Microsoft Kills the Kin

adeelarshad82 writes "The Microsoft Kin is dead, or at least it doesn't have a future as a standalone product. Microsoft released a statement suggesting that it's cutting bait on the Windows Phone 7 spinoff and folding the project's staff and technologies into the main body of Windows Phone 7. For now, it seems like Verizon Wireless will continue to sell Kin phones. But with the Kin team essentially disbanded, it's hard to see future updates and support for the line being a priority within Microsoft."

Comments

Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

The Kin can be summed up with the following:

a.) Name was horrible and made no sense.
b.) What was the point of the device again?
c.) Ads were annoying and made no sense

So in essence this is just another typical Microsoft device. le'sigh.

Re:Not surprising

[lgw]

So this was basically the Zune of phones?

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, they expected people to walk into a store and chose this over, say, the Droid/Milestone or the Palm Pre Plus?

Re:Not surprising

[LanceUppercut]

Yes. Except that it did not have the huge sales numbers of Zune.

Re:Not surprising

[Brett Buck]

As noted last week:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1692376&cid=32634622&art_pos=7

      Only question - does the Kin come in "Feces Brown"?

Re:Not surprising

[Strudelkugel]

YABF - Yet Another Ballmer Flop.

When is the Microsoft board going to get a clue and send him off to pursue "personal interests"?

Then his kids will say "Can we get iPhones now?"

Re:Not surprising

[binarylarry]

Don't worry bro, Ballmer got rid of the real problems in the office.

Now that it's "all Ballmer, all the time" it's smooth sailing from here on out.

*sells all Microsoft stock*

Re:Not surprising

[RazorSharp]

Yes. Except that it did not have the huge sales numbers of Zune.

Triple digits would be quite a feat.

Re:Not surprising

[Captain Splendid]

*sells all Microsoft stock*

Don't forget to sell your stocks in chair manufacturers, too. He's only going to get to do that once, at home, before his wife rips him a new one.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymusing]

If Kin is dead, would Windows Phone 7 be the next of kin?

Re:Not surprising

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

d.) The hardware is ugly as sin. What the hell were they thinking?
e.) Why were they making it a separate OS platform to begin with? Is that just an admission that they couldn't modify any of their existing or in-development mobile platforms enough to accommodate the new features?

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

No, after this debacle, Zune is the Kin of media players.

Re:Not surprising

[Rinikusu]

d) I like the simplicity of their hardware. It's no EVO 4g, but it shouldn't have to be for a featurephone.
e) It's my understanding that, like the Zune, it's basically winmo 6.x with a skin. And winmo 6.x is dead dead dead.

Kinda like the HTC HD2. Nice hardware, but you know it's a dead-end out of the box. Kinda like some android phones, unfortunately.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Oi, my HTC Magic is running Android 2.1 thank you very much. Its not dead by any stretch of the imagination.

Re:Not surprising

[RobertM1968]

The Kin can be summed up with the following:

a.) Name was horrible and made no sense. b.) What was the point of the device again? c.) Ads were annoying and made no sense

So in essence this is just another typical Microsoft device. le'sigh.

Well, not debating whether the name was horrible or not, but it did make some sort of sense. KIN as in kinship or family and such... it does kinda work considering the "kinship" aspect of how it supposedly ties all it's various social networking features together to communicate with one's kin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin

Re:Not surprising

[MoxFulder]

Agreed on the ugliness. There's a reason that phones that look like this always suck:

What's the point of making it slide out at all??? When you're using it, it's bigger, uglier, and more awkward than a regular non-sliding Slate phone. When you're fumbling for it in your pocket, it's roughly squarish, so you never know which way is up. Humans like non-square aspect ratios (photos, display screens, book pages) for a reason... what a dumb design.

Also, what does this phone do that the way-less-hyped messaging phones from Japanese makers like Samsung can't do?

Re:Not surprising

[UnknowingFool]

From what I know the Kin wasn't a good product missing social features despite being marketed as a social phone.

• No apps or app store
• No calendar or way to sync a calendar
• No IM client even though the ROM supported AOL IM, MS IM, and Yahoo IM
• No spelling correction or corrective text
• No expansion slots
• Only syncs contacts with Facebook and Hotmail directly but not Yahoo. Gmail is through a workaround

The Zune was a decent player but it was always behind the iPod. The original Zune was on par with the iPod Classic at the time but it didn't really differentiate itself. The only major advantage of the original Zune (squirting) was so crippled as to be useless as a feature. The 2nd gen Zune were much better than the iPod Classic. Unfortunately they were not better than the iPod Touch which released a month before them. With the Zune HD, MS finally has matched the iPod Touch. The problem is that in all the iterations of the Zune, MS never developed the Zune to be more than a media player whereas Apple has designed and marketed the iPod Touch as a media and app platform. Apps give the Touch much more functionality that the Zune can't match and it appears that MS is years away from even starting to match this.

Re:Not surprising

[hobo sapiens]

What is the kin? I have never heard of it.

Oh, wait. maybe that's the point.

Re:Not surprising

[interkin3tic]

a.) Name was horrible and made no sense.

It made total sense given the target audience: social networking hillbillies.

b.) What was the point of the device again?

It had a "spot" that was hyped up. Safe to assume the point of that was for the development team to make joking references to the female anatomy.

c.) Ads were annoying and made no sense

At least they weren't inaccurate, at least the one's I saw: they for some reason tended to emphasize that if you visited all your "friends" on facebook in the real world, it would be a waste of time. You have to admire a marketing strategy that takes a product made for idiots, and then essentially tells those idiots that they are idiots.

Re:Not surprising

[sethmeisterg]

Those who DID buy it thought that they were getting a reader for eBooks.

Re:Not surprising

[trenien]

Err...

Just so you know, Samsung is a South Korean company.

Re:Not surprising

[pallmall1]

Only question - does the Kin come in "Feces Brown"?

Why, yes it does. All you have to do is scrape the outer coat of paint off that turd of a phone.

Re:Not surprising

[RocketRabbit]

Are you high?

Re:Not surprising

[RocketRabbit]

Preposterous. That would be like choosing a Droid or Pre or Blackberry over an iPhone. I mean, sure, it happens, but only if you go into the wrong store, or allow yourself to be dazzled by the sales guy.

Re:Not surprising

[Dexy]

I have an HD2. So glad that the guys at xda-devs are getting closer to getting Android on it, as WinMo 6.5 is awful - made even worse by HTC's gorgeous but bloated "Sense" UI. Not only that, but the HD2 isn't getting an official upgrade to 7 Series either. So I'm shafted until my contract runs out next May.

Re:Not surprising

[gtall]

Could you kindly stop with the Business School Product exhaust? I feel unclean.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I always looked at it as something akin (hah!) to that Sidekick device that Danger had and MS bought. It might have even been considered a sequel. But it never made sense to me in the modern age though. Five years ago it would have been a hit. Nowdays it is competing with smartphones with are just as capable when it comes to social media. I have no doubt that it was good at what it did, but the problem is that what it did was just not enough to compete.

That, and the fact that it was clear that the Kin was going to be a one-off that got ignored once Windows Mobile Phone Series 7 Edition (or whatever they're calling it) gets released.

Re:Not surprising

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Their real problem is either that they couldn't twist Verizon's arm enough, or that they were so profligate in their design that twisting wouldn't have done any good.

By all accounts, this "kin" pretty much curb-stomped anything in the dumbphone or "featurephone" category(unless you just had to have something that wouldn't blink at a month on standby in cold mud, or something). However, at the same time, it was stomped on by basically all the "smart" phones that Verizon had on offer, including the Pre Pluses that they were practically giving away.

Trouble was, Verizon wanted the same voice+data plan for a Kin that they did for any smartphone. Over a 2 year contract, it barely matters what the phone ostensibly sells for; but the monthly bills will add up fast. Essentially, a phone that couldn't even run third party applications, and had some notable holes in the first-party lineup, was being pitted against three actually competent smartphone flavors(blackberry, Pre, and the Android team), not to mention all the members of the target demographic who never even went inside the verizon store because they were already enslaved by AT&T.

Either Microsoft sucks at arm twisting, having gone soft dealing with PC OEMS, or they designed a phone that used too much data and Verizon told them that it just wasn't going to happen. If Kin had managed to hit Sidekick's market, basically "not as good as blackberry; but you can afford it upfront and monthly" they would likely have sold a bunch. As it is, though, they set the product up for slaughter-by-smartphone.

Re:Not surprising

[pitdingo]

huge sales? LOL. what did they sell like 100,000 to all the microsoft employees? Zune HD is terrible and no one is buying them because of it.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, you couldn't get it in matching Zune brown.

Re:Not surprising

[dpolak]

No no no... it was the BOB of Microsoft phones. Another one to go down in history for M$!

What was the whole point of Bob again? Kinda like kin, we will never really know....

Re:Not surprising

[mdwh2]

The Zune has managed market share as high as 10% and presumably makes some money, but because it's not market leader and far less successful than the Ipod, it's a "flop", and ridiculed by poeple here.

The Iphone has, last time I checked, less than 5% market share, with market leaders being Nokia who sell far more phones. But because it still brings in some money for Apple, it's a runaway success.

We'll see the same with the Ipad - as long as it sells some and makes money, it's a "success", where as for any other company, it's a "flop" unless it becomes number one.

Re:Not surprising

[XxtraLarGe]

By all accounts, this "kin" pretty much curb-stomped anything in the dumbphone or "featurephone" category(unless you just had to have something that wouldn't blink at a month on standby in cold mud, or something). However, at the same time, it was stomped on by basically all the "smart" phones that Verizon had on offer, including the Pre Pluses that they were practically giving away.

The Kin probably could have been a success if it was offered as a pre-paid phone, either through Tracfone/Net10, Virgin, or something like that.

Re:Not surprising

[gig]

Market share has nothing to do with Zune's success or failure, and same goes for iPhone. It's about innovation and influence.

Zune is a me-too product that has always been years behind iPod, yet at the same price point. They did hard drive based players after iPod nano dominated the market and popular culture. They did an iPod touch clone with no apps that showed just how bad Microsoft is at software. No matter how many they sell, there is no news there.

iPhone is a highly innovative product that changed the mobile phone industry. Every smartphone now has copied the multitouch interface, full-face screen, soft keyboard, GPU-accelerated graphics, desktop class HTML5 browser, app store, and other key features. Whether you use an iPhone or competing phone, you have felt iPhone's influence.

Keep in mind also that Microsoft has been making media players for a decade (PlaysForSure and then Zune), yet Zune is US-only and unprofitable. Apple has been making phones for 3 years, the first of which was a limited US-only release with no apps, yet iPhone is in 100 countries and is the most profitable phone per unit. Zune is in danger of being killed at any time, while iPhone is the envy of the industry.

So your market share numbers don't even tell a tiny piece of the story.

Re:Not surprising

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It would certainly have been even more superior-looking when compared to the sort of handsets that tracfone deals in; but they still would have had to solve the basic cost-of-data problem.

If the various Kin-social-integration-cloud-data stuff consumes smartphone levels of data, carriers are going to want to charge smartphone-level prices for it, prepaid or contract. Customers, sensibly enough, are going to want a smartphone if they are paying smartphone rates for connectivity.

Since the prepaid services tend to cater to a mixture of thrifty-people-who-don't-care-much in all income brackets, along with poor people and people with questionable credit ratings, the data costs would continue to be an issue. The handset competition would be less fierce, because the prepaid guys mostly get stuck with some real crap; but prepaid customers are probably, in aggregate, even less excited than verizon customers about paying stiff charges for a non-smartphone.

Re:Not surprising

[nyctopterus]

Good points about the Zune always being a step behind, but I disagree with this:

The 2nd gen Zune were much better than the iPod Classic. Unfortunately they were not better than the iPod Touch which released a month before them.

I owned a click-wheel iPod back in 2005, and my wife has a click-wheel Nano. I now own an iPod Touch, and as much as I love it as a little computer for browsing the internet and games, it is vastly inferior to the click-wheeled iPods as a music player. I get it out of my pocket and it always starts in coverflow mode, which means I have to I hold it vertically for a little while, sometimes give it a little shake if it's not responding (but no too much of it jumps to a different track), just to get it into the usable portrait mode. I usually do this because I want to skip a track. Apparently you can double click the home key to bring up basic controls, but this rarely seems to work for me.

The iPod touch is a fine pocket computer, but a second-rate iPod.

Re:Not surprising

[hey]

For some weird reason I kinda feel sorry for Microsoft on this one. They were trying to do something different. Of course every nerd knows if you try too hard to be cool... you fail.

The name wasn't so crazy
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/kin
If it became a hit, the name would no longer be strange.

Re:Not surprising

[Fooker]

If Kin is dead, would Windows Phone 7 be the next of kin?

I see what you did there.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

way-less-hyped messaging phones from Japanese makers like Samsung can't do?

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices in Seoul suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Re:Not surprising

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

e) It's my understanding that, like the Zune, it's basically winmo 6.x with a skin

I thought I'd heard that it's not the previous version of Windows Mobile, and it isn't Phone 7, but something different. However, I couldn't pull out any proof, and I haven't looked into it personally.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

You are completely correct except for the fact that Samsung is Korean.

Re:Not surprising

[Locke2005]

a.) Name was horrible and made no sense.
Market research was all done in West Virginia.

b.) What was the point of the device again?
Same as any device -- to sell it and make money. In this case by convincing people they could do things on a phone that are much easier to do on a real PC.

c.) Ads were annoying and made no sense.
And how is that different than any other Microsoft advertising?
E.g. the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld Ad

Re:Not surprising

[lgw]

The project manager for Bob was arguable the best-paid IT worker ever (she married Bill). That seems point enough.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because it didn't come in brown.

Re:Not surprising

[MoxFulder]

Whoops... I did know that. Thanks for the correction!

LG is Korean too. Panasonic, Sharp, and Sanyo are Japanese. Sony Ericsson is a Japanese-Swedish joint venture. HTC is Taiwanese. Any other major Asian phone manufacturers that I'm missing?

Re:Not surprising

[Meski]

What is the kin? I have never heard of it.

Oh, wait. maybe that's the point.

