MICROSOFT TO LAUNCH iPAD 'KILLER'?

Now rumors are starting to coalesce around the thing
being launched: a touchscreen tablet, manufactured
by Microsoft itself, running on Windows RT (a version
of Windows 8), intended to rival Apple's iPad.
Hollywood blog The Wrap cites "an individual with
knowledge of the company", who claims the software
giant would be "making a foray into a new hardware
category that would put the company in direct
competition with rival Apple" — tablets.
This would hardly be the first time Microsoft has tried
its hand at a tablet device. Indeed, its first tablet
preceded the iPad by the better part of a decade. But
it was a bulky laptop hybrid that required a stylus, to
which it wasn't very responsive.
Between 2008 and 2010, the company was said to be
working on a dual-touchscreen folding tablet — kind
of like a book — called "Courier."
But Microsoft management killed that project —
coincidentally, right around the time Steve Jobs
launched the first iPad. (The Courier team went on to
design the award-winning iPad notebook app, Paper.)