Microsoft cancels the Courier, the Internet sheds a tear
crunchgear.com
crunchgear.com
Microsoft has shown repeatedly in the last few years that they excel at creating pretty renders and hype for products that never appear on the market in comparable form. Anybody remember the Origami project? If not, here's a reminder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXHKCS28z1s. The same is true of the original Longhorn videos (which were revealed to be shockwave animations) and to a certain extent surface.
Contrast this with Apple's approach, which is to show absolutely nothing until they have a shipping product. Microsoft drives hype; apple makes products.
All that being said, I do hope somebody takes the ideas in those videos and makes a compelling product from them. I doubt the technology is there now, but it will be in a few years.
What, actually make something? Sounds like a good way to get hit with a patent suit.
Also, I'd be willing to bet that Microsoft ships more new products each year than Apple (meaning a larger number of different products, not just more total).
The tech media does it for them... For free, to boot.
I’m pretty sure Apple had their own Courier, their own Origami. They could have produced the most beautiful and eye-popping concept videos you can imagine. Only they didn’t.
Concept videos are just a bad idea. Companies shouldn’t make them public. Only show me products you committed to producing. If you don’t do that you run the risk of looking like someone who can‘t keep promises.
Your point may be correct, but that's more of a taunt than an argument.
> ...show absolutely nothing until they have a shipping product...
Courier was a MSR project, and they were kind enough to make it public. (MSR) It's actually one of the good things MS does.
I would tune in to Google I/O instead. Google plans to release a ChromeOS/Android tablet and the conference seems to be the best time to announce it (aside from their big Android announcements).
Of course the experiences never match up. In the videos, you get nice clips of some perfect UI. In reality, you get some crappy apps still designed for a mouse and keyboard.
Aside from that. I like, "Microsoft Kills iPad Killer" perfect headline for this news. http://blogs.forbes.com/velocity/2010/04/29/microsoft-kills-...
Nobody ever believed it would be a real product.
But just like Cairo with is object file system, Microsoft got us again.
WP7's UI looks really promising as a phone interface, but the courier wasn't about any of the tasks that phones do. It was about one thing only, and that was information collection for creatives.
I don't think I'd have liked a courier that booted up to something that I had to "launch the Courier app" from as much as I would one that simply became Courier every time I woke it up.
Where did you hear that? If you're referring to WebOS I don't think HP is going to cancel a product already in the pipeline for a product that is at least a year away
Where did you hear that?
They are going to wait until the Palm deal closes. My guess is that HP wants more control over their platforms than a commodity Windows mobile provides. WebOS is just the ticket.
Is there any competition to Apples iPad anywhere? Apart from dozens indistinguishable Android tablets, there seems to be close to no serious alternatives left on the market today.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/29/hewlett-packard-to-kill-win...
Anonymous source of course, but still.
Microsoft has been strategically announcing products to harm potential competitors since ever. This one was timed to prevent Microsoft-happy companies from buying Apple's tablet (that wasn't announced on the corresponding Apple event, BTW).
Natal is another fine example: a special-effects-heavy video from a product that didn't even have a shipping date, with people assuming it would be a couple months later, timed to hurt sales of competing consoles. They didn't have a product and my bet is that they won't have anything close to what was shown.
Microsoft has consistently used vaporware over most of its history to promote a "let's not switch providers - Microsoft will soon have a similar product" attitude on its clients.
The downside of this is that the tactic has become transparent to most. A Microsoft announcement has little credibility these days.
Can't say when it will ship (not sure if they announced that date yet), and I'm not sure how hardware constraints will make it different than what I played on, but if it's anything close to what I experienced, it'll be a major game changer (no pun intended).
Last I heard Natal doesn't work for children, black people and fat people. People who turn too quickly, people who sit down, people who clap or just touch hands. People with too much hair. People who's arms aren't raised. People in wheelchairs...
In fact the Quiz application, as shown, is completely impossible for Natal.
(I'm not a Microsoft employee)
As amazing as the concept video looked, something even better could be on the horizon.
While the Courier wasn't something that interested me over an iPad, there were some interesting ideas in those mockups.
btw UMPC's exist too; they just sucked like Surface.
Have you interacted with a Surface device or UMPC? Did the features and possibilities match the commercials? From my experience, the answer is no.
I especially liked that the proposed device seemed to be a digital diary and notebook rather than a general purpose computing device. It was a very different concept to the iPad.
I could see real potential for this kind of "digital filofax".