Surface Blades – true innovation from Microsoft

The pressure sensitivity of this is cool but lets not get ahead of ourselves with &#x27;true innovation&#x27; - this isn&#x27;t the tactile feedback multi-use touch surface we&#x27;ve been waiting for.<p>I own a Surface (journalist freebie hand-me-down), and after playing with it extensively I&#x27;ve determined Surface&#x27;s only real contribution to society is as a physical manifestation of Microsoft&#x27;s inability to commit to design decisions. Should it run classic UI or Metro? Should it to run ARM or x86 apps? Should it have a keyboard or a blade? Microsoft&#x27;s answer to all of these is YES, and that means NO polish and NO market share.<p>This blade is another example of not committing - are there any launch partners where you can use this with any software you want? Doesn&#x27;t look like it. So we&#x27;re to expect musicians are going to drop the music software they&#x27;ve been using for years for a cut-down v1 Microsoft remix app? If not, then who&#x27;s it for? The uber casual remixer who.. probably already owns an ipad? Pick a market, guys.<p>I feel bad for the undoubtedly smart folks who put together the blade and the remix app, but who are stuck working on a crappy platform. Building an array of 1000 pressure-sensitive sensors into a touch surface is cool (I&#x27;m impressed w new blade touch architecture), but its also something that a committed hacker could do. And after doing it, they&#x27;d have as much market share and software partners as Microsoft does with this blade on Surface. So... I wouldn&#x27;t call it &#x27;true innovation&#x27;. Lets leave that distinction to groundbreaking research projects or highly polished new-ish ideas that finally go big.

I would say that:<p>IF Microsoft has really thought through this new strategy, and mapped its product release timeline out with enough care and analysis so that it will stick with and expand upon Surface (and its new vibe&#x2F;product range in general), and hasn&#x27;t just rushed into a new look and is will flail about and switch to something new in two years - if Microsoft really is committed and focussed - and<p>IF Microsoft can match the confidence and self-assurance with which Apple releases and iterates its core products and<p>IF Microsoft can effectively communicate and deliver upon its vision of technology and<p>IF Microsoft can genuinely make people feel excited and good about themselves when they use their products and<p>IF Microsoft can attract a developer&#x2F;user community which feels as comfortable and at home as Apple&#x27;s -<p>then Microsoft could be back in business.<p>It&#x27;s a big ask but it&#x27;s possible I think.

&gt; It may prove popular with professional musicians and amateurs alike.<p>Yeah, operating hardware without any tactile feedback in very dark environments sure sounds nice.

I don&#x27;t think the Jaguar ever had card inserts for its controllers. In any case, even if it did the Intellivision had them first. They were a neat idea, but putting another piece of plastic in front of buttons that weren&#x27;t all that easy to press to begin with...<p>Blades could be a compelling feature, if done right. Apple forces users to do things according to the &quot;Apple Way&quot; and succeeds by polishing that way very well. Anyone who is happy with the &quot;Apple Way&quot; is a happy Apple user. Unfortunately, creating a significant amount of content on a tablet is not really a part of the &quot;Apple Way&quot;. Tablets are for consumption, dummy! People who want to create stuff on a tablet are currently an under-served market. It remains to be seen if MS will find success in tablet-space, but at least they&#x27;re targeting a niche that Apple is neglecting.

They would have to be pretty darn cheap to beat out the USB Midi controllers people generally use now with things like Ableton Live, considering you can get something like this now for less than $100 that has the virtue of already being for sale.<p>It won&#x27;t look half as cool with your Surface, though.<p>It might make sense from an industrial standpoint to replace a gazillion of those membrane pads at Micky-D&#x27;s but as a consumer good? I&#x27;m not so sure.

I can see a lot of potential in this if the platform were to be opened up and customised blades could be manufactured cheaply. I&#x27;d love to see Microsoft license the technology to third parties and possibly have an open SDK.<p>This college workshop video suggests they may be planning to open it up. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9UAxHgXYxw" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=R9UAxHgXYxw</a>

Fingerworks keyboards and touchpads--which were one of the first commercial implementations of capacitive multitouch--were popular with some music producers for specifically this reason. See for example:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qg8IB64yu8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=9qg8IB64yu8</a><p>Fingerworks was purchased by Apple, and their technology integrated into the touchpads and iOS devices.

