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?

[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?

[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?

[digitig]

Vista? It's still alive

I think "undead" is the term.

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?

[jo42]

Windows 7 - the OS formerly known as Vista.

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.

I missed the one for the KIN

[tomhudson]

And the KIN 2.

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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: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.

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

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.

But where was Android during the funeral?

[Jim Buzbee]

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

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

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.

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: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: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: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".