Microsoft Holds iPhone Funeral Event 311
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.'"
What about the rest of the family? (Score:5, Funny)
Mad Old Uncle Bob, Too. (Score:3, Funny)
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It's kinda tasteless to throw a funeral when everybody made fun of him and you knifed him in the back.
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Re:Mad Old Uncle Bob, Too. (Score:5, Funny)
and pallbearers carrying a giant iPhone
... that's a pretty basic mistake for a tech site. It's called an "iPad".
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But ... uncle Bill told us he took Bob to the farm where he could play.
Re:What about the rest of the family? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about the rest of the family? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about the rest of the family? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:What about the rest of the family? (Score:5, Funny)
Vista? It's still alive
I think "undead" is the term.
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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).
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Re:What about the rest of the family? (Score:5, Funny)
Windows 7 - the OS formerly known as Vista.
Re:You figured the trick (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [microsoftstore.com]
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...
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Re:What about the rest of the family? (Score:5, Insightful)
'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?
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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).
I missed the one for the KIN (Score:5, Funny)
Do we get one for Windows Phone 7 - the Next of KIN?
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There has been KIN 2?!!
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The KIN 2 [fonearena.com].
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.
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That would be an insult to the NeXT.
Are they 'kin mad? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Are they 'kin mad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Optimistic... (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
Re:Are they 'kin mad? (Score:5, Insightful)
After looking at Wikipedia's KIN Missing Features page [wikipedia.org], 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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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?
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IDC and Gartner (Score:2, Interesting)
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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.
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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/ [edibleapple.com]
http://www.pidjin.net/2010/04/11/stop-me-if-i-can/ [pidjin.net]
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It's not a ship party. It's a marketing ploy and a horrible one at that.
Kin (Score:2, Funny)
Funny... nobody showed up for the Kin's funeral.
HA HA HA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HA HA HA (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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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!)
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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.
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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.
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Zombies??? What are they telling us? that Windows Phone 7 is like a dead man walking?
Re:HA HA HA (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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 th
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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,
Grip and Tip (Score:2, Offtopic)
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.
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The fuck?
Mental health issues in Redmond (Score:2)
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.
So how do we divvy up the fan base, here? (Score:4, Funny)
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?
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Welcome welcome to Windows Seven
Wrapped up safely again
In bubble wrapped Microsoft Heaven
Future Fandom (Score:3, Informative)
we need to make some room for Win7 Phone fans here
How many Windows 7 Phone fans attended the Win7 PhoneFest in 2011?
Both.
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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.
iPhone is dead (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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We've heard much the same from you about iPod killers for nearly a decade. How's that working out for you?
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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?
What a joke... (Score:2)
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.
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How the Arrangements were Made (Score:2, Funny)
Clippy: "I see you're having a funeral, would you like help with that?"
Why not show hubris? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [chicagobooth.edu] - so the loud hubris ends up attracting more imitation than the results drive a logical reaction.
Ryan Fenton
so tell me (Score:2)
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.
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MS used to scare people (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
And now .... (Score:2)
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I don't.
Meanwhile... (Score:2)
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.
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That is so pathetic (Score:2)
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Let's quote Ballmer... (Score:2)
It never happened (Score:2)
noobz (Score:2)
It's an iFuneral. Duh.
But where was Android during the funeral? (Score:5, Funny)
Why doing the filming [techcrunch.com] of course. Big Fail for Microsoft...
Why they do even care about iPhone (Score:2)
It's Android who is stealing the mobile partners to Microsoft, not Apple.
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Easy... (Score:2)
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, bu
Ballmer did want to "bury" Google (Score:2)
Reportedly, he also took off a shoe and banged it on a table.
(Or maybe there was something about a chair. :P )
Notify next of Kin (Score:5, Insightful)
Seattle is pretty much zombie central (Score:2)
Probably not eating their own dogfood though. (Score:2)
I wonder how many of the attendees had an iphone in their back pocket..
Why do we care about this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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.
Who? (Score:2)
Who is this Microsoft that you speak of?
launch for which product now? (Score:5, Insightful)
RIP iPhone (Score:2)
Fortunately, the life of my iPhone is insured for a surprisingly large amount.
Funerals for Old Man Depression (Score:2)
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 habi
The death of iPhone may be true... (Score:2)
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 us
Q & A (Score:2)
What goes "Ha ha ha ha ha... Oh damn."?
Steve Jobs pissing his pants from laughing so hard.
Jesus, people. (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Its just one tragic blunder after another (Score:4, Insightful)
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:When... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what the hell (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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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...
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Re:I've been in the industry a while (Score:5, Insightful)
I was on the teams that shipped the iPod, every generation since the first.
LET ME INSTALL ROCKBOX YOU JERK