Who would have thought that one of the coolest things we’ve seen at CES would be hidden in a 10×10 booth at the very back of the South Hall? Like a diamond in the rough, there sat the PQ Labs iTablet.
They’ve essentially taken the idea behind the Microsoft Surface and have done it better in every way. It’s cheaper, it’s gorgeous, and perhaps most notably, it’s not a hulking monster.
Two of the most notable features of the Surface are its multitouch capabilities and the availability of a development SDK, both of which PQ Labs has matched (or, in the case of the SDK, plan to match soon). The number of fingers detected by the multitouch sensor is limited only by the individual software designer’s desire – the hardware itself supports as many simultaneous prods as you can throw at it.
Contrary to its iCliche name, the iTable runs Windows XP rather than on OS X or some proprietary system. The last bit is good news for developers – if you’ve already got an app ready to go, you don’t need to rewrite it from scratch for compatibility. Just call in the proper APIs for mapping input, and you’re good to go. They’re pitching this pretty hard as a “big iPhone” (hence the name) – it’s probably not the best way to market it (as it’s not, you know, a cellphone), but it really does feel similar to the iPhone; the feel of the glass, the way multitouch behaves, it’s all very similar.
The iTable product comes in a variety of flavors, depending how complete of a system you’re looking for. The cheapest way to get in on the fun is the Multi-Touch G², a 32″ LCD overlay that goes for $2,399. Beyond that is where the “Table” part of the “iTable” name comes in – a few grand more (the $5000-$7000 was thrown around in conversation) nets you a table with the sensors incorporated into the display, and roughly $10,000 gets you the aforementioned table with a beast of a computer pre-configured ready to go. It may seem pricey, but with the 30″ surface going for $12,500, it’s relatively cheap.
The company is a recent startup, so they don’t quite have the resources to throw around that Microsoft does. As such, they operating without a warehouse, so these things are being built per order and they’re currently only selling units to businesses. You know, PQ Labs, CrunchGear is a business – hook it up!
This is definitely very sexy.
Except for the retarded name. Everyone thinks it’s Apple. Their lack of creative branding is frustrating.
Getting your product confused as an Apple product is probably a good thing.
I smell a patent AND a trademark lawsuit. Double Whammy…
I’ll have to agree that their will be some ridiculous legal/patent issues abound with this. However the display is pretty sick and I can’t wait to see how far they take it.
I always have and still hate the iProduct branding. I especially hate how everyone jumped on the bandwagon. It’s stumped creativity and killed expansion of technology branding. Apple still demands a very small portion of market and companies need to realize that iCrap doesn’t mean great product.
Definitely looks very nice, and it’s good to see the pricing for these types of things is going lower. The Surface appears more polished however – this didn’t seem to flow as better. Then again, maybe a YouTube video doesn’t do it justice.
To learn more about Islam or to find out how it is the best religion, visit http://www.islamicb.blogspot.com
Great. I’m currently in the market for a new religion.
How many virgins do I get? And, do I have to suicide bomb something to get them, cause I’m not too keen on that part. Lemme know, kthx bai.
Technically, if you kill innocents, the virgins you get are virgin demons who pop their cherries on your orifices during a horrific gangbang of your soul.
Well. There are a lot of a-holes crawling out of the woodwork. don’t you have a klan rally to go to? And there are big words used in this article. can you understand them all?
The iSlam, is that an apple product, or not? If it’s the best then I’m guessing yes, at least from a design perspective.
dude… effing priceless :) I mean +10 kudos.
LOL. +100 virgins for sKicker
Now thats funny! I hope no riots break out because of this. On behalf of sKicker.. it is a JOKE!(you might need to explain to some dudes)
Great, I’ve always wanted to know more about multi-touch supporting Muslims.
yall are just proud of urselves arentcha ? full of hatred and intolerance…
peace Y
Can it detect and locate wireless devices placed on top of it like the Surface does?
Didn’t ask, but I’d assume no.
Surface detects unique visual identifier codes placed on the back of objects, not a wireless signature or anything. It’ll interface with them once it knows what they are, but they have little barcodes on the back.
Exactly.
The author is completely clueless on what he’s comparing. Object recognition of Microsoft Surface is so revolutionary.
“…so revolutionary.”
When it works that is.
Plus:
“it looks like you are about to drink that cup of coffee, would you like help with that?”
Wow, this looks amazing! I can’t wait for the day where I can just chill on the couch with one of these. It takes gaming to a whole new level.
That is way too cool. Seems much more responsive than the touch screens currently available from companies like HP, especially with the multitouch ability.
Perceptive Pixel anyone?