Mull of kin tired

... someone else can finish this. Advance apologies to Paul McCartney.

Re:Not surprising

[MediaCastleX]

You're right on the one hand, although even if it wasn't a great idea, I think sampling out said idea, as it stood for what would definitely be improved on (hopefully) to become the full WP7 experience, was a good "beta" product for users to get. Still it's hard to see any benefit at all, as I have not heard or known anyone who actually got it...*shrugs*

Re:Not surprising

[Voyager529]

the guys at xda-devs

...are the guys to pay attention to with regards to software upgrades. Depending on the carriers to provide WinMo upgrades is as reliable as Dell providing laptop video driver upgrades quicker than the guys over at Laptopvideo2go.

Let me be the first

[Nova Express]

What the hell was the Kin? Never heard of it before.

And let me add insult to injury:

(Sent from my iPhone.)

Re:Let me be the first

[GeekZilla]

Beat me to it. WTF is a Kin?

Re:Let me be the first

[jaymz2k4]

It was microsofts attempt to woo the facebook generation. The fact you have never heard of it probably means the targeted marketing was done competently.

Re:Let me be the first

[O('_')O_Bush]

It's just as well. From the commercials, it looked like it did the same thing as my email spam box.

Re:Let me be the first

[Freaky Spook]

The fact you have never heard of it probably means the targeted marketing was done competently.

Considering Microsoft's marketing strategies for Zune, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Bing it's more likely that the marketing was not done competently.

It's almost as if Ballmer is employing that failed salesman Gill from the Simpson's to develop their product sale strategies because they all appear desperate, corny, out-dated and un-researched.

Re:Let me be the first

[sortius_nod]

Unfortunately having such a narrow scope you're relying on the whims of a specific subset of society and effectively alienating any possible fringe markets. I doubt this product would have made a dent in any market to be honest, it seems like it was more of an half baked marketing development than anything else. Even if the target market isn't exactly tech savvy, they aren't going to buy into something that's not at the top of it's class. The Kin was far from top of it's class.

As a comment on Engadget said today "a dumbphone with a smartphone pricing plan". Pretty much sums up why MS dumped it.

What does concern me is that MS are doing a lot of big announcements then dumping the designs. The Courier being the most notable of recent years. It seems that with Steve "Chairman" Balmer at the helm they're sailing into stormy waters.

Re:Let me be the first

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure that the marketing stretegies for Bing and Windows 7 failed? As far as I can tell the ads are doing well.

I'm in total agreement on the other two, mind you.

Re:Let me be the first

[alexandre_ganso]

Not ALL of them. The Xbox 360 is really great.

Re:Let me be the first

[LWATCDR]

I would have to disagree. As a member of the C64 generation I knew about it. Maybe it was marketed well. The ads looked good but it was a fail for a lot reasons.
1. It wasn't really a smart phone no app store or selection of games.
2. It wasn't a messaging/media phone because you had to have a smart phone data plan.
So for the cost of a Palm WebOS or android phone you could get a Kin. Teenagers my be foolish, lacking in wisdom, and even unable to understand the consequence of their actions but they are not stupid.

Re:Let me be the first

[alexandre_ganso]

BTW, what happened to MS Surface? That seemed pretty cool.

Re:Let me be the first

[Peter Simpson]

"the targeted marketing was done competently."

But, sadly, in vain. I can't help but wonder what the total cost of developing and introducing products like the Kins was. Announcing their demise within the same month as their introduction seems a strange (and unprofitable) way of doing business.

When the rest of the world is using iPhones and Droids, a "social media-only" phone seemed a strange offering indeed.

Re:Let me be the first

[Anonymous Coward]

The engineers responsible have been sacked.

Re:Let me be the first

[JustOK]

what's wrong with courier?

Re:Let me be the first

[sortius_nod]

It's still "about", they've even demoed a touchless version that uses a transparent LED screen.

Pretty sure it was "released", but only to business.

Re:Let me be the first

[Sorthum]

Sure, but look at the platform. It's five years old, and despite its new form factor it hasn't really been updated since release.

I realize they don't want to change things around on game developers, but I'd like to think that we can get better performance today than we could five years ago...

Re:Let me be the first

[mattack2]

You're totally missing at least one point of a console - to have a stable (features-wise) platform so that developers can develop for one thing only.. I realize that things like Kinect break down that stability, too.

Re:Let me be the first

[sootman]

> The fact you have never heard of it probably means
> the targeted marketing was done competently.

The fact that it was killed just WEEKS after introduction probably means the "targeting" was done more competently than the "marketing" was.

Remember in science when you learned about the difference between accuracy and precision and how it was possible to have one, the other, neither, or both? I think it's something like that.

Re:Let me be the first

[maxume]

They would probably sell you one if you wanted to give them $15-$20,000.

Re:Let me be the first

[rolfwind]

You may never heard of it, but the commercials were noticed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CakBlWTwJK0

So... Microsoft's latest "Me too!" product goes down the tubes. Seems like it's becoming a pattern, a square company trying too hard to be hip. They're simply not going to out-Apple Apple so why don't they find another angle?

To me, MS has been struggling to find an identity outside the OS/Office market the last decade and mostly failed except with the XBox. Reports usually always mention the overwhelming bureacracy, corporate infighting and it seems they are petering along from previous momentum but have lost any set goal to strive towards. Seems like Ballmer, despite his jumping around, really has an iron fist because he's clueless himself.

Imo, they need to get a dictator, or at least, when making projects like this, hand it off to an autonomous unit headed by someone who has the clout and authority to resist the BS from the rest of the company.

Re:Let me be the first

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used it. It's not as cool as it looks.

It would be great if they'd sold it in 2007 at the price of a typical desktop PC (if not less) and brought some really talented third party developers on board for apps... But in the post-iPad world I think they've missed their chance. Apple has something shipping today, and Microsoft has an overpriced "concept" machine for which they can say, "oh look, wouldn't this be cool if it were done right 3 years ago." Pretty much a novelty item for hotel lobbies and casinos.

Re:Let me be the first

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's really awesome... how's that HD DVD workin' out for ya?

Re:Let me be the first

[Sorthum]

No, I truly get that-- it's not a hard concept.

My point is that that was their last product "hit." I don't think we can find another viable electronic manufacturer that hasn't come out with something droolworthy in half a decade?

Re:Let me be the first

[Anonymous Coward]

They still bring Surface out at trade shows.

The Microsoft Kin will most likely go the way of Microsoft bob. Both seemed pretty stupid to me.

Wait a minute...

Microsoft Bob flubbed and was terminated. Bill Gates married that project's lead.

Microsoft Kin flubbed and was terminated. Is Bill getting divorced, and about to remarry...? Maybe Steve Ballmore?

Re:Let me be the first

[mortonda]

Many distributions moved on to Dovecot

Re:Let me be the first

[geminidomino]

I don't think we can find another viable electronic manufacturer that hasn't come out with something droolworthy in half a decade?

Sure you can. And you don't even have to change industries.

Sony - PS3 is about a year younger than the XBox, but all they've really done with it since is the same thing MS did with the 360 - tweak components so that the platform remains "stable", and try to piggy-back off the Wii's success. As a bonus, they actually made theirs LESS feature-rich by killing back-compatibility and linux capability. It's not too much of a stretch to assume they won't change their tactics in the next 16 months, so they're worth watching.

Subsequent revamps of the PSP have made them actually LESS desirable to most potential customers, with the latest PSP (Go?) being an utterly depressing mess.

Nintendo - Wii is the same age as the PS3, and has been even less tweaked than the PS3 (Ok, so it comes in black now). They stopped even courting their main market to target the "casual" players for awhile there, apparently not realizing that "casual" players have ADD when it comes to games, and they'd be largely supplanted by frickin' "Farmville". What few offerings that have been made to actual "gamers" have boiled down, to quote Yahtzee, "Yet Another Bloody $X" where $X is some nostalgic Nintendo franchise.

The DSLite came out earlier the same year and was quite nice, though I don't know if it qualifies as "droolworthy." The DSi was an incremental update to that, but the new features really didn't add anythign to the gaming experience on it, just more control and limitations on the end-user. If the 3DS is as disappointing, then we may well see Nintendo hit the 5-year mark too.

Re:Let me be the first

[tomhudson]

The ads looked good

Both times I saw the Kin ad, I said to myself "you've GOT to be kidding."

A guy shooting pics of his ex-girlfriend?

That's just creepy. So you lose the women.

The message it sends is "guys who have a Kin are losers!" So you also lose the men.

So who was the target market? Stalkers?

At least that foolishness never made it to Canada.

Re:Let me be the first

[RobertM1968]

Sure, but look at the platform. It's five years old, and despite its new form factor it hasn't really been updated since release.

I realize they don't want to change things around on game developers, but I'd like to think that we can get better performance today than we could five years ago...

Actually, as cool as it would be for them to release faster versions, it makes no business sense to do so. They are still in competition with other gaming platforms. Keeping the design as similar as possible to maintain (or lower) price and or profit makes more sense so they can make a few bucks on the platform - or at least (failing that) sell more of them since they can sell them at the same price (for a sleeker design) or less, thus gaining them more marketshare and more revenue on games and licensing.

Re:Let me be the first

[UnknowingFool]

Yes but it's the size of a table and costs $12,500 or $15,000 dollars depending on the two available models. It appears to function great as a kiosk but it will require customized programming by the purchaser. Those factors make it limited for many markets.

Re:Let me be the first

[black_lbi]

(Sent from my iPhone.)

I call shenanigans.
On my 3G the slashdot site slows to a crawl and is unusable with all its fancy ajax controls. I tried changing my settings, but nothing seems to work.
Maybe it's better on a 3GS as it has double the amount of RAM and a faster processor.

Re:Let me be the first

[hairyfeet]

I know I shouldn't feed the AC but I'd say HD DVD is doing better for MSFT than BD is for Sony, who is bleeding cash and taking a bath on the BD drives to keep from getting killed on price, and every time I walk into Walmart the shelf space for BD movies seems to get a little smaller. By not tying their console to a next gen format MSFT didn't have to worry about ending up backing a dead horse and last I heard has been making money on the 360 for nearly 2 years now, while Sony continues to lose serious cash.

Of course we shouldn't be surprised that Sony backed a more expensive proprietary format, as they are the same company that gave us memory stick, Mini Disc, ATRAC, etc, etc. The question is with the company losing as much cash as they are will they be able to even afford the massive R&D it'll take to come up with a PS4 when MSFT decides its time for the 720 or whatever they call it.

As for TFA whoever allowed the Kin out the door should be pink slipped. With WinMo 7 right around the corner having to support a WinMo 6 based product at this point in the lifecycle would be just stupid and a waste of cash, and while they were right to kill it the question is why it was allowed out the door in the first place.

Re:Let me be the first

[ppanon]

Nah. Although, IMHO, they've moved and hidden too many things to "simplify the interface for new users", Windows 7 is actually a pretty decent product, especially compared to Vista's lackluster efficiency/performance. People have been waiting to upgrade past XP - some have jumped to Apple, and a few have moved on to Linux. However there's a lot of pent-up demand for something better than XP. Windows 7 pretty well sells itself once people become aware that it's available and doesn't require a machine with enough power consumption to make a noticeable increase in their monthly electric bill. The Windows 7 ads may also be better than the ones for Vista, but that doesn't mean they don't suck.

Re:Let me be the first

[zmollusc]

I hope that those assholes spend plenty of money developing the PS4 and even more marketing it to me. It makes it sweeter when i tell their salesdroids that although I would be delighted to purchase, the rootkit and DRM on my finances will not allow me to buy Sony products.

Re:Let me be the first

[Anonymous Coward]

what's wrong with courier?

It's horrible at distinguishing between lowercase L, capital I, and digit 1, as well as capital O and digit 0.

Do yourself a favor and switch your terminal/editor/IDE to Bitstream Vera/Deja Vu/Menlo, or Monaco if you have a Mac.

Re:Let me be the first

[macs4all]

BTW, what happened to MS Surface? That seemed pretty cool.

You're kidding, right?

Re:Let me be the first

[Bert64]

How long was the first xbox around for tho? I seem to remember it getting dropped very quickly after a lot less than 5 years...

Re:Let me be the first

[Dexy]

Re: Sony losing money on the PS3 - funnily enough this turned up on the main page just two hours after your post.

Re:Let me be the first

[Bert64]

It's fine on my 3GS, i tend to read it on the train...

Re:Let me be the first

[gtall]

Actually, I always thought of Ballmer as employing Mr. Haney from Green Acres: (in a nasal tone) Mr. Douglas, have I got a deal for you...a genuine developed exclusively with you in mind.

Re:Let me be the first

[dzfoo]

That's now. Do you recall how it all started? It was a beastly large and ugly machine, with huge controllers, seemingly designed for proto-hominid hands.

Oh, and it had skin covers, like racing stripes and fire flames, in an attempt to lure the "kool l33t kidz" in.

Sure, give the Kin a few more years and perhaps it would have started to look decent.

        -dZ.

Re:Let me be the first

[gig]

It was like an iPhone without all the stuff people like about iPhone, but for basically the same price. How could it possibly have failed?
 

Re:Let me be the first

[gig]

Surface was finally released 18 months after it was first shown.

Re:Let me be the first

[gig]

> Of course we shouldn't be surprised that Sony backed a more expensive proprietary format,

HD-DVD was the proprietary format. It was a Microsoft video format in a Toshiba player. Blu-Ray is ISO standard video in players from many manufacturers, just like DVD. Only 150,000 HD-DVD players were sold, same as the first hour's worth of iPads. It's Apple who benefited most from HD-DVD's sabotage of the optical disc because iTunes is a disc-less Blu-Ray. Same video format.

Re:Let me be the first

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell was the Kin? Never heard of it before.

And let me add insult to injury:

(Sent from a douchebag.)

I don't have one, but I know what one is. Oh, that was your attempt at being clever.

I remember you from when you used to troll Fark. Now I run into you again years later trolling slashdot. Great.

Re:Let me be the first

[gig]

Teenagers don't want teen phones, they want the adult phone that they think they will still want when they are adults. That's why they like iPhone and iPod touch so much. It's the phone from 5 years from now. KIN is the phone from 5 years ago.

