This is one of those stories in which the facts are construed to fit the conventional wisdom regarding Microsoft, e.g. no mention of WP7 which was announced and previewed in the quarter immediately prior to the Courier's cancellation, no mention of the investment Microsoft made in development of the Metro interface, and of course no mention of the manufacturing costs inherent in a dual screen device or the energy such a device would consume with mainstream technology.
Instead, there is the criticism that Microsoft is not enough like Apple (and a focus on personalities).
When manufacturers don't see a way to build and sell dual screen tablets at a profit, Microsoft won't sell much of the software to run them. It is not as if Microsoft doesn't have the enough experience as a hardware provider to evaluate the economics of going it alone versus partnering with the electronics industry. And partnering with the electronics industry rather than competing as a manufacturer has - with the exception of the XBOX in a market dominated by proprietary hardware - been a highly successful course.
Finally, it is not as if the design decisions underlying the courier are dead - a viable dual screen tablet is still as plausible today as it was when the iPad started shipping and there is no reason such a device could not run with a Metro interface or that the technology developed as part of the Courier project could not be incorporated.
What was killed was a project which required forking the Windows roadmap in ways analogous to past Microsoft decisions and which led to Windows Mobile becoming a dead end overnight - never mind that a mobile device without email probably would have been stillborn.
You raise some good points here. I think ultimately it's clear that as cool as the Courier may have been, a "real" Windows tablet like the Win 8 Metro that's been previewed is the product Microsoft can really build around.
In a perfect world, we'd have both devices, but there's an enormous danger in releasing an interim niche product before your real product arrived -- for example, the press surrounding the Kin phone was devastating, and almost certainly hurt the release of WinPhone 7. Even if the Courier turned out to be a success, it could have confused the marketplace.
It's often said that one of Steve Jobs' greatest strength was his willingness to kill products before the light of day unless they were the right products and they were good enough. It's interesting that Ballmer leaned on Gates to make this decision, but I think Gates's decision was the right one for Microsoft.
Jobs could kill projects that way because Apple doesn't rely on partnerships in the way Microsoft does. In other words, in planning for the iPad launch Apple could call up Samsung and ask "Can you deliver 2m chips per month?" Conversely, Microsoft has to show Micheal Dell the Courier and ask, "Do you want to build these, and if so, when, and how many do you think it will take to be profitable, what sort of battery would you use, etc.?"
Because of this, Microsoft has to be willing to fail somewhat publicly. Because of their size, Microsoft will have failures that sound big - but really, on a corporate scale, 130 people on a project that gets cancelled isn't very many.
I agree that lack of email is mad. But how big a decision can this be? If it can run programs, it can run an mail client. Even an exchange client. "it won't have an email client" is not part of the hardware design, it's just that the software hasn't been written/ported yet.
Also, while talking about updates, the article freely conflates hardware and software updates by comparing the release of the iPad 3 to a Windows upgrade. There's nothing stopping the tablet OEMs from releasing new hardware at any time regardless of Windows upgrades.
I would love to see the WTF look on Jobs' face when he first saw this device. What was Microsoft thinking?
The iPad works because it gives you a simpler way to do the simplest things you would otherwise do at your desk. It fits into your life quickly and effortlessly and it's priced to be a discretionary purchase. This is all essential for a new product category.
Microsoft thought that architects were going to pay probably over $1000 for this bizarre device to do work on it?? Highly trained people doing specialized work don't usually alter their workflow unless there is an obvious need and a proven solution. If they focussed the entire product on a single vertical then maybe they could sell a few. But an all-purpose creativity device with no 3rd party apps? That pie is in orbit.
I think you're spot on. Microsoft seems almost obsessed on demoing and talking about these lofty products, the Surface is another example. Real artists ship, as someone said..
What's interesting is that while Apple had the perfect pitch for the iPad (simple web browsing device), the form factor and touch screen made it possible to use it for almost anything. Now you see pilots, doctors and musicians use the iPad in their work. It's obvious that it's not limited to content consumption.
Here's an idea: Make an app (or a framework) allowing two iPads to be connected over WiFi or with a special "dual iPad" cover that would make the app span the screens of both iPads. With this, you could recreate the Courier experience on a shipping device, priced at $800.
