Plenty of people believed it would be a real product, they were also very excited about it. It looked like something very innovative from Microsoft. Why produce such a slick looking video for vaporware?
But just like Cairo with is object file system, Microsoft got us again.
I think this was based on Inkskein, which is not vaporware. I don't see why such a thing isn't possible. The iPad could support such an interface. Just divide the screen in two in landscape. This is what I'd want Evernote to become.
The courier did its job. That and the news of the HP slate (on indefinite hold) were timed to try and get some free press out of the pre-iPad hype. The fact that no actual product was close to shipping didn't matter.
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
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.
Speaking of competition: How is Googles Chrome OS doing? I haven't heard anything about it either.
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.
The fact that no actual product was close to shipping didn't matter. That's right boss, I'm here to report at this project's conclusion that we ... got some hypeglow that dripped off the iPad. No, ... I'm not sure how much any tablet-future-legitimizing hype we did build only helped iPad's reception, ...that's ... a good point. ... Yes, that's correct, we ... have no revenue to report from this.
cringe
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.
Perhaps I was a bit too terse, but I was essentially making the same point as you. You and I are in violent agreement. I'm not at all surprised courier isn't going anywhere. The leaks were all about trying to assure pundits and tech decision makers that Microsoft is "on the job" so just waits little for their solution. The tech press dutifully lapped up the story. Whether or not anyone actually believes it is another matter.
Just a small correction (I'm a Microsoft employee). I've played on Project Natal, and (pardon my french) it's pretty fucking awesome. You've got to see it to believe it.
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).
If that is the case why did Microsoft and Lionhead opt to show video mock-ups rather than real product demos?
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 wouldn't take this news as the huge bummer that it looks like. One thing Microsoft doesn't have with the courier is the element of surprise. Windows phone 7 is coming out later this year, so I would think that they want to focus on that as much as possible and then consider how to scale that experience to something like a courier/tablet device.
As amazing as the concept video looked, something even better could be on the horizon.
The funny thing is we were just having a discussion at work trying to figure out where Microsoft's $9.5 billion R&D budget goes (that's per year). I wonder how much of it was spent on this last year?
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.
You don't think Apple "drove hype" for the iPad? Seriously?
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).
And why do you think this is? Because they don't release concept videos, and they deliver really polished products on their own time. People say Apple is all about marketing, but that's a joke. The press does all of Apple's marketing for them, all Apple needs to do is keep generating hits.
Apple's failed products are more notable because of two facts:
* they release very small number of products
* there have only had a small number of failed products
There is a fundamental difference between a shipping product that doesn't meet its sales targets and gets canned and a leaked video of a non-existent product that gets canned before production.
What Apple doesn’t do – at least not anymore since Jobs is back – is show concepts or prototypes (save those lost in bars :). They just don’t ever talk about future products. Or if they do, you will get what they announce no more than a few months later.
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.
This isn't just a policy on projects. Last year I was talking to an engineer on the compilers team about some of the work they were doing on LLVM/Clang, and even he wouldn't talk about unreleased features. This is a compiler! Not the latest iPod or MacBook, and yet I just kept hearing the same mantra, "We don't discuss unannounced products.
I was really hoping Microsoft shipped Courier, because I really don't want to buy an iPad (and I have a lot of personal reasons to do that). Have to wait and see what is going to do HP.
> ...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 was really hoping Microsoft shipped Courier, because I really don't want to buy an iPad (and I have a lot of personal reasons to do that). Have to wait and see what is going to do HP."
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).
i wonder which one it is gonna be: ChromeOS or Android...
and will they get in the consumer hardware business or will it just be a rebranding ala nexus one?
Man oh man, if Google went into the hardware business, now that would shake things up. Seriously, it would be a huge shift for the company and would require some massive hiring and restructuring. I think that would be exciting, but not at all likely.
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.
Hence my qualifier "in comparable form." Origami did ship, but when it did it was twice as expensive as promised (initially: "as much as a good mobile phone", when released: $1200+) and was an unusable mess (read some reviews). The devices shipped bore no resemblance to those in the video, either in terms of interface or hardware. So while Microsoft's partners did ship UMPCs, it would be highly misleading to suggest that Microsoft shipped "Origami," at least as presented in the videos.
I think what killed it was that it didn't run Windows 7 or Windows Phone 7. Which is really too bad, because the former was obviously inappropriate for it, and the latter was subtly inappropriate.
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.
My guess is this goes back to Microsoft internal battles. Both the Windows client & Office groups were getting their turf encroached on here. The less powerful Windows Mobile & Zune groups probably had no love for it either. In ~5 years we'l probably see a lot of these ideas implemented by the big players inside of Microsoft.
I'm a terrible Apple fanboi but I thought that the courier demonstrated some really interesting ideas.
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".
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[ 10.1 ms ] story [ 2076 ms ] threadAside 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.
http://www.popplet.com/
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)
While the Courier wasn't something that interested me over an iPad, there were some interesting ideas in those mockups.
As amazing as the concept video looked, something even better could be on the horizon.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1304685
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.
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.
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.
http://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept-products/
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".