Re:Let me be the first

[Steauengeglase]

This isn't a new phenomena with MS; they have been doing it for forever. So I wouldn't say they are chasing Apple, just their own tail. If tamagotchis suddenly made a huge come back and everyone and their brother spent hours playing with it, MS would be obligated to create their own. Not attempting would be, by MS's measure, viewed as a failure (or at least not getting a few patents in that field would be a failure).

Still, if MS wants to have any real standing in the future, they will have to do as you suggested, get a dictator.

Re:Let me be the first

[LWATCDR]

Or they want cheap plans.
Of the teens I know few of them have smart phones because of the data plan cost. Most have messaging phones because they are cheaper per month.
The days when people just looked at the price of the phone are over. Even teens look at the price of the plan and the Kin was expensive.
Plus they really did fail to play up one feature and I think they forgot to include another feature.
1. The HD camera. I never knew they could shoot HD video! That is cool for a cheap phone. If it didn't have the smart phone data plan I could see a lot of people getting it for that reason. Thing is they never showed it on the ads or really pushed it.
2. ZunePass. I mean really the Zune Pass is such a good deal that I wish I could get it for my android phone. That might have sold a lot of phones except...
It all goes back to that data plan. For the price I would get a Palm or and Android phone and have a real smart phone. I bet a lot of teenagers feel the same way.
Plus let's face it. Microsoft is the anti-cool.
Except for the XBox line Microsoft is the Buick of technology.

Re:Let me be the first

[Anonymous Coward]

marketing is far more than advertising. it's product design, feature selection, pricing, and finally, advertising.

Re:Let me be the first

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, right? I just now saw an ad for it yesterday at the movie theatre (more ads, less previews). And now it's dead? So sudden!

Re:Let me be the first

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

It was microsofts attempt to woo the facebook generation. The fact you have never heard of it probably means the targeted marketing was done competently.

Please better define the term "facebook generation". I barely use it myself; yet I have family and (real life) friends ranging from ages 12 to 80 that use it. While there might be a predominant age, there's no single generation.

Re:Let me be the first

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

BTW, what happened to MS Surface? That seemed pretty cool.

Probably they realized a computing device the size of a piece of furniture isn't practical for most people.

Re:Let me be the first

[mark72005]

I think a major factor for teenagers is that their friends have the droids, the iphones, etc.

It doesn't do anything for you in the way of "keeping up with the Joneses" to have a dumb phone that can only do facebook - no apps, nothing particularly cool about it. Kids/teens aren't satisfied if their friends all have better devices. They'd hold out or bargain (offering to contribute money, etc) for a "real" smartphone.

Minimalist is for a certain set of the market, and they are not people who want facebook in their pocket 24/7, and they are certainly not teenagers who want everything with as big of a "cool" factor as what their friends have.

Re:Let me be the first

[mattack2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox
says it came out November 15, 2001 in NA, and was discontinued "in late 2006". That's about 5 years, depending on how "late" 2006 it was.

But at least Sony said the PS2 was intended to be a 10 year platform (I have no idea if they said that only in revisionist-history terms), and has said the same thing about the PS3.

Re:Let me be the first

[captainClassLoader]

And, knowing me, 3 days into owning one I'd trip over one of the dogs and spill my pint of IPA into it and that would be that. At least I like glass topped tables, though. Can't have too many of them.

Good

[GreatDrok]

It was a 'kin stupid name. I don't know what the 'kin 'ell they were 'kin thinking. 'kin idiots.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Kin was another MSFT project that was doomed from the very beginning. Crappy looking phone, bad marketing message, 1/2-hearted attempt to enter a market with far superior products. I'm starting to sense a pattern here...

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's part of a pattern. But they're supposed to pump millions into it for close to a decade, in the hopes that the next iteration will hit the ground running.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The marketing was aimed at teens and tweens, a segment that Apple understands but Microsoft, not at all. Supposedly, their next iteration will be aimed at their home turf 30-55 yr old male demographic and will be called 'kin-A!

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The Kin was decent, but as of now, it had no apps, even though they are supposedly forthcoming. Apps are the thing that make or break a platform. Of course, the iPhone is king here, but Android has a very good selection.

There was just no niche for the Kin to grab. Teens/tweens either will be handed a RAZR by their parents, or they will be handed an iPhone or smartphone. Verizon already has the Droid, a flagship smartphone at a decent price, so existing Verizon customers wouldn't upgrade to the Kin series.

I just wonder if Microsoft was trying to make a successor to the Sidekick. The Sidekick was a great and glitzy device... 3-4 years ago. However, the iPhone has taken that market by storm.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

All reasons why it is being diskintinued.

Re:Good

[tomhudson]

You kin always go to their 'kin web site - kin.com. If you follow the links to Verizon, you can still buy one. There's an Early Termination Fee of $350. I'm wondering if Verizon customers couldn't go back to Verizon and say "I want my $350 Early Termination Fee".

At the very least, anyone who bought one in the last 6 weeks is going to be royally p*ssed.

Re:Good

[dovgr]

They seem to have set a trend here. Zune is very similar how the f-word is pronounced in Hebrew. So now we can start guessing what they will be calling their next product...

Well, that was fast

[wandazulu]

I can't think of any other product that Microsoft made that fell out of its graces so quickly. I think even Microsoft Bob got a year in the stores before it was "retired".

Re:Well, that was fast

[ColdWetDog]

Indeed. The quickest "launch to drop" time I'm aware of in the consumer electronics sector was the ill fated Palm Foleo. (May 30, 2007 to September 4,2007). Maybe other slashdotters will recall even less successful products.

Re:Well, that was fast

[Anonymous Coward]

The Kin was released, at least. The Foleo was actually ready-to-ship in production packaging and was cancelled a few weeks before the expected launch.

Re:Well, that was fast

[davester666]

That's not the same as the Kin. The Foleo never actually was available for purchase. Palm was smart enough to realize that their product was going to fail late in the development cycle, but before it actually made it to market.

Of course, Microsoft would be the king of this category, except they don't announce that they have decided NOT to proceed with development of product X [where X is announced in an attempt to insert FUD into the marketplace just to kill a product they don't [yet] compete against].

I would list them here, but I'm sure SlashDot has a limit of around 32K for posts...

Re:Well, that was fast

[Weedhopper]

Okay, I, for all intents and purposes, was living under a rock during this period. Looking back, why wasn't it launched? What was so different about it from the first eee?

Re:Well, that was fast

[atrimtab]

The Foleo was kind of an iPad with a keyboard. Without the keyboard and a lot more hype it might have worked.

Yes, this is a joke.

Re:Well, that was fast

[RMingin]

I dunno, I think the Courier has it beat. Cancelled before it was released... Or even prototyped... Only announced, just in time to FUD away some iPad sales. Thing is, if they'd waited more before announcing Courier was dead, they would have FUDded away still more iPad sales. As it was, I waffled a little, they canned it, and I bought my iPad. Lousy timing.

Re:Well, that was fast

[Moofie]

The fact that you had to own a Treo in order to make it work, and it could do basically nothing on its own.

Re:Well, that was fast

[Anonymous Coward]

The Palm Foleo was never released. It was canceled before it ever went on sale. The kin was on sale for 2 months before Microsoft killed it. There was reports that they had some ... get this ... 500 in 2 months. Yes, 500.

Re:Well, that was fast

[UnknowingFool]

More than anything this shows why you should never partner with MS. While MS may have designed the OS over 2 years, the manufacturing was done by Sharp. I would say that Sharp lost some money.

Re:Well, that was fast

[phantomfive]

Microsoft Bob is a special case, it was created by Bill Gates' lover. How could it not have been given a fair....that is, unfair go?

Re:Well, that was fast

[Tom]

Maybe they're learning. Learning that almost everything they make is pure crap. Unfortunately, their solution is to make different crap, not making something that isn't crap.

Re:Well, that was fast

[Anonymous Coward]

On the Internet Microsoft Windows is unsafe for any need.

You forgot a comma, after "Internet"... don't let it happen again.

Re:Well, that was fast

[Anonymous Coward]

And, interestingly enough, the Foleo was killed just weeks before the concept of a "netbook" became a huge success.

Re:Well, that was fast

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Perhaps we can conclude that the CEO of Microsoft then and the lead on Bob had a better "working relationship" than do the CEO of Microsoft now and the lead on Kin?

Re:Well, that was fast

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Which actually makes having killed it seem like a pretty decent idea.

Well golly, should I choose this here net-book that does absolutely nothing unless my Palm brand smartphone is within a couple of meters, or should I choose this one that is pretty much like a normal computer, only smaller and cheaper and slower, that I can tether my phone to if I really want to....

Had Foleo been some sort of WebOS device that could either function alone like a normal netbook, syncing data and favorites and stuff back to your phone the next time they were in contact and, if the two were directly communicating with each other, the user being able to "pass" running application cards back and forth between the two, that would have kicked ass. As it was, though, Foleo was sort of the last gasp of old-school palm, offering an expensive and inflexible way to give your palm phone a larger screen and keyboard. They might as well have tied it to the railroad tracks as released it in front of the netbook explosion.

Re:Well, that was fast

[ensignyu]

There were a couple fundamental problems:

First, it had a relatively large 10" screen and a nice, non-cramped keyboard. Having a screen that large raised the price point to $500-$600. IMHO, the thing that made netbooks popular was the low starting price point (EEE was promised for $200, I think it ended up at $300 on launch). It turns out people don't mind a tiny 7" screen if it means saving a couple hundred bucks. Now that the netbook market has been established, 10" screen netbooks are affordable and $500 might-as-well-call-it-a-laptop netbooks are selling OK, but I think it probably took them a while to get those economies of scale and enough market demand.

Secondly, it used an underpowered 416mhz XScale processor -- the kind used in pre-smartphone PDAs circa 2003, but the Foleo was announced in 2007. This pretty much hobbled the ability to use it as a desktop, because it wasn't fast enough to run a full Linux desktop stack or do stuff like play video. Instead, they had their own custom user interface and you couldn't run standard apps out of the box. This probably lead to it being marketed as a "mobile companion" rather than a computer. They should have done like EEE and thrown a 800 mhz Celeron processor in there, but it probably would have messed up the design (needing to add fans for cooling) and they'd also have to shrink the screen to balance costs. It's only now in 2009-2010 that you can get 1-2ghz ARM processors which are low-power, low-heat, cheap, and powerful enough to run desktop-class apps.

In summary, the Foleo fells somewhere along the big gap betweens laptops and PDAs, but the technology wasn't powerful enough or cheap enough to carve out an entirely new niche there. Netbooks succeeded because they were basically just cheap laptops. Now the iPad looks like it's going to fill that gap (although you still can't carry it in your pocket). It's got enough apps that people don't care that it's not a full desktop OS. It can play 10 hours of video. And it's a cheap tablet -- of course, Apple's selling it for a nice premium, but it's still cheaper than the overpriced, ultimately unsuccessful Windows-based tablets even if the hardware isn't as capable.

Re:Well, that was fast

[Anonymous Coward]

The Palm Foleo never "launched" so your "launch to drop" time is incorrect.

Heck, it not only wasn't launched, it was never even put into production.

Re:Well, that was fast

[gig]

A year in 1995 is 48 days now. But I don't think BOB lasted a year, did it?

KIN's 48 days also featured almost no iPhones. The older ones were retired at the beginning and the new one sold out in 3 days at the end.

Re:Well, that was fast

[CAIMLAS]

Which is amazing, when you think about it.

Not only is this a big corporation, this is Microsoft. The turnaround on this is incredibly fast - dare I say, even agile? They appear to have at least fixed one of their internal problems, and have demonstrated they aren't the Same Old Microsoft we knew even 5 years ago.

Kudos to them for recognizing their mistake and dropping the product.

hate to be a hater but,

[Daneurysm]

...it is rather enjoyable to watch Microsoft these days...I understand that the new boss is probably same as the old boss. But, damn, it's down right fascinating to watch it all unfold.

Re:hate to be a hater but,

[Microlith]

Indeed, it is amusing to watch them squirm and flounder in a market they don't have total dominance over. Watching them swing left and right, outright copying their competitors to try and regain a foothold in a market they got pushed out of. Fortunately, they don't have an incompetent competitor in the market like Sony to leave the door wide open.

I wonder if this is how MS would be if they weren't tops in the OS and Office suite world, would they be lurching left and right trying to find a place?

Re:hate to be a hater but,

[Daneurysm]

To be honest, if Microsoft didn't exist until recently I bet they'd be a very innovative and nimble company.

...so much baggage in that company. Think of all of the windows tablets...it was the general consensus that tablets were an answer searching for a question. Someone else made that happen. Think of how long ago Windows phones started appearing. They tried so hard and perhaps succeeded very successfully to maintain their 'windows experience' across these three 3rd cousins platforms...to no avail.

Nearly 2 million Iphone4's sold in a few days time, over 100,000 Android activations a day, "blackberry" is now a verb...Hell, even the great-grandchild of the Palm Pilot made a more significant dent in the market years after schooling Microsoft in a different (but related) market years earlier.

...such interesting times.

Re:hate to be a hater but,

[nine-times]

"Blackberry" is a verb? Did I miss this? Does it mean "to have Google and Apple drink your milkshake"?

Re:hate to be a hater but,

[dzfoo]

If only Stallman was alive to enjoy this.

Oh wait!

        -dZ.

Re:hate to be a hater but,

[dzfoo]

To get "blackberried" is when they kick you in the 'nads.

Seems rather apt.

    -dZ.

Re:hate to be a hater but,

[Bert64]

If they weren't top in the office suite and desktop os world they wouldn't have enough money to be able to afford all this lurching around...

Re:hate to be a hater but,

[Nyder]

To be honest, if Microsoft didn't exist until recently I bet they'd be a very innovative and nimble company. ...so much baggage in that company. Think of all of the windows tablets...it was the general consensus that tablets were an answer searching for a question. Someone else made that happen. Think of how long ago Windows phones started appearing. They tried so hard and perhaps succeeded very successfully to maintain their 'windows experience' across these three 3rd cousins platforms...to no avail.

