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Comment by saturdayplace | Hacker News Reader

Typically the form-factor seems to dominate discussions of the Courier, but the really interesting thing is that it was intended to be a content creation device. Contrast that with the iPad which excels at providing consumption. We could have had two radically different tablet categories, each excellently tailored to one specific intent. Microsoft really could have had a hand in shaping the landscape where now they're catching up.

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The reasons cited by people who claim the iPad "can't do content creation" is the virtual keyboard, which precludes efficient typing and the lack of legacy apps, which precludes existing workflows.

The courier would be in that exact same position.

And let us not forget that there are already two radically different tablet categories. One tailored to typing and legacy apps and the other tailored to all-new touch-focused apps. The market simply couldn't care less about the ones with keyboards and apps that were designed for mice.

And do remember that the "creation versus consumption" thing is a talking point originally introduced by... Microsoft! People somehow seem to have adopted it as a simple truth, but it's really a piece of marketing.

> And do remember that the "creation versus consumption" thing is a talking point originally introduced by... Microsoft!

Really? I didn't know that. When did they create this distinction?

In a competitive analysis back in January. http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/01/24/what-microsoft-re...

The courier would have had a stylus, handwriting recognition, and a really nice screen. You'd have been able to cut and paste text and images by drawing circles around them and swiping them into a clipboard-bucket-thing on the other screen.

I don't know how well it would have worked in the final product, but it looked pretty snazzy in the demo videos. :-)

One of the primary reasons I like computers is that I don't have to write by hand anymore. I don't think I'm alone.

I think the intention was for people who needed to draw things, like architects, electrical/mechanical engineers, artists. I nearly die over the fact that there is no awesome tablet that explicitly supports styluses and uses them in some new awesome creative way. It would really take away the barrier of taking notes in class with a tablet efficiently. (Even though I still plan on getting a tablet to do such things).

Most of the time. But years of high school and college trained me to take notes with my hand. Trying to focus on what people are saying and use a keyboard just feels too hard.

And yet I still don't want to give up all the advantages of electronic (vs paper) notes. I'd run to get a tablet with a really, really good stylus (I had high hopes for the HTC Flyer, but... maybe a future ICS tablet will get it right).

I’m not sure what handwriting recognition gets you. I don’t know if you noticed but handwriting is slow. Much, much, much slower than any touch keyboard, especially a huge one like on the iPad.

I really don't know why tablets don't have shorthand recognition.

Shorthand is fast.

That would be a niche feature. I doubt many people can write shorthand.

I wonder if more people would learn shorthand if the devices could make it an input technique competitive with touch typing?

Handwriting recognition lets you jot down notes on a large diagram without stopping to switch contexts and find some sort of keyboard input mechanism.

The courier was designed for people who are spending most of their time drawing, and don't need the overhead of dealing with a keyboard. I've seen some similar Windows 7 devices floating around, and I'd be interested to try them out.

This obviously isn't marketed at coders, and it sounds pretty useful for some heavy-duty drawing tasks.

That’s useful.

It doesn’t make the Courier any more a creation device than the iPad, though. That’s just absurd. The iPad is (also) for creation, the Courier would have been (also) for creation.

> Contrast that with the iPad which excels at providing consumption.

That's not a contrast. Just because iPad excels at consumption doesn't mean it fails at creation.

Paper excels at providing consumption. Far more paper is used for consumption than for creation. Doesn't mean paper isn't also fantastic for creation.

Yes, but the Courier was leagues beyond anything you can do with an iPad in terms of content creation. Even now, there's nothing on the iPad that works as well as OneNote (yes, that includes EverNote), and Courier extended far past OneNote to integrate a bunch of more advanced, integrated design ideas.

The Courier was never demoed publicly, let alone shipped to consumers, it's a bit silly to say it was leagues beyond anything at all.

"Yes, but the Courier was leagues beyond anything you can do with an iPad"

With all due respect, the courier was not a shipping product, the video mockups were cool, but to compare a successful shipping product with a vapourware concept video - and to conclude that the non-existing one is better, is not particularly useful.

I agree with you to some extent but you missed out the last bit of his sentence "in terms of content creation". I do think the original iPad was poor for content creation, thats fine as it was a brilliant device but I do think there was a chance the Courier could have been better in that regard.

"Creation vs consumption" is a completely false dichotomy. By far the biggest constraint on "creation" is the person operating the device. We have no shortage of guitars, computers with attached keyboards, and cameras, yet there's not a notable surplus of great music, writing and movies. For an actually creative person, the surplus of accessible content is inspiration to create, not some sort of impediment. Actually creative people also see limitless creative potential in these "consumption devices".

Creation = me writing this comment on Hacker News (for which I'd like to have a keyboard) or writing a letter to my mom (for which I might even like to write in my own handwriting, perhaps on a pen-based tablet). It's not only about creating works of genius.

"but the Courier was leagues beyond anything you can do with an iPad in terms of content creation"

Really? I only saw infographic videos that were made by artists. We did not see the real thing in action.

You must be thinking that someone canceled the Hoverboards that the film series "Back to the future" displayed "working" in the same way MS displayed Courier "working".

To dream (and to fake is way easier than create).

OneNote is such an amazing piece of software I owned Gateway's M285-E just for it. See this pic on the right:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/52/167988348_fb452a3ad2_z.jpg

Hacker News likes VisiCalc, and in the same vein, for handwritten notes on the iPad, try VisiCalc author Dan Bricklin's "Note Taker HD". That said, you'd have to blend Note Taker HD with Evernote to get OneNote.

OneNote's amazing. It would be a fascinating story to share how it managed to get traction at Microsoft and how it lost its prominance once the tablet PC push died out.

That said, Note Taker HD is also amazing, as are Evernote, OmniGraffle, Keynote, Pages, iA Writer, Index Card, Tiffen Photo fx Ultra, Snapseed, PhotoForge2, Inspire Pro, Sketch Book Pro, Garage Band, iMovie, OmniFocus, Textastic Code Editor (compatible with TextMate syntax definitions and themes), and the list goes on.

OneNote on a TabletPC was pretty much tailor-made for middle management at Microsoft to use while sitting in meetings all day.

That's how it came to exist, as the most delicious dogfood.

In a way, Apple didn't target or tailor their device at all, cleverly allowing the vagueness to guarantee multiple uses. Remember the 2010 keynote?

>Do we have what it takes to establish a 3rd category of products? An awesome product between the laptop and the smartphone?

I think the iPad is used creatively by quite a few people, although possibly not as high a percentage as Macs and PCs. But then, what about all those PCs in banks and call centres ?... :)

>But then, what about all those PCs in banks and call centres?

They are used in the creation of income :)

iPad is quite good for content creation, excluding text. It's good for finger-painted art,for example.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/7866...

It's not so bad at text when you connect a Bluetooth keyboard, either.

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