Apple Was a 'Pain in the A$$', so MSFT Got Kinect

Apple, a pain in the ass? Well, I never!

Microsoft is spending a huge chunk of change on Kinect. Hundreds of millions of dollars are going towards marketing the company's new motion-sensing peripheral. However, what many don't know is that Microsoft wasn't Kinect's first choice for a home. No, Inon Beracha, CEO of PrimeSense, wanted to talk to Apple about the technology behind Kinect before anyone else.

Cult of Mac's Leander Kahney reports that in 2008, he was sat next to Inon Beracha on a flight from Europe to the States. Kahney was shown a video demo of the technology that is now Kinect and was extremely impressed. Inon explained that a team of engineers in the Israeli military developed the system and they had hired him to shop the idea around and generate interest among the major tech companies.

Kahney writes that the first place Inon and his engineers thought of when it came to commercializing the device was Apple.

"It was the most natural place for the technology," Inon told him.

Unfortunately, working with Apple wasn't exactly the dream come true PrimeSense was hoping for. The Cupertino-based company was apparently obsessed with secrecy and Cult of Mac reports that they wanted Inon to sign "a stack of crippling NDAs."

"Apple is a pain in the ass," he told Kahney, smiling.

Lucky for PrimeSense, Microsoft was just as excited by Kinect as Kahney was by the demo he had seen on the CEO's laptop. Inon took his technology elsewhere and dealt with a company that wasn't "a pain in the ass" instead.

_{Source: Cult of Mac}