Oh dear (1)

Posting will be very light for the next couple of weeks.

By the time it picks up, we'll know all about Microsoft's Origami project. But based on the news from Intel's Developers Conference, there are some pretty big clues.

I don't think it looks anything special. And in UI tests with XP (which doesn't really support a scalable UI) it looked pretty bad I understand - everything too small to really use properly. That might improve with Vista, but that's another day. Battery life of 3 hours + will not cut it for uses people might imagine it for.

It does seem a classic problem of having a device designed essentially by committee (Intel + MS + insert PC manufacturer here).

But Apple could be easily poised to nail this market. It will now be easy for it to use the same Intel chips in a tablet Mac which could fit very well into it's offerings. Also, it has the Inkwell technology in Mac OS X already (from Newton). Whichever way the Origami product turns out, I think Apple will do it better very quickly. Whether that's innovation, copying (or just MS releasing something before it's ready) is for the world to judge.