CourierTablet
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Microsoft shutters Pioneer Studios, we pour one out for J Allard
It's been about a year since he left Microsoft, but the J Allard era came to a more definitive close yesterday, with the shuttering of his brainchild, Pioneer Studios. Microsoft opened the incubation lab more than three years ago as an entrepreneurial space where designers could toy around with new consumer technologies. The tragically shelved Courier tablet was first developed within Pioneer's exposed brick walls, where Allard and his Alchemy Ventures team also worked on the Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone 7. Now, however, a Microsoft spokeswoman has confirmed that the downtown Seattle office is no longer occupied, telling CNET that many of the lab's employees have either left, or moved on to different positions within the company. Pioneer co-founder Georg Petschnigg left Microsoft in April to pursue an "undisclosed new venture," while fellow godfather Jonathan Harris is still at Redmond, where he serves as "principle experience director," according to their respective LinkedIn profiles. The spokeswoman didn't offer a specific reason for the decision, but in a now-ominous video posted to Microsoft's developer site back in October, Petschnigg acknowledged that the unit's innovative spirit would frequently lead to dead ends. "Often times our work just doesn't go anywhere," he explained, adding that Pioneer would only pursue projects expected to bring in more than $100 million a year. "That's one of the perils of being an entrepreneur." See the full video after the break.
Microsoft: Windows Phone 7 not planned to hit tablets, Courier was always a concept
Microsoft has been all over Computex this week, and we caught a few minutes with the software giant's OEM vice pres Steve Guggenheimer (aka the Guggs) after his keynote this afternoon. Obviously, tablets were top of mind for us and he reinforced that Microsoft plans to push Windows 7 hard for the category, just as we have recently heard. "People are looking for a premium experience and the benefit of Windows familiarity," he said. When we asked him about Windows Phone 7 scaling up into the larger-screened devices or even a tablet version of Windows 7, he was quite firm in saying that the current PC offering is the platform of choice. He cited netbooks being the record for the company, and that people want to use slates not only for "content consumption," but also creation. On the other hand, Microsoft also has its Embedded Compact 7 for ARM-based tablets and devices. Lastly, we couldn't let Guggs talk about tablets without answering our questions about the Courier. As we have previously heard, he cited that the dualscreen tablet has always been a concept for the company. To paraphrase, he said that Microsoft's constantly envisioning new platforms to see what flows. Well, that's that then.
Microsoft's Courier 'digital journal': exclusive pictures and details (update: video!)
We've been dying to know more about Microsoft's Courier tablet / e-book device ever since we first caught wind of it last September, and while our entreaties to Mr. Ballmer went unanswered, we just learned some very interesting information from an extremely trusted source. We're told Courier will function as a "digital journal," and it's designed to be seriously portable: it's under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn't much bigger than a 5x7 photo when closed. That's a lot smaller than we expected -- this new picture really puts it into perspective -- and the internals apparently reflect that emphasis on mobility: rather than Windows 7, we're told the Courier is built on Tegra 2 and runs on the same OS as the Zune HD, Pink, and Windows Mobile 7 Series, which we're taking to mean Windows CE 6. As we've heard, the interface appears to be pen-based and centered around drawing and writing, with built-in handwriting recognition and a corresponding web site that allows access to everything entered into the device in a blog-like format complete with comments. We're also hearing that there will be a built-in camera, and there's a headphone jack for media playback. Most interestingly, it looks like the Courier will also serve as Microsoft's e-book device, with a dedicated ecosystem centered around reading. It all sounds spectacular, but all we have for a launch date is "Q3 / Q4", and we have no idea how much it's going to cost, so we're trying to maintain a healthy skepticism until any of this gets official -- call us any time, Microsoft. One more pic showing the interface after the break. Update: We've added a gallery of user interface shots -- some of which we've seen and some of which are new. Update 2: We've just gotten two full-length HD videos of the interface in action. We've seen parts of these before, but there's some new stuff here that's quite interesting. Check it below. %Gallery-87492%
Microsoft Courier interface explained in more detail
Steve Ballmer might have no idea what's going on with the Microsoft Courier tablet, but a new set of documents leaked to Gizmodo certainly suggests the product is more than just a couple videos the boss-man hasn't seen. The images detail the Courier's unique user interface, which draws on everything from multitouch gestures to pen-based handwriting recognition. The heart of the interface appears to be the Smart Agenda, pictured above, which pulls together all your disparate content like calendar entries, emails, and to-dos into one unified starting place, described as "Cliff Notes" to the Pagestream "novel." The journal itself appears to be searchable by all kinds of data, including time, location, and tags, and it's all accessed by a special multi-button pen. There's also a camera and an offhand mention of "boos and subscriptions," so it sounds like whoever was dreaming this all up considered using the Courier as an ebook reader as well -- which would be totally sweet, given the types of annotations you could do. Of course, none of this is real yet, but we're hoping against hope -- please, Mr. Steve, make our holiday dreams come true?
