Microsoft Holds iPhone Funeral Event

theodp writes "TechFlash reports that Microsoft celebrated the completion and upcoming launch of Windows Phone 7 on Friday with a 'Windows Phone Pride Parade' complete with zombies, a 'Thriller' Dance, and pallbearers carrying a giant iPhone. 'These kind of "ship" parties are common throughout the industry,' explained Microsoft communications VP Frank Shaw. 'It's a great way for teams that have worked overtime to create a kick-ass product blow off steam and have a little fun.'"

Comments

What about the rest of the family?

[bcohen5055]

Did I miss the windows vista funeral? How about Windows ME when was that? I had a great obituary prepared

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Elektroschock]

Tasteless, indecent. I will declare this day the Burn-a-Windows-Phone day. Guess that may incite a revolution in the customer support, office worker afraid that their phone would inflame when they don't call 10 others.

We know what this 11 Sept stands for: Violence.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[DurendalMac]

Why no funeral for the Kin, MS? Also, I have to laugh heartily at the iPhone and Blackberry funerals. WM7 is going to kill those just like the Zune killed the iPod!

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Corporate Troll]

Vista? It's still alive... It came with many computer and many users are still using it. Besides, 7 is nothing more than Vista a bit tuned. There are still many things that irk me about sevens interface. (Like no vertical lines in a directory tree... WTF were they thinking?) Luckily you can downgrade Vista Business, which is what came with some PCs at work. Those all run XP Pro now. To get 7 we'd have to shell out money and I'm really not all that convinced of any benefits of Seven. (Bar 64-bit support, but for business use that's largely irrelevant) Users of Vista Home Premium are out of luck though.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Inner_Child]

'It's a great way for teams that have worked overtime to create a kick-ass product blow off steam and have a little fun.'

So why does the WinMo7 team get to do this?

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Inner_Child]

Sorry, Windows Phone 7, I forgot the branding change...

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[digitig]

Vista? It's still alive

I think "undead" is the term.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[mysidia]

No ME funeral, and Vista's still alive and well, and will be until 2021.

However, Microsoft is probably about to have a Windows 2000 Funeral, seeing as they just declared it End Of Life in July, XP is next in (2014).

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did I miss the windows vista funeral? How about Windows ME when was that? I had a great obituary prepared

What's windows vista?

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows ME is NOT dead..
 
  We log customer browsers and one day I found one customer with Windows ME and Firefox 2 (that is quite smart for Windows ME user). We were so curious that we actually called that guy to check if it's true...

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Eponymous Coward]

I think you can get XP on any computer. Just install a pirated copy. It will fail the Windows Genuine Advantage check (or whatever it's called). You will be given a phone number to call to fix the problem (ie, pay for a license).

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Merls the Sneaky]

We have a whole box of unsold vista at my store. Last time we sold one was before win7 came out.

I still get the occasional machine with vista on it that needs a repair though. So I think "undead" is an appropriate description. I will still be trying to drive a stake through its heart every time it rears its ugly head.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[AmigaMMC]

The Zune might not have killed the iPOD but it still remains a much better product. Just like Zune 2.0 software is light years ahead of iTunes 10. I've owned a Zune first Gen., I own a Zune HD, I've used iPods all flavors and i own and iPhone 4 which I don't use for music, yuck! And... yeah, Zune wins for compatibility with standards as well as human interface.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Frequency Domain]

My response was more "son of obituary".

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Zune wins for compatibility with standards"
A big one is Microsoft's "Plays for Sure".

Oh, wait ...

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[jo42]

Windows 7 - the OS formerly known as Vista.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a coward, I felt shame of my company doing this. But I believe they are not from Dev dicipline -- if it is, I am speechless.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Anonymous Coward]

what about LISA the powerbook 5300, the puck mouse

for every microsoft failure there are 2 apple failures

but until the Ipod - Iphone no one gave a shit about apple enough to care when they failed

what does that say?

go on apple ride your second 15 year fad, its almost up, dont hold it like that sounds strangely like drop your 8 grand computer from just under a meter to reset its failed chips

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Hymer]

...any benefits of Seven. (Bar 64-bit support, but for business use that's largely irrelevant)...
I don't know why anyone have any real use of 64 bit at home, big business on the other hand do need it for

• financial applications
• film editing
• special effects
• CAD/CAM
• simulations
• en/decryption
• any other big number crunching

...and government institutions, like IRS (who needed an Mac to calculate Bill Gates tax), DoD (for any of those above), DoT, DHS, DoE and probably Department of the Treasury.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Prune]

No comment about the interface, but the Zune has better sound quality than the iPod, due to a better DAC and internal amplifier.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[lgw]

The number of gaming mahcines that would benefit from >2GB useful memory are 10-100 times as many all all the uses you listed combined. Of course, any real big number crunching should be using a server OS (2008 r2 is kind of nice - everything is off by default, even sound: finally MS gets it).

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was seriously considering getting a Zune HD to replace my aging Zen V Plus. I played with one and I must admit it's a really nice device, though for about half the price I can get a Zen X-fi 2 which doesn't have as nice of an interface but, IMO, has better sound quality.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[pandronic]

Wow, does this really work? Did you actually do this?

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[SpinyManiac]

I couldn't possibly confirm that you get a full retail version of Windows for much less money this way. It was £92 for Pro when I didn't do it.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[jellomizer]

But is that much better than Apples offering. I have seen the Zune. Yes it is different in some ways but it isn't enough to have people switch. People who get Zunes are in general (meaning there are exceptions) are the same people who wouldn't get an iPod anyways.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

At work I do CAD on a Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM .... and Windows XP.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[jellomizer]

MS has a lot of work to get done.

1. Windows 7 mobile will need to be THAT much better then the iPhone. It can't be a little better or have a few different features.

2. Android is a good platform too and is a easier sell to other hardware manufactures. And has already took Microsofts place as the the OS for all the other Cell Phones.

3. How well are they going to follow the Internet standards. As some one who does make web UI for phones I am estatic that I can use proper standard HTML 5. Windows 7 may have some surprises when it gets to some advanced mobile sites.

4. Who are they going to target. Across RIM Apple and Android you have a lot of people who are happy with their phones.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Vista? It's still alive... It came with many computer and many users are still using it.

Microsoft did however send flowers to the funeral for IE6 even though it's still supported. http://ie6funeral.com/

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

I think you can get XP on any computer. Just install a pirated copy. It will fail the Windows Genuine Advantage check (or whatever it's called). You will be given a phone number to call to fix the problem (ie, pay for a license).

Or get a good pirated copy and it will pass WGA.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[beeshman]

The Zune might not have killed the iPOD....

iPOD??? This really bugs me. Do you also confuse the Mac with a MAC? Sheesh...

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Corporate Troll]

None of those, except the first, are typical business use. I was talking about the millions of desktop that run office software, accounting software, interface with document management systems, email, etc....

Financial applications? If so and this needs to be done on a desktop, they should invest in a big iron and not do this stuff in a spreadsheet as a glorified database. Right tools for the job, please.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[donweel]

Sure, just Zune killed the iPod.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Bungie]

Who are they going to target. Across RIM Apple and Android you have a lot of people who are happy with their phones.

Windows Mobile 7 will probably have a place in other types of devices which use a ROM based OS, like Thin Clients and portable media devices.

I suspect Microsoft will target RIM/iPhone/Andoid users by promoting the ease of development and seamless integration with other Microsoft software (as usual). From what I've heard, it's pretty easy to build and cross compile WIndows Mobile apps using Visual Studio (I think the free Express edition may even be able to do it). There also seems to be a lot of stupid things you can do with ActiveSync that aren't as slick on other devices (like copying and installing software or syncing Outlook). There will probably also be a lot of Windows technologies as well like CardSpace that will only be available on Windows Mobile.

Of course that's all my own speculation...

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Bungie]

Actually while you're downloading a pirate copy of XP you should just download the WGA cracks as well...I don't think Microsoft is stull updating WGA to circumvent the cracks anymore, so whatever versions are out there will work pretty well.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Bungie]

There are many advantages to 64-bit and muck more than just calculation:

The additional address space. A 32-bit x86 without PAE has a maximum address space of 4GB. When you boot a 32-bit Windows system like XP it has to split the address space between hardware, kernel and application address space. Windows usually splits it so that hardware/system and application each get 2GB of address space. That means that any application cannot address and use over 2GB of memory (virtual and physical combined).

Some services which cache a large amount of data like MSSQL and Active Directory can actually run into this limitation which is why you can boot Windows with the /3G switch (which gives 3GB application and 1GB hardware/kernel address space instead). The application can then use 3GB of memory while the kernel reduces it's own caches and memory usage to fit into the 1GB along with the hardware addressing.

Under 64-bit you have a virtual address space of something like 16 terrabytes which is so large Windows actually caps it's addressible memory at a set limit like 2TB. Obviously there's plenty of addressible space for hardware, kernel and application addressing to fit without any of the hard limitations and juggling in 32-bit.

The x64 instruction set is also much cleaner and has a newer design while x86 is very old and has a lot of legacy elements that origionate from the origional 8086 and through all of the subsequent generations.

IIRC AMD-64 also adds a bunch of general purpose and floating point registers. With more of them available you can do things like store all of a functions local variables in the additional registers instead of memory which speeds up code execution.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[AmigaMMC]

You would call the iPod standardized? I can play nearly any non-proprietary video on the Zune; I can play MP3 and WMA (and I convert everything to WMA since at same bit-rate it's half the file size of an MP3, have you tried that on the iPod?). Meaning that for a music only 80GB iPod it's really a 160GB Zune equivalent. WMA also uses less processing power, which means longer battery use. I can fly from Chicago to Italy without having to worry about recharging.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[AmigaMMC]

But it's not about switching, it's about attracting new customers. Funny enough Microsoft's hype cannot compete with Apple's hype.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[AmigaMMC]

You should be bugged by things that have a real impact in the world we live in, dumbass. Grow up!

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[linuxiac]

What, you missed all the "Year of Linux on the desktop" announcements in 1999?

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[tian2992]

you mean like OGG, or maybe FLAC, what about AIFF?, I'd say it's about the same on format-compatibility, also have you checked the battery life on the new iPods, it's staggering. A tip for you, try not to reencode your media, you'll lose quality and gain almost nothing in return. The Zune is neither freer nor substancially better than the iPod, and that's why it got lost on the sea of "MP3 Players" instead of being "the new iPod"

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[gig]

Yes, iPod is standardized. It only plays ISO standard media. Same audio and video you find in every single consumer electronics device in the entire fucking world.

It's Microsoft and the Windows PC that are famous for their lack of support for standards.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[helix2301]

Well Vista was ME version 2 or ME R2 depending on how you look at it.

This event was very funny and such a Microsoft thing to do they love doing things like this to other companies.

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[BigZee]

The problem with alternatives to the ipod isn't that they may or may not be better, it's down to hardware support. How many Zune docks are out there? How many cars support Zune as a device that can be controlled by the car's stereo system?

Re:What about the rest of the family?

[Anonymous Coward]

/reads post, cocks head //looks at mod ///taps nose, laughs

I missed the one for the KIN

[tomhudson]

And the KIN 2.

Do we get one for Windows Phone 7 - the Next of KIN?

Re:I missed the one for the KIN

[Erikderzweite]

There has been KIN 2?!!

Re:I missed the one for the KIN

[tomhudson]

You know how they say "Pics or it never happened?"
The KIN 2.

We "could" have called it the Next of KIN, but it died in the same awful fiery crash. Fortunately, since only KIN 1 and KIN 2 owners were affected, the impact was almost nil.

Re:I missed the one for the KIN

[greg_barton]

That would be an insult to the NeXT.

Re:I missed the one for the KIN

[mybecq]

I missed the one for the KIN

It is considered polite to allow family the right to quiet grief in the case of stillborns.

Are they 'kin mad?

[gilesjuk]

Hmm let me see, which company recently withdrew a phone after a few weeks on sale?

Why will Windows Phone 7 succeed when Kin failed?

Windows Mobile sold reasonably well, but all the OEMs who pumped out WM handsets have largely moved on and release Android phones now.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[jd2112]

The Kin failed because it was a somewhat-smarter-than-a-free-with-activation phone selling at smartphone prices. From what I've seen Windows Mobile 7 might have a shot at a respectable market share but I think it will be insufficient to fend off the onslaught of Android and IPhone,

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but like PlaysForSure when the Zune came out, now that Microsoft has a brand new and better product I'm sure OEMs will come back in droves to take advantage of the new platform.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously people, it's a ship party.