I know, I was thinking of other companies that offer similar things, but this one is just really easy. It’s USB powered and will just fit right onto your TV. And at $3000 even small businesses can have them.
That is awesome, I want one :)
Contrary to its iCliche name, the iTable runs Windows XP rather than on OS X or some proprietary system.
Windows XP is not a proprietary operating system?
The OS is not proprietary to the iTable. The language is pretty clear Troll.
LOL. If that’s what he meant, how would using OS X be “proprietary” then???
He said With OSX ***OR*** a propitery OS.
Not so sure about this, what are they offering?
The surface SDK leverages the vector based GUI of WPF. A complete OS GUI framework.
This looks more like a multitouch layer on XP with some custom apps.
Proprietary.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
The last bit is good news for developers – if you’ve already got an app ready to go, you don’t need to rewrite it from scratch for compatibility.
You only have to rewrite it from scratch to make it into a multitouch application.
There may be many applications on the iPhone that use gestures, but very few that have their own models of and extensions of multitouch manipulation of content and ideas.
For example, moving two or three fingers across a 4 inch screen for an hour is a lot less tiring that moving your arms across a 30″+ screen…
@alex4d
God forbid we move our arms in todays age of automated everything *lol*
And easier still to just use a mouse.
Way less cool, but easier.
Very cool, but it doesn’t have all the functionality of MS Surface. Even so, it is something I can see in people’s homes…in homes of those that can actually afford one. $10K as opposed to $12.5K for the lack of functionality is really not a bargain.
but $2500 to equip your TV *is* a bargain.
Comparison of this product to Microsoft Surface is not the right one. Here are demoed only multitouch capabilities of iTable, so perhaps this is some kind of porting MultiTouch features available OOTB in Microsoft Windows 7 ported on custom SDK that can run on Windows XP.
IMHO, Surface is much more than MultiTouch device. It can communicate with other devices when they are set on top of it, and inside Surface is entire computer. Also, Surface’s surface can be used as a table. It is solid. I like BMW surface based car configurator, that can be used for demoing, color choosing and other tasks related to new car configuration.
yes, it is different, BUT
- the unique thing of surface is the big fat multitouch, not the standard built in computer, in fact building in a computer is kind of dumb
- the part of surface that recognizes stuff put on the surface is pretty worthless, goofy, eyecandy
There has not been a moment in my life where I have enjoyed using cords.
The thought of being able to connect my devices to my computer just by setting them on a table makes me extremely excited, and it’s hardly “eye-candy”.
You really need to make actual points rather than just leave worthless troll comments.
It does not look at all like a table (despite its name) – Let get it in a classroom and do some of this type of educational stuff with it now ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVFsxev-2sk
is this available for personal consumption.. I think, surface is only available for commercial purposes..
and surface has got a lot of ergonomic advantages, though the price is sky high.. we prefer to read a book rather than reading it online.. and surface makes the man machine interactions a lot more ergonomic..
btw, iTable is a product of apple or what?
The main key element on the Microsoft Surface is the infrared camera and not so much the multi touch thingy…
That infrared camera is what allow it to do more stuff like placing items on the screen / glass rather just to an interactive table.
And because of the infrared camera, that’s why there’s the huge base on the Microsoft Surface that houses those camera.
CLUELESS.
“Two of the most notable features of the Surface are its multitouch capabilities and the availability of a development SDK”
How obout the object-recognition capability of Microsoft Surface? That is the MOST notable feature of Surface.
On top of object recogition, Surface also sports more than 3 touch point so that many people can use it at the same time.
Not to mention it can also take the body weight of an adult http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=755 :-)
iTable is sexy, but please get your facts right before you bait people.
The iTable supports as many touches as you want to put on it. You can see that in the video.
And if I’m not mistaken, the surface does NOT recognize objects. It recognizes little barcodes that are placed on the objects. I have one from when I visited the dev team.
So it can respond to multiple points of touch at the same time? i.e. not recognise them, but respond to them.
So, for example, we could be at both ends of the table working on totally separate things and the software responds to both of us at the same time as individuals.
Many of these cheaper solutions sill only have one point of entry which is modified by multiple touches at the same time. Not sure if I’m explaining the difference properly. But hopefully you get my point.
Surface uses the tags for object identity, but you can certainly detect object shapes etc.
oh yeah you can detect object shapes. I didn’t do the headline, of course it doesn’t trump the service in EVERY way. :)
But yes, you can work on separate sides and it tracks separately. The picture at the bottom of the post shows that, but I understand why you would ask. I was very pointed in my questions about touch interference… we couldn’t figure out just exactly how the IR detectors were getting it so well.
man, at the end when you were playing Warcraft 3, I’ve had games go on for hours :). Could you imagine two hours of conducting the Philharmonic! move over Wii Fit
this is amazing, and for .net developers, it’s a good news as well :)
Itablet cant be compare with surface, Itablet is as a touch screen overlay, take a look at: http://multi-touch-screen.net/product.html.
