
Microsoft cancels the Courier, the Internet sheds a tear - McKittrick
http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/04/29/microsoft-cancels-the-courier-the-internet-sheds-a-tear/
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necubi
And this is surprising to who exactly?

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.

~~~
smallblacksun
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).

~~~
ugh
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.

~~~
grinich
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.

------
nexneo
Will be #1 on Vaporware 2010. Last year winner was Crunchpad.

~~~
maukdaddy
To be fair, MS never announced that Courier was a real product.

~~~
nexneo
But they leaked existence and now they required to leak its death. That is
good enough to qualifies as vaporware.

Aside from that. I like, "Microsoft Kills iPad Killer" perfect headline for
this news. [http://blogs.forbes.com/velocity/2010/04/29/microsoft-
kills-...](http://blogs.forbes.com/velocity/2010/04/29/microsoft-kills-ipad-
killer/)

~~~
Batsu
It's a wonder Apple's products even go out in the open anymore, with so many
potential murderers.

------
SamAtt
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?

~~~
bokchoi
It goes to Haskell!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1304685>

------
raganwald
Why Apple Doesn't Do Concept Products:

<http://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept-products/>

~~~
cstuder
And of course: "Real artists ship."

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jsz0
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.

------
mortenjorck
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.

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JunkDNA
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.

~~~
SamAtt
"the news of the HP slate (on indefinite hold)"

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

~~~
JunkDNA
[http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-doesnt-have-to-worry-
ab...](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-doesnt-have-to-worry-about-the-hp-
slate-anymore-2010-4)

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.

~~~
cstuder
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.

------
brandonkm
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.

------
slantyyz
Good news in the sense that it gives a WebOS based slate (which would be way
more interesting than that thing HP showed at CES) a fighting chance.

While the Courier wasn't something that interested me over an iPad, there were
some interesting ideas in those mockups.

------
Malic
I _own_ an iPad would have given the Courier a serious look. I have to wonder
if Microsoft wants to go in a different (even better?) direction?

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j_baker
This is the first time I've heard of the Courier...

~~~
paulgb
Same here, at first I thought the title was referring to Microsoft's Courier
New font. I guess someone at Crunchgear made the same connection.

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chaostheory
Not surprised. Just like UMPC and Surface, it's just another fancy mocked up
commercial for Microsoft. History repeats itself.

~~~
tzs
Surface is just mocked up? That's going to come as a big surprise to the many
establishments that have them installed and are using them.

~~~
chaostheory
What I meant was that the commercials show a lot more of the device's
potential that just isn't really there.

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.

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thought_alarm
It goes to show that most people on the "internet" don't understand software
development.

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danw
Would make a nice iPad app, especially combined with a Pogo Stylus.

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emehrkay
Am I the only person who wasnt impressed by the courier? It seemed overly
complicated

~~~
sambeau
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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thejay
Once again, we rejoice.

