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The Return of the Microsoft Kin
symbolset writes "In a surprising turn of events, Engadget is reporting that the Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two will have an encore in the market. Some years ago Microsoft purchased Danger, Inc, services provider for the legendary Sidekick line of phones, and set upon refreshing them for a new generation in 'Project Pink.' Several project restarts and one data loss incident later, the project had lost favor internally and relations with the launch carrier Verizon had gone sour. The product was launched anyway to dismal sales and yanked from the market in under two months. According to the article, the costly data plan was thought to be to blame for the poor sales, so cellular data services and features that require them have been removed."
As nobody cares...
I can't possibly understand this. Anyone with half a brain who picked up a Kin phone could see that the things were atrocious. It was like some 70 year old engineer decided he was going to make a phone that was all hip and "did all that music stuff the young kids like". Totally out of touch with the market and any sane school of thought regarding a UI.
Oh well though. If Microsoft feeling like flushing EVEN MORE money down the drain, then who am I to stop them.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Amazing how Microsoft can release multiple devices that partly compete against each other... you could see someone considering a WP7 phone for the social aspects, then saying "well the Kin is cheaper, and I can do some social things on it so good enough."
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
With who, techies? With the general public, I'd bet 95%+ have never heard of the thing and thus have no opinion in either direction.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
so cellular data services and features that require them have been removed.
Then the article closes with:
Seriously, who wants a Kin without the unlimited photo uploads?
I thought the entire point of the Kin was that you could connect to social networking services from anywhere. Removing that ability cripples the phone. But let us suppose that they aer right: buyers want to save money by only using those features when they are connected to WiFi. So be it - no hardware or software changes are required to do that.
Seems to me that a better option would be to take the Kin functionality and sell a Kin app for Windows 7. Or bundle it. But as the article points out, this may just be a way to unload the hardware backlog.
Between the Kinect and the Kindle, do we really need any more Kin* product names?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Not good
Read your link. It's mostly anecdotes about how hard it is to buy one of these phones because of how quickly they sold out despite ugly store displays without working examples.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
IIRC Microsoft hired dweebs to update the databases who decided to save time and money by not doing backups first. Then middle management panicked and brought the databases back on-line despite the fact most were now empty. All of the permanent damage was done by the panic of middle management. By the time they found the scheduled backups and did a restore there was a dual-master database synch problem. The unique (row?) ids used for identifying records were now duplicated. Chaos ensued.
The first anniversary of purchase having passed there were almost no senior engineers left onboard. The senior engineers gave Roz Ho a chance and worked to their first year retention, but Kin development management was so screwed that they bailed despite their massive second year retention bonuses. You should have heard the disbelief around the campus when all these senior people bailed without lining up new jobs first. It was that bad. MSFT has only the most token version control, no modularity, absolutely clueless about basic design issues (unlike mp3 players, phone sounds need to overlay each other, etc.) , constantly thrashing from one half-functional never to be delivered Windows OS to another. Zune, Kin don't use actual MSFT OSes, they use heavily munged old forks, which you would think would be a sign to MSFT that everything about their phone OSes sux. but no.
Rozzie thought she could just dump Danger's in-progress new sidekick contract with T-mobile and put all the engineers on Kin, but of course that didn't work. Complete screw up, no due diligence, I'm sure everyone involved got promoted, that's how the world works.
anonymous for good reason
They will release it as the "Kin ect" (with "ect" being an acronym for "Enhanced Cellular Technology") and add some functionality that allows you to sync it with your Xbox.
Then they'll count Kin sales for both the mobile and console peripheral markets.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
There's a supply shortage. None of the manufacturers shipped enough devices to meet demand. It's a good thing it was a Monday launch instead of Friday or Saturday. People might have actually been lined up just to get super pissed they couldn't buy a phone.
I wonder whether Microsoft's 'kin phones will be any better than their 'kin operating systems or 'kin applications. Un 'kin likely.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
In the UK, PAYG phones are getting data thrown in for free with top-ups. The equivalent of ~$16/month in top-ups will get you unlimited internets + some reasonable amount of mins and texts to go with some reasonably inexpensive but good smartphones, like the Sony X10 mini. If that sort of pricing went down in the US, this phone would have a chance. I thought it was quite nifty.
Because before the iPhone, everyone else was already selling touchscreen smartphones with massive app stores, developers were cashing in on the huge new app market, and people around the world were ditching their feature phones for smartphones.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Microsoft has unveiled its new Zune One and Zune Two mobile phones for unusually stupid social-networking enthusiasts in their late teens and early twenties with a higher income than their IQ.
Team leader Roz Ho said the company had tried to create a Microsoft gadget that people actually wanted to have, like the XBox 360, but that actually worked properly.
"Get your Friendster and your MySpace!" said Ms Ho. "We studied consumer habits and built the perfect phone for the, uh, 'social generation,'" she air-quoted, "to make it 'fab' and 'bling' — I mean, of course, 'Bing!' — for people too dumb to work an iPhone to share their lives moment to moment."
The handset is of simple design for simple people. The keyboard engages caps lock at random and interjects common "chat" acronyms like "LOL" and "OMG" and "RTFM" should too many words in a row be spelt correctly. A breathalyzer automatically switches on the video camera in the event of excessive alcohol consumption. As well as the usual daily crashes, the Blue Screen of Death can be invoked by the user so as to have a suitable excuse not to answer a text. Later revisions of the phone may include making voice calls.
"We are excited to be the exclusive carrier for this exciting new Microsoft phone in the exciting US," said John Harrobin, Senior Vice President of Paperclip Filing, Morning Drunkenness and Excited Press Release Quotes at Verizon Wireless. "Because we fucking hate you people. We really do."
Roz Ho was previously leader of the Microsoft team that lost all the data on everyone's T-Mobile Sidekick phones last year when the systems team was told not to bother with backups.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
God damn it's hilarious when some jackhole declares a product a failure after a week or two. Moron.
They haven't stopped the incompetence - this is the same KIN phone, stripped of the data features.
So basically you have a phone that can use Zune pass to listen to music if there's Wifi around.
Smells like a warehouse full of unsold KINs that need to ship before they get the Pac Man/Atari 2600 treatment
Actually, there was no reason to rename the Zune. It was only a failure in the commercial sense. The hardware and concept were actually quite good. While I only know two people who own them, both were quite pleased and from what I could see of it the device worked well.
With the Kin, I think the biggest problem was that they were aiming it at a market which doesn't exist and they gave up before it did. The way that Apple came to be so closely linked to portable music is that they waited until the market formed, then ripped off the interface from Creative, slapped on a different input scheme and made it white. After that it was marketing from there on out.
The first Kin would have sold incredibly well, but tragically a deal with The Situation to carry on on the "Jersey Shore" fell through when it turned out the various oils he used caused shorts in the keyboard and also the electronics tended to be eaten by a wide variety of biologic organisms living in the hot tub.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley