Microsoft Also Has a Secret Tablet Project, But Get This — It Has a Pen!

By

courier8

Un-fuckin-believable. Like Apple, Microsoft is also secretly developing a multitouch tablet, according to this report on Gizmodo.

But where Apple’s device will be designed for your fingers, Microsoft’s includes a pen! WTF? Is this the nineties? Has Microsoft learned nothing from the iPhone at all?

Yeah, Apple’s tablet will also support a pen. For detailed graphics work, and maybe even text input, a pen will work better than your fingers, but the primary input device?

Says Giz:

“The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style. It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications.”

Microsoft’s tablet is actually a dual-screen booklet, very much like the OLPC XO-2 design concept that made the rounds last year (and I personally was hoping would be Apple’s secret “Brick project).

Codenamed Courier, it has two multitouch 7-inch screens joined by a central hinge, which has a single iPhone-like “Home” button. It’s a late prototype, Giz says, and may have nifty hardware features like inductive pad charging.

But if you have to use a pen to control it, it’s fucked.

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