Games? Can't do FPS and other mainstream games.
How about a NEW form of game that uses a wii controller for character movement input, the Surface for data input and feedback and your HD LCD on the wall for displaying the world environment? Every version of Windows OS comes with one or more versions of solitaire. Why couldn't every Surface come with not just solitaire but several group board games like Monopoly, Risk, Axis & Allies, with tokens for them available cheaply? Any game with a top-down view should be a perfect fit. I'm playing a lot of Torchlight right now and I'd do BETTER just touching the creature I want to target than having to position the mouse pointer over it.
Office applications? Don't need multitouch for that. Also, lack of keyboard and awkward screen to read from.
Then you shouldn't be thinking that the only way this thing will/should ever function is if it's perfectly horizontal. Just because we're currently looking at it built into a coffee table doesn't mean it won't be available (or at least adaptable) to a kitchen table, conference table, cocktail table, and tiltable/swivelable on all of them to a greater or lesser degree. Also, some office applications aren't solely concerned with just entering text and data, but then moving it around. If all you're doing is writing emails and reports it's not an intuitive choice for input, but what if you're putting together a Powerpoint presentation, assembling newsletters or advertisements in Word or Publisher? What if you're interested in rearranging a character sheet the way you want it?
Art? Tablets (Wacom for example) already offer everything surface can do.
As already noted they don't. As it exists the surface provides a 30" tablet instead of 6" which enables the artist to "paint" on the Surface with the SAME motions as they might use on a full size canvas with brushes. The object recognition could be used to switch virtual "brushes", textures, or even something as mundane as choosing colors. Heck, it may be that they can USE actual, normal brushes. And as noted it doesn't divorce the input device from the display like a tablet.
Just being a touch screen I could take my Campaign Cartographer software, drop my wacom tablet - which I bought to use with CC - and instead use the Surface for all my CC projects - and then even without object recognition use it to run a D&D game with all the maps in CC.
Picture Editing? Surface does not offer any advantages over a PC with Photoshop.
Again, just being multitouch it DOES offer advantages. At least I ASSUME it's multi-touch and not just touch.
Video editing? You need massive processor power for that. Surface will hardly have that. Also, see picture editing.
Surface isn't really the computer - it's just the display and input. The D&D application in the videos for example is being run from a laptop, not the surface itself. The Surface is just being used in conjunction with objects for players to input their actions and display the results. It'd be the same with video editing.
Media browsing like on an IPod? Get an Ipod. Its cheaper and portable.
But much harder to see video on a 2" ipod screen than a 30" Surface screen and much greater accuracy of reading the users touch input. I should imagine one of the first things available for the Surface will be an iPod dock for that reason alone - followed by the next generation of iPod which Surface will automatically recognize, open iTunes and sync your iPod via bluetooth without having to even plug it into a dock. It could do that now with an iPhone I'm sure.
No one will buy surface for board games, D&D and some odd, once in a year, applications. Its more something for businesses than for consumers.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman, 1981
"I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers." - Thomas Watson, IBM chairman, 1943
Both may be misquotes but the point stands. Think bigger. Imagine what's possible WITH it, not dismiss it because of what's possible WITHOUT it. If one takes a stance that says this is a useless, expensive paperweight then it's in their interests to convince everyone to think of it in the most restrictive, least imaginative terms if not actually dismiss it out of hand. You can send men to the moon with 640k of computer memory (I'm pretty sure we DID with even less). But what can you do with MORE? Pocket calculators can do more than a 1943 computer. Heck, I've heard that decently experienced ABACUS users perform calculations faster than people with pocket calculators. Probably same applies in competing with a slide rule. If you look at a programmable calculator you'd be right in stating that it doesn't add and subtract any better than the solar pocket calculator I keep in my cars glovebox. But if I DO program the former I can do a lot more with it than you can conceive of doing with the one in my car.
Touch screens are not new. Multi-touch screens are not too new but I've read articles on how they work and if I had the notion to bother I could just build one myself. Object recognition capability is new in this form but rfid and keycard readers have been around for years. Yet altogether what I'm seeing in the Surface is an attempt to see what can be done with all these methods of input that has never been taken full advantage of OUTSIDE of very specialized applications. Just because you can do things NOW without them doesn't mean that applications can't or won't benefit from trying to do them differently.
We used to play computer games with just keyboards. We soon played a lot of games with joysticks. Then we started using mouse-keyboard in combination. Game consoles have always had dedicated controllers. Things CHANGE. It's clear that they ARE changing again. These methods of input won't replace everything else and it would be silly to think that it would, but they are going to expand options and open new possibilities.
I said in a post just above that I'd buy the Surface to play 4E on and that I don't even LIKE 4E. That's because with software such as they're using and the Surface to use instead of pen and paper it moves toward a different game experience that would make 4E more palatable for me. I don't like 4E
as D&D (such as I percieve it), but I believe I'd like it on the Surface as a certainly more desireable experience than playing World of Warcraft - and I know I could get 5 or more people
right now to give up WoW for this kind of game. 6 people. $15 a month WoW subscriptions each. 12 months. That's over $1000 right there compared to the paltry $60 I paid to WotC on buying the 4E core books that are gathering more dust than anything else on my RPG shelves. Even if we all lost interest in the D&D uses of it after a year to play World of Warcraft II on it instead it'd still be worth it for WotC. An initial $2000 investment for me, while almost painfully costly would continue to pay off with the inevitable additional capabilities that will become available for it aside from any other possibilities mentioned above. I'll just sell my motorcycle to pay for it. I seldom ride it anyway.
