TechTeeter

If Apple’s diversifying into female sanitary products business, Microsoft, not willing to be left behind, is making a bet on package delivery services. Last month, Apple introduced the much anticipated iPad. For some time we’ve been hearing about Microsoft’s new in-the-works tablet called Courier. Today, interesting photos and videos of Microsoft Courier appear in engadget.

Microsoft Courier

Although I have reservations about the split book-like design, some of the concepts really caught my eye. Having two independent screens is attractive particularly if you are used to working with more than one monitor at work. It lets you organize things a li’l better and interaction amongst multiple applications or entities becomes so much easier.

I am getting all warm-and-fuzzy thinking about an interface that supports a combination of pen and finger gestures. It seems quite a natural way to use the device. But, my engineer head tells me that the software to do that will be hard to pull off. There’s a reason iPhone kept it simple. Still, despite all its efforts, those styli are bloody hard to get rid of. Look for a very tempting application of them in the video where the artist uses them to mix colors on a palette.

Dealing with different kinds of media without going through arrays of menus is going to be more of a norm than exception.  It’s interesting to see some new takes on that here. From the looks of it, it tries to go a notch above handwriting recognition – it’s intention recognition. Put a box around a TODO list to convert it into a digital Post-it note of sorts. Flick the images around and it understands what to do with them. Again, all that seems cool in a video. How much of it happens it in reality, remains to be seen. I’ll be particularly surprised if Microsoft is able to crank out a smooth and seamless experience as shown. If they delivers this at all, that is.