If the iPad can do screen mirroring to an Apple TV, why not to another iPad? (Because Apple says so, of course. :)
Stuff like this is starting to happen in a small way with WiST compatible music apps.
What I found most ludicrous? Ballmer relying on Gates' taste to select one device or another.
It's hard to fathom the absurdity of this.
He did the right thing - this whole idea of making something for creative people, "for architects", is beyond ridiculous.
But then how can a project go so bad (I am remembering the Kin) and nobody notices until there are 130 people working on it for a year? Here, when we have a stupid idea, it's usually killed at the 5-people-involved stage. Could it be Microsoft lacks adult supervision?
What I found most ludicrous? Ballmer relying on Gates' taste to select one device or another.
I know right? Why ask arguably the most successful businessman in history for his opinion? Stupid Ballmer.
But then how can a project go so bad (I am remembering the Kin) and nobody notices until there are 130 people working on it for a year? Here, when we have a stupid idea, it's usually killed at the 5-people-involved stage.
That happens quite easily. The story I've heard about the Kin (with no verifiable sources) is that they built the phone they planned on designing for the most part. And had the phone shipped as a feature phone it may have been a blockbuster. But Verizon changed their tune due to it being so late and made it a smartphone. But it was a great idea, up until it was a really bad idea -- with contractual obligations for marketing and delivery.
Oddly, the neutered Kin is one of Verizon's top selling feature phones now.
> Why ask arguably the most successful businessman in history for his opinion?
In this specific case, I side with the stated opinion of one of the most admired businessmen of all time, Steve Jobs. Bill Gates just has no taste.
After reading this description of the Courier, I don't know why even bothering Gates with this.
edit: another explanation could be blame shifting. Ballmer knows his tenure has not been exactly brilliant and canceling a project that could be (it would be portrayed as that, if convenient) the iPad killer Microsoft's board dreams about would end up being ammunition against Ballmer in any future conflict. By delegating this decision to Gates, Ballmer is safe. Killing the Courier was the right thing, but Ballmer needed bigger balls than his own to kill it.
There is something unique about tablets like iPad, which is tough to understand. When Steve Jobs released it, he emphasized that this was a major event. However at the time, it looked like a overblown iPhone. Personally for me, there are days when i never miss using my iPad, but without PC i cannot do even for few hours.
That said, i still feel that there is something i don't understand of this device. Something which old-guards like steve and gates, who have seen it happening once, feel about it and how its going to bring in some big changes in future. Hat's off to Ballmer to call in the right person for task.
Hallmark of a good leadership is often about understanding the gravity of situation, know your limitations and find the best person for task. No-wonder companies with leaders like that lead the industry for decades.
This article sounds as if nobody on the Courier team had been prepped for a MSFT exec review. There's internal training you go through (Precision Questioning and Answering) that teaches you what BillG's email question was:
A test of whether you thought your product through.
The question could have been e-mail, browsing, orientation, lefties versus righties, market segmentation, price points, or compatibility with RTL languages, but doesn't really matter.
It sounds as if Allard didn't have a full answer to the very obvious email question. And that was project death, back in old-world MSFT. Read some of the old examples from Joel on his BillG review; he was mainly checking to see if you had your product completely buttoned up before letting you ship. Because if the Courier team couldn't really answer how these "creatives" integrated email into their workflow in detail, 1) how can you be certain of their other decisions and 2) they probably would have shipped a half-baked V1 that would have taken two or three years to fix, by which point you would have been ready with Win8 tablet.
Sure, it's possible that he was harping on tablet email the way he threw GC skepticism at DevDiv reviews Every. Single. Time. But, given that it was email and not OneNote (the by far most-loved tablet app, IIRC), I suspect that the Courier team was having trouble turning from a fun hippie prototype team into a shipping organization with all of the details necessary to produce a solid V1 product buttoned down and BillG called them on it.
But J Allard has been through plenty of BillG reviews. He did the XBox and Zune. And was one of the instrumental people that pushed Microsoft to the internet. He was one of the rising young stars at Microsoft.
He must've had Bill's ear on a regular basis in the past. I suspect this wasn't the first time he heard or got that feedback from Bill. Bill probably gave him the rope in the past, hoping that J would do something stunning. And when the story didn't come together the way he hoped, Bill hung him with it.
Ironically, J's market failure, the Zune, will end up being the motivating UI force for WP7/Win8 which killed his Courier.