You can think whatever you like about the actual product, and how it will compare to the iPhone and Android phones, but let the people have some fun with their party.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[UnknowingFool]

I haven't seen much of Windows 7 that puts it above Android and iPhone. In some respects, it appears several years behind the other two. The only thing that has kept WinMobile relevant has been business users. Windows 7 is breaking all backwards compatibility forcing those users to migrate.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[mike260]

Why will Windows Phone 7 succeed when Kin failed?

Because it is a better platform with better carrier support and (one would hope) better marketing?

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[UnknowingFool]

It's one thing to hold a ship party celebrating your product. It's another to predict that your product will be the demise of your competitor who has been kicking your butt for the last several years when your last several attempts have been laughably pathetic. It's called arrogance, hubris, delusion, etc.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[UnknowingFool]

Even in the height of the Win Mobile usage, users were not exactly clamoring for one. They got one because it was one of the few choices that they had for business. With Win 7 Phone, MS has broken all backwards compatibility meaning there is no reason why business users have to stay with MS. With the current feature set, it appears that MS is abandoning business users completely and going after consumers

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kin was a carryover from the aquisition of Danger (you know, the TMobile Sidekick guys).

The Danger built system just happened to be the big one that failed after MS aquired them (and not a backup to be found... oops).

I've come to the conclusion that Danger was a poor aquisition (i.e. waste of money) for Microsoft.

Verizon had as much to do with Kin's failure as Microsoft/Danger.... underpowered smart phone targeted at a teen/social audience, but with outrageous data/service prices.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it could be they're just having fun after a lot of work. Everyone hopes their product will be the one that wins out. The market will decide in the end, so for now let them have their fun, and you can go do something more productive.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[UnknowingFool]

It smacks of desperation. There is a ploy in politics where if you have nothing real to say, smear the other side. The other problem is that MS somehow believes for them to win, Apple must fail. I don't think Apple has ever determined that they must win. Apple seems to be more concerned with making a better product more than anything else. Really no one has to "win" at all. Some people will buy Blackberries; some people will buy Androids. Some people will buy Apple. They can all exist in the market place.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who pissed in your breakfast cereal this morning?

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[UnknowingFool]

Wow, it seems that you absolved MS of any responsibility of failure.

The Danger built system just happened to be the big one that failed after MS aquired them (and not a backup to be found... oops).

A year after MS acquired them, the Danger systems failed. It has not been explicitly explained but one rumor is that a SAN upgrade went wrong. You don't know why. Maybe MS decided that Danger should eat the dogfood and this led to the failure. This is what happened to hotmail.

I've come to the conclusion that Danger was a poor aquisition (i.e. waste of money) for Microsoft.

MS acquired Danger to get a head start on what would become the Kin. Two MS decisions would doom it. First MS decided to scrap the Java based system and redo everything with Windows CE because a MS product could never use Java. Second, the head of division didn't want both Kin and Win 7 Phone so he withheld resources from the Kin team. Those decisions delayed the launch by at least 18 months.

Verizon had as much to do with Kin's failure as Microsoft/Danger.... underpowered smart phone targeted at a teen/social audience, but with outrageous data/service prices.

What? Verizon didn't decide on the hardware or software. Those were MS decisions. As for the data prices, Verizon was willing to give MS users a break on the prices so that they could get the Sidekick users (teenagers), however, MS was 18 months late so they didn't give MS a break in the end. 18 months is almost 2 generations in cell phone lifetime and rather unacceptable.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[cowscows]

Yeah, unfortunately for Microsoft, they don't really have a choice. WinMobile is really looking like a dead end, so while they could just try and cling onto that market share it would likely end up continuing to fade away. Windows 7 has a tough road ahead for sure, and might even crash and burn, but if everything goes right it could keep them in the game long term. Kind of amazing to see Microsoft having to take such a big risk just to stay relevant.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[hardburn]

After looking at Wikipedia's KIN Missing Features page, I found that every single bullet point there deserves a Picard Faceplam. I mean, no calendar app? At all? Even Free w/Activation phones get some kind of calendar app.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Merls the Sneaky]

I don't think Apple has ever determined that they must win.

In the early years Apple (Jobs) wanted to do to IBM what Microsoft (Balmer) wants to do to Google today. In the early days Apple saw IBM as their main competition.

Pics or it didn't happen? Yes.
http://www.edibleapple.com/old-school-steve-jobs-flicks-off-ibm/
http://www.pidjin.net/2010/04/11/stop-me-if-i-can/

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Mongoose Disciple]

Why will Windows Phone 7 succeed when Kin failed?

Frankly, it's a much better platform to develop for. You could even make a decent case that it's a better (as in, a developer with an equal exposure to the platform can accomplish more, easier/faster) platform to develop for than Android of iPhone.

Is that enough to catch up this late in the game, and despite other shortcomings? Probably not.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just plain stupid, That picture of Jobs could have been of Les Solomon, Gary Kildal, Ted Nelson, Adam Osborne etc, and all other members of homebrew/hacker clubs. IBM represented mainframes. Worse IBM represented the attitude that all that businesses should buy are mainframes. These pioneers objected to the roadblocks IBM tried to place in the way of all other types of computers.

Mainframes were reviled as these big boxes that lived behind closed doors where they were serviced by a specialized technicians forming a priesthood. No family or neighborhood expert. You couldn't take the cover off, you couldn't reprogram your computer OS. All at a time when inovation should be running wild.

In retrospect they were right. The very near ubiquity of microcomputers proves that.

Most of the members of that group if pressed at the time, would have said that mainframes needed to go away completely, just that they needed to fit into that niche of big business that needed mainframes, and give other computers a chance to thrive in their own niches.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're plain stupid. Apple is great at what they've done, there's no questioning that. Facts speak for themselves and anyone who doesn't believe can just look at the state of things today. No citation needed.

But facts also show that Apple isn't the only game in town, and the fanboi culture around them is just that... fanaticism. Don't get me wrong here. I'm not bashing Apple. They do indeed make great, solid products. But some people seem to think of them religiously, sounding to the point of being brainwashed.

Microsoft had a party. They had an iPhone funeral. So what? It was fun for them, it bolstered morale and enjoyment in the workers' jobs. Do YOU work somewhere where your employer throws Thriller parties in the street upon completion of a new product, even if it hasn't gone to market yet? Just to celebrate your hard work on the job and for hope that it will succeed? Yeah, didn't think so.

This isn't about MS vs. Apple vs. Android vs. whatever else. Honestly, I'm a Linux guy. I use Ubuntu 100% at work every single day of the week and wouldn't have it any other way. And I understand the hate against Microsoft. I've seen MS products since their original Mac products in the 80s, and followed them through to today. And what I say is this: Forget all your fanboi zealousness and religiousness... think about this from the perspective of a product team in any random company. To throw a party like that after your hard work is done (whether the work is good or bad or will succeed or not), is just pretty cool.

Most of us Slashdotters could only wish that our employers threw Thriller parties in the street for us after a job well done. It's not about Apple, it's not even about Microsoft. It's about feeling appreciated for the job you do, and in this case, Microsoft, whether we like them or not, has allowed their employees to have fun and enjoy the place they work after the work they did.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[dafing]

I've mentioned the "Welcome IBM" message before, the difference is that Apple was in the market already...so in this situation, it would be Apple/Google sarcastically welcoming Windows Phone 7, which would then go on to take ~95% of the market by 2012 or so.

I'm a longtime Apple user, while I really dont give a shit what people choose to use, I dont care what car you drive, each time I consider Microsoft, they go and screw up...thats putting it mildly.....there must be SOME reason for why they are this awful? Were they just coasting all these years, fat on Win 95, 98, ME money, until Vista finally set them off the cliff?

Think of "Surface", they try and appear "cool" and "with it" with these R&D projects, they use Multitouch to make big plastic coffee tables, about, what, 5 ever made? Meanwhile, Apple (and Google now) give us cutting edge Smartphones that every geek carries.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Locutus]

this is their last chance to imagine they have any hope of winning, let them have their fun. These are mostly going to be the developers so their job is supposedly considered done. Now the marketing and partnership departments start really spending the money getting vendors to make and ship phones with the OS on it. So they all have about 1 month left before reality starts to sink in and they realize they are too little, too late to this smartphone party which has been going on now for 3 or so years.

LoB

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[RightSaidFred99]

Development tools, as usual with Microsoft. They'll have development tools that blow away anything Google or Apple has. I don't know if that will be enough, though.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[RightSaidFred99]

Grr, I'm very serious! Grr, I don't like them having fun and trying to build a little excitement! Grrrrr!

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[UnknowingFool]

The majority of Win Mobile users are business users. Breaking all backwards compatibility might be a boom for 3rd party developers but current users won't like it. Also Win 7 phone is focused heavily on consumers and not business users. There is not a lot of incentive of these users to buy a Win 7 Phone. If they have to migrate, they might as well choose Blackberry.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[LingNoi]

It's not a ship party. It's a marketing ploy and a horrible one at that.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's a ship party.

God I love slashdot, the one place on Earth where people think it's so unlikely that people would throw a party that it must be some stunt.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Tom]

Windows 7 is breaking all backwards compatibility forcing those users to migrate.

...to an iPhone. It's already happening.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Mathieu Lu]

Nah, it's just to remind developers about all those zombie Windows boxes out there on the networks, reminding us that looking at the past is a way of looking into the future.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[Paradise Pete]

Because it is a better platform with better carrier support and (one would hope) better marketing?

They held a mock funeral. I wouldn't get my hopes up for better marketing.

Re:Are they 'kin mad?

[QuietObserver]

Even Free w/Activation phones get some kind of calendar app.

Exactly. Even my phone, which is about as basic as a cell phone can get, has a calendar. How can anyone excuse the lack of a calendar on a more powerful phone?

Kin

[zonker]

Funny... nobody showed up for the Kin's funeral.

Re:Kin

[binarylarry]

Sopssa did.

HA HA HA

[Antisyzygy]

Dude, I am not really an Apple person, but I seriously doubt a Windows based phone will bet able to take down the iPhone. The funeral aspect just makes Microsoft look like a bunch of twats.

Re:HA HA HA

[Reaperducer]

In the echo chamber of Microsoft love that is the greater Redmond/Bellevue/Issaquah/Seattle area, this makes perfect sense.

People talk about the Steve Jobs reality distortion field that affects people near him. The MS RDF engulfs the entire metro. It's really pathetic to witness.

Re:HA HA HA

[robmv]

Zombies??? What are they telling us? that Windows Phone 7 is like a dead man walking?

Re:HA HA HA

[magus_melchior]

If I didn't know any better, I'd say they're still sore about the "I'm a Mac" ads. Although they weren't very accurate and they were arrogant as hell, Microsoft's responses ("look ma, cheap PC with a ton of bloatware I don't need!" and of course Seinfeld & Bill) have been absolutely pathetic-- and in the case of mobile, they had a golden opportunity to rip Apple a good one over their response to the iPhone 4 antenna design flaw. I mean, come on... they had a ton of examples from other handset makers.

Watching Microsoft's recent PR is sort of like watching a grown man miss a tee-ball. In three swings.

Re:HA HA HA

[ScrewMaster]

If I didn't know any better, I'd say they're still sore about the "I'm a Mac" ads. Although they weren't very accurate and they were arrogant as hell, Microsoft's responses ("look ma, cheap PC with a ton of bloatware I don't need!" and of course Seinfeld & Bill) have been absolutely pathetic-- and in the case of mobile, they had a golden opportunity to rip Apple a good one over their response to the iPhone 4 antenna design flaw. I mean, come on... they had a ton of examples from other handset makers.

Watching Microsoft's recent PR is sort of like watching a grown man miss a tee-ball. In three swings.

I tend to agree. With all the money those companies wield, how hard is it to hire a top-notch ad agency? Or, for that matter, hire the best advertising people in the business and turn them loose. Microsoft's people must think that PC means "Politically Correct" not "Personal Computer."

