Surface Tags, Tools in Service Pack

The first service pack for Microsoft Surface, the company’s multitouch-capable tabletop computer, adds improved developer tools, support for tags that identify objects set on the table, and other improvements. Announced at the May 2009 TechEd conference, Surface SP1 indicates Microsoft’s continued interest in promoting third-party development on the devices, which cost more than US$10,000 apiece and so far have been deployed in only a handful of locations.

Most Improvements for Developers

Announced in May 2007, Surface looks like a coffee table with an embedded touch-sensitive screen. Concealed beneath the screen is a system of infrared cameras, a projector, and a PC running Windows Vista. Users interact with Surface applications by touching the screen, which can understand and react to multiple touches at the same time. Originally, Microsoft limited Surface purchases and application development to a few partners, but toward the end of 2008, the company added the product to price lists and made an SDK broadly available to developers. Since then, Microsoft has tripled the number of Surface partners from 60 to 180 and distributed more than 1,500 SDKs.