Kai-Fu Lee, who worked on notable products at Apple including QuickTime and PlainTalk speech technology, is heading Microsoft's Natural Interactive Services Division, which is charged with developing a "natural user interface" for the upcoming (three years out) Longhorn operating system, according to Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft Watch.
"Our approach is not to replace the GUI (graphical user interface)," Lee told Foley. "It is to augment it. We want to find new places where natural language can add value." In other words, they don't want to recreate Microsoft BOB, the awful UI that Melinda Gates introduced around the time she was engaged to Bill Gates. BOB, which was supposed to stand for "best of both worlds (windows and a UI that looked like Bill Gates' house)" was truly the worst operating system UI ever trotted out by a major company, so Lee and his team are not making the mistake of focusing on specific physical metaphors for a "natural user interface."
But Lee is really only talking about adding voice commands, which have been available from Apple (the PlainTalk continuous speech technology, which he invented at Carnegie Mellon University) and IBM, among others, for many years. This is continuing proof that what Microsoft does, besides hiring people from other companies to catch up to those companies, is stick to a slow-and-steady approach to incremental improvements to lure customers. But if anyone has ever actually tried talking to their computer all day, especially in a crowded office, it isn't very natural. It's like talking to your car when stuck in traffic.