Really, many of Microsoft's commercials are just painful to watch ("Windows 7 was my idea!" What the hell does that mean?) Well, now there was that cool X-Box ad with the baby being ejected from his mother's body, flying through the air aging as we watch, and then landing as an old man in an already-prepared grave. Weird, but kinda cool. If I remember right (and I might not be) it was banned in England.

Of course, Apple has certainly changed its tune from that original "1984" ad. Far from being about freedom, choice and creativity, Apple is now about limitations and restrictions, indeed they've become a high-profile promoter of the "walled garden", at least when it comes to an iAnything. I feel bad about that, because I used to be a major Apple supporter back in the Apple ][ days. They were a really neat outfit, I wrote and sold a lot of code for the Apple ][-series. The Macintosh held little interest for me, because I could see where it was heading ("computing appliance" indeed.) Today, the only distinction between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple ... well, Microsoft is ... I mean, Apple is definitely better because ... ah well. Not so much.

Neither company is really worthy of all that much respect when you get right down to it, unless your only measure of a corporation's worth is the size of their dividends.

Re:HA HA HA

[macshit]

OTOH, pretty much every MS dev I know seems to have an iphone...

(and of course MS even does iphone development, e.g., for Bing!)

Re:HA HA HA

[UnknowingFool]

Yes but was that by choice? After the iPhone stomping incident by Ballmer how many devs would show an iPhone or Android. MS Devs having a Win 7 Phone is nothing. When MS accountants, HR people, security guards, etc are asking for a Win 7 Phone, then that might worth noting.

Re:HA HA HA

[MMC Monster]

People talk about the Steve Jobs reality distortion field that affects people near him. The MS RDF engulfs the entire metro. It's really pathetic to witness.

Steve Jobs' RDF can't be seen for the same reason the magnetosphere can't be seen. It's around all of us, with a radius measured in thousands of miles. I wouldn't be surprised if it's effecting people in low Earth orbit.

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

The MS RDF exists, and is strong among some people.

Here's a real life example comment I heard from an MS employee (approximate quotation):

I can't believe they did the KIN website in Flash! They should have used Silverlight!

I assure you they're not all that stupid, though.

As for the pictures and the video, well, from what I gather, when the team ships a product, they get a small day of free beer where they can unwind for a bit. The goofy costumes you see are just nerds being nerds. Personally, watching the "Thriller" video, I thought the comment they were trying to convey was: "Windows Mobile is a zombie coming back from the dead." It's important to have a sense of humor. I'm sure most people involved understands the irony and the dangers they face ahead if this product doesn't succeed in the market.

Re:HA HA HA

[glebd]

Neither company is really worthy of all that much respect when you get right down to it, unless your only measure of a corporation's worth is the size of their dividends.

Except Apple makes products that work. You can at least respect them for that.

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is desperate to seem relevant in the age when everyone else has moved on. The "death" of iPhone is really the wrong target. Sure, Apple may have ended Windows Mobile, but Android would have, in its absence. Microsoft sealed it's own fate, failing to innovate, and stagnating for far too long. Unlike you, I prefer the iPhone, but with the momentum behind both platforms, I just don't see anyone really caring what Microsoft does, at this point. Sure, some businesses will probably adopt it, particularly slower ones who haven't yet adopted Android or iPhone, or who aren't wholly committed to RIM... but with RIM dominating the business space, yet losing market share, I see them as the biggest potential losers in the SmartPhone space with Microsoft's re-entry. Consumers will probably stick with iPhone/Android. At this point, I doubt Microsoft will have enough clout to the forward momentum of Apple, and especially Google, which is now expected to be the number 1 player in the mobile space within a few years. They're just not consumer "cool" right now. In the mobile space, the overlord has become the underdog.

Re:HA HA HA

[macshit]

Hm, of course it was by choice -- from what I can tell (based on the occasional talk about phones), "ordinary people" (i.e., not Balmer and other "public faces") at MS are pretty much as infatuated with the iphone as the rest of the country is... it's the cool thing to have, even there.

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember the xbox! Microsoft upset the Game Console market out of now were. Maybe they can again!

Re:HA HA HA

[Antisyzygy]

HP makes products that work as well. Asus makes products that work as well. Acer makes product that work as well. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on making decent computers at the hardware level. Apple just makes prettier looking ones (and HP is 90 percent caught up in that regard with the Envy's) and pairs them with a great OS. I actually really like MacOS, but I simply do not want to pay 500-800 extra dollars for a computer that it supposed to work with. Throw in garage band, and other iLife software, maybe you could consider it a 350-650 difference. Still, MacOS is simply not worth that premium when you don't have a money to blow. Until Apple drops prices you will see the majority of people purchase PC's from manufacturers that use Microsoft OS'es. If Apple charged less of a premium for their products over PC's you would see people flock to Macs in such large numbers that Apple wouldn't even be able to keep up. I promise I would buy one.

Re:HA HA HA

[Charliemopps]

Agreed. Windows based phones and even PDA's have sucked for years. Why they think they have suddenly changed anything I do not know.

Re:HA HA HA

[ScrewMaster]

Neither company is really worthy of all that much respect when you get right down to it, unless your only measure of a corporation's worth is the size of their dividends.

Except Apple makes products that work. You can at least respect them for that.

I have news for you Apple types ... Microsoft also "makes products that work." And, actually, they work better now than at any time since Windows 3.x. Those who know me know I'm no Apple fanboy, and I certainly recognize Microsoft for what it is (I write Windows code for a living, so I know why and how Windows sucks.) But times change. You need to get away from "Windows 95 = Mac '86" mindset: yes, the difference is there, but for 99% of computer users it's not significant and never, ever will be.

The point being, there's a lot more to a corporation than whether or not it nets big profits and has popular products.

Re:HA HA HA

[Antisyzygy]

Ive noticed most people begrudgingly deal with Microsoft because they can't afford the premium Apple charges, or they play video games, or Linux is too confusing for them. I use Ubuntu in a dual boot, but holy shit some of the configuration I need to do at times for software and other things is such a pain in the ass to deal with at times. I have no idea why there is not another alternative.

Re:HA HA HA

[ScrewMaster]

If Apple charged less of a premium for their products over PC's you would see people flock to Macs in such large numbers that Apple wouldn't even be able to keep up.

Probably not. That's a long-time fantasy of Apple lovers, but the reality is that inertia will keep people and companies using Windows even in the face of "better" (and that's a relative term) and free (as in Linux.)

Apple is a hardware company, and they like those big profits. That's not likely to change anytime soon.

Re:HA HA HA

[Antisyzygy]

Im in no sense of the word an Apple lover. However, I do like their products. I simply will not pay for them because they are too expensive. You can buy similar hardware (from my favorite company HP or even many others such as Asus) for so much cheaper its absolutely ridiculous. Most Apple fanboys will say "Oh yeah, well it wont last as long" but that is simply not true. Not to mention, these same dickheads buy a new Apple every two years anyway.

MacOS and the software it comes with actually are quite good, way better than Microsoft alternatives. Linux can be very good as well, especially the free software available you can download direct from repositories through your GUI. Since so many people contribute to Linux as a platform it seems to me that its very hodge-podge. I think that you have to be much more educated than average in computer science before Linux becomes completely useful. Don't get me wrong, I can use a Linux command prompt and do all the time to run code on a cluster, but it sucks having to read through pages of documentation to do something that should be simple. Ive run into problems with various software many times that I had to wade through documentation to get results. That being said, I have an Ubuntu system I use regularly.

Overall, I think that Apple makes a solid OS, but I think that if they really want to claim that "PC's are dead" they need to lower their god damn prices.

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid? Why the fuck wouldn't they use their own product? Do you think Oracle.com is running on fucking postrgres?

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're Microsoft, you have to decide whether you're selling cell phones or Web plugins. Once you've made that decision, it must inform all further decisions you make.

There is no wrong decision, but refusing to make one at all by trying to do both at once will doom your product and lead to people laughing at you on Slashdot.

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, if you really compare apples and ... no, forget that corny line.

If you compare the price of an Apple computer with a similarly-equipped PC (name brand, of course), the premium is not that much, if any. Desktop or laptop. When I bought my Mac Pro right after they first came out in 2006, an equivalent Dell or Compaq quad-core tower cost MORE. Several hundred dollars more. Hmmm ...

Yeah, they dropped their prices so they were a couple hundred cheaper than the Apple after that. The new 12-core Mac Pro goes for $5K. How much is a 12-core Dell? A 12-core HP or Compaq? A 12-core Gateway? A 12-core Asus? Come on! Help me out here, I'm dying!

Lots of 17-inch laptops are cheaper than Apple's. True. Do they have 1920x1200 displays? No. Maybe 1440x900. HUGE difference, pun intended. Get a 17-inch laptop from a competitor that has that resolution, equal processor and RAM, and lookee there, the price gap pretty much went away.

I know, you don't NEED that much power. Ok, then you're not the target market.

Apple will probably never make a $500 laptop, so resign yourself to Windows forever more.

Re:HA HA HA

[xmorg]

The reason a winPhone wont work is the same way windows dominates on the PC. I phones have the APPS!

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that you have to be much more educated than average in computer science before Linux becomes completely useful. Don't get me wrong, I can use a Linux command prompt and do all the time to run code on a cluster, but it sucks having to read through pages of documentation to do something that should be simple. Ive run into problems with various software many times that I had to wade through documentation to get results. That being said, I have an Ubuntu system I use regularly.

My mod. That part. Me too.

Re:HA HA HA

[wampus]

They are Microsoft. They could give away a product that simultaneously gives head and cures cancer and slashdot would have a problem with it.

Re:HA HA HA

[symbolset]

They don't have to ask. Microsoft will be thoughtfully providing a Windows Phone 7 phone to every employee worldwide.

Re:HA HA HA

[shutdown -p now]

People talk about the Steve Jobs reality distortion field that affects people near him. The MS RDF engulfs the entire metro. It's really pathetic to witness.

I'm a Microsoftie, and, frankly, I found that somewhat embarrassing to see. This was waaay premature and just looks silly as a result, especially since no-one had actually seen the final WP7 phones outside MS (and even inside, only a few).

But then again I'm not in Seattle area, so your theory would nicely explain that.

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me wrong, I can use a Linux command prompt and do all the time to run code on a cluster, but it sucks having to read through pages of documentation to do something that should be simple. Ive run into problems with various software many times that I had to wade through documentation to get results.

With a MSFT OS, it is about finding the often undocument trick. The one that is NEVER in their Help section. Why MSFT even tries to write a Help section is a mystery to me. It simply is not helpful. Ever. It must be for the real simpletons. Anyway, with Linux, the documentation lets you learn how stuff works and then you fix it. Both approaches - finding tricks and learning shit - take time. One approach uses copywritten software that is a drain on my wallet. One approach enriches my mind and uses free software that will be legally available until the end of our current civilization.

Re:HA HA HA

[shutdown -p now]

After the iPhone stomping incident by Ballmer how many devs would show an iPhone or Android.

I see about 50% WinMo, 50% iPhones on the Redmond campus, at least in places where I hang out when I'm there (which is DevDiv). Generally, managers are the ones who seem to be going for WinMo since they want better Outlook integration.

For what's it worth, I sport a Nexus One myself. I don't buy phones which can't run sshd in background as a matter of principle. ~

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

"In the echo chamber of Microsoft love that is the greater Redmond/Bellevue/Issaquah/Seattle area, this makes perfect sense."

It's so true. I've been there, and it's another world in which MS is all that exists.

"The only thing I know about politics is that I had a job when George W. Bush was president."

Heh. The only thing I know about politics is that I had a job, a balanced budget, a World Trade Center, and 4000 more living US soldiers when Clinton was president.

Re:HA HA HA

[SeaFox]

I think the "iPhone funeral" will come back to be one of the biggest laughing-stock moments of Microsoft.

I fully expect a parody funeral by Jobs when WinMob 7 fails to make any sizable dent in the phone marketplace at Apple or Google's expense, if at all.

Re:HA HA HA

[toriver]

But shouldn't the Google Streetmindscan cars have picked up any influence the field has?

Re:HA HA HA

[cyber-vandal]

That's because a lot of Slashdot people actually have memories and remember that Microsoft have behaved very badly in the past. Just like any habitual criminal the trust won't magically come back, it will take a lot of effort on their part.