I'm not sure on the timing, but these may have been in 2002 or more recent. At least from my experiences in DevDiv, that's around the time that BillG pretty much checked out.
I think that point and the first versions of both of those products prove my point. The former really took a full generation before they figured out the market. Zune has a fantastic music service and the sharing gimmick worked quite well, but they never really managed to figure out a way for the device itself to become more than me-too in the eye of the consumer.
I somehow love the idea of SteveB asking 2012-BillG to channel 1998-BillG and him just tearing into Allard, old-school review style. Particularly for some of the hippie free love divisions that don't have any former BillG TAs or the exec review culture, it would've been a bloodbath.
At least on the XBox, Gates and Allard interacted a fair bit. From the book "Opening the XBox":
"In the next meeting with Gates, Allard, Ferroni, and Thomason broke the news that the machine wouldn't be able to run the full Windows OS...Hase says he admired Allard for 'having the stones' to 'rip Windows to shreds'...
Allard recalled later, 'I think that was the closest Bill ever got to strangling me. But he ultimately came around.'"
The impression I get is that Allard has had his share of interaction with Gates, which is why I think this email thing wasn't news to Allard. But I suspect this time Allard couldn't convince Gates and so it was killed.
> A new survey by the Boston Consulting Group found that more than 40 percent of current tablet users in the United States want a tablet that runs Windows. That number jumps to 53 percent when non-tablet owners are included. The reason: familiarity with Windows, which still runs nearly 90 percent of all PCs sold.
Here, in a nutshell, is why Steve Jobs was right when he said that it wasn't the customer's job to know what they want. Not many people have the balls to risk cannibalizing their own product and launch a product that their marketeers are convinced the public doesn't want.
I always hate this quote. You should always ask people what they want, you just shouldn't literally deliver what they ask for when you can do much better.
It helps by reframing the question. Instead of asking people what they want, ask them what kinds of problems are they having with their existing solution. Often, they will tell you solutions, and you'll need to work backwards a bit till you discover what their pain points are.
Once you thoroughly understand the problems they're having, you have a much better shot at crafting a great solution.
To be fair, Jobs himself acknowledged this. Still, Ford made cars. What was interesting about Jobs taking that stance is that he was in a position to do something about it in tech, upending a lot of established dogma. And making a lot of money in the process.
The current situation is more analogous to car owners preferring a different kind of horse. Or even people not owning any vehicles still preferring a new kind of horse rather than a car even after cars came out.
But the BCG study isn’t an anomaly. Forrester conducted a poll earlier this year and got the same message, with an even starker gap between Microsoft and everyone else: “Only 9% of consumers considering buying a tablet actively prefer an Android tablet — compared with 16% who prefer iOS and 46% who prefer Windows.”
When I wrote about it back in August, I found this so puzzling that I got Forrester researcher Sarah Rotman Epps on the phone to confirm that this wasn’t some weird typo. Nope, she told me.
And it’s sort of common sense: “When we survey consumers, it becomes very clear that Windows is still a very popular brand,” she said. Apple has sold tens of millions of iPads, but Microsoft has sold more than 400 million Windows 7 devices.
46% of consumers preferring Windows = 46% of consumers who are clueless to what a tablet really is.
I've had a touchscreen LCD hooked up to my Windows 7 machine for about a year and a half. Beyond scrolling through web pages it is unusable. The Windows UI is designed for a keyboard and mouse. Now take this 22" touch screen I have and bring it down to 7". Good luck doing anything.
Obviously Microsoft's answer to this is the new Metro overlay (or whatever they are calling it for Windows 8.) If consumers are swiping through two different versions with a Windows 8 tablet, and one of them is barely usable on a touch screen, its going to flop.
I use Windows on my iPad -- by remoting in to my desktops. The only app that I have found usable is LogMeIn because of how the mouse cursor is controlled. Its not a pleasant experience but I can get minor work done at able 1/4th speed or less. You can't release a device that does that out of the box and put your brand on it.
Microsoft appears at a loss on how to move from the keyboard & mouse world to the touchscreen & voice one. Windows has tons of software for it, none of which was designed for touchscreen & voice world. I never have used this phrase before, but Microsoft is trying to have their cake and eat it too. Instead they will get nothing.
You are trying to use something not designed for touch and suggesting they suck at touch.