I dont know how you can try to compare it with the Microsoft Surface.
iTable? Does it connect to the internet?
I’d rather wait for the Surface to hit consumer markets.
The author claims that this is better than MS Surface without saying why he makes that assertion.
As others have pointed out the novelty of the MS Surface is that is uses infra-red cameras for hand(gesture) detection and object detection. Touch enabled surfaces cannot do the latter unless they have some RFID or bluetooth based detection.
The bad thing about blogging is that anyone can write an “article” without the burden of actually researching the content that he is trying to publish… sigh….
You can buy an HP touchsmart for $1300 and install surface on it. You dont need the complexities of an IR table to do the same thing as this product. Not to mention that the full blown version does much more than this product- do some research and stop making such wild claims. this is not an article its a rant from another MS hating jackass blogger that doenst know a damn thing.
sign…
But what do you DO with it? Just move crap around the screen??
Just another example of technology being made for the sake of making technology. No practical use. Why not just use a mouse to move things around?
you should see the videos at
http://www.microsoft.com/surface
to see the ideas for this kind of devices :)
If you only have € 9,95 (around $13.60) to spare, you might want to consider the – admittedly less advanced – infrared pen solution – see penciil.com.
Previously, I thought the whole large multi-touch thing was interesting, but not practical for 99% of the population. Now I’m excited to see where the concept goes. Screw tables. I want a wall-mounted 43″ iPhone plasma.
My TV is mounted against the wall, and that’s the way I like it. There is a killer app here. People have been working on the living room computer + media center for ages, but the interface has always held it back. Not so many people have a burning desire to leave a keyboard and mouse in their living room, which for most of us is dominated by the TV and remote paradigm. It would be pretty cool to use one of these things for browsing movies and music. Personally, I’d love to have one for playing music at parties.
Existing form factor. New capabilities.
The nice thing about Microsoft Surface is the XML based UI language. In the next version(s) of Silverlight, WPF and Surface there will be ONE single XAML version and your applications coded once will automatically work in all 3 platforms: web, fat client and multi-touch.
Couple this with the fact that Microsoft has a rich .NET development environment that can link the cloud, WCF, SQL Server, SharePoint, Office, Exchange…that’s where MS Surface simply owns. They announced this during the PDC in October 2008.
I write a lot about this on my website. This is very similar to the Silverlight vs Flash debate. MS simply can jam this down our throat through the OS/money and link it to all their products through APIs or features and the product spreads like a virus.
Very true on the dev environment, that’s where Surface has these guys nailed. But! This is a much cheaper and more compact solution that will do most of what a consumer or business wants a surface to do.
But what do you DO with it? Just move crap around the screen?? thanks.
http://kisalt.us/590/
you should see the videos at
http://www.microsoft.com/surface
to see the ideas for this kind of devices :)
THAT’S what I should of asked Santa for!
Wahh ><
if you want a cheap multitouch interface you can use win7 and hp hardware :)
Omg its so sexy. Awesome pc and great post..
This is really sick. Why it just keeps getting better and better..
tht girl is annoying
I was at CES and saw that they were running a multi-touch version of Cooliris (The Best Design Winner of Crunchies this year), and that was so sick. I played with it for at least 20 minutes. It was mind-blowing, beautiful and I am waiting to buy one of these devices with Cooliris running on it .
I love how it crashes at 2:06
lol i didn’t notice that, i was facing the camera. She might have accidentally resized the window and set it off, they were using certain touches in corners as meta triggers.
Kinda ghetto, yeah, but remember there isn’t a 30-person team at microsoft making this thing.
Awesome and it is a great news for .net developers!
Water effect su*ks. I still prefer MS Surface
lol… ya ok it looks good… not too good although. Just a monitor with touch screen. The thing that bugs me the most is that it is another copy of apple again. Just like they always did. Same techniques as in the iPhone.
by the way… what is up with the name… iTable… c’mon… was it so hard to come up with a much more different name?
In before the lawsuit
According to their website, this is not linked to XP, as this is OS independent (SDK and API should be supplied with it for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux).
Yeah, it can be developed for other systems – all the units at the time were XP, though. I don’t think they mentioned OS X or Linux support when we were there at CES. Thanks for mentioning that, though.
I don’t spend much time thinking about a new company until they get far enough along in the “start-up” phase to get a telephone number…