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me wrong, I can use a Linux command prompt and do all the time to run code on a cluster, but it sucks having to read through pages of documentation to do something that should be simple. Ive run into problems with various software many times that I had to wade through documentation to get results.

With a MSFT OS, it is about finding the often undocument trick. The one that is NEVER in their Help section. Why MSFT even tries to write a Help section is a mystery to me. It simply is not helpful. Ever. It must be for the real simpletons. Anyway, with Linux, the documentation lets you learn how stuff works and then you fix it. Both approaches - finding tricks and learning shit - take time. One approach uses copywritten software that is a drain on my wallet. One approach enriches my mind and uses free software that will be legally available until the end of our current civilization.

So I'm supposed to read the documentation in the code, fix the code and recompile? Good lord.

Re:HA HA HA

[Draek]

To be fair to them, I still remember when the Apple loyalists said the same thing about Android, and yet here we are.

Yeah, Microsoft ain't the brightest bulb in the batch when it comes to portable platforms, but the iPhone isn't the unbeatable juggernaut that Slashdot tries to make it look as either.

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

I can use a Linux command prompt and do all the time to run code on a cluster, but it sucks having to read through pages of documentation to do something that should be simple. Ive run into problems with various software many times that I had to wade through documentation to get results. That being said, I have an Ubuntu system I use regularly.

Overall, I think that Apple makes a solid OS, but I think that if they really want to claim that "PC's are dead" they need to lower their god damn prices.

Your time must not be worth very much if Apple is still too expensive after factoring in how much time you waste getting Linux to do what you want.

Re:HA HA HA

[sloth jr]

Actually, it doesn't change that much. MS still has a well-earned reputation for half-assed software that doesn't work well, and not merely relegated to OS. Example? LiveMeeting's a good one. Record, pause, continue - then convert it afterwards with their hoaky converter tools into a Windows Media file that lo! Only uses the first video clip's audio (eg, just to the pause). Okay, so we'll just edit it with MS-provided tools and drop the audio in from the remaining clips. NO. Can't read LiveMeeting's weird codecs.

One example of many sub-standard experiences that is the MS Way (if you're looking for others, look no further than Office autocorrection). Yes, Win7 is way better than it was before. But the warts are the same warts we saw in Win 3.x: it takes too much effort to do simple things. Not that Apple doesn't also suck (and increasingly so), but there's still a big usability difference, and not in MS' favor.

Re:HA HA HA

[Antisyzygy]

Im not saying that the iPhone is unbeatable. Hell I own a HTC Eris myself. It just think Microsoft is being ridiculous and premature considering every Windows phone and PDA I ever owned or witnessed was a piece of crap.

Re:HA HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, stupid. The reality is their own product doesn't have the adoption that Flash does. The website's main purpose was to advertise the brand. By pig-headedly requiring their own technology, they would have shut out a large potential audience. Not to mention this would frustrate users (I have to install some bullshit just to see an advertisement?).

Re:HA HA HA

[Bungie]

It's impossible for all MS employees to be current on all MS technologies at all time. There are many different departments and projects which are moving independantly of each other. The number of products Microsoft produces is so vast that it's impossible for them to keep in sync with each other.

There's a good chance the designer hadn't learned SilverLight so he just did it up in Flash. Microsoft probably purchased quite a few Flash licenses in the time before they created SilverLight, so they may as well get their money's worth out of them.

When I worked for IBM we had similar products for many popular Microsoft tools. That didn't mean that we would use OS/2 Warp and Lotus SmartSuite when Windows XP and Office 2003 were cleary superior tools for what we were doing. I'm sure accounting would be pissed if they were told they had to use Symphony instead of Excel for making spreadsheets. Of course we would use our own products where we could (especially since the licenses are free).

If the competitor's tool does a job significantly better or the people in the department are more familiar with it (and if the cost warrants it) then there's no shame in using it. It's just pride getting in the way of production.

Re:HA HA HA

[Bungie]

Yes but Apple's products always depreciate rapidly in usefulness over time and require complete replacement. I have a pile of old Macs that can no longer run the current versions of OS X and other software. A Mac that's over three or four years old can't run current versions of FireFox or Office. Amazingly I can install Windows XP on a (well over decade old) Pentium 233 and it will run the current FireFox version and even Office 2007 (slow as hell though)! Apple products work but they are only useful as long as Apple wants them to be, and I don't respect them for that.

Re:HA HA HA

[Painted]

So you can run an 11 year old OS on an 11 year old computer?

Though I understand your point; sometimes the 'cutoffs' that Apple are quite arbitrary and irritating. I say this as the owner of a 1st gen Mac Pro, that while wonderfully functional in almost every way, cannot have an official video card upgrade, due to no firmware patch.

Re:HA HA HA

[alexandre_ganso]

You can buy similar hardware (from my favorite company HP or even many others such as Asus)

I beg to differ.

Albeit the processor/memory/hard drive/video card are the same, I see little innovation coming from individual PC vendors. They basically imitate each other. It almost seems as they are collaborating instead of competing, each one improving in a small step that everyone else will then copy.

I wouldn't mention that other pc makers wouldn't probably even exist without the apple 2. And Windows also, without the Macintosh, the mouse they got from xerox and made useful in people's computers, and the Mac OS.

No, I will talk about the notebooks.

Before Apple entered the notebook business, notebooks had the keyboard touching the outer border, with no wrist rest. The back of the keyboard was so useless than canon even managed to stick a printer in there [1]. So you can account for the wrist rest. Oh, and also the trackpad. Because my HP notebook had a button that would spit an imitation of a mouse to the left side [2].

Let's take the more recent computers. They brought to market the glass screens, backlit keyboard (not sure about this one), webcams with a little light to warn you they are in use (in a notebook), the multi-touch trackpad for scrolling first - the other manufacturers' solution was to waste space on the right side. The vents on the hinge, so the computer won't blow at you or at your desk and its innards are a little bit more protected, the magnetic latch, the first general-purpose notebooks with 6+ hours of battery life, batteries with a button to see its charge without turning the computer on, the transparent metal for the sleep light, the removal of the useless lights/sticks/extra buttons leaving the computer with what it needs, the metal casing, the unibody casing... So they are innovating on engineering, and as far as I see, much more than anyone else.

HP has nice research with memristors. Let's hope they finish it. I would like to see every computer manufacturer bringing so much innovation to their products as Apple does. But for the last 30 years, that's not the case.

So no, you cannot buy similar hardware, when they bring a new thing. You have to wait for hp/asus/whatever to catch up. Besides, the main innovation on the engineering process was made not by the brands themselves, but by the engineering team in east asia (mostly taiwan) who builds the machines for the american companies, like foxconn with desktop chassis for dell/hp/compaq, quanta with notebooks for everyone else, and so on.

Now apple is using stainless steel, too (on the old ipod shuffle and now on the iphone), a new manufacturing process for the glass for the iphone's screen, and that liquidmetal thing. Let's see what they come up with these, and how long it will take for the rest of the market to get up with.

Please correct me where I am wrong.

[1] http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/hardware-hoarders/2009/06/dan-darcys-1993-canon-bj-notebook-bn22.html
[2] http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/cgi-bin/sitewise.pl?act=big&p=3405&pic=2

Re:HA HA HA

[alexandre_ganso]

No - you can run today's google chrome/firefox on the 11 year-old os, on the 11 year-old computer. You cannot do that in a mac.

Not that MS didn't try to do the same - they tried to force everyone to upgrade to Vista. They tried to EOL windows XP, and had to retreat.

The only thing that impeded MS to do EXACTLY the same as apple do is market force - meaning that people just did not see value in upgrading when MS wanted. On the other hand, people rushed to upgrade to Leopard from Tiger, and even to Snow Leopard. I know that I had to go to the FNAC store six or seven times to find a single copy, as it was sold out every day.

So, being able to run new software on old windows is just reflecting the perceiving lack of value of upgrading ms products.

what the hell

[friedman101]

i live in seattle, the mecca and last bastion of microsoft fanboyism. i haven't met one person excited about this, even the 20k Microsoft employees who are getting them for free seem pretty meh about it. didn't the last microsoft phone get pulled off the shelves after selling like 400 nation wide? the cart is about 20 miles ahead of the horse here.

Re:what the hell

[Man On Pink Corner]

The 400-unit sellthrough figure was a slanderous lie spread by Apple fanboy trolls. The actual number of Kin phones sold was closer to 1000.

Re:what the hell

[istartedi]

400? Really? How will this compare in value to Apple Newtons 20 years from now? Maybe 400 is, paradoxicly, too low to pique the interest of collectors.

In order for it to be collectably bad, it probably has to fall into enough hands so that people will remember it.

In any event, if it's that rare an item it's probably worth holding on to it if you retain it un-opened, and have the extra space...

Re:what the hell

[Anonymous Coward]

701 then?

Re:what the hell

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a hell of a big difference between the Newton's failure scenario and Kin's.

The Newton was a genuine attempt to do something innovative and different. It pushed the state of the art too far. It failed because the technology wasn't ready and neither was the world. Good try, guys, why don't you come back later and give it another shot.

The Kin, on the other hand, was just another pointless, kneecapped "feature phone," which they tried to sell at smartphone prices with predictable results.

better plan ahead when you go out to a show

[Anonymous Coward]

It might take 5 minutes to turn off your Windows 7 phone, while various processes decide whether or not to respond to the shutdown.

Its just one tragic blunder after another

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fuck at m$ thought this could bring them anything but ridicule?

Re:Its just one tragic blunder after another

[0123456]

Who the fuck at m$ thought this could bring them anything but ridicule?

Presumably the same people who think that anyone would intentionally buy a phone that runs Windows?

Re:Its just one tragic blunder after another

[webminer]

Well, technically, I did buy a windows phone (HTC HD2, runs Windows Mobile 6.5). But I loaded Android 2.2 as soon as I got bought the phone. Now, I use windows only during bootup (which is maybe once a week). I couldn't stand the winmo interface for more than a few mins. Laggy and slow. Not sure if win mo 7 will fix anything at all.

Re:Its just one tragic blunder after another

[Dhalka226]

I have this really strange method for determining which of a genre of products to buy: I compare my needs to what they deliver, their overall quality and price. If that brings a Windows phone out on top, that's what I will buy.

I know, it's crazy. It doesn't leave much room for being an Apple fanboy or anti-Microsoft zealot, but it works for me.

Re:Its just one tragic blunder after another

[Anonymous Coward]

My employers supplied me with a new HTC 'phone. The OS is Windows. The HTC hardware seems OK but the OS makes me apopleptic with rage. The phone is permanently switched off and in a drawer. My employers can eat shit and die.

Re:Its just one tragic blunder after another

[Tom]

Well, people do buy Viagra pillos on the Internet, so assuming you'll find a few idiots isn't that irrational.

Grip and Tip

[Gazzonyx]

A bit off topic, but I'd like my fellow slashdotters to do me a favor...
If anything ever happens to me, pour out a 40 into the gutter for a money makin' thug.
Then pour out a caffeinated beverage into the gutter for me. I'd prefer RockStar, but Monster or even English Breakfast Tea would suffice.

Re:Grip and Tip

[Anonymous Coward]

The fuck?

Mental health issues in Redmond

[cyber-vandal]

They need that delusional psychosis sorted now. I can just picture a group of men in Armani suits wandering around the streets of Seattle saying "I love my Kin" over and over again.

Microwho?

[Anonymous Coward]

Weren't they that nasty monopolist?

Mad Old Uncle Bob, Too.

[Gazzonyx]

What about Bob?!

Re:Mad Old Uncle Bob, Too.

[davester666]

It's kinda tasteless to throw a funeral when everybody made fun of him and you knifed him in the back.

Re:Mad Old Uncle Bob, Too.

[Gazzonyx]

To be fair, he had it coming to him. Can we agree on that?

Re:Mad Old Uncle Bob, Too.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

But ... uncle Bill told us he took Bob to the farm where he could play.

Re:Mad Old Uncle Bob, Too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the response MS wants from the fanbois i believe ...

Re:Mad Old Uncle Bob, Too.

[Nerdfest]

and pallbearers carrying a giant iPhone

... that's a pretty basic mistake for a tech site. It's called an "iPad".

Re:Mad Old Uncle Bob, Too.

[lgw]

Bob's project manager became richer, faster, than anyone in all of history. Give Bob some credit!

