"A sheet of glass" can be pretty thick. What does that statement even mean? Anyway this sounds totally awesome if it ever becomes available and I would love for MS to push the industry in this direction. However, I doubt very much they'll deliver on this. Cool projects rarely make it out of MS Research, sadly.
Also, it seems like they're pretty far behind the times on this. Three years is a long time, and it seems likely that the industry will change significantly before then. Apple or HTC could easily come out with a similar device before MS hits the market.
These researchers seem very disconnected from the market. What hardware have they shipped that people want to buy?
They should take a queue from Apple and have small teams or individuals working on a 10-3-1 process - make 10 different prototypes where everyone can go wild, the 3 best of those are further developed, then a final polished iteration from those.
I think you've confused research with product development.
The person being interviewed is not a product developer. He is a computer scientist who did pioneering research in touch interfaces going back the to '70s.
>Apple or HTC could easily come out with a similar device before MS hits the market.
Sure, but that is if they see it as viable. Unless it's just an add-on secondary input device and display, it'll require that the OS and apps all work really well with it. So there's the big issue... would it work great with existing software or require a fresh start? Can it work well for mainstream use including things like word processing?
The work doesn't seem particularly new. If one looks closely at the first picture "Bill Buxton using the Active Desk he helped develop at the University of Toronto" we can see the older Apple color icon at the top left.
Of course it still is a very cool technology to respect and admire even if existing OSes aren't quite ready for it.
The biggest problem I see with touch interfaces on legacy OSes is that they can work better on large screens, but don't scale down well.
Also, it seems like they're pretty far behind the times on this. Three years is a long time, and it seems likely that the industry will change significantly before then. Apple or HTC could easily come out with a similar device before MS hits the market.