Apple simply doesn't make "concept vehicles" because it knows that a
concept divorced from reality is worthless. Engineers and industrial
designers get input into any "concepts" from day one to make sure these
kind of fiascos don't happen. Sure the Courier looked kinda cool, but so
do teleportation and handheld phasers.
What this shows is that the MS Courier was nothing more than an artist's
conception. (or concoction, depending on how you see it.) It had nothing
to do with real technology which could be manufactured and sold at a
reasonable price or you can bet the farm that MS would have throw a lot
of money at it. And hasn't that been the whole reason why MS tablets
have failed from day one? MS kept thinking that the tablet (and mobile in
general) would be an extension of their desktop ecosystem, but everyone
who considered a MS tablet just bought a laptop instead because it was
cheaper and better suited to the MS desktop ecosystem.
Apple redefined the tablet as an extension of the their mobile ecosystem
which completely changed the whole tablet game. I think when HP saw
the Apple tablet at $499 with the iPhone OS X instead of Mac OSX, they
said to themselves, ugh oh, we really do need to start from scratch, one
more Windows 7 tablet ain't gonna do squat.
And Kindle? You can argue till you are blue in face that e-ink is better,
but the iPad is going to steamroll Kindle by sheer numbers. A lot more
people will simply by e-books on the iPad because that's what they own,
not a Kindle. Amazon's best bet is to make the Kindle app the best cross
platform e-book reader/bookstore in the world.
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