I fail to see the &quot;innovation&quot; in this. Purpose built keyboards have been around for as long as i can remember, I am especially thinking about the TV production computers with special keys, colours etc... When i saw this i had my hopes high to see a touch surface with an electronically customisable layout, so that the app can essentially draw its own controls.<p>With e-Ink this is not difficult to do.

For reference&#x27;s sake, Point-of-Sale systems (as per fast food retail) have been using completely custom <i>keyboards</i> for years (only affects the last case).

I&#x27;m excited for the Surface 2 and will likely get one, but I&#x27;m not sure the idea of creating several use-case specific keyboards beyond a standard QWERTY makes any sense. Isn&#x27;t the whole point of having a dynamic touch screens to enable ANY use case?<p>It also appears to be connecting via a proprietary connector rather than Bluetooth or USB which means it likely won&#x27;t work with any hybrids&#x2F;tablets from other vendors.

This is supposed to be the &quot;innovation?&quot; A static, physical, printed-on-a-touchpad input system for a touch device?<p>This input device was made to seem cool in an ad. In the real world the reaction will be puzzlement over why these controls are not implemented on the screen, where visual feedback and reconfiguration of the controls is possible.

Nothing in the music space is more innovative than beamz by Flo Rida <a href="http://vimeo.com/72153180" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vimeo.com&#x2F;72153180</a><p>Uargh...

This is like a parody of innovation! It looks like a concept project mostly. The key to making anything like this comes from how well it is integrated with the software, and audio production software is really hard to get right.<p>There is a need for physical controls for music software control (or any software) and there is a fundamental problem. The amount of parameters and functions that need to be controlled is vast. It will quickly overwhelm a control surface with limited amount of controls unless a lot of thought and design is put into the a method of switching the function of the controls. These types of controls are still virtual!

I think this is a step-backwards. It&#x27;s a terribly flawed concept for two reasons:<p>1) the screen is already an infinitely customisable graphical touch UI<p>2) you need to set your portable device down on a flat surface to use it<p>Without it you can easily page back-and-forth through multiple control screens each with a custom UI. You can still have a different screen for breakfast, lunch and dinner.<p>Without it you can carry the device to a table and enter the data in situ. You can hold it in one hand and operate the device with the other.<p>This bypasses a mobile touch device&#x27;s two main assets: its portability and its touch screen!

Yes, this is potentially innovative, but not in the same way that the standard iPod&#x2F;iPhone connector is. On iOS musical devices you can already plug them into music hardware - guitars, keyboards, mixers, etc. That&#x27;s already happening.<p>I would actually argue that Surface Blades are not the best thing ever simply because for things like mixing you want 3 dimensional tactile feedback for subtle adjustments. Big buttons on a flat touch pad is probably better than a purely visual interface, but it seems like they are straddling the line between a non-optimal software interface for a middle ground that isn&#x27;t the same as using a real mixing board, but it&#x27;s maybe a bit better than using an on screen UI.<p>My guess is that musicians aren&#x27;t going to flock to this unless they get some established producer to use it to mix some awesome beats and even then it&#x27;s unclear that this is much better than a dedicated hardware device experience yet.

Ah, yeah, true innovation alright; an application specific touch-UI? Dang, tablets will never be able to offer that XD.<p>In the comments: &quot;Apple has a patent for a similar device. However their touch sensitive keyboard is also an e-ink type display so each software you run can have it&#x27;s own custom keyboard&#x2F;input tablet displayed without having to purchase or install anything extra. That will be a game changer and make the MS device look primitive.&quot;<p>Man oh man. There&#x27;s no point in putting the &#x27;$&#x27; in M$ anymore. What a great day for the rest of the world.<p>I&#x27;m waiting for the infospasm posts self-assuredly advising start-ups leave room for your product to pivot by not implementing the UI in static hardware and &#x27;How Flaviboard Increased Our Revenue by 30000% by Getting Hardware Out of the Iteration Cycle&#x27;

This has a potential if Microsoft opens up the architecture and allows other companies to create their own touch covers. it will automatically boost Surface sales if big name software companies produce customized touch covers to work with their applications.<p>Think for example covers for video editing software, CAD etc

It would be awesome if the &#x27;keyboard&#x27; could be combined with an e-ink screen that overlaid it. That way, the touchpad could be reconfigured on the fly depending upon the app that you are using.

