“Do you remember Microsoft’s top secret Couriet tablet project? It was a dual screen, book-like tablet first leaked well before Apple unveiled the iPad, created by J. Allard, the mind behind Microsoft’s fantastic Xbox console,” John Brownlee reports for Cult of Mac.
MacDailyNews Take: It was vapor. A 3-D animation. As we told you the very day it “leaked.” Buzz Lightyear is more real; at least there are plastic dolls and stuffed toys – physical objects claiming to be him that actually exist. But, we’ll play along.
Brownlee continues, “So what happened to the Courier? Why wasn’t it released? It all came down to the fact that Bill Gates had an ‘allergic reaction’ to the project because it didn’t run Outlook.”
“Allard at least had a cohesive vision for the Courier: it wasn’t about being a laptop or smartphone replacement, it was about being a device for media consumption and creation,” Brownlee writes. “Sound familiar? Allard had identified the core tablet idea that Apple ended up embracing for the iPad… and Microsoft axed the project, even though if Allard had been allowed to continue, Microsoft and Apple might have reached market with similarly exciting devices at the exact same time.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Brownlee must be taking advanced yoga to be able to stretch like that. Regardless, his timeline is severely warped. There’s no way Courier could have debuted alongside iPad.
The video of vapor classified as “Courier” was “leaked” to Gizmodo on September 23, 2009. (By the way, ex-Microsoftie Robbie Bach has since confirmed that ‘Courier’ was vaporware.) iPad was unveiled by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on January 27, 2010.
No company, Microsoft especially, can go from a vaporous video “leaked” in a sad attempt to freeze a market that they knew Apple was about to create (the extent of which was unknown even to Apple) to a shippable (even with Microsoft’s low standards) product in four short months. Microsoft couldn’t even do it in four years. At Microsoft, you’ve performed a miracle if you can get a font change made on a trade show handout in four months. To top it all off, Steve Jobs himself said that iPad was conceived long ago, years prior to iPhone’s 2007 debut, and put on hold while Apple concentrated first on iPhone (and iPod touch) before returning to tackle the iPad.
Nothing could have saved Microsoft from iPad, certainly not a freaking video that Microsoft in their laughable hubris thought would be able to freeze a market while they waited, as usual, for Apple to show them what the hell to do next.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Not only it was vaporware. Even if it would not, then still it would be failure, since it would highly pricey and impractical, according to presented design.
At least their big ass table will be everywhere soon… yeah?
I believe “big ass table” will be everywhere soon. Only problem for Microsoft is, they will be running iOS (i.e., Apple TV). The MS Surface Computers will follow WinTablets and WinPhones into a recycle bin.
M$ has been selling them for quite some time…
Yes, the very unexpected $500 iPad price announcement, together with its slick design, were the major factors that sent everybody back to the drawing boards, initially at least. Imitating takes time.
If the Xbox was so “exciting”, why did it take years of big losses before it started to do well? Any company without a big monopoly money-machine like the 80% margin Office and Windows would have rolled up and died before turning the first black ink.
Windows took years and 3 versions before it was even usable, much less profitable. Never underestimate MS’s ability to hump the corpse until it starts breathing again.
At least for a little while.
Eww… thanks for that image. 😛
haaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. ChrissyOne, OMG you just made me blurp my coffee.
Nice turn of phrase! It fits in so many ways…
+1 for style and 100 for bonus. LOL.
The XBOX has an amazing system design architecture but was built very cheaply and with some portions of the physical design being done by people without the experience (the GPU connection to the motherboard specifically). This led to the RROD happening on almost 100% of all units built in the early days (years!), aside from other technical problems like flaky DVD-ROM’s etc.. It took years for these problems to get fixed and that was the reason for the great losses over a few years.
MS cut corners and it cost them in a way they could never have imagined. If they could have released the XBOX 360 slim as it is built today in 2005, it would have been a work of genius and a huge success from the beginning. Aside from these technical build flaws, the system architecture was way ahead its time.
It is very exciting. Way beyond any iPad games, and I love my iPad.