Nearly 2 million Iphone4's sold in a few days time, over 100,000 Android activations a day, "blackberry" is now a verb...Hell, even the great-grandchild of the Palm Pilot made a more significant dent in the market years after schooling Microsoft in a different (but related) market years earlier. ...such interesting times.

Microsoft doesn't know it's market. All it knows is it wants to be the ruler of all, one way or another. And as long as people keep giving them money, it will keep trying.

Re:hate to be a hater but,

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I understand that the new boss is probably same as the old boss.

the old boss was competent and didn't have a taste for throwing chairs.

Re:hate to be a hater but,

[sznupi]

Well, open source (free software? ;p ) operating systems form over half of smartphone sales. It should remain roughly like that even when Samsung will really start to push their bada OS (I guess it will become #2 very quickly)

Re:hate to be a hater but,

[sznupi]

Did they ever had even 1% of phone sales anyway?

What an ugly phone

[ndogg]

I hate to say it, but I'm somewhat superficial with my phones. I don't need them to be "beautiful" or anything, but I don't want it to be ugly. This was definitely an ugly phone. I have the Nokia N900, which won't win any beauty contests, but I think it definitely looks nicer than the Kin. I even had an OpenMoko, although I actually think that's a somewhat elegant looking phone.

Re:What an ugly phone

[bsDaemon]

wait... the kin was a PHONE?! I thought it was a softball the got the internet.

Roz Ho

[Anonymous Coward]

So...is Roz Ho still driving the ship into the proverbial iceberg? I wish I could fail upwards as well as she does...

Re:Roz Ho

[_merlin]

I'm still driving my "ship" into the proverbial iceberg that is Roz Ho.

But??? But???

[olsmeister]

How will I know when ?uestlove is having a free concert in the park?

Why did they release it?

[MrEricSir]

The real question here isn't so much why did they get rid of it -- that's pretty obvious -- but why they released this product in the first place? Is their management really so out of touch they thought this had potential?

Re:Why did they release it?

[iluvcapra]

why they released this product in the first place? Is their management really so out of touch they thought this had potential?

They paid a small fortune to buy Danger and the Sidekick platform, and couldn't admit that they got taken and bought something that was obsolete, if transiently popular at the time they bought it. Notice that Robbie Bach, MS VP of entertainment and devices, the guy who made the call to buy Danger, was eased out of the company a few weeks ago.

Re:Why did they release it?

[painandgreed]

The real question here isn't so much why did they get rid of it -- that's pretty obvious -- but why they released this product in the first place? Is their management really so out of touch they thought this had potential?

Actually, I was thinking it might make a decent kids phone. Not that kids would want it mind you, but parents buy the thing and a phone that allows them to do the favorite social networking sites while not free access to the internet might be a nice compromise that both parents and kids could deal with. Then again, I'm not a parent, nor a kid, so I am unfamiliar with the realities of raising a child in the internet age. From people saying they have actually seen them in the wild, it seems that mostly poster's wives are buying them. I can see it being an older person's phone also. The few apps they need to keep in touch with family and not have to deal with the complexity of a smart phone. My parents use Facebook to keep in touch with me and my cousins, but lord knows when they'll figure out texting. Then there was the entire 'backed up to the cloud' aspect which is why they bought Danger and is appealing to anybody who has never head of Sidekick.

Re:Why did they release it?

[kybred]

They paid a small fortune to buy Danger and the Sidekick platform, and couldn't admit that they got taken and bought something that was obsolete, if transiently popular at the time they bought it. Notice that Robbie Bach, MS VP of entertainment and devices, the guy who made the call to buy Danger, was eased out of the company a few weeks ago.

And that's a shame, Danger had some really sharp folks. I wonder how many stayed on after MS bought them. Hopefully they made out well.

Re:Why did they release it?

[wickerprints]

Danger/Sidekick was a thriving platform long before MS bought it and ran it into the ground. Under the right management, it could have been THE dominant mobile device for the 15-25yo market. Problem is, neither Danger nor MS anticipated the impact of the iPhone. They had a good thing going--the Hiptop has been around since 2002; the platform was innovative and mature. The first iPhone came out, sans 3G, in 2007, and the App Store didn't even exist until mid-2008, a few months after MS acquired Danger. There was PLENTY of time to adapt and compete. And it didn't happen.

Then MS mismanagement caused the server failure and data loss in late 2009 that basically killed what little was left of the Sidekick. The real story here is not that MS got taken--it's that they not only failed to capitalize on their acquisition, but they actively fucked up what assets they acquired. They basically let the Sidekick wither on the vine by diverting resources to develop "Project Pink," which is--wait for it--the Kin. Worked out really well, didn't it?

MS *has no mobile strategy.* NONE. They are flailing desperately, and this latest debacle has only proven to the consumer that MS mobile products are NOT to be trusted. As a consumer, what does hearing this news tell you? MS might as well post a gigantic banner saying, "if you buy our phones today, don't count on them being supported tomorrow." Windows Phone is next to die.

People like to make fun of Steve Jobs and his "reality distortion field." I think the real RDF is around Ballmer, who has surrounded himself with lackeys and yes-men, executives who are in it for the money. There is this pervasive belief that MS can compete in any tech market by way of throwing money at every situation--that they can succeed simply because they are MS. Those tactics may have worked a decade ago, but times have changed.

Re:Why did they release it?

[nine-times]

Problem is, neither Danger nor MS anticipated the impact of the iPhone.

This is what it comes down to. The Sidekick was a pretty good platform for the pre-iPhone days, as were Windows, Palm, and Blackberry. However, the iPhone pretty well blew everyone out of the water in the consumer market. Blackberry held its own in the enterprise market, but they're faltering. Everyone else realized that they had to revamp to take on the iPhone, which resulted in Android phones.

Sorry to the Apple haters, but they really did change the mobile landscape. Microsoft hasn't kept up.

Re:Why did they release it?

[CAIMLAS]

My guess: it was an exploratory product. They had the product sitting around, put some polish on it and said "sure, why not? nothing else is working!"

So they threw it out with a little marketing. It didn't catch. Why?

I'd argue for one of several reasons:
1) Microsoft isn't cool. With most people, "cool" is half the reason to have something, especially in the "Facebook generation".
2) The phones don't really actually fit any demographic that would buy them, from what I can tell. At best, they'd fit the 40+ socially active single women demographic, I think.
3) The ads were, at best, obnoxious and condescending (at least the ones I saw on Hulu). Holy hell! MS really needs a better advertising firm. Windows 7 is doing well in spite of its advertising, not because of it (though the 'get shit done quickly via the modified 'run' dialog' ones did appeal to me, as a geek).
4) The iPhone did well because it wasn't just a phone; it was an MP3 player and could do movies and apps, too. As near as I could tell, the Kin wasn't much more than just an IM client with a phone. Pass, for pretty much everyone.
5) The UI looked retardedly simple and useless. Little nondescript squares you drag around? No thanks.

Re:Why did they release it?

[MrEricSir]

I have a trouble believing anyone would make an "exploratory product" unless it was dirt cheap.

In this case, with all the R&D and marketing, it seems like they just wasted a lot of money. The only takeaway here is that Microsoft isn't managed very well. And many in the industry would have been happy to tell them that for free.

Re:Why did they release it?

[Phantom Gremlin]

I think the real RDF is around Ballmer, who has surrounded himself with lackeys and yes-men

I absolutely agree. But Microsoft is a big company. Isn't there any employee remaining from the old days (who therefore already has "fuck you" money and less concern for his job) who can talk some sense into Ballmer?

It shouldn't take much. Unless Ballmer is a total idiot, then all someone would need to do is to take your post, your very post I'm responding to. Simply discuss it line by line with Ballmer. Or is Ballmer so clueless that he doesn't understand simple words. E.g.: "this latest debacle has only proven to the consumer that MS mobile products are NOT to be trusted."

The current management at Microsoft seems to be hopelessly lost!

Cutting Bait?

[frostfreek]

I don't understand fishing metaphors! Seriously. What is that supposed to mean?

Re:Cutting Bait?

[dangitman]

I don't understand fishing metaphors! Seriously. What is that supposed to mean?

I think it's when you realize you just slept with an underage girl (jailbait) and knife her to death so she can't tell anyone about it.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

When you are fishing, sometimes the line gets snagged on a underground log or weeds. You can struggle for a while trying to get it free, but at some point to get on with fishing you have to cut the line and attach a new hook complete with new bait. Or sometimes your bait just isn't working for the conditions for what ever reason, to switch to new bait, you'd have to cut off the old bait. So basically it means one will be trying over again with a new approach by admitting a previous mistake.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[paiute]

When you are fishing, sometimes the line gets snagged on a underground log or weeds. You can struggle for a while trying to get it free, but at some point to get on with fishing you have to cut the line and attach a new hook complete with new bait. Or sometimes your bait just isn't working for the conditions for what ever reason, to switch to new bait, you'd have to cut off the old bait. So basically it means one will be trying over again with a new approach by admitting a previous mistake.

I always thought the metaphor of cutting bait was slicing up other fish to use as bait, so cutting bait was preparing to fish as opposed to actually fishing. In that sense, fish or cut bait is a polite equivalent to shit or get off the pot.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fish-or-cut-bait.html

"Cutting bait is a straightforward literal term, i.e. chopping up bait to attract larger fish."

Re:Cutting Bait?

[Weedhopper]

Allow me to make a car analogy for you. When someone farts, you have to roll down your windshield before you run out of gas. Otherwise, your carburetor get sludged up, but not before your treads are too worn down.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[ThreeGigs]

"shit or get off the pot"

Wait, I don't understand the shitting metaphor, what's that supposed to mean?

(grin)

Re:Cutting Bait?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I don't understand fishing metaphors! Seriously. What is that supposed to mean?

I don't know either, perhaps someone can frame it as a car analogy.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[NekSnappa]

It's like driving down the road and realizing that the accelerator on your Prius is stuck so you jump out the door.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but that's the British meaning. The USA meaning is similar but involves less meat flavored puddings.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[Anachragnome]

"I don't know either, perhaps someone can frame it as a car analogy."

The light is green. Go, motherfucker.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/theword/2009/06/fish_or_cut_bai.html

Re:Cutting Bait?

[grouchomarxist]

I think the parent's explanation makes more sense, as "do or give up". Under your explanation it means "do or prepare to do".

Re:Cutting Bait?

[Anonymous Coward]

That the Parent has been modded "5 - Funny" is really an expression of how JUVINIAL Slashdotters have become. This is now Fark.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[interkin3tic]

...and that's when I decided I was done with slashdot for a while.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[bazorg]

a very common situation indeed.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is my understanding of the term as well.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[theskipper]

Were you purposely fishing for spelling Nazis? And all caps is like a shiny lure?

Re:Cutting Bait?

[sgtrock]

Actually, the original phrase was "fish, cut bait, or go ashore." It was a common saying among working fishermen for generations. It meant if you weren't prepared to work and work hard, you had no business trying to earn your living out on the water. So, the real meaning of "fish or cut bait" is basically, "Get to work!" :)

Re:Cutting Bait?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you fish and leave a bait in the water too long, the bait loses its appeal. I always thought cut bait was to throw out the old bait and tie a new one.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[Just Some Guy]

I think the connotation is that you need to commit to a course of action. Either get on with it or give up and get ready for your next attempt. Don't just limp along half-assed.

Re:Cutting Bait?

[c0ck_l0rge]

Wouldn't that also be a "Van der Sloot"?

Next of Kin?

[BearRanger]

That would be Windows Phone 7. Thanks to Android it's likely to meet a similar fate.

Re:Next of Kin?

[atrimtab]

That would be Windows Phone 7. Thanks to Android it's likely to meet a similar fate.

If Microsoft open source most of Windows Phone 7 and licenses it for free to hardware makers it may have a chance. They'd just have find a sweet spot of control like Google has. Otherwise, Windows Phone 7 is already doomed.

Re:Next of Kin?

[shutdown -p now]

WP7 is (at least at the moment) trying to make a stake on developers first - emphasis on app store with sane (i.e. not phase-of-moon dependent, but rather straightforward and unambiguous rules) review policies, and familiar high-level framework (Silverlight) and development tools (Visual studio, Expression. It's also by far the easiest of all platforms to add visual bling to your apps, which is the kind of thing casual mobile users tend to love. You know, smooth animations and transitions, that kind of thing.

But Kin, while visually reminiscent of WP7, was a closed platform - no open SDK, no external apps, practically zero extensibility. With that card not entering the play, what else was there, really? Any functionality it could possibly offer can be added to either of the competing platforms via apps. As for price, we've seen a slew of cheap Android phones entering the market in the last few months - some running ancient versions such as 1.6, but there are still enough apps for those to be useful.

As for WP7... we shall see. If catering to "developers, developers, developers" does play out as it did for MS in the past, it may well acquire the critical mass of apps fast enough to enter the market as a serious contender. And the UI is pretty interesting, too - though I say it as a geek, finding its intentional visual minimalism and focus on informativeness over flashiness appealing; not sure how well that will fly with the crowds.

Re:Next of Kin?

[macs4all]

That would be Windows Phone 7. Thanks to iPhone it's likely to meet a similar fate.

There, fixed that for you...

Re:Next of Kin?

[BearRanger]

No, you broke it. Microsoft makes a mobile OS that they license to phone manufacturers. Google makes a mobile OS that they give away to phone manufacturers. Apple makes a single mobile phone that they provide the hardware and software for, but that they don't make available to others. It's very successful but it's not quite the same market niche.

No, it's Android that will slaughter Windows Phone 7, not iPhone. And can we please dispense with this "fixed that for you" meme? I meant exactly what I said, and I'm sure other people that get "corrected" mean what they say too.

Stop laughing, it's a serious mental illness

[straponego]

They just can't help themselves, especially in mobile. It's like, if they ever stick to a plan for a full year, we'll all know what they're up to! Can't have that. Call it the Sun syndrome...

But on the bright side, one of their employees has come to the conclusion that, in principle anyway, it would be good if their software worked. And was easy to use.

http://www.crn.com/software/225701869

So maybe they'll give that a shot soon.

