Before the tablet wars were in full affect, the tablet rumors wars raged on the Internet. Primary topics of conversation in this pre-iPad era were what Apple was doing with tablets (and what it would be called), the TechCrunch Tablet and the dual-screen Microsoft Courier. The CrunchPad, as it was going to be called, was usurped by Fusion Garage and turned into the JooJoo, a more or less terrible device that will live in infamy in the graveyard of devices gone by. Apple, as we know, has taken over the world with the iPad. The Courier? Abandoned by Microsoft before ever seeing the light of day.
Two developers miss what the Courier could have been. Together they started a group-funded Kickstarter project called Tapose to bring the defunct-Courier to the iPad. The app is expected to go live later this week. Check below for exclusive screenshots.
Tapose raised $26,561 from 1,274 developers using Kickstarter. Even our ReadWriteWeb Channels editor David Strom threw in $100 and offered advice to co-founder Benjamin Monnig. Monnig is an aerospace engineer for Boeing, working on glass cockpits for 737 airplanes.
Tapose, based off the word juxtapose, has a crazy amount of functionality. It is more or less like the team wanted to cram the whole Courier into an iPad. It has a word processor, wireless printing, a media browser, cloud functionality, internal app-like functions, a control hub, a “pencup” for making journal entries and doodles, a journal to go with that cup, a slide bar, drawing functions, sticky notes, lists, lasso-style media tool for cutting and pasting, collaboration tools, different types of paper backgrounds, business card sticky notes. If half of what Tapose has listed in its features page, it is automatically one of the most useful, productive apps ever created for the iPad. Based off these screenshots, it looks like there is a lot more.
The whole concept is based off of the notion that the Courier was a dual-screen tablet that could perform much like a laptop. Since the Courier project, we have seen several dual-screen smartphones, all of them beautifully confusing flops that did not work anything like intended. Tapose is intended to work by having two sides to an iPad app, giving users multi-tasking capabilities with the functionality of fully functional tablet.
The app was submitted to the Apple App Store on Monday, Dec. 5. A quick search of the app store does not show it available as of yet but it is expected to go live by the end of the week.
The whole thing is amusing. It will be doubly amusing if Tapose becomes one of the best selling apps on the App Store. Even the founders thought the concept was amusing, posting a humorous sketch on YouTube.
If you watched that skit all the way through, you have to be excited of what Tapose is going to bring to the world. Two guys with a crazy idea get group funded by more than a thousand people and launch one of the best apps (in theory) the world has ever seen? What is not to love about that story?
Are Drake and Monnig crazy? Or are they crazy enough to be absolutely brilliant? Let us know in the comments.