Re:Mad Old Uncle Bob, Too.

[Phoghat]

George, tell me again about the rabbits..,

Boom

So how do we divvy up the fan base, here?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Okay, so we have our iPhone fans and Android fans... we need to make some room for Win7 Phone fans here. Do we just take a few volunteers now or do we wait for a few hostile stories to come along so a handful of people can conclude that those stores aren't true and become fans that way?

Re:So how do we divvy up the fan base, here?

[BoRegardless]

Welcome welcome to Windows Seven

Wrapped up safely again

In bubble wrapped Microsoft Heaven

Re:So how do we divvy up the fan base, here?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Windows Phone 7 really has one target and that's to be more usable, more enterprise friendly and more stable than BlackBerry 6.

If they're seriously targeting iPhones, I suspect a Zune like adoption rate. If they're targeting BB, they may have a hit on their hands.

Re:So how do we divvy up the fan base, here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think paul thurrott is on slashdot? He should take care of it... http://www.winsupersite.com/mobile/wp7_emotion.asp

Re:So how do we divvy up the fan base, here?

[hardburn]

So the plan is for the most quickly dieing platform to take out the second most quickly dieing platform?

Re:So how do we divvy up the fan base, here?

[MikeFM]

I think being any kind of a fanboy for any Microsoft product (excepting maybe the gaming division) should qualify you as mentally ill and get you a free trip to visit the nice guys in white coats. When has any Microsoft product not been crap that only made it because of their aggressive marketing and business deals? I've used some very expensive WinCE mobiles and they suck horribly. Win7 has to be better as there is no way to be worse but even imagining Microsoft understanding users well enough to make a good mobile is laughable. Android and iOS are really the only contenders and its all a matter of which will get it's act together first as to who will become the only real player. Android is lacking a clean UI and some control over providing a good user experience. Apple is to restrictive and needs to ease up. Either can fix the issues way easier than any competitor can come to market.

If I was Google I'd fix my, mostly minor, problems and add a cross compiler that'd recompile iOS apps for Android with no work on the part of the developer.

Re:So how do we divvy up the fan base, here?

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize there are significantly more Blackberry users than iPhone users, right? They'd have to beat out iPhone, then Android, THEN Blackberry before they had a chance at taking out the smartphone OS leader, Nokia.

Re:So how do we divvy up the fan base, here?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I think being any kind of a fanboy for any Microsoft product (excepting maybe the gaming division) should qualify you as mentally ill and get you a free trip to visit the nice guys in white coats.

Well... that really only works if fanboy labeling is precise. Right now a fanboy or apologist is just somebody who read the whole article.

Re:So how do we divvy up the fan base, here?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Depends on the market. In the US, they're targeting Blackberry. Abroad, it's kind of a crapshoot.

Re:So how do we divvy up the fan base, here?

[mjwx]

Okay, so we have our iPhone fans and Android fans... we need to make some room for Win7 Phone fans here.

There's an empty cubicle in the back of the mens bog, all three of them should be able to squeeze in there.

Re:When...

[yoyhed]

I'd say Office and Windows are still pretty damn relevant. However, in the mobile space - yeah, WinMo7 isn't going to change anything. iPhones and Android phones will still rule the smartphone market, and though BlackBerries are a dying breed in terms of the cutting-edge, even they will far exceed WinMo7's usage.

iPhone is dead

[the eric conspiracy]

Windows 7 phone is DOA.

OK to have the funeral too. For both of them.

The thing they missed is that Android has done the killing.

Re:iPhone is dead

[BasilBrush]

We've heard much the same from you about iPod killers for nearly a decade. How's that working out for you?

Re:iPhone is dead

[Valdrax]

Any, you know, substance to that claim? If you've got numbers, I'm all ears. (Eyes?)

Or is just a "My team is better than yours," cheerleading kind of thing?

Re:iPhone is dead

[the eric conspiracy]

Sure, here are some numbers.

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/02/android-sales-overtake-iphone-in-the-u-s/

What a joke...

[Chuq]

I saw Windows Phone 7 demoed in the keynote at Tech Ed Australia this year, and as most of the audience it was a great big "who cares". Nothing revolutionary, ugly UI. They even demoed four WM7 applications which had been developed, all of which were your standard application which sources data from a website and displays it for the phones UI. You could tell in their voices they were trying to make it sound exciting, but it's nothing iPhone/Android doesn't already have.

Re:What a joke...

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

heheh... saw this... even the bumber stickers sucked!

Re:What a joke...

[RightSaidFred99]

The thing you neckbeard dweebs always forget about is the tooling. Microsoft will deliver absolutely superior tools for developing applications on WinMo7. They'll also have more influence over the corporate world, and from there they get developers developing software for their platform.

I don't know that they're going to set the world on fire, but you're a dipshit if you just dismiss them out of hand.

How the Arrangements were Made

[Anonymous Coward]

Clippy: "I see you're having a funeral, would you like help with that?"

Why not show hubris?

[RyanFenton]

If you know your product is highly likely going to fail, why not add some poetry to existence by showing the maximum hubris possible?

If you can't be a good example of success, then you can also play a role of being a very loud example of failure.

The problem is that, at looking to politics and business, most extremely loud examples of failure end up being repeated anyway the very next political/financial cycle, with very little modifications to counter that same method of failure.

Ultimately, it is because people remember claims, not results - so the loud hubris ends up attracting more imitation than the results drive a logical reaction.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Why not show hubris?

[convolvatron]

i worked for a startup and the CEO insisted on having some kind of ceremony in the parking
lot where...i think we burned some of their marketing t-shirts of our huge 'competitor' that
we were going to present a serious challenge to.

6 months later, they had shipped their own technically superior version of our product, and ran
it on all their existing platforms. they didn't even bother buying us, we just disappeared from
memory

does anyone know which startup i'm referring to? or is it really all of them

Re:Why not show hubris?

[c0d3g33k]

Stacker, is that you?

There

[kaoshin]

Take that you conceited, coffee drinking, terminally hip, walled gardened, Steve Jobs worshiping, hybrid driving douche bag crapintosh lovers. How 'bout some Winders fo that ass?

so tell me

[FranTaylor]

What happens when you try to bury someone and they aren't dead yet?

No doubt their goal will be to put YOU in that hole.

Re:so tell me

[UnknowingFool]

Interesting way to put it. After the comments by Michael Dell that Apple should have shut down when they were at their lowest point, Steve Jobs put them in his sights. When Apple's market cap exceeded Dell's, Steve Jobs sent out a company wide email about it.

MS used to scare people

[astrashe]

These guys used to strike terror into people -- they'd kill startups by just hinting that they were working on something similar.

I never thought I'd feel sorry for them.

Re:MS used to scare people

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys used to strike terror into people -- they'd kill startups by just hinting that they were working on something similar.

I never thought I'd feel sorry for them.

Except their competition aren't start-ups. Now if they were things would be interesting.

Re:MS used to scare people

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Self delusional, cut off from reality and living off their old hits: MS, the Vegas years.

Re:MS used to scare people

[mybecq]

I never thought I'd feel sorry for them.

I don't.

Re:MS used to scare people

[bm_luethke]

We have a few big tech companies that many have wondered if they can make it without their founders. Apple floundered when Jobs left for the first time, Microsoft is doing the same thing too. From all reports Gates truly is keeping a hands off approach to his retirement from them and I think it shows.

Love em, hate em, or indifferent one has to note that both Apple and Microsoft seem to be built around the ideas of one person - at the least they both flounder when that one person tries to step away.

Re:MS used to scare people

[Nishi-no-wan]

That comment made my day. How true, how true.

Re:MS used to scare people

[DigiShaman]

If Bill Gates was dead, he'd be rolling over in his grave now. Hell, he might be rolling over in his bed for all we know.

So why hasn't he come out and said anything. Could it be (A) he doesn't give a damn anymore. Or (B), a negative public statement from him would cause his stock to drop like a rock?

Re:MS used to scare people

[dafing]

I feel the same way about Sony....especially with those last Marcus "big boy games" PSP hawking kid ads....its similar to how they did the "graffiti" crap http://gizmodo.com/140940/sonys-psp-graffiti-is-pissing-people-off

What's your diagnosis for Microsoft and Sony? Just giant companies, used to stomping about and destroying the competition without any real concern, who then suddenly realise they're in last place, and all out of ideas?

I grew up with both companies being leaders, now I see them like the USA car companies, somehow staying afloat by spreading BS about the competition, calling on patriotism, fond memories, while begging for bail outs.

nerd humor fail

[jewishbaconzombies]

Unfunny and self-defensive against someone killing you in the marketplace. Ya - that's nerd humor alright.

Future Fandom

[Tailhook]

we need to make some room for Win7 Phone fans here

How many Windows 7 Phone fans attended the Win7 PhoneFest in 2011?

Both.

I've been in the industry a while

[Anonymous Coward]

I was on the teams that shipped the iPod, every generation since the first.

And we never held a funeral for a competitor's product. In fact at the 4th iPod anniversary party, we had a pinata of our own product that we whacked with a stick.

This is tasteless and if MS' product does fail to kill the iPhone, they'll just look like a huge bunch of idiots.

I think this PR agent would have done better to just say "it seemed like a good idea at the time" instead of trying to write it off as "everyone does it".

Re:I've been in the industry a while

[KarmaMB84]

I wonder if after the KIN debacle, they're trying to show their partners they're so behind this product, they're willing to make themselves look like idiots for it....

Re:I've been in the industry a while

[UnknowingFool]

At this point, anyone who partners with MS has to be wary. They have a history of backstabbing them. i.e. Zune. With the KIN, the reports of less 10,000 unit sales represents a huge financial loss to Sharp who manufactured the units.

Re:I've been in the industry a while

[jcr]

The AC above reminds me of the one time that Steve Jobs had a presentation that included a coffin on the stage. What he had in the coffin was Mac OS 9.

At Apple, they are aware of, but they don't concentrate on the competition. They focus on the product and the customers, and what others are doing is way down on the list of things to care about.

-jcr

Re:I've been in the industry a while

[Undead Waffle]

I was on the teams that shipped the iPod, every generation since the first.

LET ME INSTALL ROCKBOX YOU JERK

Re:I've been in the industry a while

[Anonymous Coward]

The AC above reminds me of the one time that Steve Jobs had a presentation that included a coffin on the stage. What he had in the coffin was Mac OS 9.

At Apple, they are aware of, but they don't concentrate on the competition. They focus on the product and the customers, and what others are doing is way down on the list of things to care about.

-jcr

yeah, that is why they have spent millions and millions of dollars on of the most direct and long running anti-competitor smear campaigns the industry have ever seen (the anti-PC ads). And why Jobs on stage just recently had to 'hint' that Android numbers weren't real (claim debunked by Google). And Jobs repeatedly over the years have directly ridiculed features competitors had (“No one wants to watch video on a small screen”) when Apple didn't have them. Not focused on competitors at all those guys.. nooo.

Re:I've been in the industry a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you are among the minority of people in the tech industry that doesn't have a sense of humour. This type of event is typical of the quirky sense of humour of development teams. The Firefox vs IE dev team's jabs at each other are legendary. Maybe Apple employees are just too pompous and full of themselves to loosen up see humour when it slaps them in the face (you're initials aren't SJ, are they?).

Re:I've been in the industry a while

[Gazzonyx]

I think the applicable quote would be something to the effect of "losers compare themselves to everyone else; winners compare themselves to their goals".

Re:I've been in the industry a while

[Man On Pink Corner]

Cheap shots in TV commercials are nothing unusual. The marketing people at the #2 player in a given market are paid to slag the competition, and if they're competent, that's what they do.

But when the engineers are focused on somebody else's taillights, it's a problem. They are paid to tend to the company's own knitting.

Re:I've been in the industry a while

[jcr]

not focused on competitors at all those guys.. nooo.

Apple has about 34 thousand employees. How many of them do you think have anything at all to do with advertising?

-jcr

Meanwhile...

[Man On Pink Corner]

Engineers and managers at Apple meet in a boring, windowless conference room to discuss how to address weaknesses in the iPhone, what features should be added and how they should be implemented, and how to sell more units.

Re:Meanwhile...

[pandrijeczko]

...and presumably the only thing they could come up with after all that was to tell Steve Jobs to use the word "magical" in his press conferences.

