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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."
I bet you can BING some awesome reviews and success stories about this tablet anyhow.
*snicker*
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Lets face it, 'tablets' are dead. You are essentially paying more for less. While there will always be a small niche market for tablets, there aren't any benefits for the general consumer when compared to a laptop, -especially- when they are running dumbed-down OSes.
Neither the iPad nor Courier have (or would have in the case of MS's canceled project) any real advantages when it comes to getting work done than a regular Netbook or Laptop. I can see the point of a low-priced tablet device, essentially a large, sturdy smartphone for a -low- price. But when it comes down to it, its quite stupid to pay more and get less of a product and that is what tablets currently are.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Where's sopssa when you need him!? I hope that Courier touting MIcrosoft shill is reading this. He's going to need more than a hug after this news.
Hold on, I think I hear someone backpedaling.
.....products it then never produces... its all part of market testing.
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.
They've had tablet support since Windows 3.11.
Yeah, and look how many Windows tablets you've seen in the wild since then.
I have only seen one with my own eyes. In use by a Microsoft partner account manager, so it kinda figures.
Msft got HP to buy Palm so that HTC, or Google, could not buy Palm. Now, to repay HP for buying Palm, msft drops msft's own "iPad killer" thus eliminating a huge competitor for HP.
Msft and Apple, hate and fear Android - they want to patent troll Android out of existance. HP has no special love for Android, because Android would not differentiate HP enough from the other Android tablet, or phone, sellers.
HP is a very close partner with msft, with both PCs and phones. If either HTC, or google, bought Palm, they would be able to use Palm's arsenal of patents to counter-sue msft and/or apple.
Pure speculation on my part, but it is quite a coincidence that the following all happened at the same time:
Apple sues HTC
Msft and HTC form a special patent deal
HP buys Palm
Msft discontinues Courier
The idea seemed at first glance to be interesting, and was full of a lot of new concepts for how to use a tablet.
But I didn't see a lot of really practical ideas in there, starting with the dual folding screens. The thoughts of glass on glass, with slight torque in everyday carrying and average amounts of dust and grit...
Some of the other things in the videos seemed cool, but in everyday use again I just thought some of the actions would grow to be annoying. The central dragging area was kind of interesting...
Someone could easily carry on the concept with a special case that held two iPads, and some software to have them act in tandem over Bluetooth.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It was planned to only allow installation of one font, a certain typewriter font, to make it run faster and create a consistent branding.
This did not do well in focus groups, who showed a preference for being able to use Comic Sans and other fonts.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
its all part of market testing.
And if the "testing" happens to kill a competitors product launch while people wait for the Microsoft product, well that was just an accident!
Happily there are very few product announcements from Microsoft people are willing to wait for these days it was apparent to pretty much anyone Courier wasn't going anywhere at slow pace of even delivering concept videos...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So, first time in years that Microsoft's concept of "innovation", which is really "just copy whatever Google or Apple or Sony do", actually WASN'T a stupid idea... and they kill the project? You've got to admit, this was much better conceived than the Zune!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You have exactly one VP saying that the product was real, but was shitcanned. Besides that, there's some leaked computer generated videos and pictures of an alleged product.
You're mourning the fact that a puff of vapor got carried off by the breeze. That's not awesome, that's standard operating procedure for Redmond; unless by awesome you mean "marketing bullshit that never has to withstand real world use and criticism," in which case, spot on.
How about, HP was the only hardware maker willing to build Courier, but Microsoft's schedule was slipping and slipping so HP in disgust decided to buy Palm to use WebOS for the tablets it has lined up instead?
Thus without a hardware backer, Microsoft had to close Courier for good.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Can they kill Comic Sans too?
Vaporware is the ultimate refining of the process of "Overpromise, Underdeliver".
In other words, when you promise everything, and deliver nothing.
Though the basic premise of overpromise/underdeliver has always a basic theme in I.T in general. You're making promises you know you can't deliver, to an audience that is in no position of expertise to question what you say, and in their dependent state, has to believe you, and has no choice but to accept whatever you happen to actually deliver. (a process also known more commonly as "I.T. Consultant")
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
At the moment. But will Apple really be able to carry the momentum once people start realizing theres nothing really -great- about the iPad?