Have you tried a windows phone 7? I am a mobile dev who has worked on wp7, android, and iPhone. I personally use an iPhone, but I found wp7 to be much nicer than Android and pretty well designed.
You didn't read the original article. The story is about microsoft not wanting to fork Windows. They want Windows 8 to work on desktops, and tablets. From the demo videos I saw, Windows 8 switch back and forth between a usable touchscreen UI and the traditional keyboard & mouse UI. That is having your cake and eating it too. And its going to piss consumers off when they think they can use Excel on their new Windows Tablet and instead get an experience akin to picking cactus nettles out of your face.
I think your second analogy is spot on. I'm curious to know what kind of tablet people are envisioning when they answer these questions: an iPad-style device running Windows or a better-designed version of a convertible notebook? I honestly can't believe that nearly half of the ready-to-buy-a-tablet market is holding off for Metro.
How does that means Jobs is right? If anything, it seems a significant percentage of current tablet users are not satisfied with their tablets(80% of which are iPads?) and want something with a bit more power.
Maybe they would have been happier with an iPad that was more powerful like the Windows 8 dev preview tablet? We will know when those come out.
Windows tablets have been available in a variety of forms for around twenty years. Without exception, they've all been failures in the marketplace.
People like the idea of a Windows tablet much more than the reality. Real products have to make compromises, like sacrificing performance or battery life to run legacy applications designed for PCs, and there's no magical way to make interfaces designed for a mouse and keyboard suitable for touch input without changing them completely.
I'm forced to use a windows xp tablet at work. Made by Philips. It's so bad it hurts, and every so often you see the cursor appear that is under your finger when you hit a button. It's buggy and hideous. Used once it could put you off Microsoft for life.
I know a lot of people were in love with the Courier idea, but I really appreciate Bill Gates' call on this one. What looks cool in a demo doesn't always translate to practice. There are a lot of uneasy questions here:
* How big is the market for a content creation tablet in Allard's vision?
* Is it safe to assume that architects, artists, etc would use such a device for their core work, or would it simply be a "for fun" device? "For fun" devices that sell at high price points are a big risk in my view.
* With Allard bucking the notion that the product needed to align with Microsoft's core software line-up, how wise would it be to bet the future (post-PC world, yada yada) on a product that diverges from the company line, rather than converges?
If Microsoft did anything with the Courier tablet, they should position it within their entertainment division along with the XBox. The issue with that is that they'd essentially be cultivating competing businesses within Microsoft. XBox + Courier becomes the "post-PC" business unit, while the Windows cash cow is forced to compete. I'm not sure that makes sense either.
There is not an easy play here. I think Metro is a huge step forward for Microsoft, and they're making some interesting plays with regards to traditional Windows integration. It certainly looks a lot like what people have been screaming for: a tablet that can run a post-PC operating system, but can switch back to their tried and true Windows desktop when needed. The question is whether or not the compromise will deliver a sub-par experience.
When's the last time a dual-UI delivered a good experience?
Microsoft's been down this road a few times and it hasn't worked yet. Just look at Tablet XP. How many great tablet apps are there? Ones that really leverage the stylus or were written to run efficiently and intelligently to start quickly, resume sessions, auto-save documents and preserve precious battery life?
And how many were lazy ports with, maybe, enlarged controls and piles of inefficient legacy code lurking within? Code that just didn't map well to actual mobile use, where every second of delay feels like an age, and add up very quickly to a complete waste of time (compared to just walking over to a desktop).
The only way I can see Windows 8's metro interface really working, is if the mode shift to classic Windows UI and apps is tied to a 'docking' situation. So, metro on the go, classic windows when you dock it into a proper display, keyboard, mouse and external power. That would give developers the right incentive to ensure they have something that works great while the user is out and about, designed specifically for that use case, while still keeping the full flexibility of legacy apps when the necessary peripherals (and plenty of electricity) are available.
"When's the last time a dual-UI delivered a good experience?"
Nothing works, until it does. I've had this same conversation with clients and partners alike. When something goes wrong, they reaction is often "Well it worked yesterday." Yes, everything works until it doesn't, and nothing works until it does. Evaluative statements of the past don't always predict the future.