Re:Meanwhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever works. Maybe Ballmer could take some magic lessons, and see if it helps.

Re:Meanwhile...

[colinrichardday]

Does Steve Jobs actually permit boring conference rooms at Apple headquarters? It doesn't seem his style.

Re:Meanwhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

Point being they don't sit around obsessing over whatever Microsoft is doing.

If you work for Microsoft and Ballmer catches you with an iPhone or Android phone, you can expect a Herman Miller chair upside the head. If you work for Apple and Jobs sees you with a Windows phone, he's more likely to be too busy thinking about what to order for lunch to even notice.

thank you

[The Clockwork Troll]

I represent the beleaguered estate of Michael Jackson and we are pleased you have chosen to include us in your marketing budget.

Please make the check out to "Bubbles".

Pride Parade

[Anonymous Coward]

'Windows Phone Pride Parade' it's official -- Windows Phones are gay.. // Sorry couldnt pass up the double entendre

That is so pathetic

[devent]

They are so insecure that they must compare their product to the iPhone and, worst, hire dancers to dance in the street for their product. As one of the biggest software company you would expect them to set standards but they are only ride the "me, too" train. Like first Zune, the "me, too" iPod, now the WM7, the "me, too" iPhone and Android.

Re:That is so pathetic

[antifoidulus]

Microsoft as of late has been shown to be a company that doesn't even seem to know what is going on inside the company let alone the outside world. From what I have read(and just my own experience working in an unrelated but huge company) there are a lot of "empire builders" at Microsoft, ie managers who only care about increasing their influence and power in the company, nothing else. And to do that they constantly try to undermine other managers at Microsoft and give their pet project top billing. You can see this in their mobile lineup(kin, multiple flavors of mobile windows that are largely incompatible etc) and even within products themselves. Windows settings and GUIs are incredibly inconsistent, you can tell that managers responsible for certain parts of the OS were unwilling to cooperate with each other and thus you get multiple different places where you can change the same system component(firewall being a prime example).

The big problem at Microsoft seems to be that they have totally unqualified people at the top(in both technical and managerial skills). Most of the senior management(including Balmer) at Microsoft were just people who sort of stumbled into the right place at the right time. If Balmer joined Microsoft a couple of years later I doubt he would be anywhere near the top. Ballmer has shown that he is either unable or unwilling to actually find a cohesive vision for Microsoft products and actually push it through. Despite Linux being developed by a large # of people(with an almost equally large # viewpoints behind them), I actually find the experience of using a Linux machine MUCH more cohesive than Windows. Looking at an out of the box Windows installation, you would find it hard to believe that it was actually put together by one company and is, in my opinion, the hardest OS to use of the big 3 desktop OSs.

Re:That is so pathetic

[arikol]

I kinda, sorta agree about the cohesiveness of the Linux user experience. It still contains too much command line/compiling frustration to be really great, and too many programs are mired in old interfaces designed by the programmers/engineers who made the original program (of which there may be little left).
But the system itself, as in the case of Ubuntu, is in many cases consistent and a joy to use. Somebody there "gets it".
Contrast this with just the control panel in any flavour of Windows and you get an amazing number of different and incompatible behaviours.

Ballmer lacks vision, and MS has completely lost any sense of vision, at least in what makes it to market. Which is sad because we see some R&D stuff from them which looks amazing, yet when that department has been forced to install something which does not fit that product (decided by two managerial levels above from four departments sideways) we finally get some unusable hunk of crap with more computational power than a Cray, yet slow and unresponsive.

I'm rooting for MS to get back on track, but until then I use my trusty iPhone, or an Android device. WebOS seems interesting too, and given my past love of my PalmVx I would be willing to give that a try. Lots of good options. MS doesn't seem to be willing to give us an option in the same class.

Let's quote Ballmer...

[BearRanger]

"I like our strategy. I like it a lot." Funerals aside, how's that working out for you Steve?

Windows Phone Pride Parade?

[sharkey]

"We're here! We're queer! We don't want anymore bears!"

It never happened

[overshoot]

And of course we know that in the unlikely event that Apple survives the irresistible force that is WP7, Microsoft will acknowledge that the rumors of the iPhone's death might have been somewhat exaggerated.

noobz

[paiute]

It's an iFuneral. Duh.

But where was Android during the funeral?

[Jim Buzbee]

Why doing the filming of course. Big Fail for Microsoft...

Re:But where was Android during the funeral?

[Hemogoblin]

Speaking of which, does anyone know if it's possible to get said EVO in Canada?

Bigashnigg

[Bigashnigg]

Lol why celebrate beating the Iphone? it sucks anyways rofl. Droid is the best phone out there this phone is nothing to it!

Why they do even care about iPhone

[diegocg]

It's Android who is stealing the mobile partners to Microsoft, not Apple.

Re:Why they do even care about iPhone

[UnknowingFool]

Yep. Android is customizable and free: Two things that manufacturers can't get from MS. With Win 7 Phone, it appears that MS is imposing more conditions to make Win 7 Phones more consistent. That can't be looked favorably upon by manufacturers.

Re:Why they do even care about iPhone

[Mongoose Disciple]

With Win 7 Phone, it appears that MS is imposing more conditions to make Win 7 Phones more consistent. That can't be looked favorably upon by manufacturers.

Eh, maybe, maybe not. Consider that consistency is a big strength of the iPhone at this point and it's (while a strength in other ways) a weakness in Android. That is, that as someone developint for the Android platform it's hard to be sure what kind of hardware, OS version, etc. you can expect -- probably you have to plan to support 'all of the above' in every case.

Re:Why they do even care about iPhone

[AvitarX]

I'm pretty sure the google experience costs money, and without droid is not as much competition.

Re:Why they do even care about iPhone

[alexandre_ganso]

Consistency is a strength for iphone's customers: the general public. Carriers swallow the iphone because it's worse not having it. Differently from apple, the android and winmo 7's customers are mobile carriers.

Think of yourself as a mobile carrier: do you prefer a free and customizable thing where you can touch as you wish, or a paid locked-down experience? Do you understand why Android is getting so big?

Re:Why they do even care about iPhone

[alexandre_ganso]

You should have a look outside the us. On the rest of the world, it's pretty much people who can pay an iphone, android, and who doesn't want a smartphone (eg cheap, students, older people)

Ballmer did want to "bury" Google

[Arancaytar]

Reportedly, he also took off a shoe and banged it on a table.

(Or maybe there was something about a chair. :P )

Abyss

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have thrown the iphone into the red ring of death... or present the iphone screen with a blue screen of death... That would have been much better than this pathetic parade...

Notify next of Kin

[broKenfoLd]

Dear Microsoft, Seriously? Anyone remember the Microsoft Kin, launched in 2010? If the iPhone has died, then the Microsoft offering was a stillborn. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20009336-56.html

Re:Notify next of Kin

[phrostie]

Thanks, I wanted to post about it, but couldn't remember the name.

Re:Notify next of Kin

[sparrowhead]

We will all remember 9-11 as the day Kin raised from the dead, won't we?

Seattle is pretty much zombie central

[Larry Lightbulb]

http://www.seattlezombies.com/ is a good place to start.

Probably not eating their own dogfood though.

[spasm]

I wonder how many of the attendees had an iphone in their back pocket..

Que...

[Anonymous Coward]

Que the Mac nuts whining about bullshit.

Why do we care about this?

[AusIV]

I'm getting tired of all this circle jerking about smart phones. There can be more than one smartphone operating system. There doesn't have to be a "victor" to have a successful smartphone OS. There's no reason that the success of Windows 7 phone (or whatever it's called, I don't really care) has to be predicated on the death of the iPhone. The two can coexist. Yes, they'll compete with each other, but there doesn't always have to be a winner and a loser.

I'm an android fan. My current phone is Android based, and my next phone will probably be android based. But if someone would prefer an iPhone, a Windows Mobile phone, a phone from Palm or Blackberry, I really don't care. The existence of competitors in no way reduces the utility of my own phone. In fact, the existence of competition probably leads to improvements for all of the phones.

Re:Why do we care about this?

[Aussie]

Sure there could be more than one. The problems start when exclusive deals are made. Let's say for example that Skype were to make some sort of deal with Apple that excluded Android phones from decent support or your local telco makes a deal with Microsoft and supports certain network features on Windows 7 phones only. Multiple smartphone platforms would be great if corporations didn't view it as an opportunity to be dicks.

Re:Why do we care about this?

[mmaniaci]

Its not a war where there is a victor and the loser is obliterated from existence. Here, the winner is simply the company/phone/OS with the most market share and the loser still exists and can even be profitable. Perhaps the phrasing needs changing, but your little gripe is moot.

Re:Why do we care about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called marketing you dufus.

Certainly companies want to "win" by getting as much money as they can. They want as many people as possible using their stuff. If it were up to them (any company) they would in fact slaughter all the competition so completely that there was nothing else. That's business.

Re:Why do we care about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

There can be more than one smartphone operating system.

No, it is not the microsoft way. The competition must be killed for a 98% markedshare.

Re:Why do we care about this?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

It's just another in a long line of IT religious wars. Anyone who takes it serious is an idiot. Maybe it's the geek version of sports rivalries.

Re:Why do we care about this?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

. But if someone would prefer an iPhone, a Windows Mobile phone, a phone from Palm or Blackberry, I really don't care. The existence of competitors in no way reduces the utility of my own phone. In fact, the existence of competition probably leads to improvements for all of the phones.

It's true, competition is good for the market and consumers. It's bad for monopolists. The reason MS is so often derided here is that they are in the business of leveraging and creating monopolized markets, which is bad for the market and consumers. The reason people here don't want Windows Mobile to succeed is because MS will leverage their existing monopolies to make other phones have less utility, whether that is by making it harder for other phones to properly interact with Windows, by limiting the use of MSOffice formats on other phones, by making it hard to network other phones with exchange and the like, or by some other means. MS has been all about reducing the utility of potential competitors by artificially breaking them using their existing market power. So while simply releasing a phone does not hurt you, in the long term MS being successful in the space likely will. Moreover, if MS becomes too successful in the space, it's likely they will manage to kill or retard innovation in that market, getting themselves more money at the cost of progress. You'll forgive those of us then, that aren't wishing them well in their enterprise.

Re:Why do we care about this?

[mugnyte]

Remember, they are all walled gardens. Nobody is touting the new features of their phone by stating "it works with everyone else's phone too!"

I agree with you though:
MS is particularly heinous, going back to the days of Netscape's demise, the Office Open XML disaster, IE's compatibility & security nightmares, plus the usual MeToo junk of J#, Moviemaker, Zune, etc.

Re:Why do we care about this?

[dafing]

I'm an iPhone user who appreciates and respects Android. I agree that there should be competition, and hopefully open standards for those who would like to change devices in the near future. I wish there was a third strong "Smartphone OS", it would be a hell of a lot better for the consumer, I thought WebOS might have been the third.

What I personally cant stand is when Microsoft continues to release INCREDIBLY shitty products, that innocent customers then buy, get locked into, and then learn to despise. I feel the pain of anyone who bought a Kin. (both of them)

Re:Why do we care about this?

[weicco]

There doesn't has to be a "victor" to have a successful smartphone OS.

Of course there have to be or else all the vendors could start producing mediocre products which nobody wants but are forced to buy because there's no alternative. The competition to be number one drives companies to make better products, but I admit that it's not always the best product that wins, it can also be the one with best marketing.

Re:Why do we care about this?

[RazorSharp]

I agree that there doesn't have to be a single 'victor' in the market, but MS has always looked at business that way. This is a prime example of their attitude that business is market dominance or bust. It will be their undoing as they just can't settle with second or third place and will continue to squander resources in pursuit of the elusive #1. Just look what they did with the XBox and are now doing with Bing. They'll sacrifice profitability for market-share any day.

Let's crash that party.

[Anonymous Coward]

NOT FINAL HARDWARE. People who bought this product also bought: Swampland, Bridges.

Copyright violation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they get permission to publicly play the "Thriller"?

having been at that party three things struck me..

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Steve Ballmer, who I had never seen before is really really wierd. Like, Kevin Spacey on acid wierd. But all around... he seemed like a nice enough guy... if a little high risk for aneurism. It was amusing to hear how he prefers using his phone to a microsoft equipped PC.

