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Finally! Microsoft Surface Neo And Surface Duo Implement Excellent Courier Idea

Long ago in 2009, Microsoft introduced what I thought was a marvelous idea, the Courier tablet computer prototype:


(Microsoft Courier tablet idea)

FINALLY, Microsoft is going to bring this idea to the marketplace with their extremely cool-looking Surface Neo and Surface Duo. Skip around in the video if you wish, this is a condensed version of the product introductions, with lots of highlights.


(Microsoft Surface Neo and Surface Duo)

The folio-style book, as opposed to a continuously scrolling papyrus, is an innovation that has stood the test of time, and has many advantages as an interface. Science fiction fans of course remember the original multi-page e-book; the fabulous Runcible from Neal Stephenson's 1995 novel The Diamond Age:

...Runcible, whose pages [smart paper] were thicker and more densely packed with computational machinery, each sheet folded four times into a sixteen-page signature, thirty-two signatures brought together in a spine that, in addition to keeping the book from falling apart, functioned as an enormous switching system and database.
(Read more about Stephenson's Runcible)

By the way, gentle reader, did you know that the two-sided tablet idea was actually introduced long before Microsoft Courier? Would you believe six years earlier, by Toshiba? Check out my earlier article Multi-Page E-Book Tablet Roundup so you'll be in-the-know, computer science history-wise.

You're welcome.

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