Natural User Interface

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates predicts that they way people interact with computers will change dramatically over the next five years, with mice and keyboards giving way to touch, vision, and speech interfaces. "This whole idea of what I call natural user interface is really redefining the experience," Gates says. "We're adding the ability to touch and directly manipulate, we're adding vision so the computer can see what you're doing, we're adding the pen, we're adding speech." As examples of the future of user interfaces, Gates pointed to the Microsoft Surface computer, a large table-like machine with a multi-touch interface on the surface, as well as the iPhone and the Nintendo Wii game console. "I'll be brave, in five years we'll have many tens of million of people sitting browsing their photos, browsing their music, organizing their lives using this type of touch interface," Gates says. He says that although his company has made some mistakes over the years, he says Microsoft will surprise people with what it plans to do in the search area. Gates also supports Vista, noting Microsoft has sold 100 million licenses for the operating system.