2. Damn near everyone at the event was using an iPhone or a blackberry to record Ballmers speech. Walking around seattle I see a LOT of droid phones, going tonto M$ft's campus produced the highest density of iPhones I have seen in the region. I was surprised to see an almost sheer absence of either droids or previous windows phones. And obviously the iPhones work quite well regardless of the antenna issue, as all the microsoft kiddies had their phones extremely wrapped up in their hands.

3. The phones they were toting around were actually really nice. Not droid noce, but certainly nicer than iOS. I think they might very successfully have hit the niche between the power user that wants a droid and a 13 year old girls and phone sex people that want iPhone facetime chatability. From the phones I saw, I can see windows 7 totally wiping out Blackberry and Symbian... it felt like it would work for users of those two OS's but far smoother that blackberry or symbian. I don't think it even remotely touches iOS or Android though.

Oh, and microsoft kids can not under any circumstances handle their alcohol. It was rather embarrassing.

IDC and Gartner

[symbolset]

The usual Microsoft fanboys at IDC and Gartner have both weighed in. They don't see Windows Phone 7 being a breakout hit - at best it gets 7 points of share before Windows Mobile resumes its long decline.

Re:That is so pathetic - true

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 and Vista also have a lot of me too features.

Easy...

[Junta]

Because everything about the revamp of WinMo7 was to mimic Apple. Remove multitasking intentionally, remove copy and paste intentionally (even Apple rectified that long ago, but MS seems enamored of that).

MS observed that they are firmly in the 'other' category in market share, took a glance and saw Apple with the biggest slice at the time, didn't look at trend data to see where it was going nor made the connection about partners vs homegrown phone, and shamelessly started ripping it off inconsistently, but applying their relatively poor UI sense to the base concepts exhibited by Apple's phone.

Now, Android is going strong due to technical capabilities and flexibility afforded to phone makers MS simply can *not* match with a business model they can be comfortable with. So they hope to extract money by giving partners an iPhone knockoff rather than trying to truly innovate.

Windows Phone 7 will absolutely inherit the legacy of Kin.

What i thought...

[keith_nt4]

I guess it's odd on my part but I saw that headline about a funeral at the launch and assumed it must be for windows mobile 6.5 and earlier which 7 is effectively retiring. I don't know that 7 is supposed to be backwards compatible, probably not if I had to guess. And I thought it odd MS would formalize the death of their product. But it's a "funeral" for the iPhone. That makes slightly more sense. I guess.

Who?

[codepunk]

Who is this Microsoft that you speak of?

Optimistic...

[Junta]

MS has been nothing if not consistent in mobile phone marketshare. Up til now, I'd characterize it as not even really trying seriously. Now that they have started to try in earnest, every move they make is a huge head scratcher.

Kin is a shining example of MS not 'getting it'.

Every demo and discussion of WinMo7 seems to show that not only do they not get it, but they are actively screwing over WinMo6 users too. Sideloaded apps? No, copying Apple means none of that. Copy and paste? No, they copy iPhone 2G. Multitasking? Again... no.. Decent UI? No, that would mean knocking off Apple *too* much....

Android is taking it without any contest (though I like WebOS better).

launch for which product now?

[lawpoop]

It's pretty sad that the events around the launch of their product are about the iPhone rather than their own. Don't they have anything to tout about Windows phone 7? Or can they only tear down the other guy?

Re:launch for which product now?

[Beefpatrol]

Microsoft has always been robustly anti-competitive. As TFA shows, they aren't even trying to hide the fact that the passion behind their "kick-ass product" is really more like the passion of a temper tantrum than the passion of someone creating something that kicks ass.

Microsoft used to at least be clever about their anti-competitive behavior. Now that Bill Gates left and they aren't even good at being anti-competitive any more, they're basically just an 800 pound retarded, spoiled, wealthy gorilla toward which almost nobody has any remaining good will. I can't imagine that a company more concerned with destroying the competition than with satisfying customers can continue being profitable forever. I am having a hard time seeing how they are going to get themselves out of the predicament they are in, (especially when they don't seem to understand that they are in one.) I suspect they might have to pull an IBM and almost go bankrupt before they finally get around to curing their cranio-rectal inversion.

Re:launch for which product now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be a dick, but do you know what anti-competitive means?

RIP iPhone

[jamesh]

Fortunately, the life of my iPhone is insured for a surprisingly large amount.

Where's Ballmer?

[twoears]

I'd think emBallmer would have been a pall bearer. He's strong enough -- he's already shown he's good at chair throwing. And the screaming at the end of the video sounded just like him in his sweat-soaked blue dress shirt, chanting at the top of his lungs, "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"

faith in biznezz

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait.....now lemme guess, THIS is the private sector that's more efficient, respectable, or responsible than Gub'Mint ?

shoot, maybe it was the AIG party, so sorry

Re:faith in biznezz

[Man On Pink Corner]

Here are the government phones you asked for. The best part is, the waiting list for installation is only ten years!

And now ....

[taniwha]

and now they announce the release of a new product with a funeral ....

Funerals for Old Man Depression

[dpbsmith]

It is so characteristic of Microsoft to think it is more important that the iPhone fail than that Microsoft succeed. And a mock-funeral is such a sad example of sympathetic magic, and reminiscent of efforts to think away the Great Depression.

During the Great Depression, people were constantly suggesting that the U.S. think its way out of the depression simply by adopting an optimistic attitude. People put up billboards saying "Wasn't the Depression terrible?" on the assumption that if people got in the habit of thinking of it in the past tense, it would go away. Radio stations literally and deliberately programmed only optimistic songs, which the songwriters churned out as their contribution to the economy.

Conspicuous among these efforts were funerals for Old Man Depression, literal funeral processions conducted in major cities. Here's an account of one, from the The New York Times, Sep. 12, 1930, p. 19:

VIRGINIANS DROWN TRADE SLUMP TRIO
EFFIGIES WALK THE PLANK ...In bidding them begone, Governor Pollard said: "Old Man Depression, Old Lady Pessimism, and your unhappy daughter Miss Fortune, the United States is no place for you. You never had any real justification to be here anyhow. You were wraiths, unsubstantial. You lived upon mass timidity. You were created by unjustified fears and uncertainty.... ....the depths of pessimism to which the country sunk were by no means justified by the facts. You were the products of a mood, but American economic history shows that the mood of depression is very rarely of long duration. Your time has come. I consign you to a watery grave. Your doom is sealed. Old Man Hard Work, Lady Optimism, Little Johnny Payroll, and Miss Good Fortune are here to take your place. ...you put over a bit of bad psychology on the American people But you couldn't make it stick."

I expect Microsoft's funerals for the iPhone to be every bit as effective.

The death of iPhone may be true...

[mmaniaci]

...but it sure as hell is not due to Windows Phone 7... or any Microsoft product.

I work at RadioShack (yeah, only job I could find... give me a break) and it seems like the majority of people coming through are very much over the iPhone. The other cell companies are making phones that are much better than the iPhone (statistically speaking, not trying to troll some fanbois) and Google has done well with their marketing of Android OS. Apple's new releases don't bring enough new features to keep existing users on their device. When it was the only touch screen smart phone with apps, they could easily get away with it. Now that every carrier has 3-5 completely different touch screen, multitasking, Android-based phones, the new iPhone really doesn't look all that enticing (especially with the fuck-tarded price + service plan).

Now back to Windows Phone 7... nobody cares... nobody will ever care. Businesses will get suckered into using them, then realize their mistake and spend the next 10 years trying to break contract/lock-in. *Yawn*

Re:The death of iPhone may be true...

[tooyoung]

and it seems like the majority of people coming through are very much over the iPhone

Yeah, I've noticed the same at my job at K-mart. No one there seems to care about buying iPhones, you can smell that the end is near for Apple.

Re:The death of iPhone may be true...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is Radioshack the bellwether for technology trends? Do people that shop there even own smart phones?

Re:The death of iPhone may be true...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not much traction at 7-11, either. I don't know why the boss thought he could sell iPhones out of a cardboard box next to the Slurpee machine, but I guess I can't blame him for trying. He's new to America and the ways of capitalism.

Re:The death of iPhone may be true...

[mjwx]

I work at RadioShack (yeah, only job I could find... give me a break) and it seems like the majority of people coming through are very much over the iPhone. The other cell companies are making phones that are much better than the iPhone (statistically speaking, not trying to troll some fanbois) and Google has done well with their marketing of Android OS. Apple's new releases don't bring enough new features to keep existing users on their device. When it was the only touch screen smart phone with apps, they could easily get away with it. Now that every carrier has 3-5 completely different touch screen, multitasking, Android-based phones, the new iPhone really doesn't look all that enticing (especially with the fuck-tarded price + service plan).

This is what I've said from the begining.

No one is going to kill the iphone, it will kill itself. More precisely Apple will kill it with overly restrictive censorship, fighting modders/hackers and constantly changing the rules. Apple is the single biggest threat to the Iphone.

Q & A

[sootman]

What goes "Ha ha ha ha ha... Oh damn."?

Steve Jobs pissing his pants from laughing so hard.

I've given up on MS mobile products

[slapout]

MS had years -- quite a few years in fact -- to improve their mobile product. But they didn't. Even when the iPhone came out, they didn't really make many improvements. Then Google just leapfrogged them (MS) with Android. I had a Windows Mobile phone for a couple of years. But I keep finding it too hard to do simple things. And while it's not perfect, I'm currently happy with my Android phone and my iPod touch, both of which are much easier to use. I seems to me that with "Window Phone 7" MS is just playing catch up. They may finally have a product as good as the others. But I've already moved on and don't plan on going back. And I'm sure others have had the same experience.

Windows 7+

[Burnhard]

Because I like Windows 7 (actually I love it), I had high hopes for mobile 7. I'm an iPhone 3GS owner by the way. The problem with a lot of MS products is that instead of re-developing something from scratch, they tend to take a whole bunch of stuff they developed 20 years ago and try to compile it in to some new product with a few interface changes. I had this experience with Win CE and it has a tendency to produce craptastic products that are neither fully compatible with the desktop (which is the intention), or fully usable on the target (which is obviously nice to have). It's harder to innovate if you're always trying to retain compatibility too. Indeed this is MS's problem in a nutshell: their big selling point is continuity, which plays well in the corporate world, but not so much in the world of consumer goods - where devices are chucked out every two years for the next latest and greatest.

ugh

[Georules]

I'm not going to even try to be insightful, informative, funny, blah. This is just lame.

WinMO 7 dead before born?

[Ilgaz]

Here is just 2 examples which I can give as a Symbian user (so not following rest).

Nimbuzz: XMPP based, ultra reliable multi platform (more like massively multi) application which is famous/popular on almost all mobile platforms. It is clear that Nimbuzz like multi platform apps require significant work to be coded for Windows 7 mobile on a framework which doesn't really exist on any other platform. The usual "code the UI in C++, code the core in ultra portable C" trick doesn't work on Windows 7. Nobody would likely spare time to that unless MS magically manages to grab at least 10% market share. They are big deal since obviously, they have no issues with professional coding _and_ Windows/Microsoft themselves. Thanks to the premature call for EOL Windows mobile 6.5, they also had to declare the support for existing platform will be limited and no updates will be shipped. A great way to deal with people already using/liking MS Mobile Operating systems (yes,they exist).

Mozilla team: Declared they won't be supporting Windows 7 mobile. That is a big deal since we, Symbian users were closely following Mozilla mobile projects and flaming them for years as their actual, working browser shipped for Windows Mobile first. They had their very valid reasons (check below for gcc)

I understand most mobile developers like _standard_ tools, like gcc. They want to be able to use any operating system to develop&test. iPhone requires you XCode on Mac but XCode is still gcc, Apple wasn't stupid to break away from open source/standard toolchain. It is one of reasons why Nokia&partners spent hundreds of millions of dollars to open source Symbian and it is already becoming possible to develop for and even build the entire OS itself with GNU tools.

IMHO large companies/organizations should be watched by independent developers before they gamble their time for Windows Mobile 7 (or whatever Ballmer calls it). If you really want to struggle developing for a strange platform, Symbian^3/Qt could be a nice start.

iPhone users must have laughed a lot

[Ilgaz]

Don't forget the genius of killing a full feature mobile OS to compete with Apple iPhone and somehow managing to make iPhone users MAD before you even ship a working device.

