Microsoft has made the decision to cancel Courier — the next-generation tablet that was in incubation at the company.On April 29,
Office 2010 Professional, Gizmodo was the first to report Microsoft;s decision. Corporate Vice President Frank Shaw gave me the same statement he gave to Giz:“At any given time, we;re looking at new ideas, investigating, testing,
Office Home And Business 2010 X86, incubating them. It;s in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.”I;m kind of surprised at the timing, given Microsoft recently confirmed to The New York Times what I;d been hearing for the past few months: That Courier was on track to hit the market in 2011+. Word is the conclusion to nix Courier happened in the past week or so.Courier was going to be a kind of “Franklin Covey planner on steroids,” according to early mock-ups of the product. Supposedly, Chief Experience Officer J Allard was the main mover and shaker behind the Courier project.Courier was an incubation project,
Microsoft Office 2010 Home And Business clave, meaning it was closer to being commercialized than a Microsoft Research project,
Office Pro Plus 2010 Activation Key, but not yet actually in the production pipeline.Microsoft has had — and continues to have — a number of incubation projects active at any given time. The Midori operating system project is another incubation project at the company. NetDocs — Microsoft;s precursor to Office Web Apps,
Office Pro 2010 Serial Key, which the company decided to kill in the early 2000;s — was another.I;m still expecting Microsoft to commercialize some of the technologies that comprised Courier at some point. Maybe they;ll show up as part of the Windows 8 or Windows 9 operating system. Who knows…Microsoft is not commenting on why the company decided to eliminate the Courier incubation. Theories, anyone?