Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Touted iPad Rival Courier Becomes Less Than Vapor
Kostya writes "The much discussed Courier two-panel tablet device from Microsoft is now even less than vaporware — now it's just plain dead. 'Microsoft execs informed the internal team that had been working on the tablet device that the project would no longer be supported.' While the Courier had never been officially announced as a supported product by Microsoft, it had generated a lot of discussion as what the iPad should have been."
AFAIK, Microsoft never really announced anything. They even went as far as calling it a rumor and at best some "sources" called it an incubation project.
Announced product examples are Windows Phone 7 and Natal.
(Multi-)Touch, on the other hand, is very limited in terms of use in anything creative.
Buh? Heard of Brushes? Used for, y'know, a New Yorker cover or two?
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Yeah, Pogo Stylus
I ordered several different styluses to test them all out, and the Pogo was much nicer than the others - a few others have rubbery tips that have too much resistance moving across the screen to move easily. The Pogo has a kind of sponge-like material that coasts across a screen much more easily.
I wanted to confirm that was a good choice.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually there are two senses in which it can view 720p video. I'm sure the person you're responding to meant the first.
First, the H.264 playback engine caps out at 720p. Now, almost all playback engines cap out at some level. If you load 720p video files on a first generation iPod Touch, they won't play at all -- it's more than the device can handle. So don't say "of course it can play back a 720p file, every device can play back a 1080p file and just downscale it, that's no big deal". Because that isn't true.
(And yes, there's an advantage to this, if the video doesn't have much going on on the side edges. You can "zoom in" to the video, making it go full screen with the edges clipped, and with a 720p data file you'll get more detail doing this. This could be the case for example if you've got a HD render of "The Philadelphia Story" with Grant/Hepburn, as it was actually filmed in 4:3, not 16:9.)
But, second, the iPad has video-out capabilities. I picked up the "dock port to VGA" adapter for mine. When I hook it up to the HDTV in my living room, and run a little program I wrote that queries the OS for a list of attached screens and their display characteristics, know what? I have full access to full 720p resolution out that display port. So an iPad tucked behind an HDTV that it's connected to can indeed drive a full genuine 720p display.
(But I'm sure that's not what the person you were responding to meant.)
Yeah but you really ought to give MSFT credit, they have gotten bullshitting down to a fricking art form. For those not old enough to remember or who weren't into PCs at the time read The Yellow Road To Cairo to see how MSFT under old Darth Gates managed to pretty much grind innovation to a halt for FIVE years, while killing or nearly killing several competitors, all while selling not a damned thing at all besides screenshots and bullshit.
Say what you want about old Billy boy, it takes some 50 pound brass balls to bullshit an entire industry for half a decade with nothing but a bluff. To keep a lie going THAT long, and get everyone to believe it? Man I'd hate to play old Bill in poker. Hell I'll admit he bluffed the shit out of me too, I didn't get OS/2 until it was practically on life support because I was waiting for the Cairo coolness. say what you want about old Bill, he is one cold calculating son of a bitch.
It is a shame it turned out to be bullshit, but I figured it was, old Ballmer monkey just ain't got the bullshitting skills that Bill had. To pull off good vaporware you got to make the audience believe in the vapors not just throw out a press release or an occasional leak. Ballmer needs to go spend some time at the feet of his master before trying to pull that off again, he just ain't got the skills.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
or because they've got a 54% estimated failure rate?
It's a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable. It's a lot wrong to say it's a suspension bridge.