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Microsoft's Metro-fied vision of the future

Microsoft's Metro-fied vision of the future

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Microsoft unveiled a concept video this morning showing how it sees the future of productivity, and it looks awesome. It's a follow-up to "Office 2019" — a video from back in 2009 that showed a mass shift to tablet computing amongst other advances we're yet to see — but this new concept is arguably a far greater leap ahead. Dubbed "Future Vision," Microsoft sees a highly connected world, with greater use of AI, translation built into glasses frames, car windows which tell you both the time to your destination and which building your meeting is in tomorrow, and everything using an evolution of Microsoft's Metro UI.

Despite the potential for science fiction, Microsoft says that everything in the video is realistic and based in fact. Chris Pratley, Microsoft's General Manager of Technical Strategy, told Geekwire, "we could footnote everything about where [the innovations are] coming from, who’s working on it, why we think it’s going to happen." However, with Microsoft's history of failing to deliver great concepts (like the Courier) we have to wonder how far away this vision of the future really is.