Pictures of new and updated Surface demo apps

On top of the Grand Piano and Firefly game they’ve already released, it appears the Microsoft Surface team have been hard at work developing even more sample applications as well as updates to existing applications for the Surface.

I found these photos taken by Jean-Luc David, a Microsoft Canada employee who I presume was visiting the Redmond campus last week and had a chance to play with the Surface with some of these new applications loaded. Here’s a couple highlights.

You probably would have seen the rockpool water-ripple demo already, I could be wrong but this looks different and far better than the original. The most obvious difference is that rocks are no longer multi-colored and show more detail.

The photo application now appears to support categories and labels.

Virtual Earth on the Surface.

A puzzle game called ScatterPuzzle. Now possible to play without those glass cubes.

Ghosts, an adaption of the puzzle game where the aim is to move objects so lines do not cross each other.

A gorgeous Backgammon game for Surface.

The music player is updated with a better looking playlist.

The most awesome of the updates are the interactive visualizations. Here it is labeling each touch point.

Last but not least, the feedback application now incorporates a keyboard interface for touch-typing.

39 insightful thoughts

  1. supposedly, 50 apps were developed for launch, i guess that there must be at least 100 of them now. all done and powered by WPF/.net 3.5.

  2. Really love those visualizations. If there are 100 apps made on WPF for Surface, then that probably is more then the number of WPF apps for Windows PC’s, which is a shame. And why do all touch screen devices try to copy the look and feel of the iPhone keyboard now? Have they ran out of orginial ideas for designs for touch screens?

  3. @Nidonocu: I agree. Instead of a fancy one-off demo, these applications are beginning to have practical value.

  4. like the sansa shaker? the one that was dismissed as childish? but now that winmo 7 will have it, it’s cool? why is everyone hating on sandisk (well, if they got iriver to design their stuff, it’d be better but..)

    and i didn’t realize WPF was for Surface/Win 7 and not for XP/Vista, ‘cos there’s hardly any apps out yet

  5. There is this game my dorm mates can’t stop playing that would be so perfect on the Surface called CueClub (Pool). Its so realistic just playing on a Windows based laptop, I can imagine the amount of it would be on the Surface.

  6. there was an article a while back about Windows Mobile 7 phones having touch and gesture features. one of those gestures was shaking the phone to bring it out of sleep. another was rocking the phone left and right to go back and forward in the browser.

    the way all the albums were scattered on the Surface just made me think of a scenario where the user would shake the phone to shuffle the library and all the albums would fall onto the screen like a snowglobe type effect. the album the shuffle “chooses” would be the last to fall and magickally be centered on the screen.

    if anyone uses this, please tell them where it came from first! 😉

  7. @ Phil_123
    It’s not about the QWERTY layout. There are other colors/designs too that can be used for the QWERTY keyboard.

  8. @Imran Hussain:
    that doesn’t even look like the osk for the iPhone.
    that’s like saying it looks like a really big iPhone because the surface is a big sheet of glass.

  9. This is an exciting project, and I hope to be able to buy one of these in the future. Surface is the 2.0 of computers!

  10. @ ikyouCrow
    You mean you dont find any resemblane at all with the white buttons on greyish background keyboard color scheme on both the iPhone and Surface ? Isn’t color scheme very similar ?? I’m NOT sayin that Microsoft ripped off Apple’s idea or something, if that’s the idea anyone gets from my statement. But those colors just remind me of the iPhone. As well as those “Send” and “Exit” buttons.

  11. @Imran Hussain:
    Oh so Apple probably patented that too, Microsoft should stick with the XP Teletubbies colour scheme! /sarcasm

    So what other designs can you come out with? An exact ripoff of the Optimus Maximus keyboard? Or Meizu MiniOne’s IOPKL/KLIOP keyboard?

    It just happened that QWERTY is the most common keyboard layout used nowadays and the grey/white/black/metallic colour scheme is stylish in this decade. Why should Microsoft reinvent the wheel? Surface’s screen is rectangular, iPhone’s screen is rectangular, does that make it a copy of the iPhone? Steve Jobs wears jeans, I wear jeans, does that make me a copy of Steve Jobs?

  12. @Phil_123
    lol, I knew someone was gonna take my words as Microsoft bashing. Calm down dude, I’m not some Apple fanboy or the likes.
    But at least now you see/admitted the similarities too.

  13. @ Imran

    Maybe if you are really into the iPhone you might tend to think a lot of things look like it, but to me it looks like the design is pretty typical and fits in with the rest of the Surface interface. There isn’t really any other good neutral color for the keyboard besides gray. Saying those buttons look like iPhone buttons is like saying any gray or black embossed buttons looks like an iPhone buttons, but really though the iPhone isn’t the inventor of gray and black buttons. I don’t understand why people tend to think that the every small detail of Apple’s design is entirely original and special.

  14. @Imran:
    well if you’re referring to the font, then maybe. Segoe UI and Lucida Grande do look depressingly alike. the buttons too, i’d give you that.

    however the current trends in UI design lately seems to be transparency (which should actually be called translucency), round corners on buttons, menus, and windows, and white sans serif text on black reflective surfaces.

    as for the colour scheme, i always saw the iPhone theme as having more of a greyish-blue tint to it.

  15. Wasn’t the MS SUrface displayed before the iPhone for the first time,if so iPhone is the ripper,u imran apple fanboy.

  16. What rubbish Anonman! fanboy yourself, of whoever you want. Even those who were arguing about it, did find some likeness just like I did, so keep your immature statements to yourself.
    Maybe you’re blind not to see the similar colors and similar text. And when I say similarity, if it means to you “rip off”, then pleasure yourself all you want.

  17. It was pretty fun to play with at MIX08. We do WPF development at my company, I am hoping to get them to give us one. 😀

  18. @All:

    No WPF for PC?. i have personally have tested two dozen of them… WPF is used more for enterprise apps now and for Special Displays. even the HP motion display runs on WPF/.net 3.5.

  19. One word for Microsoft Surface “AWESOME”.
    To me this is just the starting and hopethat we get more functionality in this present Surface and more in Surface 2.
    Can’t wait for the consumer version will do anything to have it.

  20. Nice apps… I think MS is building it up for home usage now.

    Does Surface accept optical disks?
    Even cooler would be if it could read disks you place on it… we can only dream.

  21. Nice Snaps of AWESOME product!
    But wondering if there is any blue screen snaps for the surface 🙂

  22. God am I excited that not this coming week, but the week after I get to play with this thing!!!! Im thinking I might go back to it once, or twice. Or 6 times!

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