Microsoft Surface Is Finally Here. What the Heck Took So Long?

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Yesterday at the CTIA Wireless expo, Microsoft announced that its Surface tabletop touchscreen computers will officially launch this month at five AT&T stores in New York City, San Francisco, Atlanta and San Antonio. As much of the geekosphere already knows, I’ve been a close follower of this technology since before it was announced last May, when my in-depth feature with hands-on video on Surface enthusiastically announced that the machine would be “ready for deployment by the end of 2007.”

And yet here we are well in to 2008 and the first Surface devices are just now rolling out. So what happened? I put that question recently to Pete Thompson, Microsoft’s general manager for Surface. “It’s actually been a good thing for us,” he told me. “We were anticipating that the initial deployments were going to be showcase pilots using our own software applications on units to drive traffic. What our partners have decided is that they want to skip that stage and go to an integrated experience where they build their own applications. That’s pulled the timeline until this spring.”

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