Courier: New Microsoft Tablet PC Which Looks Amazing!
Gizmodo had an exclusive regarding the new Tablet PC from Microsoft. The tablet will be call the Courier and man does it look good.
The Courier is currently in “late prototype” stage of development and not exactly a tablet, its more of a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They’re connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre.
The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style.
It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications.
To check out more information about the Courier and also to view the intro video click here.
2 Comments
I can’t believe this could just be vaporware. Microsoft needs to work on and release this device. I think if they added an eBook reader, with the dual screens, it would make it even more of a great piece of hardware.
Jason’s right, Microsoft needs to step up and start taking on apple, they’ve done a horrible job on competing with apple in anything but computers. But even then, people everywhere prefer a iMac over a PC. Personally i cant understand it but thats how it goes. Microsoft’s Zune has nothing on the iPod Touch. Microsoft doesn’t have a phone… The only thing microsft has is a game system… God forbid, Apple enters the gaming campaign. Please give apple some competition, cause right now they are complete rip offs in many aspects.
A step in the right direction would be to release somthing like this, to directly compete with apple’s tablet that will eventually be released. Here’s a reality check Microsoft, Apple isn’t going to make their tablet vapor ware.. and if you do they’ll get all the money in that line of technology as well. Wake up, and do something.
Examples of Apple Rip-offs. Creating new generations of iPods and switching the pin-out on the charge cables. Now i have to go buy a new sound dock to play my iPod on.. cause it wont charge and play music at the same time, only play music.
Asking for thousands of dollars from a computer taht cant out compute a less then thousand dollar PC. Mac’s are non customizable as well, so if your Mac dies, guess what, you have to go buy a new one. I personally would rather spend the money on antivirus software and be able to fix my computer that has died, and replace only one part. Not the whole damn PC.
Im sure there is so much more im not thinking of or haven’t found out about, but in any case they can get away with this crap because they have no competition; why should they care, where else are their customers going to go if they want this kind of technology. If i have an iPod touch im not trading it in for a zune. The Zune HD is a downgrade.
Get some intelligent people to do somthing amazing. That people can actually buy… unlike the Microsft surface which is so expensive that the middle class couldn’t touch it. Multi-Touch is amazing, Tablet PC’s are a growing technology, especially for Multimedia Designers (like myself). Keeping track of projects, using software like 3Ds Max and maya on somthing like this would make modeling so much easier.
Microsoft used to be a company that no one could compete with. So what happened? I’m giving up on Microsoft to do something. The only greatest thing they have release recently was Windows 7, and all it did was fix all the screw ups of vista and then added super compatibility with previous operating systems. Thanks for creating an OS that isn’t broken.