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Microsoft "Courier" Pictures
tekgoblin writes to let us know that Gizmodo has some early shots of the new prototype "Courier" booklet (foldable tablet) on the way from Microsoft. "Courier is a real device, and we've heard that it's in the 'late prototype' stage of development. It's not a tablet, it's a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They're connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre."
MS's ability to name things has always be bad.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Watching the demo, I just can't understand why Microsoft seems so obsessed with the idea that everybody's going to want to interact with a computer using a pen.
Think about it. Let's say you're collaborating on a project with somebody, and he's done a lot of brainstorming about it. He comes to a meeting with a stack of notebooks where he's written down all his ideas. What's the first thing he says? "Sorry about my handwriting."
Even I apologize for my handwriting, and I have the handwriting of a comic-book letterer -- when I want to. The thing is, writing neatly takes a lot of time. It's much faster to use upper and lower case than block capitals, for starters, and it's faster to use cursive than printing. And even faster than that to just scrawl it out any way you can.
But you know what's even faster than that? Typing on a computer keyboard.
Microsoft first got on this kick with OneNote, its note-taking application, which it seemed to want to market as the killer app for tablet PCs. And by that I mean the first generation of tablet PCs. You know the ones. You didn't buy one. For some reason, Microsoft was pushing really hard for this idea that everybody would be walking around with tablet PCs, scribbling notes into OneNote with pens.
Now, I use OneNote every day. But while I have a nice-sized Wacom tablet sitting right here on my desk, which comes with a very nice, contoured stylus that fits very nicely in my hand, never once have I been inspired to plug the thing in to scrawl off some notes in OneNote. Not when there's a keyboard sitting right in front of me. Not when I know that if I simply type in my thoughts, OneNote won't have to try to OCR my scrawls in order to make the text searchable. Not when I know that storing a bitmap to save a six-word thought is a waste of space.
So in this Courier demo we not only have someone scribbling notes on a notepad -- which conveniently resembles an onscreen Moleskine notebook, because everybody knows people like their computers to model real-life things that are less efficient than computers, even when the computer doesn't much resemble that real-life thing -- but at one point the person draws a box around those notes, taps on it and the box turns into ... a highlighted yellow version of that wobbly, hand-drawn box.
That might be all well and good if I was a bright-eyed fresh college grad like the eager woman in the demo, and my life was accompanied by a wistful accoustic indie-rock soundtrack. But in real life, if I was being jostled back and forth on the noisy subway on my way home and I drew that box and it popped up on my screen looking all fucked-up like I just drew it, the first thing that would cross my mind would be, "God dammit, why is this computer so stupid that it can't tell I was trying to draw a box just now? Why won't it just make a rectangle? Drawing boxes was so much fucking easier when all I had to do is click my mouse button, hold it and drag."
This UI goes beyond a solution looking for a problem. It's a way of actively making it harder for me to get work done with a computer.
It reminds me of all the VRML hype from years back. People were predicting that in the future, we wouldn't type URLs into a Web browser. We'd fire up our Avatars and fly to places on the Web in 3-D graphics. We would walk through virtual libraries, pulling electronic books off 3-D shelves. We'd ride dragons to meeting rooms where we'd chat with other avatars in real time. And all I could think was, "WTF? So we've just invented the Internet, this miraculous thing that puts the world of information right at your fingertips, no matter where you are, so that all you have to do is type a couple things and the information instantly appears on your screen... and you want to impose a 3-D spatial paradigm on it? Instead of calling up information out of thin air, you want to have to hike down the virtual block to get it? You call that progress?"
Same thing with this tablet idea. People are too stu
Breakfast served all day!
When Microsoft says "late prototype" I read it as "we've got nothing, really, but if we say we're about to release something, a non-zero percentage of the market will sit on their thumbs until we do, instead of buying actual products that are actually available from other sources, because by golly, we're Microsoft."
(Yes, I know, it actually works. And no, I don't think that's a very nice tactic.)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
The only content you added beyond that provided by Engadget and Gizmodo was your ads.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
because I could walk around holding the courier with one hand and writing stuff/accessing it with another even if I'm wearing gloves?
virtual keyboards like the iphone/ipad are not very good for using them on the go in my opinion, and a pen-based interface can work a lot better.
-- the cake is a lie
I don't think you could. Try it out now. Walking and writing on a paper pad at the same time is going to result in a slow walk and messy writing. An app that has been well designed for the iPad (and other keyboard interfaces) would work with the idea that there is no pen and make it as easy as possible for the user to use them.
As a far-out example, using FCP is a lot easier once you memorise the (thousand or so...) keyboard shortcuts whereas an equivalent app on the iPad wouldn't have you using a virtual keyboard but would make use of the touch and multi-touch features to the best advantage of the user. These are completely different devices to a PC on a desk and so require a developer to, well, Think Different.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
I don't think EnergyStar certification is important to most people when it comes to charging their portable devices.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Is there a particular reason to believe that they WILL lock it down?
I haven't seen any evidence of them doing that with any other platform they've released with the exception of Xbox360 and Xbox Live.
Their Desktop and Mobile operating systems have been paragon's of "openness" from the standpoint of installing applications and I really don't see why they'd change this.
You can accuse me of being an MS FanBoi if you want but this post was typed in a Chrome browser and there is a Moto Droid strapped to my hip.
So Windows CE is like Linux with the standard GNU utilities and Windows Mobile is like Ubuntu.
Sorry to all you Windows geeks out there, but I just thought somebody better put it in a way that the n00bs who don't go messing with their computers can understand it.
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If you look, there is no "there" there. As in, nothing physical is being shown at any time. These are not prototypes - they are concepts! They aren't even as real at this stage as the fantasy cars you see at car shows.
So let's see what comes out and WHEN it comes out. Remember that not even Windows Mobile 7 Edition comes out until the end of the year, and it's a lot less ambitious!
Some of the ideas are really interesting, but how much will we see in real life and how practical will it be to use.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Did we just sink to the level of Apple antipathy/analysis where someone actually states that a Microsoft vaporware project is way ahead of an Apple product that's going to hit the streets in three weeks?
Tweet, tweet.
Breaking a screen into two smaller ones and sticking a giant hinge/bezel in the middle isn't an advantage.
Even reading a regular text ebook. Two screens aren't an advantage, they are a hindrance.
Yes, because that thing called a "printed book" which has that exact same user interface is such a failure...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
"There's no way I'll be buying the locked down tablet-like iPad when this is coming up."
Well at least MS scored a direct hit with one sucker. Announcing a product still in its initial concept phase has one and only one purpose: to prevent you from buying a competitor's product long enough for them to develop something that might compete.
Some day your dreams may come true. I wish you luck.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.