While Steve Jobs was beating the drums for his new real-life Pixar logo, Bill Gates was awkwardly stumbling through a presentation of Microsoft’s new home technologies, Mira and Freestyle. Mira is a removable wireless flat screen with a touch-screen. Freestyle is TV remote interface for media.
The user interface for Freestyle looks brilliant. It looks like common sense, but that’s what makes it so good. They don’t try to use a wacky mouse/cursor replacement from the TV remote, just simple Up, Down and Select commands.
Cnet has some good video of both Freestyle and Mira in action and the Microsoft website has screenshots of the new Freestyle UI.
Freestyle looks like it could be right on the money: separating digital media from the complexities of a traditional GUI. A nice move.
If we’re talkin’ about Gates vs. Jobs, naturally, Gates is the more shrewd business man, but I really like that Jobs clearly has an aesthetic and you can see it in everything Apple does. He unifies it all. Microsoft’s products — to my eye — lack that cohesiveness.
I think Gates is on the ball here. I look at my desk now, and 1/4 of the space is taken up with my computer.(an indigo imac) This has always troubled me, as I would personally like to see technology go ‘invisible’, like nature. Here’s my silly concept: I’d like to see my ‘desktop’ integrated into my desktop. No cords. No keypad(At least, not one that is raised). The monitor can be extracted from the desktop or stay horizontal(but visually vertical). I’d like the system to be opaque, until I wish to use it. Goofy stuff. Sci-fi? Hmm. Seeing what Gates is doing (with Mira)is kind of going in that direction. I hope Jobs will catch on to this. Kirby is right on about the two. Gates is definately the more shrewder, but Jobs has the pizazz.
i don’t thinkn you remember me …