The new Web MIDI spec allows hands-on devices with sliders, dials, XY pads etc to be accessible from javascript.<p>While the majority of MIDI controller devices currently target music apps it will be interesting to see how hands-on devices can help improve interactions with other types of app. As an example, here I tackle the fiddly business of graph navigation using a standard plug-and-play MIDI controller and the latest Chrome: <a href="https://vimeo.com/74886850" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vimeo.com&#x2F;74886850</a>

It really surprises me how in the middle of Microsoft massive failures, you can still find a couple of good ideas here and there, proving that some fresh blood is still pumping inside that company. I wonder what it feels like. Does it feel great like &quot;i&#x27;m the one that keeps this company innovating&quot;, or bad like &quot;damn, if only I were working at apple or google, i would be among other people like me, and management wouldn&#x27;t destroy my ideas with their crappy execution&quot; ?

I wouldn&#x27;t call this innovation... it&#x27;s cool, yeah, but let&#x27;s stop using the word innovation for each cool feature created

I&#x27;m sorry, but are they calling MS innovative for reinventing the peripheral? Only this time for tablets!

Meh. I dont feel much innovation there. They are simply using the keyboard port as a USB replacement to connect a dedicated peripheral. Its not bad per se, but its proprietary and you may as well throw it all away when you buy a non surface tablet late on. I doubt this will change anything.

Microsoft is struggling to get developers excited about their platform. If they can&#x27;t convince companies to invest the time to build software, they&#x27;ll never convince anyone to manufacture hardware; hardware has a real cost per unit.

My guess is that the blades are terrible and no one will ever use them. It is an easy prediction to make but looking at it doesn&#x27;t inspire confidence.

If a blade has to be flat enough to fold against the screen, it can&#x27;t really offer tactile feedback. Why not a second touchscreen, just cost or power?

It seems like an awesome product but it&#x27;s Microsoft so I guess it&#x27;ll never get the recognition and the street cred.

nomination for the most overused word of the year - innovation.<p>seriously, is any idea now innovation? is it true innovation? or fake? what about disruptive? paradigmatic? enabling?<p>absolutely clear what the headline is digging at (can&#x27;t innovate my ass...). so tired of this bullshit.

Give me a digital painting toolbox blade to go with that Wacom screen and I&#x27;ll be happy.

I was actually considering taking my Surface Pro down off of craigslist and keeping it to play with this for a while (depending on how much they wanted for it). I love synths and drum machines and am always interested to try new music toys and software (I&#x27;m far from a musician, so toys is the appropriate word here for me).<p>So I clicked through to the MS site for it and found that they won&#x27;t let me order one. In fact, they&#x27;re a bit condescending about it:<p>&gt;Want your own Surface Music Kit? Join the #RemixProject and make a Vine video to show us why you deserve one.<p>I guess that I am willing to pay is not reason enough to one deserve one.&#x27;<p>Then I got to thinking &quot;what&#x27;s so innovative about this?&quot;<p>If anything it&#x27;s a step backwards, a proprietary connector attaches a keyboard&#x2F;input device to a single model of (shitty) computer.<p>What about this is better than an iPad + usb midi controller? More RAM I guess...but then there&#x27;s the laptop + midi controller option.<p>----<p>As for the other uses for this, every other one seems better served by a regular tablet or PC. The Surface is not &quot;no compromises&quot; it&#x27;s &quot;All compromises&quot;.<p>In my experience, the surface pro sucks as a tablet, it&#x27;s too heavy and the app selection is terrible, what is there is hacked together and offers few features (see the MLB TV app on win 8 vs iPad for a great example of the quality difference).<p>It also sucks as a laptop. You can&#x27;t use it on a couch because they keyboard is not helping to stabilize it, every time you hit a key it wobbles about.<p>The trackpad is miserable. (Edit: miserable on both the touch and type covers)<p>Windows does not like high dpi Screens, and does not offer decent scaling ability. In order to have applications look crisp, they need to be tiny, and on an 11&quot; screen with that many pixels tiny is really tiny. There&#x27;s also no support for multiple scaling settings for screens. Plug in an external monitor and you need to take a trip to the control panel (and log in and out) in order to change the scaling....and it will be applied to BOTH screens.<p>If you want to use the touchscreen on a table with the kickstand, it tilts and the whole thing moves away from you, again the keyboard does nothing to help stabilize it, and there&#x27;s no non-slip coating on the kickstand or bottom of the tablet so it just slides away if you push too hard.<p>RE-EDIT:<p>removed kvetching