Re:Stop laughing, it's a serious mental illness

[Tom]

But on the bright side, one of their employees has come to the conclusion that, in principle anyway, it would be good if their software worked. And was easy to use. [...] So maybe they'll give that a shot soon.

I heard the board is discussing putting that on the business plan. For 2030.

Re:Stop laughing, it's a serious mental illness

[Anonymous Coward]

This made me smile, from the linked article :

Nick Gold, director of business development for Baltimore, Md.-based Apple VAR Chesapeake Systems, says efforts to simplify Windows could alienate Microsoft's existing customers. "There are lots of Windows oriented people, from power users on the desktop to IT administrators, who like the complexity of Windows and the feeling that it's a bit esoteric," he said

I guess that explains a lot of the comments on Slashdot these days, especially re the iPad .. :)

Re:Stop laughing, it's a serious mental illness

[gbjbaanb]

But on the bright side, one of their employees has come to the conclusion that, in principle anyway, it would be good if their software worked. And was easy to use.

read that article again - it describes how they want to make it appear that it works and is easy to use. Subtle difference between 'well engineered' and 'crufty implementation with a pretty gui plastered on top'.

Recurring was the death knell

[fermion]

When I saw the ads I thought the Kin was something that MS did right. I am surprised that they did not succeed. The massive ad campaign should have been enough to make a dent. What I did no realize is that to use the phone the way it is intended, with unlimited texting and such, the recurring billing from Verizon would be well over $100 a month.

This is a phone for kids and young adult. How many of these are able to afford more than $100 a month for a phone. My first mobile phone was $50 a month, and that was when I was working at higher than minimum wage. Sure the ads depict kids with unlimited resources who can afford to take cabs around the city and fly all over the country, but that is like a TV where people with no visible means of income can afford spacious NYC apartments. No one takes it seriously, or maybe they did.

I think this is another case of people worshiping verizon no matter how little sense it makes, thinking that if they can cut a deal they wil automatically become successful. I keep asking if one wants to sell phones to a market that does not already have smart phone saturation, why not go for Cricket or Boost? They could keep the recurring to something a young adult could have a chance of keeping up with.

Re:Recurring was the death knell

[Darkness404]

How are you surprised? What did the Kin do when compared to Android? For about the same price, someone could have gotten an Android phone, lets see here:

Apps, Android has a lot, Kin had none.

Flash, depending on the phone Flash could be possible on the Android phone, it was impossible on the Kin

Browser, I have no doubt that Android's browsers were better than what was on the Kin

Etc.

The only thing that would have saved the Kin would be a reduced price data plan which didn't happen. It wasn't Verizon that was the main problem it was a phone that did less than the comparable Android phones for the same required data plan. Yes, Verizon could have easily helped it work, but it was MS that created such a niche-less device in the first place.

As for the $100 statement, when you figure in all the things it can replace its probably cheaper today to get an "everything" plan than a home phone, cable and internet plan, plus, its a lot more convenient.

Re:Recurring was the death knell

[Rinikusu]

I like the hardware. I think nVidia's Tegra platform is pretty solid. But, without ability to download/run apps, silly games, and the outragerous freaking plan (seriously, $100/month aimed at tweens/teens? no thanks!), they killed it before it even started. Hey, at $50/month, plus $15/month for Zune Pass? I'd be interested and I'm 37 (and male).

I'd be much more interested if someone can root the kin and get a fully working version of Android on it. Again, I like the hardware, I'm just not sure they thought the software/network stack well enough. As much as I'd like to like Verizon, their pricing sucks.

Re:Recurring was the death knell

[Darkness404]

What are you talking about? According to http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/05/kin-one-and-two-review/ they cost $50 or $100 subsidized after rebates. The Droid Eris cost $99 on release which was way before Kin and went down to about $30 or so before the Kin launched. Today, there is the LG Ally which is less than the Kin was when first released but I'm not sure that it was released when Kin launched or not.

Yes, today the Kin is insanely cheap on contract but thats only because they were a failure to start with. They didn't start out that cheap and yes, there was an Android phone that was cheaper than the Kin on release (yes the Eris is discontinued now, but it was discontinued on June 21 or 22nd, way after the Kin was released).

So, no, your argument makes no sense, there was an Android phone out there for cheaper than the Kin on launch.

Re:Recurring was the death knell

[Junta]

I suspect the plan price was enough to kill it off, though I have some shred of hope that humanity saw the ads that did nothing more than say "OMG you can facebook" and collectively shrugged. Of course, the devices looked bad and the interface in the ads looked even worse.

In terms of Verizon worshipping, the full story sounds more like some MS guy liked Sidekicks (which if they were thinking clearly would be recognized as a stopgap rather than an endgame). Then they acquired danger and decided to do it their own way while keeping sidekick barely alive. On top of targeting a rapidly evaporating market as smartphones came down, they made it horribly late by insisting upon essentially starting from scratch (reminds me of the hotmail acquisition and initial attempt to move to winnt servers). By the time they were ready to move, smartphones and smartphone plans had come down so much, the Kin was laughable.

Essentially, it's the story of MS' life in the mobile market. They don't get the concepts until someone else has already gone. I don't know if/when MS will finally give up. The handset vendors have everything to gain from a platform like Android and nothing really to lose. I personally like WebOS, but I don't think there is room for more than one Apple-like entity in the market, and Android is really out-MSing MS in the space. MS made share gains by all the OEM support, and HTC, Samsung, et al are more in charge of their own destinies than MS ever would allow.

Re:Recurring was the death knell

[tomhudson]

Why would you compare a Kin phone's hardware software to an Android phone? The least expensive Android phone still costs 3 times more than the Kin phone.

Are you on drugs?

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=5290 Kin 1: $329.99
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=5291 Kin 2: $429.99

Sure, you can get them for less on a 2-year plan, but the same thing applies for Android phones. And there's a $350.00 Early Termination Fee.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=5331LG Android: $369.99 - so it's cheaper than the Kin 2.

The kin phones are DOA.

I've seen some Silmaril actions before

[The_mad_linguist]

Well, I suppose we'll be calling Ballmer "Fëanor" now.

Re:I've seen some Silmaril actions before

[Nimey]

Feanor slew his kin.

Nice obscure reference.

Re:I've seen some Silmaril actions before

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah and he even positioned the viking horns thingy on the 'e' just right.

Re:I've seen some Silmaril actions before

[EricTheGreen]

With those anger management issues of his, I'd think "Turín" would be more apropos.

That was fast

[Dracos]

It was only last week that I read a rumor that only about 500 of these things had been sold. Perhaps the kids they were marketing these to have Macs?

Re:That was fast

[Darkness404]

Perhaps the kids they were marketing it to realized that if they were going to have to pay a smartphone data plan they might as well just get a smartphone that actually has apps and a future.

Really, Android phones are cheap these days and even the crappiest of Android phones can do more than Kin can.

Back to their core competency.

[SteeldrivingJon]

Digital watches.

Re:Back to their core competency.

[MichaelSmith]

Digital watches.

They don't make you happy, even if you have lots of bits of green paper.

Re:Back to their core competency.

[sharkey]

MS Digital Watches? Meet you for dinner at 18:73am!!

this explains the shakeup

[Anonymous Coward]

This helps explain the departure of senior execs Robbie Bach and J. Allard from MS a month ago. As far as Ballmer was concerned, the Kin was perhaps the final straw.

Re:But??? But???

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you have to ask...

MOD PARENT UP!!

[Brett Buck]

Oh, that link is classic. It's also 100% applicable to the "Linux on the desktop" issue, too.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Linux on the desktop "Doesn't Work", instead.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!!

[boxwood]

Actually the problem with the linux desktop is lack of hype and the fact that you can easily reconfigure it.

MacOS has lots of hype and you can reconfigure it very much. This forces people to use MacOS more or less with the default settings. And because of the hype people are willing to use it long enough to get used to it.

There is no hype for the linux desktop. And since its not what people are used to, they start spending lots of time reconfiguring it to make it more like windows. The end result is that many users end up with a desktop OS thats a poor approximation of windows which took a lot of configuration to get that way.

Its a shame. If people just installed it and didn't go messing with the configuration too much and instead just got used to the interface, they'd have a really good experience with it. But it goes against the philosophy of linux to forbid users from configuring things the way apple does. So people will continue to move the applications menu to the lower left corner, get rid of the top panel, etc, throwing away all the hard work people did on UI design. And after they make the UI hard to use, they complain that the UI is hard to use.

The biggest problem with getting used to the linux desktop interface is that when you have to use windows or macOS it feels like a big step backwards.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with getting used to the linux desktop interface is that when you have to use windows or macOS it feels like a big step backwards.

Bullshit.

The biggest problem with getting used to the linux desktop interface is that you DON'T - You get used to a window manager and a DE, and applications that may possibly work consistently within a DE, and generally don't outside of that.

I've tried and tried to run Linux on the client side. I now happily run OSX. Why? I have the X support when I need it, I have great commercial app backing for those times it is needed, and it stays the hell out of my way and lets me work, while still providing some pretty great features for an OS. Hard to say it's a step back when features such as Expose were later emulated (poorly) by many DEs.

I love linux on the server side - but every time I've used it on the desktop (ESPECIALLY the laptop side) I end up frustrated. The configurability is great, the problem is that each package generally has it's own ideas of how it should behave. There's a lot to be said for a consistent user experience.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with getting used to the linux desktop interface is that when you have to use windows or macOS it feels like a big step backwards.

True, but in a way completely unrelated to what you claimed. The problem isn't that Windows/Mac users spend lots of time reconfiguring Linux to look like Windows/Mac and come away disappointed. Most of them would never even try, because let's face it, that's a very geeky thing to even attempt.

The problem is rather this: the level of integration and polish in Linux has never even sniffed the level which would be acceptable to more than a few niches. Linux is in a perpetual state of half-assedness, precisely because the nature of the community which develops it is such that it is always designed with too much emphasis on infinite reconfigurability. Software designed that way always requires tweaking, because the designers are never forced into the discipline which only comes when you must leave the knobs out. They can always push responsibility down to the user. Worse, they usually don't even think of it that way; instead they think they are providing features. A common goal is to add more knobs, because knobs are cool, you see.

I am a geek. I have compiled kernels. I've done minor hacking on some drivers. I can read source and figure out what's wrong, given enough time. I don't want to do that all the time. I find that even in the supposedly modern and friendly distributions like Ubuntu, I inevitably spend tons of time fixing stupid problems instead of doing the work I want to do. This in spite of the fact that I now minimize customization of my environment and try so hard to give the default config a chance. (I do this out of pragmatism, actually: after a while, there's nothing more boring/infuriating than installing the latest new distribution and having to go back and figure out all the tweaks again.)

That is why Linux is a failure on the desktop, and will continue to be for the forseeable future.

Maybe I'm just not in a cutting-edge market...

[damn_registrars]

... but I've only been seeing ads on TV for the Kin for about 2-3 weeks. And on top of that, only for a Kin on one network. I wouldn't exactly say its been a mass-market item so far; if it appealed to me (which it does not) I would have had to switch networks to use it as I am currently on a GSM network.

I would say if they are killing it already, it died from bad marketing (and bad corporate decisions) as anything.

Re:Maybe I'm just not in a cutting-edge market...

[Darkness404]

Bad marketing had nothing to do with it.

The problem was you were paying for a smartphone data plan and for the phone. For the price you were paying for a Kin why not go with Android or a Blackberry?

Microsoft tried to tap a non existent niche and failed. Had they struck a deal with Verizon to get a discounted data plan? Sure, it might have survived, but was there a single thing done right with the Kin when compared to an Android or Blackberry device?

Re:Maybe I'm just not in a cutting-edge market...

[Facegarden]

... but I've only been seeing ads on TV for the Kin for about 2-3 weeks....

That's the crazy thing... it's only been *on the market* for 2-3 weeks. They basically killed it right away.

Engadget covered this a bit better, but basically through bad project management, they delayed the whole thing by 18 months, and a LOT has changed in the smartphone space in that time. If they had come out with it 18 months ago, it might have made sense.

Now even microsoft is coming out with a new mobile OS, it really doesn't make sense to support two, and Verizon was pretty upset that microsoft delayed it so long, so they didn't give microsoft the low plan pricing they originally planned for.

All in all, it never made sense to anyone, and now its gone. Its like the palm Foleo all over again.

-Taylor

Re:Maybe I'm just not in a cutting-edge market...

[Revotron]

Bad marketing may not have been the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, but it still played a part.

Ads demonstrated nothing about the phone short of "Take pictures, upload them instantly." Furthermore, the way that feature was demonstrated was in the context of "Stalk your ex-girlfriend, upload her pictures to your studio. Stare at them later." Either that, or "Take risque pictures, sext your girlfriend."

The Kin and Kin Two were two terribly-thought-out products, I agree with you there. But the phones were also the victims of terrible marketing from the "me-too" corporation that wanted to look young and edgy. Midlife crisis for Microsoft? Just about.

Re:Maybe I'm just not in a cutting-edge market...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you listen to the ads, they did 2 things right...
Stalking and Social networking

Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[RazorSharp]

until something sticks. That seems to be their current strategy with cell phones, and unfortunately, despite this individual failure, with their money and resources, I have a feeling something will stick eventually. For every Clippy and Bob and ME and Vista there is an XP and 7. Hrmm, okay, no alternative to Clippy and Bob ever took off. But hell, Office is still raking in dough.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[Darkness404]

Microsoft seems to be willingly blind to what their users want and what is out there though. It seems to take a financial failure before they will wake up. Simply doing a crap job copying an existing product isn't going to earn you any customers, you have to be better and that is where Microsoft's things fail in most cases. And yes, Office is making MS quite a bit of money, but once word gets out about Google Docs and OOo, the case to use Office keeps on becoming less and less for most users.

I don't see Microsoft making a decent phone anytime soon because it keeps trying to emulate BlackBerry, the iPhone, Android and WebOS and failing at all of them. Microsoft will never get the reliability of BlackBerry OS, Microsoft can never reach the cult-like status of Apple, it can't just decide not to include a major feature like Flash, Multitasking, copy/paste, etc. until a future software update and expect people to buy it, Microsoft can never reach the level of appeal of the Google cloud services nor the openness of a Linux-based OS, and Microsoft will try, but fail to reach the level of ease of use of WebOS just like they tried to copy OS X and failed.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

For every Clippy and Bob and ME and Vista there is an XP and 7.

