7cee7ab](http://write-
live.com/d/538254c5-7d31-41f2-83bb-bcd0a7cee7ab) [http://write-
live.com/d/8f9b7846-a7b9-4e5c-b704-dad9aa87d14e](http://write-
live.com/d/8f9b7846-a7b9-4e5c-b704-dad9aa87d14e) [http://write-
live.com/d/7e0ba663-14b7-4ffd-ac9f-b26eb8d47d6e](http://write-
live.com/d/7e0ba663-14b7-4ffd-ac9f-b26eb8d47d6e)

use mouse / wheel to zoom/pan

------
LukeHoersten
Microsoft is just crushing it with their visual design work lately. I have to
admit, I'm impressed and re-thinking my opinion on MS.

------
tammer
I've always thought Apple's missing a huge opportunity by not releasing 30-40
inch iPads. Think about it: ultimate tabletop gaming, makes smartboards
obsolete, interactive movable secondary television, revolutionary sign/kiosk
system, ideal office workstation, innumerable app-enabled uses...

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting, I keep thinking I'll build something like this, although I note
that Seiki discontinued their big 4K screen. The key for me in previous "smart
boards" has always been that drawing on them has been like drawing on a
tablet, which is to say the "ink" is way behind the pen when it comes to
updating the display. It is the same experience on a slow timeshare system
where you're typing doesn't get echoed for a dozen or more characters. And
when composing text, you at least have a moderately easy way to back up and
correct but when drawing not so much. That and the occasional sample glitch
that suddenly has the pen making a mark 2 miles off screen you get this weird
across the screen line.

------
roozbeh18
microsoft gave us 3 of these at 14k last year. since then it has been used as
a giant monitor. video looks cool though

~~~
saurik
So... not good?

------
jsingleton
Let's hope it's better than the big touch screen the BBC were using during the
election. Anyone know what that was running?

Edit: May have been [http://www.u-touch.co.uk/84-4k-multitouch-screen-
ir/](http://www.u-touch.co.uk/84-4k-multitouch-screen-ir/) or
[http://www.idonix.com/projects/vizTouchScreen2011](http://www.idonix.com/projects/vizTouchScreen2011).

~~~
duncanawoods
I assumed that was cgi - like a weather forecaster waving at a bluescreen. Did
she have any way of choosing the seat? I think it may have been 100%
controlled offscreen.

Totally farcical UX - the screen had 3 functions yet she had to walk back and
forth to slap a tile to switch them. Its a bad sign to measure Fitt's distance
in meters! A remote would have been more sensible but it was for the pretense
of being tech, not actual practicality.

------
bitL
Give me Surface Desk and I might consider going back to MS again.

------
jbob2000
How would this compete with HP's Slate 17? It's an android tablet-desktop
thing. $450!
[http://store.hp.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/us/en/pdp/desk...](http://store.hp.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/us/en/pdp/desktops/hp-
slate-all-in-one---17-l020)

------
moey
Why isn't Microsoft ever transparent about the cost of their devices before
release dates? In my opinion their product announcements would have much more
attention and excitement if they gave a date and a price. But most of the time
it's just, oh look there gonna release something sometime soon for some price.
One can't even decide if it's in their budget.

~~~
saurik
Microsoft announces things while they are still finalizing, or even sometimes
while still designing, what might not even always become a product: this gives
them a chance to get feedback from potential clients as part of large semi-
public beta programs and back room negotiations. They probably do not know
when it will be ready, nor have they yet decided how much it will cost.

------
nathankunicki
So the Surface has come full circle? This is basically the original Surface.

Which is great, by the way. Merely an observation.

------
sudioStudio64
Anything that fixes the first ten minutes of every meeting nonsense where
everyone trys to get the AV figured out.

Anything.

------
arey_abhishek
Hackernews, we've made a whiteboard which lets you broadcast everything you
write with a normal marker to a mobile device.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmVtfF6pIo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmVtfF6pIo)

------
robterrell
Sounds like this is the result of Microsoft's acquisition of Jeff Han's
Perceptive Pixel?

~~~
ryoshu
Most likely. The UX should be great if it's a direct extension. They really
nailed the interaction feel.

------
brador
Everyone seems to be missing a huge market for these: Schools.

I can see it improving the collaborative learning experience. But in my
opinion, this makes remote teaching in first world schools a viable
possibility.

~~~
taco_emoji
There's been players in that space for years now:
[http://education.smarttech.com/en/products/4000-series](http://education.smarttech.com/en/products/4000-series)

~~~
locustreign
MS's previous enterprise offering in this space was the SMART Room System for
Lync. It worked really well...as long as your collaborators were also on Lync.
No standards based video conference connectivity, and good luck if you tried
to use the system for an external collaboration/training/demo (pick your
flavor of WebEx, Google Hangouts, etc.). With Lync being absorbed into Skype
for Business I hope they will approach these new offerings with less of a silo
type mentality. The tight integration with a Surface looks great, but what
happens when someone brings in an iPad?

------
epsylon
I'm curious nobody mentioned the problem that is Skype. For many companies,
NSA snooping means that Skype cannot be used for any sensitive stuff (which
translates into a defacto company wide ban).

------
elorant
Is there an API for that?

------
karmakaze
Looks expensive. I _don 't_ want one--it really only has value for multi-
person use. Hence it's target and likely price.

------
callesgg
I assume the UI will suck and it will be almost unused at any place that
purchases one, cause of it.

------
yarrel
A big thank you to the Microsoft social media team currently targeting HN for
this and your other fine submissions.

~~~
jongalloway2
You can see the previous submissions for the OP here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=SanderMak](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=SanderMak)

Doesn't look like a social media team.

------
ekianjo
They forget to mention one critical feature: it includes free NSA spying for
all your critical projects. Not sure that's something you want to do if you
are a foreign (i.e. non American) company.

