Microsoft Surface
Here is the definitive proof that Microsoft can make decent stuff: www.microsoft.com/surface
My love of all things Apple is well known, but I wouldn’t call myself a Microsoft hater. I’m a Windows hater. It’s a rubbish operating system that has helped unleash a plague of viruses around the world. I do, however, like Microsoft Office & Exchange, and I absolutely love the XBox 360. Surface is another one of their products that looks awesome and is a genuine innovation (not something commonly associated with Microsoft).
Surface is a touch sensitive table top computer. You use your hands to drag things around. The best bit is the way it can detect things that you place on the surface (e.g. cameras, mobile phones, MP3 players) and allows you to drag and drop files to and from these devices with ease.
It’s not really a home consumer product, it’s more suited to business applications, but at some point in the future it will start to cross over into the home computing market. I hope Apple are watching, because this is undoubtedly the future.
Have a look at the website (www.microsoft.com/surface). When I first looked at the demos, I thought it looked more like science fiction, but no, these things ship this year. Amazing. Well done Microsoft.