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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.'"
Did I miss the windows vista funeral? How about Windows ME when was that? I had a great obituary prepared
Do we get one for Windows Phone 7 - the Next of KIN?
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.
Funny... nobody showed up for the Kin's funeral.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
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.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
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?
What about Bob?!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
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?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
Clippy: "I see you're having a funeral, would you like help with that?"
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
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.
we need to make some room for Win7 Phone fans here
How many Windows 7 Phone fans attended the Win7 PhoneFest in 2011?
Both.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
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.
Why doing the filming of course. Big Fail for Microsoft...
The fuck?
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
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.
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
Monstar L
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...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
I was on the teams that shipped the iPod, every generation since the first.
LET ME INSTALL ROCKBOX YOU JERK
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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?
You will know that you are winning, when your competitor wants to bury you.
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.