Tomorrow I’m off to the heart of Covent Garden, where Dragon’s Den star Kelly Hoppen’s apartment is kitted out with Microsoft’s latest incarnation of a connected home.
I’m not quite sure what to expect. The invitation mentions Microsoft Azure and an Xbox, but what I’m really hoping to see is concrete proof of a future in Microsoft’s connected home idea.
I want to be sitting on my sofa eating a pizza, hailing Cortana like I’m Jean-Luc Picard to get my connected home to do all sorts of things. Like connecting to Skype hands-free where I can speak to my German friend with real-time translation. I want to be charging my phone right next to me, wirelessly, using powerful inductive charging dishes, whilst reading the recipe for said pizza from a digital worktop that is reading out instructions.
This is all after Cortana has turned on the oven for me (she also closed my blinds).
Microsoft has always been primarily a software company, but after Nadella’s push for devices, I’m hoping it can shake off that stigma and really provide world-changing examples of hardware that will one day be in homes. Google’s doing a good job of this already, but its data trawling habit scares me, and Apple’s just a bit too cool – plus I bet it’s going down the Simpsons Pierce Brosnan connected home route and no one wants that.
I’ll report back tomorrow.