I agree that it won't be easy. That's why I say that there is no easy play here. Apple has forged ahead with a tablet that completely abandons past models. It is a 100% touch experience. It is undeniable that people have cried out for a dual-UI product though.
Balance. I'm not saying consumers know best either. I'm saying that if Microsoft can balance the two, it could pay off.
As far as developer incentives go, I think Apple has done Microsoft a huge favor. There will be a lot of bad dual-UI apps. Lazy programmers produce crappy applications. But there are a large number of motivated developers out there as well. They've seen what a touch UI should look like. The incentive comes in the form of inspiration and the validation (from consumers) that a 100% touch UI sells, and it sells well.
When's the last time a dual-UI delivered a good experience?
Before the iPad was launched you could just as easily say "When's the last time a tablet delivered a good experience?". Microsoft and others had tried the form factor and failed, but then Apple came along and made a brilliant device. There is no reason the same could not happen for dual-UI devices.
That's kind of strange reasoning. iPad was the first tablet to deliver good experience, and this was exactly because UI was tailored for touch. This does little to assure that dual UI can be successful.
A large amount of the software available for those consoles utilises a dual-screen interface in an interesting / useful way.
Admittedly not a device designed for creation (beyond the camera and associated silly visual effects), but the original DS came out of nowhere and proved a dual-screen device with a stylus interface could work properly.
That, unlike the iPad, Courier, and the future Win8 devices, is legitimately a specialty device, and if you think that Apple's restrictive about what software developers can do, take a look at Nintendo's policies.
Then try browsing Hacker News, Gmail, or some PG essays on your DS. The DS is an interesting device and I love it to pieces, but comparing it to an iPad, a Win8 device, or a Courier tablet, is very, very tenuous.
This quote made Brook's law echo in my head:
"But an employee who worked on Courier said the project was far enough along that the remaining work could have been completed in months if the company had added more people to the team." [Emphasis mine]
Yeah, I basically agree except Brooks himself said in the Mythical Man-Month that Brooks' Law is "an outrageous oversimplification."
Not every job is comparable to "nine women having one baby in one month." There can be sweet spots in staffing, and sometimes projects really don't have enough staff to achieve their goals.
I remembered how the Courier appealed to me more than the iPad when i saw that video. The moleskin form factor is also a big plus over iPad since it was less fragile and more compact (perfect for traveling).
I don't understand why they couldn't pursue both, similar to the iPad & Macbook-pro dynamic.
Of course, Microsoft's real problem is not that they killed the product, but that they made it public at a time when it wasn't clear it would really go to market.
Microsoft has a long history of commencing marketing well before a product is ready. How long was the run-up to Windows Cairo? (Ki-Rho; XP)
That can be a very effective way to reduce or eliminate competition, and it's a technique that's helped Microsoft acquire dominance in a number of markets.
With the current fondness for years of lead time for some Microsoft products and the occasional failure to release, Microsoft's competitors can target Microsoft's products well prior to release, and the inevitable critical reviews can gain visibility in the market.
The actual Microsoft product releases - when the products are available to consumers, and the profits commence and the reviews and the competitors have all adapted and retargeted - have become anti-climactic.
They didn't intentionally make it public. The videos and so on were leaks.
The internet seems to have decided that Microsoft intentionally leaked this stuff to disrupt the iPad launch, but I find that very unlikely considering that according to these and other stories, the project was already in severe danger of being killed by the time the videos came out. It's more likely someone on the team leaked them out of frustration with the impending cancellation - leaking something you're about to kill is not a PR win (as we've seen).
Microsoft killing it is only a problem if it was turning into a great device. Which we don't know any more than we know whether it was turning into a bad one.
Typically the form-factor seems to dominate discussions of the Courier, but the really interesting thing is that it was intended to be a content creation device. Contrast that with the iPad which excels at providing consumption. We could have had two radically different tablet categories, each excellently tailored to one specific intent. Microsoft really could have had a hand in shaping the landscape where now they're catching up.
The reasons cited by people who claim the iPad "can't do content creation" is the virtual keyboard, which precludes efficient typing and the lack of legacy apps, which precludes existing workflows.
The courier would be in that exact same position.
And let us not forget that there are already two radically different tablet categories. One tailored to typing and legacy apps and the other tailored to all-new touch-focused apps. The market simply couldn't care less about the ones with keyboards and apps that were designed for mice.
