Monday"s reveal of the Surface tablet from Microsoft was certainly out of left field. However, one of the consequences of that announcement is a sudden rebranding of one of the company"s products that was already using that name.
We are talking about the Microsoft Surface touch screen OS that the company has been promoting for the last few years as a different way to provide a large touch screen-based UI for products such as tables in locations like hotels and casinos.
With Microsoft deciding that Surface was a good name for their new tablet, the company also decided to rebrand the Microsoft Surface touch screen OS to Microsoft PixelSense.
Even though Microsoft has made this change, it is not 100 percent complete. For example, the official community forums for PixelSense are still labeled as being for Microsoft Surface. Also, the SDK for the OS is still referred to as the Microsoft Surface 2.0 SDK.
That may indicate that Microsoft made this change in branding at the last minute and didn"t have a lot of time to get everything set up before Monday"s Surface tablet reveal. In any case, when we refer to Surface from now on, it will be for the tablet hardware product, not the touch screen OS.
Source: PixelSense website | Image via Microsoft