Aside from these physical, XBOX is a gem ion
That piece of shit would’ve arrived a year or two after the iPad’s debut and been more expensive with half the battery life. Bill Gates pressing “Cancel” on that stinker was a favor to Microsoft. I actually wanted to see the Courier hit the market, fail miserably and crush the hearts of all those tech blog geeks while iPad mania exploded unabated right in their pasty faces. Instead it lives on mythologically thanks to asshats like the writer of that article.
Well said, one and all
Bill Gates had an ‘allergic reaction’ to the project because it didn’t run Outlook?
Wow, too bad Microsoft doesn’t have… I dunno… programmers or something.
I’m not buying that Bill Gates was involved. He left the CEO position to Ballmer and has shaken the dust of that place from his coat.
All he cares about anymore is that their checks to him are on time and don’t bounce.
Maybe it didn’t need a stylus? After, Bill likes the feel of a stylus in his hand 😉
Your smiley indicates a deeper meaning, something along the lines of “needle-dick the bug fscker?”
Hahaha! What an elaborate excuse. Oh and don’t forget the X-Box was a POS for years with a failure rate that would have bankrupt most companies that doesn’t have a monopoly to fall back to. Most legit companies would have dumped that POS after the first billion lost! Heck most companies would stop after a few hundred million. Not MS. We’re willing to blow our WADS in billions before we give up! Never give up, never surrender (specially when we know we can’t run out of money…ever)! Heehee
If Microsoft had produced the Courier before iPad, we could all be writing about how Allard got the idea from Apple’s Knowledge Navigator, circa mid 90s. The “idea” is not particularly new, it was the determination by Steve Jobs and Apple to actually work out all the problems to actually bring it to fruition. One has to completely close one’s mind and analytical reasoning to be able to cobble together a piece of tripe like that story.
“to completely close one’s mind and analytical reasoning” — there’s an epidemic of that going around in the analysts’ circles these days.
Bill Gates had an ‘allergic reaction’ to the project because it didn’t run Outlook?
…must have been an Outlook attachment with Flash that killed it !
Brownlee is an idiot if he thinks that a tablet without an email client could have challenged iPad. Gates was incredulous that Allard would even have considered such a thing, that users would have to use a separate device to access email, a BASIC FUNCTION for a mobile, Internet-connected device. Gates was right to kill it, and it’s instructive that Allard and Robbie Bach left Microsoft soon afterward. There’s no question in my mind that he lost confidence in them and forced them out.
Just a thought, but email client is software. You can always come out with an updated version and add it. Web software first then Outlook.
Its the concept of LOOKING AHEAD with an open mind that is killing Microsoft. They just cannot do it. Tweaks are one thing, moving forward is another.
Just a thought,
en
MS lost a bright mind when J. Allard left.
They pretty much pissed the guy off when they forced him to dump Project Pink, started over from scratch and brought in Windows developers. The Kin was what resulted.
He was probably the only forward thinking exec at MS who was not lost in the forest of “Windows” and actually knew a thing or two about industrial design.
He also pulled off a likely first at MS, he made a product that did not rely on Windows or Office (XBox, XBox 360) that succeeded (eventually).
red ring of death, sounds like a jet engine.. yea real forward thinking. obtuse msofty points instead of cash to buy DLC.
more like half assed typical msft thinking.
They def had some real QC issues with the xenon and even tge falcon mobo revisions.
They did however make the first online network for consoles that really took off and the xbox did not rely on windows to make a sale. That is what was good about Allard. He was capable of thinking outside the typical MS exec koolaid bowl
But wasn’t XBox built on a special version of Windows ported (originally) to PPC G5 (on Power Macs no less) and then on Cell processors (a PPC variant)?
Gates didn’t kill it. The project will resume as soon as the tablet finishes rebooting (again).
+1
But then.. after it reboots.. 15 more updates will have been posted.. and the process will continue.. forever, and forever…
My favorite via Gizmodo: Courier: First Details of Microsoft’s Secret Tablet
My favourite part, stated with absolute certainty, by this amazingly thorough, “investigative journalist” :
“Courier is a real device, and we’ve heard that it’s in the “late prototype” stage of development. “
Perhaps if one is willing to to report with certitude that something is real, one should ensure that it is … um … real.
So, does XBOX have Outlook?