And do remember that the "creation versus consumption" thing is a talking point originally introduced by... Microsoft! People somehow seem to have adopted it as a simple truth, but it's really a piece of marketing.
The courier would have had a stylus, handwriting recognition, and a really nice screen. You'd have been able to cut and paste text and images by drawing circles around them and swiping them into a clipboard-bucket-thing on the other screen.
I don't know how well it would have worked in the final product, but it looked pretty snazzy in the demo videos. :-)
I think the intention was for people who needed to draw things, like architects, electrical/mechanical engineers, artists. I nearly die over the fact that there is no awesome tablet that explicitly supports styluses and uses them in some new awesome creative way. It would really take away the barrier of taking notes in class with a tablet efficiently. (Even though I still plan on getting a tablet to do such things).
Most of the time. But years of high school and college trained me to take notes with my hand. Trying to focus on what people are saying and use a keyboard just feels too hard.
And yet I still don't want to give up all the advantages of electronic (vs paper) notes. I'd run to get a tablet with a really, really good stylus (I had high hopes for the HTC Flyer, but... maybe a future ICS tablet will get it right).
I’m not sure what handwriting recognition gets you. I don’t know if you noticed but handwriting is slow. Much, much, much slower than any touch keyboard, especially a huge one like on the iPad.
Handwriting recognition lets you jot down notes on a large diagram without stopping to switch contexts and find some sort of keyboard input mechanism.
The courier was designed for people who are spending most of their time drawing, and don't need the overhead of dealing with a keyboard. I've seen some similar Windows 7 devices floating around, and I'd be interested to try them out.
This obviously isn't marketed at coders, and it sounds pretty useful for some heavy-duty drawing tasks.
It doesn’t make the Courier any more a creation device than the iPad, though. That’s just absurd. The iPad is (also) for creation, the Courier would have been (also) for creation.
Yes, but the Courier was leagues beyond anything you can do with an iPad in terms of content creation. Even now, there's nothing on the iPad that works as well as OneNote (yes, that includes EverNote), and Courier extended far past OneNote to integrate a bunch of more advanced, integrated design ideas.
"Yes, but the Courier was leagues beyond anything you can do with an iPad"
With all due respect, the courier was not a shipping product, the video mockups were cool, but to compare a successful shipping product with a vapourware concept video - and to conclude that the non-existing one is better, is not particularly useful.
I agree with you to some extent but you missed out the last bit of his sentence "in terms of content creation". I do think the original iPad was poor for content creation, thats fine as it was a brilliant device but I do think there was a chance the Courier could have been better in that regard.
"Creation vs consumption" is a completely false dichotomy. By far the biggest constraint on "creation" is the person operating the device. We have no shortage of guitars, computers with attached keyboards, and cameras, yet there's not a notable surplus of great music, writing and movies.
For an actually creative person, the surplus of accessible content is inspiration to create, not some sort of impediment. Actually creative people also see limitless creative potential in these "consumption devices".
Creation = me writing this comment on Hacker News (for which I'd like to have a keyboard) or writing a letter to my mom (for which I might even like to write in my own handwriting, perhaps on a pen-based tablet). It's not only about creating works of genius.
"but the Courier was leagues beyond anything you can do with an iPad in terms of content creation"
Really? I only saw infographic videos that were made by artists. We did not see the real thing in action.
You must be thinking that someone canceled the Hoverboards that the film series "Back to the future" displayed "working" in the same way MS displayed Courier "working".
Hacker News likes VisiCalc, and in the same vein, for handwritten notes on the iPad, try VisiCalc author Dan Bricklin's "Note Taker HD". That said, you'd have to blend Note Taker HD with Evernote to get OneNote.
OneNote's amazing. It would be a fascinating story to share how it managed to get traction at Microsoft and how it lost its prominance once the tablet PC push died out.
That said, Note Taker HD is also amazing, as are Evernote, OmniGraffle, Keynote, Pages, iA Writer, Index Card, Tiffen Photo fx Ultra, Snapseed, PhotoForge2, Inspire Pro, Sketch Book Pro, Garage Band, iMovie, OmniFocus, Textastic Code Editor (compatible with TextMate syntax definitions and themes), and the list goes on.
In a way, Apple didn't target or tailor their device at all, cleverly allowing the vagueness to guarantee multiple uses. Remember the 2010 keynote?
