"There is no other company more committed to natural user interfaces than Microsoft," Mr. Spare added.
Kinect, a $150 add-on to the Xbox game console, points the way to a different model, a natural user interface, or NUI, said Mr. Mundie.
Unlike past interfaces centered on the keyboard and mouse, natural user interface uses ingrained human movements that do not have to be learned.
Natural user interface (NUI) is a great example of this and the Kinect device has helped brought NUI to a mass audience that is extending much further than just gaming.
Among other things, he complained repeatedly about the team's use of NUI (pronounced "newey"), as shorthand for "natural user interface," arguing that the term was used only "inside the Microsoft bubble".
And so device makers in a post-iPhone world are focused on fingertips, with touch at the core of the newest wave of computer design, known as natural user interface.
Though scientists have been working on natural user interface, Apple made touching, swiping and flicking at screens mainstream, said Harsha Prahlad, a research engineer who works with robots and sensors at SRI International, the research institute.
"We have a really broad mission to enable everyday devices with the ability to see, and enable natural user interfaces across all kinds of devices," said James Spare, chief executive of Canesta, who is a former Microsoft executive.
Microsoft's work on interaction modalities, or natural user interfaces.
"We have more and more natural user interfaces," says Mr Kindel.
The whole concept is how to make computing real and human, including all the natural user interfaces.