"They made a funeral for my beloved mobile phone, lets pre-order their device."

It wouldn't change if the device in question was Symbian or Android. If you want to compete with a platform, don't troll their existing users for God's sake.

Hi. I'm an iPhone ...

[King_TJ]

and the rumors of my death are GREATLY exaggerated! Thank-you.

You figured the trick

[Ilgaz]

Of course, MS loves people to call Vista "dead" so they will upgrade to Windows 7 which is absolutely a service pack (just like Snow Leo/Plain Leo).
Noticed them not defending Vista on any platform while we users (I use OS X here!) who really knows how latest generation of OS upgrades do?

If I used Windows mobile 6.5 and liked it, I wouldn't be upgrading to Windows 7 anytime soon since it is a damn premature OS compared to Windows Mobile 6.5. Somehow, people think there is some kind of "kill switch" which activates and their phone works worse when major OS upgrade happens. As a Symbian S60 V3 user which would stay on UIQ3 if Sony wasn't that dumb, I disagree.

If you like the OS you use, it can be fixed/secured with vendor updates or even security solutions/utilities, there is absolutely no reason to "upgrade". Especially on mobile operating systems which also requires an entire new device.

Re:You figured the trick

[Low Ranked Craig]

The difference is that Apple only charged people $29 for the Snow Leopard upgrade. The Vista to 7 upgrade was, uh just a bit more

I use both OS X and Windows 7, but for me the big difference is that Leopard was a good OS and for $29 SL was reasonable. Vista, in my personal experience was shitty, and in no way do I feel like paying $150 or more to upgrade to what Vista should have been in the first place.

Windows Mobile 7 may be great, but I'd suggest to Microsoft that they at least have a bit of success before declaring their major competitors dead and fucking up a Michael Jackson song...

Re:You figured the trick

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually most computers that came with Vista roughly a year before 7 was released had offers for completely free upgrades to 7.

Re:You figured the trick

[UnknowingFool]

Um no. Only certain versions of Vista allowed for free upgrades. If you got Vista Starter, Vista Home Basic, or Vista Enterprise, you were not eligible. Also you limited to the same version as you had before.

Re:You figured the trick

[Anonymous Coward]

Only certain versions of Vista allowed for free upgrades. If you got Vista Starter, Vista Home Basic, or Vista Enterprise, you were not eligible.

AKA, most computers that came with Vista.

Also you limited to the same version as you had before.

Irrelevant.

Re:You figured the trick

[Anonymous Coward]

Yikes, someone's got a bit of pent up anger. I payed $30 bucks for my retail version of Windows 7 straight from the microsoft guys themselves. And they're just having a bit of fun, I'm sure you would want to have a party after you spent a good long time working on some intense project.

As for the win7 phone, heck I'd buy it. I've been waiting for the Win7 phone for quite some time now. But it isn't going to upstage the Iphone. Apple is kind of like the Beatles...annoyingly popular with a load of crap and few real gems.

Re:You figured the trick

[LinuxIsGarbage]

To get Vista Enterprise you would need Software Assurance. If you're covered by Software Assurance you could upgrade to Windows 7 under the terms of SA.

Re:You figured the trick

[Anonymous Coward]

Snow Lepard was a patch, at best a service pack. MS users are still stuck in the mentality they you buy the software and then the company supports it until a newer version come out. Apple likes to charge you along the way.

So to use OS X, which is as old as XP, with each "update" costing you $130 a pop, with snow lepard at $30, you would have forked over $545 dollars. Quite the bargan.

Add another $100 to that and I can pick up a AMD quad core based computer with a 23" monitor that runs win 7. When you compare that to the over priced hardware you needed to go with your OS, it makes it look like an even better deal.

Re:You figured the trick

[UnknowingFool]

AKA, most computers that came with Vista.

It is my recollection that most consumer OEM computers that you got from Dell or HP or Lenovo came with Home Basic. If the consumer didn't upgrade while ordering the machine, they didn't get to Win 7 upgrade for free later. Most businesses when ordering computers usually had their own volume licenses and many did not get Vista but kept using XP.

Re:You figured the trick

[Anonymous Coward]

Michael Jackson sucks ass. His music can't be fucked up much more than it already is.

Re:You figured the trick

[Bungie]

If you like the OS you use, it can be fixed/secured with vendor updates or even security solutions/utilities, there is absolutely no reason to "upgrade".

Except for the changes to things like the kernel and API's which you can't just "patch in" to the previous OS without breaking many things on running customer system. It's not like you can simply copy a few Windows 7 DLL's to Vista and you magically have all of the features of 7 working on Vista. There are things under the hood which you might think should be in a service pack but really cannot be implemented properly and easily into the old system..

There were many security and driver model improvements in Vista that will never work in XP, and there are countless API changes in Windows 7 that don't exist in Vista. This is because you cannot just drop in things like a replacement driver model or ASLR without breaking and having to replace countless things in the existing OS. NT 4's service packs would overhaul massive portions of the system and would break things all over the place. People would be forced to stick with a specific service pack version on each machine (like specifically running SP3 or SP4 instead of SP6a) depending on the combination of software they needed to run and which service packs would break it. Service packs on new systems only fix or add features and tend to avoid massive overhauls to the system archeticture.

At least with all the hype behind it, I would expect some pretty major changes under the hood of Windows 7 when compared to Windows Mobile 6.5.

Re:You figured the trick

[mjwx]

The difference is that Apple only charged people $29 for the Snow Leopard upgrade.

The difference is that Microsoft only charged people $0 for a service pack.

Unlike Apple, MS does not charge for a lot of extra features that make their way in via MS Downloads and service packs. MS release and maintains quite a few free packages that Apple charges for. For example I had to purchase an OS upgrade for a 10.4 Macbook just to run an alternate operating system as OS X doesn't work properly in a Windows domain.

Re:You figured the trick

[daath93]

Home professional is standard, home basic is for netbooks.

Re:You figured the trick

[notknown86]

Mission Accomplished was recently redefined...

Re:Fuck Slashdot....can't do css worth shit

[Farmer Tim]

Registered users can choose the old style, which is why nobody cares about your whining.

Sorry, MS,

[drolli]

Hyping a product only works when the product is timely and well designed at the same time. Defining a produce by "killing a product which is already out for 4 years" is the definition of neither.

(no,i dont own an iphone. they where to late in supporting 3g, sorry)

just think...

[Anonymous Coward]

...if they actually put this kind of energy into, say, making a product that doesn't suck balls*, they might be able to actually do something. Instead it's all about killing the other guy. Kinda sad.

* Yes I realize a phone that would actually does suck balls sounds great, but something with with ms reliability is going nowhere near my balls.

Re:When...

[RightSaidFred99]

Ahh, yes. It makes you look pretty smart to dismiss the most profitable software company in history, by a long shot.

In the comfy confines of your basement I'm sure Microsoft is nobody. Out here in the real world, they're a major force.

Mod Parent Up!

[dafing]

good call on "emBallmer" :)

Want to know why MS has at least a chance?

[RightSaidFred99]

This is why MS has a fighting chance.

Microsoft is behind in the mobile space, and even I think they're pretty much of a long shot. But it's silly to count them out completely because, for one thing, you're not going to get developer tools as easy to use or high quality from Apple or Google. Besides their traction in the corporate world, the insanely high quality of their software tools and the amount of help they provide developers is one of their biggest strengths. Once you get developers developing high quality applications, you start getting the users.

Jesus, people.

[flimflammer]

Why is everyone taking the iPhone "funeral" thing so literally as if Microsoft actually expects to be the end of the iPhone?

They're just goofing off, just like that cheesy internal marketing video that surfaced on the web a few years back. Are Microsoft employees not allowed to have any fun by poking fun at their competitors?

Re:Jesus, people.

[alobar72]

I would assume they already had plenty of fun regarding the iPhone by watching the famous balmer interview over and over again :)

Re:Jesus, people.

[RazorSharp]

Why is everyone taking the iPhone "funeral" thing so literally as if Microsoft actually expects to be the end of the iPhone?

They're just goofing off, just like that cheesy internal marketing video that surfaced on the web a few years back. Are Microsoft employees not allowed to have any fun by poking fun at their competitors?

Sure. It's not a crime to make a fool of one's self. Other people are allowed to criticize them for it as well. Funny how that works, huh?

Re:When...

[Anonymous Coward]

Phones and Android phones will still rule the smartphone market

Except that Symbian rules Android and Google in Europe. But continue pretending that the US is the entire world (FYI: the EU has twice as many inhabitants than the US).

And even in the US, Symbian is doing pretty well.

Embarrassing

[mevets]

Can you imagine some sluggo pitching this as fun to his employees? I say 'his' because no woman could be so lame as to come up with this....

In the last few seconds, the zombies are all clamouring for iPhones.

Is that because iPhones are just like brains, or is Win7MoPhone so bad zombies won't use them?

Typical MS timing, mock funeral day before 9/11

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha, ha.

You won

[tokul]

You will know that you are winning, when your competitor wants to bury you.

telco threatening

[ardeez]

Actually the zombies and mock funeral are more as a warning for the telcos.

Buy and install our KILLER ! OS or we bring in the zombies!!!

It's practically free! Or at least it will be until we kill the competition
and then we'll revert to Windows based er, competitive pricing.

That OK with you? Thought so ...
Right! Take the zombies on to the next one .. who is it? t-mobile heh heh heh hehhhhh

iphone funeral - an achievement

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is the first ever sensible thing that I hear Microsoft did. A truly glorious achievement.

However, I wonder if someone at Apple now starts throwing chairs.

the only smartphone for me...

[bball99]

is one that costs less than $5 with $6 per-month service...

people at wrong funeral

[mAriuZ]

Microsoft really does have bad taste by trying to kill firefox and trying to kill the second player like iphone
they even don't dare to mention 1st place runner :Android

they should attend at the wm7 funeral march
funeral sponsored by Google and Apple
 

Cheeky

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh ho ho, they're so cheeky!" is what I'd be saying if I didn't realize they actually believe that what they say will come true...

Re:When...

[yoyhed]

I love you damn Europeans' abrasive attitude toward Americans - did I say I was talking about the whole world? Did I offend you somehow by not explicitly mentioning Nokia's OS? No need to be condescending about how many people you have in the European Union - I'm well aware that there are regions and countries of the world that are more populous than the US.

Re:When...

[yoyhed]

Oh, and this is slashdot.org, not slashdot.eu - no one mentions how Symbian's doing across the pond because the discussion is about WINDOWS MOBILE.

My point was that there are many better alternatives to Windows Mobile that will remain more popular - I was not purporting to make a definitive list of the top smartphone operating systems.

Waste of money.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should put more effort into actually producing great products. Oh, wait, that would be logical.

What Not to Copy

[bill_mcgonigle]

I think the "iPhone funeral" will come back to be one of the biggest laughing-stock moments of Microsoft.

They can't even mock Apple right. I mean, yeah, they'll probably copy most of the iOS features to compete, but a "Windows Phone Pride Parade"? C'mon, the whole Apple-Users-Are-Gay thing isn't one that they're supposed to be copying. Some people don't know when to stop.

Windows 7 is backwards compared to 6.5

[Ilgaz]

Windows 7 seems to look like a poster child for "how portable .NET is". Speak to Windows 6.x users, they are really really frustrated.

Windows 6.5 does multi task, can be developed in any language, it has amazing amount of development options, "deep level running" software such as Antivirus/Firewall are in very mature levels now.

You are right about "newer API and kernel calls" for Desktop operating systems but, lets say you are a guy who just cares about reading/smalltime editing office files, checking IMAP mail, little web browsing, IM. You don't need to "upgrade" (including device) to a new OS. Your device doesn't flip over and die because "windows 7" ships, it keeps operating exactly the same.

What MS did is, act like Apple without being Apple. They called "death" of Windows Mobile 6.5 way too early. Just like the idiot Sony, owning the OS sources, kernel sources, having Nokia there in case something happens declared death/no updates of UIQ3 P1i. It is Sony, MS is not known for abandoning older operating systems and/or breaking compatibility. For example, I was very impressed when "Vista Basic" showed me GPU processing API update (windows platform upgrade) as a free download. That is something Apple would never do.