IN this year’s edition of the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book, you’ll find extravagances like a $2 million airplane and a $1,700 Gucci tote bag. But sandwiched in between them is the Media Wall, a $100,000 example of a technology that may have you sending your mouse and keyboard to the recycling bin.
The Wall consists of an enormous 8-foot-by-3-foot touch-screen display with a powerful, integrated multimedia PC that users control by dragging one or more fingers across the screen. Imagine an iPhone, except 30 times bigger.
The specially designed operating system lets you perform entertaining tasks like virtual finger painting as well as more complex activities such as navigating 3-D maps, surfing the Web and resizing photos by literally pushing and pulling at their corners.
The result is a display that’s as much art as it is a gadget.
While the Media Wall is aimed at wealthy early adopters, Microsoft is taking a more practical and commercial approach to its multi-touch offering, which is simply called Surface – a 30-inch touch-screen built into what looks like a coffee table. But they hope the technology will eventually become even more ubiquitous than the standard PC.
Video demos of Surface, available at surface.com, promise interesting new ways to interact with data. Imagine dropping a digicam on the screen and seeing pictures spill out of it as if they were dumped from a shoe box, or setting down a Zune media player and literally poking around your music and video files.
It sounds like something from Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” but it may become reality sooner than later. According to Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble, the price tag will run somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 when they begin shipping later this year.
It’s not just the pocket-protector crowd that will be shelling out for these innovative machines. Corporate players are getting in on the action, too: Harrah’s Entertainment, one of the biggest hotel and casino owners in the country, is integrating Surface into some of its Las Vegas properties as a “virtual concierge” that guests can use to buy show tickets and navigate the casino.
While the benefit is clear for both personal and professional users, the clear winner is SC Johnson, which is sure to see a steady increase in Windex sales as the world’s computers become more finger-friendly.