>Do we have what it takes to establish a 3rd category of products? An awesome product between the laptop and the smartphone?
I think the iPad is used creatively by quite a few people, although possibly not as high a percentage as Macs and PCs. But then, what about all those PCs in banks and call centres ?... :)
It's incredible that parts of Microsoft were considering a tablet without email, and excellent of Ballmer to go get Gates to tell him no (though odd that Ballmer couldn't figure that one out himself). Then RIM launched a tablet with no email, and....yeah. Not such a good idea.
Does this mean you never get email notifications? In order to check your email, you have to pick up your tablet, turn it on, unlock it, open the browser, navigate to gmail.com, log in, and then see?
On the Xoom, it notifies me if anything happens and my email is a home screen widget - the process seems significantly smoother and faster this way.
> On the Xoom, it notifies me if anything happens and my email is a home screen widget - the process seems significantly smoother and faster this way.
If I were to have a tablet I think I'd only use it at home, among family members and enjoying my free time. In that case NO email is that important to require immediate action, and for the few, inevitable exceptions (web-server going down, payment system not working etc.) I've instructed my boss to call me on the phone directly.
I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that, if you're a manager, you should keep on top of your email. If your work involves coordinating other people, you'll spend most of your time in email anyway.
But that's as far as it goes. I'm not a manager. When I'm at work on my computer, I want my email client to not pester me. Instead, I will go to it once or twice a day when I've reached a natural pause in my work. When I'm at home on my tablet, I want my email client to not pester me. Instead, I want to read the news, watch a movie, or otherwise enjoy myself unmolested. If something is urgent, I can receive calls and pages on my phone. My phone has an email client. I don't want it to pester me, either.
How do you figure? The same basic hardware is remanifesting as the Kindle Fire, so that's not where RIM screwed up.
When I talked to non-tech types about the Playbook, one of the common themes was "it's a Blackberry without email? That's stupid."
I mean, to the average consumer Blackberry is largely synonymous with email and BBM. What made the move particularly bizaro is that RIM tried to sell this anti-feature as a corporate security thing... for a device whose primary appeal was to end consumers.
Either way, it was a stupid waste of the Blackberry brand.
From RIM's marketing and positioning, Playbook was a companion device for the Blackberry and aimed squarely at the iPad. So in that POV, the playbook was for the people who already had email and bbm.
I think the high developer friction (poor tools, poor stores, etc.) and the wrong direction were among the bigger problems.
>So in that POV, the playbook was for the people who already had email and bbm.
I don't know a single person that uses a tablet that doesn't use it for email.
>I think the high developer friction (poor tools, poor stores, etc.) and the wrong direction were among the bigger problems.
You're looking at it from a technical perspective, and the Playbook's failure was a complete lack of demand from consumers. When the people that actually buy tablets react to your marketing strategy with "that's stupid" and in turn refuse to buy your device, it doesn't matter if you have the best developer tools in the world; you've still set yourself up for failure.
>So in that POV, the playbook was for the people who already had email and bbm.
>I don't know a single person that uses a tablet that doesn't use it for email.
Didn't say it CANNOT do email. webmail and email apps were welcome, and i didn't say that it wasnt a mistake (it was) but i think RIM went for an MVP (BB style email must've had a big time-to-market cost) to get to market faster.
>I think the high developer friction (poor tools, poor stores, etc.) and the wrong direction were among the bigger problems.
>You're looking at it from a technical perspective, and the Playbook's failure was a complete lack of demand from consumers. When the people that actually buy tablets react to your marketing strategy with "that's stupid" and in turn refuse to buy your device, it doesn't matter if you have the best developer tools in the world; you've still set yourself up for failure.
We are on the same page (hence the "direction") part. Playbook was a misguided attempt, instead of zagging. it wen t and battled with iPad squarely without the 10x improvement or any unfair advantage.
In summation, i think the rank of problem of RIM's tablet strategy are: 1st: Wrong angle of attack, 2nd: platform friction , (close)3rd: key features weren't in the MVP.
Consider that the Blackberry tablets are a completely different OS than Blackberry phones. Not having email on a BB is just another example of RIM making RIM-like-decisions
>Consider that the Blackberry tablets are a completely different OS than Blackberry phones.
