The death of the MS Courier

Microsoft had been developing a revolutionary dual-screen tablet called the Courier and just now rumours of why they killed it are now surfacing it.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-2...soft-killed-its-courier-tablet/?tag=rtcol;dis

This product and its devs had so much clout within the company that Ballmer had to appeal to Gates himself. Why did he kill it? In short - it wasn't Windows nor was it Office friendly.

Also - it didn't even come with an email client. And we can see how THAT has worked for Blackberry ...

Highly interesting.

Especially this part caught my attention :

The key to Courier, Allard's team argued, was its focus on content creation. Courier was for the creative set, a gadget on which architects might begin to sketch building plans, or writers might begin to draft documents.

"This is where Bill had an allergic reaction," said one Courier worker who talked with an attendee of the meeting. As is his style in product reviews, Gates pressed Allard, challenging the logic of the approach.

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Reading between the lines, this reads like : "We don't want to supoport creativity".

This sounds too much like MS becoming a "bureau machines company" - just like IBM did.

Furthermore :

But sometimes, their creativity is stalled by process, subsumed in other products, or even sacrificed to protect the company's Windows and Office empires.

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This editor's view is almost exactly like my impression I get from reading this article.

DOS - which made MS bigfrom the beginning on - wasn't an invention. It was - bought.

And Microsoft could NEVER make a thing like the Wii - and call it "Wii" alone !
They're imho just too much business oriented.
It's almost as if they wouldn't know what Creativity really is.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Reading between the lines, this reads like : "We don't want to supoport creativity".

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MS has *never* been about creativity ... never.

For me the issue with Courier was that it showed that MS had absolutely no clue about how people use technology.

I've had a love/hate relationship with MS for a long time. On one hand, the things they did with both DOS and Windows have been amazing. Even though neither were original concepts developed by them, and neither were perfect at any incarnation, they've done a phenomenal job expanding the use of PC's to every part of society (and yes I realize macs were considered easier to use. I used them extensively in college and always preferred PC's). They XBox line has been great, despite everyone thinking they'd fail at the beginning.

But then they've done so many stupid things along the way that just drive me nuts. They are so focused on a few core concepts that they miss the potential on so many others because it doesn't fit into those core concepts, or because are so paranoid at cannibalization that they can't fathom integration. Some of the products they have worked on that missed their potential:

1) Surface - I realize it exists in the business market, but it has/had so much potential in the consumer market too.

2) Zune - My wife had an original generation Zune. She loved it. It was far superior, technologically than the iPod at the time, and the software was as easy to use, and more format friendly, but rather than integrate it properly with your PC, XBox, etc., they tried to segregate it. Heck, even PlayReady videos you find on DVD+DigitcalCOpy discs, which are a MSFT technology, wouldn't play on it! They should have integrated all their media so that it was platform agnostic. Buy it once, play it anywhere. You should have been able to buy a video on XBox live and automatically have it available on your Zune and PC. And they should have run it as a loss leader to undercut the iPod.

3) Windows Media Center - I run an HTPC for all our media needs in the living room - Cable, DVR, DVD/Blu-Ray, Music, online video. It's awesome, but it took 5 YEARS to get a cablecard expansion card so you could watch live TV on it. It's also an unfinished product, requiring a lot of 3rd part add-ins that complicate things, so when it does have a problem, its a massive PITA. Again, they should have integrated it. You still can't play most content bought on XBox Live or Zune Market on it. They could have dominated the living room like nothing else. The XBox does a nice job on some things for that, but it can't do what a dedicated HTPC can.

4) Courier and Win7 Tablets in general - Win 7 can work beautifully on tablets. I've seen a couple companies that developed skins for it that make it comparable to the iPad, both in the general GUI and application specific. I was pumped waiting for a good Win7 Tablet to come out. The idea of having something that I could dock and use as a normal PC, then undock and take with me as a Tablet, with all the same programs was amazing. Instead, we get virtually nothing.

I fear that Google, with their obsession on data-mining ultimately is going to follow the same footsteps as MSFT.

LMAO I thought this thread was bout the Courier font.

MS is kind of stuck. Windows is their cash cow and they don't want to upset it so they can milk it as long as possible. But that means they are missing on new stuff that comes along. Thus all their "me too!" products that while they may be superior in some way are too little too late.

This isn't new; you can see it in most industries.

While I despise Balmer, they did make one notable improvement for Windows 7. For the first time, rather than just designing an OS and foisting it on PC makers, they actually went to the PC makers for input during the design stage.

A lot of the improvements you see in Windows 7 are a result of that.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Highly interesting.

Especially this part caught my attention :

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You skipped the key part right before your quote

Courier users wouldn't want or need a feature-rich e-mail application such as Microsoft's Outlook that lets them switch to conversation views in their inbox or support offline e-mail reading and writing.

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Gates reaction was to not having a decent email client, the way I understand it. And I have to agree - the one thing I would expect from any MS gadget is that it integrates seamlessly with the PC and Office environment. The iDevices are still not perfect there, but they are getting better and better (e.g. with IOS5 we finally get task and reminder synchronization with MS Exchange). So any edge MS might have had, is almost lost by now.

CountChocula said:

LMAO I thought this thread was bout the Courier font.

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I thought exactly the same in the first place.

MS Courier is like A20, partially.