This reminds me of MS introduction of tablets and Windows Media Center, where both were unable to support a mainstream use case, whether due to technology not being ready, or simply not thinking the use case through so as to create a UI to match it,
Battery life looks to be a technology issue here. Cell phones, PDAs/smartphones, and even MP3 players now regularly reach double-digit hours in battery life, and is becoming the expectation of the mainstream user for things that are truly take-anywhere mobile. Part of the failure could be 802.11g's power usage but MS chooses to go to market rather than wait until 802.11n's low power mode is ready,
Having said that Origami will "change your life", and given that it's not pocketable, I hope MS has a real life-changing use case, and a UI to go with it instead of just a cramped Windows UI.
People say MS isn't innovative. I say they are; they just don't know what people (not geeks) want, and are unwilling to wait until all the pieces are ready to market/sell it.
Geeks are a much-hyped and much-undeserved target population as far as marketing goes. Do you really want to try to sell products suffering from featuritis to the ordinary person? Does having lots of little buttons and a thousand ways of doing something provide any function except as UI maze for bored people with too little going on in their lives? Honestly, I'm tired of "geek this" and "geek that", when most geeks are simply infants on crack who love flashy lights and sublime their power issues by mastering pointless excesses in technology. What will Origami do for me -- as someone who has sets of tasks to achieve -- not someone who will spend hours pushing buttons simply to push buttons?
Commenting by HaloScan
