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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."
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".
...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.
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?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The engineers responsible have been sacked.
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.
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.
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...
Surface was finally released 18 months after it was first shown.
> 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.