Saturday, March 06, 2010

Courier: Microsoft's most interesting product that doesn't exist?

Engadget got its hands on more pictures and videos of Microsoft's Courier yesterday. If you haven't been following it, Courier is a dual-screen tablet concept--a combination journal, browser, document creation tool and eBook reader--developed by a design studio owned by Microsoft. There have been no pictures or first-hand accounts of actual working hardware and software. All the public has seen to date are visualizations, renderings and animations.

What's interesting is that there are so many visualizations, renderings and animations. Normally, you see something like Courier in a conference keynote speech, the equivalent of a concept car that's exhibited at a few auto shows and then retired. What's curious about Courier is that it keeps popping up, each time with a few more details, a few more tweaks.

So what is Microsoft trying to do? Low-cost concept testing, trying to see if there's a market for the device before it commits to production? Does it want to shift the thinking about how eBook readers and similar devices should work, so that other companies will build devices that the Courier environment will run on? Or, is it readying the market for a product launch later this year or next?

From what I've seen of the Courier concepts, it truly looks like something different than the iPad and other tablet devices. Courier is much more like a "smart notebook" (a digital equivalent of a paper notebook) than a tablet or netbook. It has both a touch and pen interface, and is strongly dependent on the pen for writing and data input. In that sense, it's more like the Apple Newton than conventional tablets or eBook readers, although one hopes that its handwriting recognition is a lot better than the Newton's was.

Courier seems to have a more targeted focus than the iPad--it's a "magic diary" with virtually infinite capacity and connectivity that you can take anywhere. For that reason, it's unlikely to become the application development magnet that the iPhone is and the iPad will become. On the other hand, Courier may not need all that much in third-party software if everything that Microsoft is showing in its previews comes to fruition.

So, the question is whether we'll ever see Courier as a real, functioning product. I think that Microsoft would have a serious chance of establishing a new product category if it releases Courier and it does everything that the animations and visualizations say that it will be able to do. Until then, it remains vapor, but interesting vapor nonetheless.
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2 comments:

Genghis7777 said...

I'm a long time Newton user and agree that this could have the makings of a credible Newton replacement.

It is pen-based, and the size of the screen means that meaningful productivity is achievable. However this will be heavily dependent on what applications (word processors, spreadsheets, presentation apps) will be written for it and what support it will have for other text input modes such as soft- and hard-boards.

I know the handwriting recognition of the original Newton was said to be poor, but did you know that by the time Newton OS v2 was released it was as good as anything we have today? It just took too long (4 years) to get it up to an acceptable standard, by the time they did, interest had waned and their credibility was low. A pity as the user interface was really good to use and the iPhone is even now only catching up on many of the Newton's features. For example, system wide searching of data was available on the Newton but only first implemented on the iPhone on the 3GS model.

If they add handwriting recognition as a native part of the operating system then we might yet have found the spiritual son of the Newton.

Residential VoIP said...

Amazing !!!This is cool machine. Able to do all sorts of cool art (which means a high-end touchscreen), a replacement for a journal, sketchpad, notebook.