Microsoft

Microsoft with a new betting future – handwriting and speaking

“The conversation as a platform.” “Human language as a new user interface.” “Bots are the new apps” . It is a future that we speak here a few days ago , but Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, has become the epicenter of an intense presentation. Build, an event aimed at developers more viewers of the “one more thing” Apple has served Nadella to get something that got away for too many years to his predecessor, Steve Ballmer. Microsoft to provide “one mission”. A sense of future, a clear direction, a vision of the world in the near future .

One is to offer users something at hand since they are children: speech and handwriting. It is the aim of the Universal Platform Windows, a Windows to unite them all ( mobile, consoles, computers, tablets, virtual reality devices and that other futuristic delight, Hololens , an augmented reality that is a separate issue) and make each appliance part of an organization: the user.

On one hand, the voice. During the presentation, they showed that what is the end of the apps: Lillian Rincon, Skype, got in touch with a bot of a hotel chain. He booked a room as if interacted with a human and Cortana be, the virtual assistant Windows, not only scored on the agenda reserve but suggested Rincon him to call a friend from Dublin to warn the trip. T odo in seconds, without using the keyboard or leave Skype .

Order pizzas, schedule life, even Pandora’s box to ask Cortana “do you remember what toy store was last year?” And the computer to remember your life for you . The network of bots and virtual assistants working in unison with the other activities that anticipates change Nadella spoke: very close to the film ‘Her’ by Spike Jonze world.

On the other hand, writing. We are creatures of habit. According to the multinational, more than 70% of people “still use paper and pen at least one hour a day” . Why not give them a tool with which they can interact with technology as we do with the paper? It is a step beyond what they have learned with Surface, its hybrid between tablet computer and with which they have managed to regain the initiative in the world of appliances. Something that the company only had experience beyond their Xboxes.

The lessons of Surface translate into a “pen” can recognize handwriting (something that makes even in the case of recalcitrant lefties as the signer), provide support in presentations and graphics and one of the novelties of that future Windows, draw directly on maps where we want to go , and even take notes on the map to close the day’s agenda. Windows will take care to recognize what we are doing: you create routes, offer reservations, indicate contact. We only have to take the pen.

Microsoft failed to see the potential of the Internet at the time; He lost the train of smartphones , the largest error Ballmer-; and in recent years , Windows was a dinosaur trying desperately to look beyond its nose (the fiasco of Windows 8, for example). Windows 10, Surface and Cortana have given direction and momentum (there was talk of 270 million users currently in Windows 10, an adoption system that no other company had done before). And Nadella and his company have succeeded in turning this moment of respite in a presentation that make it clear where the future goes.

They are not the only ones working in that direction – in April we’ll talk about something similar with Facebook, for example, are not the first. But the presentation of Build has been the one that has best shown the world that, at last, we tend to a tomorrow that do not need to learn the language of the machines to do what we want. Simply tell .