Not to change the subject, but wasn't there supposed to be earth shattering news from Don Knuth today?

*glances at watch impatiently*

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

In the past the MS hardware division actually has been ahead of the game. Years ago their keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc were the best. Not so much nowadays, what happened?

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[rolfwind]

People really look at XP with rose-colored glasses. It was still a security nightmare. The reason XP did so well was because it was backwards compatible to previous Windows programs and really, what else are people going to buy? Get a new computer, Windows is on there in 99% of cases. Such are the benefits of a monopoly. Vista, otoh, often broke things that previously ran and was slightly too fat for the hardware at the outset although, predictably, hardware got faster. Windows 7 is OKAY, but I can't say I got it for any other reason other than I got a faster new computer with it pre-installed. Microsoft just has to make Windows just good enough that it's too painful too switch to Mac or Linux (moreso Linux as people will either spend the $$$ on a Mac or not). They don't actually have to sell the OS itself.

New products in different markets aren't going to work like that. Microsoft can try to sell crap 50x and 50x people can sneer and choose alternatives with no similiar repercussions. They need people that can design and design well and won't be overruled by committees, marketing, etcetera.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, you're an idiot. Second, why the fuck would Microsoft try to emulate WebOS? That is a complete shit product.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[geminidomino]

In the past the MS hardware division actually has been ahead of the game. Years ago their keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc were the best. Not so much nowadays, what happened?

I think they started making their own hardware instead of licensing the label. (IIRC a lot of those great keyboards and mice were Logitech-made)

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[geminidomino]

Caught this snippet in google's results, but the blog seems to have taken down the page.

TUG2010 Don Knuth's "Earthshaking Announcement": TeX has new successor. Fix mistakes of tex78. New will use XML, arbitrary prec, autolayout....

HTH

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[vlueboy]

until something sticks. That seems to be their current strategy with cell phones, and unfortunately, despite this individual failure, with their money and resources, I have a feeling something will stick eventually.

When the iPad was announced 4 months ago I expected better alternatives to rise shortly. The US economy is still half dead, so I am still not seeing competing pads (or even contract-less Android phones) at minus $200 their premium prices. In light of MS' lack of respect for a somewhat related product, I realize that wannabe smartphones might shut down App Stores without warning, just because of bad sales. Then I would be stuck with brand-new brick in a 2 year contract for an undesirable carrier.

No, thanks. I'll hold my pad/droid plans for another 18 months.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. But, he lost me at "New will use XML". The old DK would've looked into XML, become disgusted with it, and spent the next ten years inventing his own markup metalanguage.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[MoxFulder]

I don't see Microsoft making a decent phone anytime soon because it keeps trying to emulate BlackBerry, the iPhone, Android and WebOS and failing at all of them. Microsoft will never get the reliability of BlackBerry OS, Microsoft can never reach the cult-like status of Apple, it can't just decide not to include a major feature like Flash, Multitasking, copy/paste, etc. until a future software update and expect people to buy it, Microsoft can never reach the level of appeal of the Google cloud services nor the openness of a Linux-based OS, and Microsoft will try, but fail to reach the level of ease of use of WebOS just like they tried to copy OS X and failed.

Precisely. There's no reason for anyone to want a phone OS built on the Microsoft philosophy. Their phone OSes have been bloated, buggy, with unexciting UIs, and with a tendency to be rolled out before they were really ready. In the mobile OS market, Microsoft has no head-start or brand recognition like they've had in the PC market for decades. Sure, there have been Windows Mobile phones for yeaaaaars, mostly aimed at the business market, but none of them have been exciting enough for business users to want to use at home or tell their kids about.

I have a 2-year-old Motorola Q smartphone which runs the Windows Mobile 5.0 OS. This phone is practically a microcosm of what's wrong with Microsoft's mobile offerings. It looks great on the outside, like a thinner, more angular, "edgier" Blackberry. The QWERTY keyboard, which stubbornly refuses to wear out, is better than any I have ever used on a phone. I get people asking me about it all the time, and this is a piece of hardware that's been out for 4 years.

The internal specs aren't bad for its age, either: CDMA/EV-DO, Bluetooth 2.0, 1.3 megapixel camera, 312 MHz XScale (ARM) processor, MiniSD card slot, very bright QVGA screen, good sound quality. So far, so good, right?

The problem is the OS: it's static and half-open and half-locked-down and Microsoft-centric in every imaginable way. Almost everything you could want to do is possible, but almost everything is also a huge pain in the ass. Some examples:

• The mail client can do IMAP and POP mail, but the interface is infuriatingly quirky (can't sync the Drafts folder... why???) and lacking in options and keyboard shortcuts (for example, you can quickly switch accounts, but not folders). It can also do Exchange Mail, slightly better. For no good reason, the Exchange configuration is handled via a completely different mechanism than regular mail accounts... and a very unintuitive one at that. You can only have one Exchange account, and it's always named "Outlook Express" ... why??
• The mobile browser is outdated. It can't do any JavaScript, Flash, etc. It keeps a history list, but is dog-slow to navigate it with even a few hundred entries. There's no reliable way to download links, rather than open them immediately, which is totally maddening. There are no consistent forward-and-back shortcuts. It's impossible to have more than one instance running at a time, and there are no tabs, so you can't really multi-task on the web.
• Unlike the iPhone, Windows Mobile phones have a normal-ish filesystem which you can navigate with a file manager, in order to copy and manipulate files. You can copy files to and from an SD card easily. Unfortunately, it borrows nearly all the bad features of Windows on the Desktop: weird deep hierarchies with impenetrable UUIDs for directory names. All the important files which you might want to back up (mail, text messages, contacts) are stored in weird opaque formats and the files are permanently locked so you can't copy them... unless you use some custom ActiveSync software. Why couldn't they make it so I couldn't back up my text messages with a simple copy command?
• Parts of the OS are totally "bolted-on", like the Bluetooth support. Bluetooth works well, but the

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[McBeer]

And just what product did they do a "Crap job" of copying? There's nothing out there with the same focus as the Kin. The failure had more to do with Verizon's ridiculous network charges then anything on the phone really.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[Tom]

And yes, Office is making MS quite a bit of money, but once word gets out about Google Docs and OOo, the case to use Office keeps on becoming less and less for most users.

Unfortunately not. Their main game - lock in - is still working splendid. So much that my girlfriend is thinking about buying a windos netbook. She'll have Ubuntu on it for (her words!) when she wants to get some real work done, but the main reason is that she needs MS Office. None of the alternatives work well enough with their proprietary, fucked-up, pushed-through-ISO-and-then-implemented-differently formats and her new job requires her to be able to work with those documents.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

And yes, Office is making MS quite a bit of money, but once word gets out about Google Docs and OOo, the case to use Office keeps on becoming less and less for most users.

Google Docs? Open Office? Have you used Office 2010? I'm a hardcore Google-anything nerd, and I found myself content for a while, using Google Docs, until I updated last week to 2010. I didn't realize what I was missing. And I think most people don't, whose last impression was of Office 2000/XP/2003.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[davidshewitt]

you have to be better and that is where Microsoft's things fail in most cases

Office is making MS quite a bit of money, but once word gets out about Google Docs and OOo, the case to use Office keeps on becoming less and less for most users.

Not to discredit OOo and Google Docs, but IMHO, MS Office is better than the competition at this point.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh but put the onus backwardsss on the Googles for compatablity, it'd happen much faster. (All services included, stripped of their proprietery nonsense mind you)

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[GlassHeart]

[Microsoft] can't just decide not to include a major feature like Flash, Multitasking, copy/paste, etc. until a future software update and expect people to buy it

Actually, it used to, and it can again, but it needs to show commitment. Incidents like PlaysForSure and the KIN (and the Courier, even if nobody spent money on one) don't help, because the customers don't know if Microsoft will stand behind the product, and they'll think Microsoft is fickle. However, if they carefully rebuild their brand by delivering these features year after year, they can regain the trust in time.

Microsoft's bigger problem is that they're trying to make money by selling an OS that Google is willing to pay a large and talented team to develop and give away for free. Apple absorbs the Android competition by selling entire phones, Microsoft will have to find a way to make its customers (hardware manufacturers) willing to pay royalty!

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft really don't know what their customers (or prospective customers) want.
They've had the Windows and Office monopoly for so long that they've forgotten how to win a market.
The Kin probably looked good to guys on a six-figure income. But their kids, who could afford the plan that went with it, wanted more from a phone.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[Darkness404]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoblur

Essentially has the same focus as the Kin only it runs on top of Android so you can actually -do- something with your phone other than use a terrible browser and you can actually download apps and the like.

Re:Throw stuff at the wall. . .

[UnknowingFool]

Focus!=good implementation. The market that the Kin targeted was the same as the Danger phones. What MS delivered was an in-between phone. It was a social networking phone that missed some social features. It was a smartphone without apps. As for Verizon, MS designed the phone to use the data network. So Verizon will charge the same rate as they would for any other phone that uses a data network. This will drive up the TCO a bit.

So sad.

[diesel66]

Has anybody notified the next of 'kin?

Oops.

[symbolset]

It had 200,000 "fans" on FaceBook from the very beginning. That's really funny when you consider how many they actually sold. Apparently not all of the FaceBook fans have gotten the word yet that they can stop astroturfing now:

Tommy Marcus: MAN, I WANT THIS PHONE SO BADLY!! ITS BETTER THAN THE IPHONE AND DROID COMBINED!!!!!!!!!

Or maybe Tommy's being sarcastic. Hard to tell.

Re:Oops.

[larry bagina]

in all fairness, if you combined a droid and an iphone by gluing them together (touchscreen to touchscreen), the kin would be better.

Re:Oops.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I absolutely despise you, have you foed, and have disagreed with every comment by you I've ever seen on this site. Except this one.

Re:Oops.

[mark72005]

You could still get more out of the two smartphones, with tethering, handsfree, use as USB mass storage, etc.

The KIN, however, is the perfect shape for coaster duties

So...

[PmanAce]

...who is the next of kin?

Congratulations, MS: You beat Google again...

[No Grand Plan]

That was an even quicker death than the Nexus One.

Re:Congratulations, MS: You beat Google again...

[Darkness404]

You are comparing two different things though, the Nexus One was designed to be a high-end phone untouched by carriers, the Kin was supposed to be a mass-market device, the Nexus One was more of a developer's or power user's plaything, in all honesty, the thing that killed the Nexus One was that cheaper (subsidized) phones started appearing with the same or better specs as the Nexus One. It makes sense to tone down a product designed for high-end use whenever cheaper, higher end products start appearing.

Re:Congratulations, MS: You beat Google again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Having the Nexus One available only through Google's crappy online store didn't help.

Re:Congratulations, MS: You beat Google again...

[Frankenshteen]

mod parent up. MS wants so badly to googlize itself they're willing to demonstrate massive loss on device development, launch cut-and-run.

Re:Congratulations, MS: You beat Google again...

[dbcad7]

What is with all the "was".. Nexus is still selling and the first phone to get upgraded to the latest version of Android.. both AT&T and Tmobile users who have purchased them seem very happy with them..

Re:Congratulations, MS: You beat Google again...

[Darkness404]

Because Google killed selling the CDMA devices and the only reason why T-Mobile and AT&T customers are really happy with them is because neither AT&T or T-Mobile have a high-end Android handset in their ranks mostly because T-Mobile in general focuses on cheaper devices and plans and AT&T has their head in their ass and won't let any phone outshine the iPhone... Wait, even the BackFlip Android phone on AT&T will make calls... So perhaps not...

But really, the only reason that people are totally happy with their Nexus one on those two networks is that its the only phone thats high end on either of them.

Re:Congratulations, MS: You beat Google again...

[shutdown -p now]

You know, there are quite a few Nexus One users outside of US.

Furthermore, in some countries it's actually offered by the carriers themselves, complete with a plan offering - e.g. in South Korea.

Re:Congratulations, MS: You beat Google again...

[mjwx]

Because Google killed selling the CDMA devices

Because CDMA networks don't really exist outside the united states. Asia, Europe and Australia are on GSM. Almost all countries are on 2100 MHz networks with some sporting 900 MHz and a rare few with 850 MHz. The 900 and 850 MHz networks typically accompanies the 2100 MHz network. The N1 handset comes in a 2100/900 variant and a 2100/850 variant.

Re:Congratulations, MS: You beat Google again...

[dbcad7]

T-Mobiles Android phones are not bad,, they have been leap-frogged with by higher end hardware, but all their phones are decent.. and they have a dual core phone in the hopper that looks to be interesting.. http://phandroid.com/2010/06/25/dual-core-4-3-inch-htc-vision-headed-for-t-mo-this-year/ probably looking at around holiday season though..

How could you..

[liber9]

Slashdot, how could you miss the chance for the headline, "Microsoft kills it's Kin"?

Re:How could you..

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that would be grammatically incorrect. You want its, not it's.

Re:How could you..

[revlayle]

... and that would stop Slashdot how?

Re:How could you..

[liber9]

Which would be.. um.. more ironic? :/

Re:How could you..

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot, how could you miss the chance for the headline, "Microsoft kills it's Kin"?

Don't worry, the repost next week will get the headline right.

Re:How could you..

[IICV]

kdawson or samzenpus would have to post it, and they're too busy worshiping at their secret Gates shrine or looking at pictures of cats with bad grammar, respectively.

Kin or Kinect

[richman555]

The name Kin is really not much more different than Kinect, I think the same people came up with these names.

Re:But??? But???

[Anonymous Coward]

When you see him sitting in the park with his guitar case open and some change and small bills inside, and a sign around his neck that says, "Anything helps! God bless!", then you will know that he's giving a free concert.

So...

[Kitkoan]

Who else read the title and saw 'Microsoft kills own kin'? Thought they started killing their own brothers and sisters for a moment...

About Time

[Anonymous Coward]

I was really getting sick of the Kin commercials on Hulu.

