Monday, October 27, 2008

iWindows 7 Surface Phone?

I'm not attending the PDC this year, and I must admit that I'm more than a little jealous of my friends and colleagues who are in Los Angeles at the conference this week.[1] I've been following some of the news from the pre-conference online. And one InfoWorld article had a quote that caught my eye. The article itself is about Microsoft opening up the Surface SDK, which is pretty cool in and of itself, but towards then end there was this quote from a Forrester researcher:

"What the iPhone, the Surface, and Windows 7 all have in common is that they are the vanguard of the next major wave of human/technology interaction."

Ok, I get the iPhone and Surface part here - they both have touch-driven interfaces that move beyond what we've seen before in consumer devices - but what about Windows 7? What features is Windows 7 going to include that justifies a market analyst including it in the same category as the Surface and the iPhone for human/technology interaction?

Microsoft has been playing Windows 7 pretty close to the vest, and this week's PDC is likely to be the first time that many people outside of Microsoft get to see it. I suppose that now that I am working for Microsoft[2] I could download and install it, but honestly I have too many other things to get done. So for now I'll just keep watching the press.

And now that this tidbit has piqued my interest, I will definitely be watching the PDC keynote in two hours. You should too.

[1] Although when I learned that it was Ozzie and not Ozzy delivering the keynote with Bob Muglia, I was a bit less disappointed to not be there. Ray just can't hit those high notes the same way...

[2] Three weeks today!

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