Does Courier have Flash?
EPIC FAIL !!!!!
RIM has proven your tablet doesn’t need a mail client to be successful (sarcasm).
From the article, “At one point during that meeting in early 2010 at Gates’ waterfront offices in Kirkland, Wash., Gates asked Allard how users get e-mail. Allard, Microsoft’s executive hipster charged with keeping tabs on computing trends, told Gates his team wasn’t trying to build another e-mail experience. He reasoned that everyone who had a Courier would also have a smartphone for quick e-mail writing and retrieval and a PC for more detailed exchanges. Courier users could get e-mail from the Web, Allard said, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
But the device wasn’t intended to be a computer replacement; it was meant to complement PCs.
Courier users wouldn’t want or need a feature-rich e-mail application”
Utter nonsense. The Palm Folio and the Blackberry Playbook were complementary devices and they both failed. Clearly Gates was right and Jallard was a fool.
Further, the only thing special about the Courier was its dual panels, which is hardly a unique idea, ala Knowledge Navigator. Even I kept proposing a folding iPhone for a 5″ screen, ala two 3.5″ screens folded, long before the Courier concept. Then, the OLPC2 has folding screens. There is nothing unique about Courier, and they were nowhere near solving the hinge problem. If they had, wouldn’t we have heard about some patents being filed? Or maybe no one tracks Microsoft patents like they do Apple patents.
A hinged-screen tablet is exactly what The Guide was in its 2005 big-screen incarnation…
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371724/
So for anyone at Microsoft to say it was their concept in 2009 would just be laughable.
Is it murder when there is no life?
There was nothing to kill in courier. It was just pictures.
I just watched the new concept videos from Microsoft and RIM. They had more than enough “gee whiz” but useless video effects, but I was struck that the core ideas are largely achievable today with my iPad and iPhone (with much less clunky UX). They can’t even well imagine the present day. The only future I see is Apple unchallenged.
When was it that Ballmer showed a tablet? Was it 07 at CES JUSTbefore Apple unveiled the iPhone?
It doesn’t matter who is first on the market. Real player anyone?
The company with the best user experience rises to the top chosen by consumers.
All else is B.S.
Does this whole article sound like utter horse-crap to anybody else? I’m just not buying ANY of it…
Practically everything Apple ever introduced was shown to Bill Gates early on. The only ones he copied were the GUI OS (extremely badly) and the iPod (extremely late)- everything else he dismissed as having no future, both when he got the advance viewing, and when it was released. And he was of course completely wrong about everything… money can’t buy a competitor as stupid as that.
Thats right.
Gates always believed in tablet computing he just couldn’t wrap his head around how you could have a tablet with no keyboard or stylus.
It was like the GUI was “done” as far as he was concerned and every tablet plan he put together revolved around bending the hardware to fit the GUI as designed for a mouse. It never occurred to him to “re-think” the concept of interacting with the GUI.
It may prove to be the wonderboy’s biggest folly and MS’s EPIC failure that makes them truly irrevelant in the future.
Might, would’ve, could’ve, if, didn’t.
Typical Microsoft, “don’t but that competitors product, look over here at this shiny concept, that we’ve been working on for years (honestly) and will release soon.”
Concept videos are Microsoft’s way of freezing the market so that they can have time to bring their ‘solution’ to market.
If you look back at the iPad’s first advert, if you didn’t know better, it does look like a concept video.
Except it wasn’t, it was a shipping product.
Indeed.
The “freeze-the-market”-tactic stopped working sometime between the original iPhone presentation and the sale of the first iPad, though.
Microsoft’s freeze the market tactic stopped working when apple started aggressively pursuing the USERS of technology and stopped worrying about IT buyers.
I can only assume this article is a wind up but only goes to show how history can and frequently is re written. Difficult to run Outlook when you dont even have an OS that would have worked on it in any usable manner of course.
Well, we’ll always have Windows ‘Slates’, won’t we Ballmy
It’s just a gadget…..LOL
“fantastic Xbox console”?!?! I got one of these POS as a gift and it died from overheating and had to be replaced. Then the replacement started dying and I didn’t even bother wasting postage to send it in anymore.