Nigerian spam

[WetCat]

Dear Mr Cardholder,
the project kin dies in a accident, that leaved no survivors,
he leaved 3000000 of Australian dollars in Nigerian bank,
to get this we need you to be claimed next of kin. ....

Re:Nigerian spam

[mjwx]

Dear Mr Cardholder,
the project kin dies in a accident, that leaved no survivors,
he leaved 3000000 of Australian dollars in Nigerian bank,
to get this we need you to be claimed next of kin. ....

The spammers are learning. They've started using the only western currency still worth anything.

Could have been better

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have been less terrible if they didn't force you to get the $30/month data plan. Its not like this thing was a true smart phone. It lacked so many features that a real smart phone has and yet you had to pay monthly as if it was. Maybe it could have found a niche in the lower level data plans at a lower price but i wont shed any tears over it.

FUD

[BlueBoxSW.com]

Isn't it great that MS is creating their OWN FUD these days?

They need a serious shakeup over there.

Attempt at taking over the web with .Net: FAIL

Attempt at killing Flash with Silverlight: FAIL

Attempt at killing the iPod with Zune: FAIL

Attempt at Killing the iPhone with Windows7/Kin: FAIL

I hope IE9 takes HTML5 seriously, because people are no longer afraid to install their own browser. Their assumed dominance could turn into another big FAIL.

At least Active Directory and SQL Server still hold a pretty solid place in many corporations.

Where did they go so wrong?

Re:FUD

[Mongoose Disciple]

Attempt at taking over the web with .Net: FAIL

I'm not sure .NET was ever supposed to be what you seem to be saying, but there's certainly no small amount of .NET development being done even today.

Re:FUD

[BlueBoxSW.com]

5 years after lots of people moved from java to .net, I see lots of people moving back (or in other directions).

Re:FUD

[Mongoose Disciple]

I don't know what to tell you -- maybe it's just my market, but there's lots of both Java and .NET experience on my resume, and I get a *lot* more calls about .NET jobs.

Re:FUD

[shutdown -p now]

I'm not sure .NET was ever supposed to be what you seem to be saying

The original marketing for it (circa 2001-2002) was indeed very web-centric, and included the buzzwords of the day, such as "XML" and "web services". Hence the ".NET" name, actually. You might also remember Passport.NET from that age, also having to do with the web; and a bunch of other products that were slated to have .NET as part of their name, but which was dropped eventually - such as Windows Server .NET, shipped as Windows Server 2003.

Here is a typical example of article about .NET from that era.

Re:FUD

[shutdown -p now]

I don't know what to tell you -- maybe it's just my market, but there's lots of both Java and .NET experience on my resume, and I get a *lot* more calls about .NET jobs.

It depends very strongly on the region you're in. I've lived in a few countries in past years, and for some it's split more or less evenly (Russia, and CIS in general), while in others it's very slanted towards .NET (New Zealand). I know there are other regions which are much more Java-friendly - apparently, quite a few European countries.

On the whole, experienced developers are typically expected to be familiar (though not an expert) with both, even if specializing in a particular one.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure .NET was ever supposed to be what you seem to be saying, but there's certainly no small amount of .NET development being done even today.

I'm not sure you remember Hailstorm. That was what .Net was about. Its why its called .Net. People were really concerned that everyone would write code .Net web services in .Net for .Net using .Net for .Net They were really going to call everything .Net. VB.net IIS.Net, Windows.Net, Soap.Net, Office.Net, Internet Explorer.Net, Sql Server.Net, ect.Net. Safe to say, the web services died a horrible death, but the modifications to the programming languages weren't too bad.

Re:FUD

[moosesocks]

Attempt at killing Flash with Silverlight: FAIL

Debatable. Right now, it's probably the best way to deliver HD video to the largest selection of users. If your requirements are even remotely more complicated than serving up a flat file in a browser, it's pretty much the only option apart from Flash (which is too slow to decode HD video on most machines anyway)

Silverlight has done as well as it could have been hoped to. It's a shame that the OSS community threw Mono under the bus, because C#, Silverlight, and Moonlight had lots of potential, and virtually no legal liability (as determined by actual lawyers, not some dude on Slashdot). HTML5's a huge step in the right direction, but even Google are beginning to admit that the spec is lacking in a lot of ways, and even at that, will take some time to be adopted widely -- the situation as it currently stands is pretty dire, as browser makers have begun to take matters into their own hands.

Zune owners also seem genuinely happy with their purchase. It did a lot of things that iPods of the same vintage couldn't touch.

Microsoft's got a lot of smart people working for it. Unfortunately, they've also got a few morons mixed in there.

Re:FUD

[Swampash]

Attempt at taking over the web with .Net: FAIL

Attempt at killing Flash with Silverlight: FAIL

Attempt at killing the iPod with Zune: FAIL

Attempt at Killing the iPhone with Windows7/Kin: FAIL

Yeah, but MS makes so much money out of Office and Windows that all the costs of the projects you just described as FAILs can be written off and MS won't even notice.

Re:FUD

[miffo.swe]

.Net is dead, it just dont know it yet. Smart people use better tools, the idiots are beginners getting smarter every day until they realize the tool they use is shits.

Re:FUD

[gbjbaanb]

Even MS says that Silverlight has 60% penetration - that's significantly insufficient for it to replace Flash.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Silverlight does one thing pretty well: DRM HD Video. Other than that, it was a failure. There are just a couple hundred jobs on Monster than even mention it, compared to thousands that mention Flash.

What things has google said about HTML5?

What great and useful things does the Zune do that iPods don't?

Do you really think there's just a couple bad apples? How could just a couple people cause so much damage? I didn't even bring up the stillborn called Vista.

So what happens to those who signed an agreement?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Kin was out for only a few months (was it even a month?), so what happens to people who bought these things with a two year agreement with the expectation that Microsoft would support them?

'kin crap

[Anonymous Coward]

'kin crap

Their commercials all featured stalkers

[gdesignrr]

The first commercial for the Kin that I saw had a teenage girl visiting her social network. The first person she met was an old guy who she thought was younger, as the guy had used a young picture of himself when he friended this teenage girl. Why was this old guy pretending to be young and friending teenage girls?? They must have thought it was funny, but it came across as super creepy. The most recent one has a guy following and taking pictures of his ex-girlfriend who is trying to ignore him and pushing him away. The guy goes back to his house and keeps looking at the pictures he took of her. Creepy again. Awful campaign.

Re:Their commercials all featured stalkers

[geminidomino]

Oh, was that that little almost-round phone that put "everything you do on your phone" onto the internet?

I seem to remember the ex-girlfriend commercial, but I dunno if it's the same thing. I didn't pay much attention.

Re:Their commercials all featured stalkers

[PPH]

Why was this old guy pretending to be young and friending teenage girls?

You're new to the Internet, right?

Re:But??? But???

[Anonymous Coward]

Well since he looks like he lives in the park, I'm sure you could show up just about any old time and he'd play you a tune for some change. He might even be willing to blow you if you lay down a few George Washingtons.

Re:But??? But???

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor Kendra, she will never know either.

LOL

dumb commercials anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you highlight the "social" aspect of a phone by rolling out a commercial where the protagonist spends an afternoon with a cranky EX-girlfriend??

Honestly, who the hell thought THAT one up.

The problem - we can't own two phones

[RevWaldo]

Withe pretty much any other thing you can name, I can own more than one, even if they do the same thing but slightly differently.

Two cars if I can afford it? One's a pickup and the other's a Mini? Can do.
Hi-tops, oxfords, and sandals? A big TV and a little TV? No problem.
But for just personal use I can only really have one mobile phone. If I want two phones I'd have to pay an additional fee and have an extra phone number that I don't need.
If I was heavily into social networking, having a phone designed from the ground up just for that could be handy. But I'd still want a "real" smart phone that's good at everything else. If I have to choose between one or the other, I'd take the smart phone that's just OK at social networking.

If they want things like the Kin to work, they need to let users have more than one phone on the same number. Only then will people other than tween girls buy a "fun" phone along with a "real" phone.

.

Re:The problem - we can't own two phones

[NekSnappa]

I like that idea. A small feature phone for day to day use, and a smart phone when on the road.

Re:The problem - we can't own two phones

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a G1, which I love, but it's a tad bulkier than I'd like. I've long wished I could also have a super-small phone on the same line, and I'd even be happy to pay full price for it. Not only would this be great for being able to carry the phone that best suits my needs at the moment, it'd be valuable as a spare if one is lost, stolen or damaged. This is the feature of Google Voice that most appeals to me, and I've hoped that Google Voice will scare carriers into offering multiple phones on one line.

The mobile phone market has exploded over the last 15 years as we went from a point where they were a status symbol owned only by a few rich (or pompous) businessmen, to being ubiquitous even among teenagers. It hadn't occurred to me until I read your comment though, that as we reach this point of market saturation, the only way for the industry to keep growing will be for it to become common for people to have more than one phone, and that won't happen until carriers make it feasible and affordable to have multiple phones on one line. The first carrier to do this will probably take customers from the others, plus sell more phones.

As for buying an extra phone and swapping SIM cards -- yeah, it's possible but it's not convenient enough for frequent casual use. I want to be able to just grab a phone as I'm running out the door.

Verizon Store

[helix2301]

I was at the Verizon store over the weekend and I saw no one even look at the KIN it was either Blackberry or Droid. I never even heard the word KIN lol.

Why bother trying anything else they offer?

[OgGreeb]

IMO Microsoft just made their mobile platform problems worse. They spent all that time, money and effort to roll Kin out,
made deals with other companies, blew out a huge advertising campaign, and then waited all of about a nanosecond to
kill it.

Every Kin cell phone buyer is now locked into a (usually) 2 year contract to use and pay for a phone with no future. Didn't
they do the same thing with OEMs and end-users of their DRM'ed PlaysForSure music?

Why in the world would anyone be stupid enough to skip over all that and buy into Windows 7 Phones? -- Because *this*
time they'll get it right and not drop the tech at the first sign of turbulence?

Re:Why bother trying anything else they offer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. I too feel sorry for the one person that bought a KIN instead of a desire as well, but that is life.

Re:Why bother trying anything else they offer?

[shutdown -p now]

Every Kin cell phone buyer is now locked into a (usually) 2 year contract to use and pay for a phone with no future.

It was a non-extensible (closed platform, no third party apps) phone to begin is; what kind of potential "future" are you talking about, regardless of the cancellation?

Re:Why bother trying anything else they offer?

[FranTaylor]

Every Kin cell phone buyer is now locked into a (usually) 2 year contract to use and pay for a phone with no future.

What if it's "lost" or "stolen"? Insurance might cover replacement cost. If they're not making them any more, then they will have to replace it with something else.

You'll certainly be marked as a sucker when people see you with one.

Re:Why bother trying anything else they offer?

[samkass]

Every Kin cell phone buyer is now locked into a (usually) 2 year contract to use and pay for a phone with no future.

I'm sure they'll both be pissed.

Re:Why bother trying anything else they offer?

[beanpoppa]

Generally, I think anyone who bought the Kin is uninformed enough to not notice/care that their new phone's product line was DoA. As it was, the Kin was launched amid the announcement from Microsoft that a radical new WM7 line would be launching at the end of the year, and that the Kin wasn't WM7, and couldn't be upgraded to it.

Re:Why bother trying anything else they offer?

[c]

>> Every Kin cell phone buyer is now locked into a (usually) 2
>> year contract to use and pay for a phone with no future.

> I'm sure they'll both be pissed.

Steve Ballmer has three children.

Ouch

[cloakedpegasus]

Someone is probably going to be (if they have not yet been) fired.

Re:Ouch

[NekSnappa]

Already has. The head of devices and entertainment division is leaving the company after 20+ years. Balmer is taking the group over.

15k is the top price

[way2trivial]

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/Pages/HowToBuy/HowToBuy.aspx

click your country

Re:15k is the top price

[sortius_nod]

Ouch, $21k... I think I'll pass.

Re:15k is the top price

[TooMuchToDo]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=How+to+build+your+own+surface+computer

The kin is dead! Long live the kin!

[d_jedi]

nt

Verizon

[symbolset]

No doubt Verizon is thrilled about this news and eager to back Microsoft's next effort with lots of co-marketing dollars, shelf space and sales face time after spending many millions up front for an exclusive. Developers must be lining up three deep.

Re:Verizon

[RobertM1968]

No doubt Verizon is thrilled about this news and eager to back Microsoft's next effort with lots of co-marketing dollars, shelf space and sales face time after spending many millions up front for an exclusive. Developers must be lining up three deep.

Well, at least the good news is that Verizon is definitely guaranteed exclusivity for anything with the KIN experience... ;-)

My phone's in jeopardy

[Gerald]

Baby. Wooooooooo.

The question becomes....

[QuietLagoon]

Does Microsoft have a plan?

.
Look at it this way.... Microsoft missed the Internet in the 90's. Gates' book, The Road Ahead missed the importance of the Internet until it was revised after the Internet became popular. Gates, the visionary at Microsoft, missed the Internet. Some visionary, eh?

Microsoft missed the whole mass migration (or should I say, the migration of the masses) from PCs to portable cell-technology devices. Windows Mobile is still little more than an unfilled vaporware promise.

What in the world is Microsoft doing with all of the money it is gaining from the aging Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office monopolies?

Surely any attempt at innovation is not a part of the plan.

Was kin the phone where they had the ad where

[NotSoHeavyD3]

the guy was kind of stalking his ex-girlfriend or something? Wow, who'd imagine that would fail?

Re:Was kin the phone where they had the ad where

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I thought about the first ad... yeah, this is a guy stalking his ex-girlfriend, and the Kin helps him in doing this.

Not entirely true

[jfoobaz]

If you have a GSM phone, you can switch between handsets without much trouble - just put the SIM into the one you want to use, and have at it. You may have to mess with syncing contacts, etc., but you'd have the problem with multiple handsets with the same number anyway.

I'm impressed

[Slashdot Parent]

(Sent from my iPhone.)

I didn't think an iPhone could hold a network connection long enough to post an entire comment.

Re:I'm impressed

[Gruturo]

I didn't think an iPhone could hold a network connection long enough to post an entire comment.

