Bill Gates shows CEOs how to waste research money

KOS, GREECE -- Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates showed off a Microsoft Research project at his annual CEO Summit today called TouchWall. The prototype is designed to demonstrate how inexpensive hardware could turn a large surface -- in this case a 6 x 4 foot screen -- into a dynamic touch display. So while Microsoft is investing millions in hardware it will never sell, where's the multi-touch version of Windows? Where's the fix for Vista?

The Gates demonstration shows what previous demonstrations by Jeff Han and others have shown, which is that the next great leap in PC user interface design will have multitouch, gestures and physics like the Apple iPhone. Read all about that great leap here. These demos also show that there are many different ways to put together hardware that enables this next-generation user interface.

The hardware research is exciting as it is varied. But the magic pixie dust that will make all this happen is the user interface and operating system, with an ecosystem of developers and third party hardware and software makers to support it. You know, that thing Microsoft does for a living.

Windows Vista, which currently powers the TouchWall demo, is horribly flawed, and largely unpopular with users. Meanwhile, I believe Apple is plotting a market takeover with a next-generation UI touch-screen computer -- basically a giant iPhone that replaces the Mac line -- that could see the light of day within two years.

Apple has to build the hardware, but Microsoft doesn't. I don't understand why Microsoft spends so much time, effort and money building hardware systems like Surface and TouchWall while its operating system business is in such dangerous disarray.

Here's a demo of TouchWall:

All the coolest stuff in the demo (the zooming, etc.) have nothing to do with TouchWall (the cheap hardware that puts all this up on a wall), and instead are the next-generation user interface elements impressively demonstrated by other people years ago.

Compare the TouchWall demo video above to this demo by Jeff Han posted more than a year ago:

People have been doing demos using these interface elements for years. What we need Microsoft to do is not just to come along and demonstrate yet another hardware platform that will never see the light of day, but to actively launch a program to ship the user interface in a Windows operating system to everyday consumers -- and let the industry innovate on the hardware side.

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