Microsoft’s Ballmer Will Not Be Showing “Courier” Slate PC at CES Opening Tonight
As much as BoomTown likes a good computer tablet faceoff, sources with knowledge of the situation said that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will not be whipping out the secret “Courier” slate PC, which the company has been noodling on, in his keynote speech opening the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas tonight. Instead, he will be showing off a new Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) slate that runs Microsoft (MSFT) software.
Last night, the New York Times reported that the software giant would do so in a blog post titled: “Microsoft and H.P. to Reveal Slate PC Ahead of Apple.”
Apple (AAPL) will be launching its much heralded slate at an event in San Francisco Jan. 27, as All Things Digital has previously reported.
The Apple device is garnering the expected flood of hype, of course. So don’t expect Ballmer to pointlessly go against the tide of this particular tsunami, thereby painting its slate efforts as also-ran.
Instead, his speech will more likely focus on the company’s new Windows 7 operating system, cloud computing, portable and mobile devices and Microsoft’s “software plus services” motto.
While Ballmer might talk about a range of products related to Microsoft, and there will be multiform hardware shown, including multitouch, tablet-type devices, there will be no grand showing of the one called the Courier, which Microsoft is reportedly working on with HP.
Hence the possible confusion over the PC slate.
Now please go back to gushing over the Apple iSlate ad nauseum!
Comments
After years of conjecture and delays in coming to market, I can think of no more appropriate name for Apple's tablet than IsLate.
Posted by Ike Pigott at January 6th, 2010 at 8:16 pmhow can something unannounced be late?
Posted by Tofino at January 6th, 2010 at 8:26 pmThat is too bad. While both devices are still rumors, the courier sounds so much more interesting than an islate.
Posted by facebook-193305627 at January 6th, 2010 at 8:55 pmIt has LONG been speculated and fawned over.
The lack of an “Apple tablet” even spurred Michael Arrington to expend considerable time and energy developing a “CrunchPad,” which veered away from launch and into possible litigation.
Posted by Ike Pigott at January 6th, 2010 at 9:59 pmThe rumored 10-inch Apple tablet is not late, that is absurd. It's a fantasy. It is 100% conjecture and 0% delays in coming to market. Apple hasn't even announced anything, let alone set a ship date.
Not only that, Apple's tablet line is almost 3 years old, and includes the most successful tablet computer ever in the iPod touch, and the fastest-growing consumer device ever in the iPhone. And they have over 100,000 tablet apps already. The 10-inch tablet, if it exists, will likely ship with version 4 of Apple's tablet OS, version 9 of their desktop management software, and version 3.3 or 4 of their desktop class developer tools, which run on version 10.6 of their desktop OS. Google's tablet OS is at 2.1, Palm's at 1.1, and neither has desktop management software or desktop class developer tools at all yet.
So it is everybody else who is late to the tablet party, not Apple. The big problem that people in the tech industry keep talking about regarding Apple is how they are too far ahead of everyone else. The talk is “can everybody else catch up?” not “Apple is late.”
Posted by Hamranhansenhansen at January 6th, 2010 at 10:15 pm…and once again, Apple's vaunted legion of fans shows its loyalism, dogged determination, and inability to understand a joke.
Posted by Ike Pigott at January 6th, 2010 at 10:21 pmThe Courier is not a rumor, it's a product concept direct from the manufacturer. The Apple tablet is a rumor. You have to at least wait until there is a photo of the Apple tablet and a brief description of how it works to have an even footing for making a comparison.
Posted by Hamranhansenhansen at January 6th, 2010 at 10:29 pmWell, in case of apple, you can only assume since they never make any pre-announcements. They just come out with the device whenever they want to. I don't think that works well with preparedness of business who want to plan ahead for upcoming software/hardware changes/upgrades etc.
Posted by lotharkumar at January 6th, 2010 at 11:50 pmConsidering many businesses are running Windows XP, Office 2003, and even Internet Explorer 6, firmly situating themselves in 1990's style computing, there is really no reason they need pre-announcements of new products from Apple.
The iPhone was Apple's most pre-announced product ever, announced in January 2007 and not shipping until June 2007, yet the big multinational where I'm consulting right now did not start supporting it until late 2008. And even then, the reason they started doing that was because so many users had just brought in their own iPhones and stopped using their company-issued Blackberry devices.
Business I-T is totally reactive, not proactive. Business is always way, way behind consumers. This is true even in PC's. The Mac came out in 1984 and Bill Gates himself has said that business resisted the GUI until 10 years later. WordPerfect, with all of its key commands and non-WYSIWYG was the business standard in 1992, 7 years after WYSIWYG Word on the Mac.
It's only if you focus solely on what Microsoft is putting out (always 10 plus years behind) and ignore the rest of the industry that you think business I-T is engaged in any planning for the future. What they are actually doing in many, many cases is planning how they will navigate Microsoft's licensing minefield and massive technical failures. There are very few business I-T people actively looking for and deploying actual solutions.
So whatever Apple releases this year is not going to be “business-ready” (LOL) for a few years no matter what. Pre-announcing 6 months earlier has no relevance.
Posted by Hamranhansenhansen at January 7th, 2010 at 1:11 amTo be funny a joke has to be true. Apple is the only exception to the tech industry routine of shooting their mouths off and not following through. So you missed your mark by a wide margin and got called on it.
Dismissing me as an Apple fan doesn't help. I have a favorable opinion of Apple because they contributed very much to making my I-T consultant charges over the past decade come out at an even zero dollars, even as my colleagues who use Windows paid tens of thousands of dollars to “enjoy” a kind of virus safari. Because I do freelance work, I see what I'm missing all the time, I see downed Windows boxes and frustrated users running archaic software that cannot even survive on the Internet. It's so bad that I now take my own 1.3 kilo Mac to jobs and run circles around everybody there and I'm asked back again and again because my employers like my high productivity. So I'm not only saving money from reduced I-T costs, I'm making money from improved productivity compared to Windows users. So the idea that people with a favorable opinion of Apple are fanatics is asinine. It's the people who continue to use what doesn't work that are the fanatics. (I'm looking in the general direction of the 80% of Windows users who are still on XP.)
Posted by Hamranhansenhansen at January 7th, 2010 at 2:09 amDoes Microsoft even have a viable mobile platform anymore? Companies have been dumping Windows Mobile for Android. It's likely they're not going back to Windows even when WinMo 7 comes out late this year. They can get Android for free so why bother.
Those HP machines are nice. I liked that convertible notepad. The first thing I heard about it was “Why is it so expensive?” Well, good luck, HP. It's going to be a hard sell to the cheapsters, no matter how good it is.
Posted by constableodo at January 7th, 2010 at 3:45 amDamn this is bad news. I was quite excited there for a minute!
I wish Apple and MS would put me out of my mysery and show the Courier and iSlate or whatever they intend to be called.
The best one wins my custom!
Posted by joey_t at January 7th, 2010 at 9:44 pmI guess Microsoft is really not ready with Courier, and I guess news of Apple coming out with a new tablet is a rumor too unless it is announed. Until then, lets read rumors.
Posted by Mark A at January 7th, 2010 at 10:48 pmwhy are people still confusing hardware with software and companies with individual people? Even in this day and age when a mac = pc (even though the mac has always been a personal computer).
Posted by anthonyalexander at January 27th, 2010 at 4:16 amSorry to hear this news!
Posted by Remove Spyware at August 8th, 2010 at 2:36 pm