At the moment. QNX will eventually be on the phones as well, but RIM is dragging their feet about getting it there.
Another common theme from the Blackberry fanatics I know is that they're all at the very least waiting for QNX phones before they get another Blackberry, and most of them have just given up and switched to iOS or Android at this point.
It seems puzzling to me that you would count QNX against the Playbook when you take that into consideration.
Yeah, I realize as I kept reading that the conclusion I reached may be the same as Gates but for entirely different reasons. I would fear any tablet that launches without email because (for me and everyone I've ever met) Emailing is Use Case #1. It sounds like Gates feared the launch because it didn't align with current revenue.
This confirms what I've suspected for a while. Microsoft is very afraid of disrupting its main business, which may actually lead to their downfall, if the process hasn't already started because of their slow reaction to the touchscreen devices market.
Contrast this with Apple or Google, who aren't afraid to build another OS that is more forward looking, and may even end up replacing their main one down the line (iOS in Apple's case, Chrome OS in Google's case).
except Google and Apple don't make money off of an OS. For MS Windows is the product. For Apple it's the experience, and for Google the OS is a means to get you to their website/services without interference.
It makes me kind of sad that we won't see something like the Courier. The biggest problem with the current tablet market is that it's the iPad and a bunch of devices that are emulating the iPad - they're all dumb-terminal content-consumption devices, basically. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it isn't a full computer-replacement experience (no matter how much Apple wants you to believe it is).
A tablet form-factor device geared at content creation would fill a major gap in the tablet market, I think. My iPad is great for watching Netflix in bed or for reading Flipboard feeds on the can, but using it to create anything longer than a 2-sentence reply to an email is just a chore. A "digital notebook" would be a really welcome addition to the market space. Something that would let me take notes, write easily, capture and annotate photos, tinker with design tools, or maybe even write code on the go, which could then be easily transferred back and forth between my workstation and "notebook" would get my money in a heartbeat.
The closest analog is the Macbook Air, not the iPad, but I think there's a place between the Air and the tablet that we could see some neat progress in.
Although this could have been a really good product Bill Gates made the right call. This would have just fragmented Windows further by the sounds of it. Sinofsky's plan for Windows 8 to essentially make it work on PC's and Tablets looks good. And it is something MS has wanted to do for a long time. They've been putting full Windows on tablets for years but he has finally delivered an interface that will make it work.
I don't see how this was even a dilemma to Microsoft. The market for what is essentially a digital scrap book could have in no way justified it. Seriously, what percentage of the population would actually benefit from this functionality?
Companies like Microsoft don't get into a market unless it's worth billions.
To me the courier was a cool device, very confusing because some "pages" were browsers, some were note pads, some were image editors -- there were no clear boundaries, but it was still cool none the less.
I feel that Steve Jobs would have went along with the idea of courier and not worry so much about their flagship os. Well, thats what happen with IOS. This makes me wonder how Gates and Jobs would have run Apple and MS if they were put in charge of the opposing team in 2005.
Well iOS has been around in public since 2007, and it is certainly a flagship OS. Unlike whatever would go onto the Courier, iOS is arguably Apple's most important OS.
Why did they work on the Courier in the first place? Couldn't Bill have asked if it supports e-mail before the project had hundreds of people assigned to it?
Did you read the article? The Courier was VERY MUCH alive. Over 130 employees working on it with custom hardware prototypes and many systems very far along. It was certainly... killed.
Instead, there is the criticism that Microsoft is not enough like Apple (and a focus on personalities).
When manufacturers don't see a way to build and sell dual screen tablets at a profit, Microsoft won't sell much of the software to run them. It is not as if Microsoft doesn't have the enough experience as a hardware provider to evaluate the economics of going it alone versus partnering with the electronics industry. And partnering with the electronics industry rather than competing as a manufacturer has - with the exception of the XBOX in a market dominated by proprietary hardware - been a highly successful course.
Finally, it is not as if the design decisions underlying the courier are dead - a viable dual screen tablet is still as plausible today as it was when the iPad started shipping and there is no reason such a device could not run with a Metro interface or that the technology developed as part of the Courier project could not be incorporated.
What was killed was a project which required forking the Windows roadmap in ways analogous to past Microsoft decisions and which led to Windows Mobile becoming a dead end overnight - never mind that a mobile device without email probably would have been stillborn.