Probably true in USA, you have to thank AT&T for that. I've used my 3G for 23 months now, on 3 operators, and any connection issues or dropped calls are something which I only read about on sites like /.

Yes the current iPhone4 antenna blues are so bad they'd be funny if they weren't kind of tragic, and Steve Jobs' response is... meh (seriously dude, how about "Sorry, we're working on a fix, meanwhile try holding it differently" ? )

But apart from that you really, really want to look at what causes connection problems - Apple is likely far less guilty than you think.

Re:I'm impressed

[Slashdot Parent]

But apart from that you really, really want to look at what causes connection problems - Apple is likely far less guilty than you think.

I'm not an RF engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll offer you this anecdote:

My house is in a little bit of a tricky zone, from a cellular reception perspective. Verizon is the only carrier that gets perfect reception; Sprint gets reasonable reception, but can roam on Verizon; AT&T gets weak, but usable signal; T-Mo gets nothing.

Of my friends on AT&T, the ones with blackberries can use their phones just fine at my house (T-Mo blackberries do not work, for some reason). On the other hand, iPhones (3G and 3Gs) just do not work. At all. Not inside. Not outside. Not on the roof. Not in a tree. Not with green eggs and ham.

If you were to stop by my house, your iPhone would be reduced to a bulky iPod Touch.

I'm sure there's some logical explanation from an RF perspective, but at least now you know why I tend to blame Apple first. :P

Shareholder Value

[geoffrobinson]

If I were a shareholder, I would be raising hell about all the money they've been wasting trying to get into anything and everything. They have wasted so much money. Money that would be put to better use if they gave it away as a dividend.

Re:But??? But???

[toQDuj]

forgive me for being thick, but is this an "undelete" pun? Perhaps if you guess the first character correctly, you can get that free concert :).

Something with a future?

[mcrbids]

Microsoft has a really tough time coming up with anything with a future outside of Windows Desktops. Even that was suspect for a while when Vista sucked so horribly badly for so godawfully long.

They've had OVER A DECADE to get Windows Mobile "right". I have a Winmo 6.0 phone, and while it's quite capable, it's also clear that a designer never got anywhere NEAR it. Buttons move randomly. It's slow. Some buttons (EG: green "call" button) work the same everywhere except where they do something else - a result that's immensely maddening. I could be looking at a number that I KNOW is a cell phone, but I have no way to simply send a text message to it without exiting everything and go back in through contacts... as one of too many examples to name.

Future?

Remember Plays4Sure? It was Microsoft's answer to the iTunes store, and it almost worked. Numerous music manufacturers were beginning to rally behind it, until Microsoft came out with their Zune, which didn't use PlaysForSure at all. Instead, it had its own marketplace!

How much louder of a vote of "no confidence" could Microsoft give their own product than to refuse to use it in their own development? To this day, you can't buy music with Microsoft's music store and have it work on their own player.

You can't make up this kind of ineptitude.

Re:Something with a future?

[ardeez]

Cargo Cult Microsoft?

They look at what the competition are doing and try hard to emulate
it, but just don't 'get it'

And by releasing all of this hardware they MUST be pissing off their
hardware partners who are allegedly Microsoft's real customers, and
that can only hasten their adoption of competing OS's like Android.

Re:Something with a future?

[Saint Stephen]

Apple used to have drm now they dont.

Re:Something with a future?

[devent]

Because MS success on the desktop is the lock-in in MS Word, MS Access, MS Excel, the deals with OEMs and that almost all games and applications are running on Windows only.

If they try to bring their stuff on something where you don't have such deals and lock-ins, like phones, gaming platforms, servers, super computer, they just suck. On the phones the OEMs are not afraid to advertise something different; in gaming platforms you have already the big players Sony and Nintendo; On servers was Unix dominant until Linux, same with super computers.

The problem with Desktop and Laptops is, nobody dare to advertise anything else besides Windows. So nobody is exposed to alternatives, so the market share stays low and nobody build applications for different platforms. Prove me wrong and go to Dell, Hp, Asus, etc. and try to find anything else then Windows and "We recommend Windows 7". Even if somebody will come and build the most advanced desktop system ever, the entry bar in the desktop market is just too high. Every new system to the market needs to compete not only on quality but on how well it runs Windows applications. Further, it needs to compete with the MS OEMs deals.

Re:Something with a future?

[nyctopterus]

Luckily for the future of computing, the whole desktop ecosystem is probably going to be a small part of the story. I think dockable phones will be the future of computing, especially in emerging markets where everyone has a phone but no one has a computer.

There is a bright future here for open software. Especially if Nokia gets its act together.

Re:Something with a future?

[Locke2005]

Microsoft has a really tough time coming up with anything with a future outside of Windows Desktops. XBox appears to be one the few exceptions to that rule. I really thought it would die a horrible death, but they persevered long enough that now it seems to actually be profitable. Zune was a fool's errand, Kin was a distraction. I really thought their tablet had some promise, but they killed that. As a company, Microsoft appears to suffer from ADHD.

Wake up Balmer

[ozonearchitect]

When is Balmer going to get it? Zune Phone Zune Phone Zune Phone Zune Phone

Re:Wake up Balmer

[ozonearchitect]

Not only do a true "Zune Phone" but call it a Zune Phone too. Jeesh Microsoft, that's what everyone is wanting? I really wonder if Microsoft wants to get into the phone market at all now. They just got passed up on market share by Apple, you'd think they would listen to their consumers by now.

Verizon was the problem

[jonwil]

The moment Verizon decided that they would require a $30 per month data plan for the Kin, it was dead in the water.

I never heard of the thing either, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

...MS has wrongly declared my new Dell PC as "non-genuine" and there is no appeal, and MS has crippled my machine, so what guarantee is there that the same thing won't happen to any device I might purchase from MS? I'd have to be nuts.

Could be the only .NET programmer here but...

[TaggartAleslayer]

If Microsoft ever created a mobile platform that allowed me to create .NET apps for it as easily as I can create Office Add-Ins and then distribute them in a marketplace like Android or Apple, with the same software signing as is expected for other Windows software, I'd be all over it.

As it is, I code .NET all day and when I want a cool phone widget I switch gears and go all Java on Android.

There is no dearth of capable App makers for a MS mobile platform. Microsoft just makes it really hard for us to be creative on their devices, using their languages, if we want to actually distribute the product of our work in some official way.

Re:Could be the only .NET programmer here but...

[gbjbaanb]

Would you though? You write Android apps because there's a large base of Android users who would use your software. For Windows, you're likely to be delivering to a niche market, even if you like to code .NET as a hobby, that's all its likely to be. There are a lot of potential developers, true, but that's a meaningless statistic.

If you want lots of people to use your software, forget .NET on the mobile platform and go with Android. If you want to make some money, code for iPhone. Coding for a Windows mobile is just pointless, you'd be better off coding apps for Meego.

Re:Could be the only .NET programmer here but...

[TaggartAleslayer]

That's kind of the point. With a decent app store, there would be more desire to use the product. Also, with Microsoft's push for Live, I could see having apps that work on an xbox dashboard, mobile device, and windows desktop without the need to code three different things. Widgets is widgets, etc.

Re:Could be the only .NET programmer here but...

[revlayle]

Well the Windows Phone 7 Series is a step in that direction... now sure how far in that direction... but I am pretty sure .NET skills can leveraged there

Well now that that's out of the way,

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps we can get Microsoft to refocus on the fact that we buy windows mobile phones because they are general purpose computers with phones inside them and not because we want a fucking iPhone.

But I doubt it.
  I guess my next phone will be an android device. It's kind of a shame to blow off all the software I bought for my winmo 6.1 pro machine but the removal of features I used to have from winmo7, is reason enough hell the lack of multi tasking is MORE than enough.
Perhaps if I'm lucky I can get the same software cheaper on android.

Who picks the capatchas? mine was "aborted" ! LOL!

Who'd have thought?

[Doctor_Jest]

Microsoft has ADHD? I mean, the Kin's fairly new... and Microsoft killing it (effectively) this soon seems uncharacteristic of such a monolithic giant of bureaucracy... it's not a nimble corporation anymore.

Re:Who'd have thought?

[thetoadwarrior]

I doubt anyone bought it. Seriously, did you hear anyone talking about it as a viable purchase or see anyone with one? It was butt-ugly and usless, imo. I think because it was mainly aimed at kids and I think MS quickly realised that market isn't big enough for their phone especially when kids want iPhones and Android phones just like adults.

Microsoft make phones?

[phonewebcam]

Well I never. Next you'll be saying they have a search engine too.

Don't worry...

[Joce640k]

Windows 8 will be centered around the "Windows App Store" - a brilliant innovation I think you'll agree. Microsoft is again leading the world forwards into a new era.

Re:Don't worry...

[mark72005]

One issue is that Microsoft is so late to the party on mobile that their "Windows App Store" is going to be years behind the other app stores in offerings.

And for people like me who had a lapse in judgement and bought a Windows Mobile phone before, we aren't coming back just because they rebrand it. I will always remember the infuriatingly poor performance of the Windows Mobile platform and never come back.

Re:But??? But???

[MWoody]

Questlove. Musician, drummer for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon house band. Relevant here because he appeared in a commercial for the Kin.

'Kin Hell!

[TDyl]

'Kin Hell - never expected that, no sir.

Re:'Kin Hell!

[gilesjuk]

Bah, I was about to make that joke :)

Although I was going to say it has gone to 'kin hell. Only good phones go to heaven.

Re:'Kin Hell!

[TDyl]

Sorry; being British 'kin 'ell is such an easy remark to make and just flies off-the-cuff; as soon as I saw the OP headline that expression was my first thought.

They done kilt mah kin?

[shikaisi]

There's gon' be a feud over this!

Re:But??? But???

[dancingmad]

Agh, the band is The Roots! They've had a ton of studio albums and were well known before becoming that piss-ant Fallon's house band.

Let's contrast.

[rindeee]

"I don't know if they can't make up their mind or what the problem is over there," Ballmer said in an onstage question-and-answer session following his speech at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. "The last time I checked you don't need two client operating systems." Okay, opinion noted. Now for the whole pot/kettle thing: KinOS, Windows Mobile/Phone 6.5/7, Windows Embedded Handheld...need I say more? Ballmer wants to criticize Google for having Android and Chrome?! Seriously? That's like Google criticizing MS for having a desktop and a mobile/phone operating system. Microsoft will have 3 concurrent phone platforms, a number of 'mobile' device platforms, desktop, server and so on. Variety is the spice of life and all, but if you want developers to build apps for your crap, you may want to keep things streamlined.

The shape

[fulhack]

The shape of that phone makes no sense what so ever.

Re:So what happens to those who signed an agreemen

[UnknowingFool]

Like all retailers, MS should have a 30 day return policy. Verizon if they are like AT&T also probably has a 30 day cancellation policy that does not charge a termination fee. If they are over 30 days, then they will have to pay to get out. $325 is what I understand.

Virtual Boy

[Kenshin]

The closest thing I can think of is Nintendo's Virtual Boy.

They distanced themselves from that real quick, and reassigned its creator (the same guy who created the wildly successful GameBoy) to a shamefully meaningless position from which he resigned.

Cultural reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my God, they killed Kinny.

That must be some sort of record

[thetoadwarrior]

Seriously, this must have be some sort of a record for mobile phone failure.

Is MS going to admit they suck at phones yet?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Give up

[coryodaniel]

For a company that never seems to give up, they seem to give up a lot.

The name was the big mistake

[the bluebrain]

Okay, this is probably going to come across a a little weird. I contend that the main thing that MS got wrong with the Kin is the name. You cannot call a device "Kin" without some kind of blowback. "Kin" is a basic anglo-saxon word that essentially has no etymology - it just is. The dreaded four-letter words fall into this category, as do many other very basic words such as water, earth, grass, fire, and so on. Except that "kin" does, as MS correctly identified, have a social connotation. "Kin" is people you're related to by blood or common interest - and by "common interest" I mean savages fighting for the same cause, and not people who like the same kind of literature as you do.

Now - call a device "Kin", and you are basically claiming the you can use it to identify who in "kin" to you. And that is plain too powerful. When I first came across this device the main part of my reaction was to be slightly upset at MS' attempt to co-opt this rather neat word. And that's why I say weird above: basically I'm saying they evoked a concept too powerful for this or any gadget.

So: They should have called it the "Microsoft Social Management Device" or something similarly inane. Then it would have been accepted more as "good first fling, looking forward where they're going to take this", rather than "this is what they want to sell us as the epitome of social interaction? You have *got* to be kidding me". Unfinished devices are fine; the first iPhone didn't have copy-paste, and that was OK.

Finally: I would have liked to like the device. A Blackberry keyboard on a social device? Cool. Perfect present for your 11-year-old niece. Welcome to the social; finally. Backed by a company that will maintain it for years to co... oop, where'd it go?

Advertising Campaign

[PPH]

Until I saw this thread, I haven't paid much attention to the Kin. But I've noticed a major ad blitz for the Kin on various local radio stations lately. And their coincidence with the announced death of the Kin seems suspicious.

If someone is persuaded to purchase one of these based upon the recent campaign and subsequently expects support/upgrades, couldn't this be the basis for a consumer fraud lawsuit? Or at least the source of massive ill will?

Silly question, of course. This is Microsoft/Verizon we're talking about. Generating ill will among customers appears to be corporate policy.

Re: really obscure reference

[JoeF]

Many distributions moved on to Dovecot

And I'm probably a nerd since I actually understand it ;-)
I am actually still using courier-imap...
http://www.courier-mta.org/imap/

Good points, but small correction.

[jamrock]

Also, what does this phone do that the way-less-hyped messaging phones from Japanese makers like Samsung can't do?

Samsung is a Korean conglomerate.

Re:Still Being Widely Advertised

[Douglas Goodall]

Just this week I saw an ad on DirecTV for the KIN making it seem like it had a bright new future. I don't know who's add it was, but it seemed compelling enough. They promoted the idea that you could take pictures and maybe movies, then upload them to a site where you could use tools on them and publish them, forever. Certain key phrases made me shudder, like forever. Given that it is being killed now, the people who paid big bucks for national advertising on the satellite can't be too happy about this.