They would not be selling hugely if there were not things people found great about them NOW. Marketing can only get you so far, and marketing only helps Apple much because people have grown to trust Apple more than other companies.
But signs point to iPad sales climbing. They just got a big boost from Oprah (formerly champion of the Kindle), they also have had to move back international release dates. And at this point, people thinking about buying one can try them out in Apple Stores and figure out if they are great or not.
With the iPad, what benefit are you getting for the cost?
An excellent screen (which really matters if you care about eye strain) over any normal screen for a device in that price range.
Tens of thousands and soon hundreds of thousands of applications dedicated to operation by touch, and used in that form factor. Yes you can buy a netbook but few applications work well in the screen sizes most netbooks support. This is such a massive benefit I can't believe it is constantly overlooked.
Compact size for the battery life - sure some netbooks also have good battery life, but they are a lot larger.
A world of peripherals that all work via the dock connector.
A fantastic data plan ($15/250MB/month or $30/month unlimited, no contract).
And let me repeat the thing about many, many developers working hard to write software that works really, really well on the device vs. running software that was built for a desktop and "works OK" on a netbook.
On a side note, you and so many other people are so mistaken about the iPad being only for consumption, or even consumption focused... That is not the end game.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
(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
The problem for Microsoft and tablet support is that, while in strict engineering terms, tablet support is "something you add"(ie. wacom drivers, handwriting/ink support, some touch gestures, a demo app or two), in terms of design, UI, and pleasantness of user experience, tablet support is all about what you remove. It's like the old notion of "burning the boats" to inspire your army.
As long as MS approaches tablet support as just a few optional features, that can be added as a superset of their primary OS, they may well be technically competent(I've heard that their handwriting recognition is actually pretty good, for instance); but they will, outside of tech-demo-ware and highly specific custom applications, never escape the massive gravitational pull of the gigantic install base of the touchless OS. At worst, their superset offering will be completely ignored. At best, it will find a few niches, and a reasonably broad adoption in the form of "pen=mouse" ports of existing applications. Since these applications won't be all that comfortable, manufacturers will back off from bold all-tablet designs, and just start churning out "convertibles", which are just laptops with a wobbly single hinge and a screen that looks like crap because of the digitizer layer.
This is one of MS's major strength/weakness combinations. They have the resources(and some genuinely good people) to relentlessly add interlocking feature-set after interlocking feature-set to their products. However, because of their enterprise orientation, they are not good at the exotic, or the starkly cut down. Any innovation has to be capable of being tacked on to the gigantic interlocking feature mass. Any cut-down subset has to alienate as few 3rd parties and legacy customers as possible, and integrate with the feature mass as much as possible. On the plus side, this means that their stuff makes it relatively easy(if not wise) to build a towering enterprise stack, and then have it supported for years and years. On the minus side, it pretty much stomps on innovation, even where technologically possible.
is that companies always thought they were for things like Child's First Computer type of toy. Little did we understand that children come along with computers just fine, it was the adults that needed the hand-holding.
As iPad's sales are still going strong, many people still won't get it. They're usually the ones that understand how to get the computer to do almost anything.
First it is "the iPad won't sell".
Then when it is selling, the claim is "it ain't running out" when figures show Apple just ordered more then at previous introductions.
then when it sells half a million, it won't last...
Oh and lack of flash will kill it despite more and more sites ditching it.
Face it, Jobs has done it again. Move on and start predicting his fall for the next gadget.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
and your surprised?
It's just fine, thanks for asking. :)
I remember when Microsoft was able to kill a platform like Go Penpoint with just a vaporware announcement.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's just fine, thanks for asking. :)
Lucky. I could never get the rc scripts to run right, and if you have to run it manually after every restart, well, then it's not really a surprise daemon at all, is it?
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
You can tell I don't follow MS much because I thought "In a world with walls or fences, who needs windows or gates." was just a clever joke. Turns out that it is paraphrasing an actual MS slogan. "For a world without walls, Windows".
That tells you everything you need to know about Microsoft. They don't even get the concept of basic construction. Either you have no wall and therefor nothing to place the window in, OR you create a big window and it becomes the wall itself. A window cannot exist without a wall.
They drink the koolaid deeply in Redmond.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.