Honestly, as much as I enjoyed the previous Future Vision video, this one is kind of a disappointment. It is beautifully produced, and there are a couple of interesting ideas, but ultimately It’s just more of the same. Instead of feeling like a vision of the future, the video feels like a vision of an alternate reality where Microsoft makes products that people actually want to buy (rather than the products they have now that people begrudginglyhave to buy). Instead of seeing these concepts as something slightly out of reach, I see them as bizarro copies of things that Apple and Google have already achieved. In the first scene I couldn’t help but think, “The car doesn’t drive itself? Google has self-driving cars now, why doesn’t Microsoft have them in the future?” And in the closing scene, the girl with her tablet I instantly thought, “Oh, she has an iPad,” not, “Oh a future tablet from Microsoft.” Where is Microsoft’s iPad competitor? Windows Phone 7 is barely out of the starting gate and apparently only for phones while Windows 8 won’t be released for at least another year.

It’s been 4 years, I think, since the last video, and you have to start to wonder, who is actually delivering this future? How many MS Office products are gesture enabled, designed for touch, optimized for mobile, enable remote collaboration, or have voice assistance? How about Google’s productivity suite, how about Apple’s? It’s pretty clear that this future, if it is that, won’t be delivered by Microsoft.