So the Zune HD’s been out for ten days (Engadget’s got a pretty comprehensive review), and it seems to be doing pretty gosh darn well on Amazon, but Microsoft’s got more cookin’ in the back while everyone’s…zuning out.
In case you haven’t heard the gossip, Courier’s the name of Microsoft’s secret tablet, and it’s the first gadget with potential to replace my volumes of Moleskines as a pen booklet, not tablet. Gizmodo seems to be the only source with details so far since PCWorld, HuffPost, CNET—you name it—all credit or link back to the G, yet despite the three-day-old announcement, there is already a Courier fan page.
The artist in me squeals.
Next up: with all these smart phones on the market, how can Microsoft not join in on the popularity contest, right? Code-named Project Pink, here are the first phone prototypes, Turtle and Pure.
The fun thing about having prototypes leaked is, now Microsoft isn’t allowed to disappoint! hah. These gadgets have to be as cool as all the hype and renderings make them out to be. (Fail and go bury your face in shame.)
Despite my Apple fandom and refusal to use a PC (except in dire CAD modeling circumstances), I’m also a huge Microsoft fan, because they are true visionaries who think beyond the computer or the typical gadget. I’ve posted Microsoft’s vision of 2019 before and I’ll post it again:
Heck, I could watch it on repeat.
The Taiwanese company I worked for in the summer has two floors of “intelligent living spaces” featuring technologies much like the Microsoft Surface, and just recently, our Project Manager told me that Living 3.0 (our company) was collaborating with Taiwan’s Microsoft, because they also had a smaller-scale intelligent living model home with similar concepts (like touchscreen panels on fridges that bust out recipes for you based on what’s inside). That’s what blows my mind. I’m pretty sure other tech companies aren’t building their own model homes for full-scale ideations and research. This is the field that merges my interests—architecture, product design, tech innovation—and this field is more fresh than those prototypes shown above, newer than web 2.0, more exciting than the latest trending topics on Twitter (IMO), and for that, I adore Microsoft.