What killed the Courier

CNet recently posted an excellent post-mortem for Microsoft’s ill-fated Courier tablet. Most of the discussion about the piece has centered on revelations about how Microsoft’s internal politics killed the project; indeed, it fits well into the standard narrative about Microsoft being hobbled by its own warring internal fiefdoms.

John Gruber picks up a throwaway line at the end of the article, that suggests each element of the Courier was assembled and designed separately, only to be bolted together in the last few weeks. Whether Gruber feels this rendered the ‘almost complete’ status of the Courier suspect, or feels this underlies Microsoft’s inability to understand good design (or both) is unclear. Either way, I don’t think it’s the key quote in the piece. To me, this incident is the most enlightening:

At one point during that meeting in early 2010 at Gates’ waterfront offices in Kirkland, Wash., Gates asked Allard how users get e-mail. Allard, Microsoft’s executive hipster charged with keeping tabs on computing trends, told Gates his team wasn’t trying to build another e-mail experience. He reasoned that everyone who had a Courier would also have a smartphone for quick e-mail writing and retrieval and a PC for more detailed exchanges. Courier users could get e-mail from the Web, Allard said, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

But the device wasn’t intended to be a computer replacement; it was meant to complement PCs. Courier users wouldn’t want or need a feature-rich e-mail application such as Microsoft’s Outlook that lets them switch to conversation views in their inbox or support offline e-mail reading and writing. The key to Courier, Allard’s team argued, was its focus on content creation. Courier was for the creative set, a gadget on which architects might begin to sketch building plans, or writers might begin to draft documents.

“This is where Bill had an allergic reaction,” said one Courier worker who talked with an attendee of the meeting. As is his style in product reviews, Gates pressed Allard, challenging the logic of the approach.

To me, this doesn’t just suggest that Microsoft was too slow to realise the opportunity the tablet market presented, and too worried about protecting its sacred cows.

Rather, Gates was right that device without native email was a non-starter; we only need look at the wreckage of the BlackBerry Playbook to be reminded of that. Whether or not users would really need it, they would expect it, and it would thus influence purchase decisions.

Indeed, the focus on designing a device for the creative set seems misplaced. Apple didn’t sell 40 million iPads by creating a device for a niche market; they did so by creating a device for everyone. Had the Courier launched, Microsoft may have had a beautifully designed product that sold moderately well within its target audience - but it wouldn’t have had sufficient widespread appeal to define the market in the way the iPad did.

Of course, the best solution would have been to have kept the Courier but have tweaked it to broaden its mass-market appeal, even if that did mean diluting the original design vision a little. It seems the choice as Microsoft was (until, arguably, Windows Phone 7) between mass-market blandness or great, niche, design. Apple’s success has been in delivering great design and mass-market appeal. It remains to be seen if, through creating Windows Phone, Microsoft will have learnt how to do this in Windows 8.