I Really want a . . . . Microsoft Product

Shock horror right?

But the Microsoft Courier is just damn nice, the UI “seems” to make sense in the videos, how it works on hardware I admit I’m a little dubious about because flicking an image from one screen to another with a plastic hinge in the middle might not work so well.

But I’ve been thinking about it and it’s probably the first Microsoft product I’ve ever wanted, sure I used to use Windows, but thats only due to me not knowing the alternatives.

There are plenty of posts out there saying, Apple will kill the Courier, the Courier will kill the iPad, drown drown drown, I don’t care what you people think!!! Anyone who claims a product will kill another product is going to be wrong, Android for instance, will it kill the iPhone? No, but will the iPhone kill Android? No, there is a market for different products for different people, it’s the same with the iPad and the courier.

iPad, along with the iPhone and iPod, is a media device, you can listen to your music, watch tv, read your books, look on the web, the kind of things you want to do for fun, in your spare time, it’s fun, and there are people who want exactly this. As soon as the iPad comes out I’m taking my mum out to get her one so she can watch twillight, read the twillight e-book, listen to the twillight soundtrack and then read the online twillight excert (Shes a bit obsessed with twillight at the moment). But if the courier was out, would I recommend it to her? Hell no, it’s not what she wants, me however, I want one, I want to be able to write out my ideas, draw sketches and organise myself quickly and easily without having to keep track of paper. So why the courier, why not the ipad? Because the courier has 2 screens, it can perform 2 application tasks at the same time, and that is exactly what you need for the sorts of thing you would want to use the courier for.

The ipad would need an app that could split the screen, create the applications within the app which the courier has to offer, implement text recognition (One thing I’m worried about with Courier I admit), then keep the UI nice and responsive. Can this be done? Obcourse, but the Courier is designed for it, and I can really see where it comes down to alot of UI changes and alot of hardware changes.

If Microsoft don’t bring this out, simple, I will go out, buy myself an MSI and start me up a lovely new linux distro, or have a go at putting Android on it to take full advantage of the intent structure Google has already built.

There are a few things that concern me though, the original video had some really nice graphics on the UI, but they have changed in the second (Latest) video to less attractive colour scheme. Not terrible, but not as good (in my opinion) they also added a shot of contacts in a cover flow effect. Apple did cover flow, I thought ooo this is fancy looking, but then I got bored, and never used it since, please don’t add this is, its a pain to go through, so just don’t do it.

Nice UI - Intelligent UI - Solid Implementation

p.s. I really would like to see a moleskin cover for the courier (Don’t know what I just like the moleskin look/branding)