“Samsung Electronics, Intel and Microsoft have been promoting their joint project ‘Origami’ mini-laptop PC since they first showed it last month. In fact, the new PC proved to be too revolutionary, enough to baffle the three firms’ executive officers who publicly tried to demonstrate how to use it,” Cho Jin-seo reports for The Korea Times. “During Wednesday’s news conference at Grand InterContinental in southern Seoul, some 30 reporters gathered to watch the much-hyped product named Q1, or Ultra Mobile PC. Kim Hun-soo, vice president of Samsung’s PC division, first ascended to the podium as he tried to do the presentation in a Steve Jobs style _ which was not so successful. Kim first tried to start the Powerpoint presentation, which was saved in his Q1. But after introducing himself, he failed to turn to the second page while his staff nervously watched him.”
“After spending several nerve-racking minutes trying to solve the problem on his own, Kim was finally helped by one of his staff to get to the next page. ‘This kind of mistake happens in every presentation, even though you practice it all night,” he said. But that was not the end of his bad day. Several pages later, the large projection screen suddenly completely went black. Samsung’s staff again rushed to help the vice president, and found the Q1’s battery has run out,” Cho Jin-seo reports.
“Microsoft Korea’s president Yoo Jae-sung became the second victim of the day when he took over the turn after Kim wrapped up his presentation. Yoo also spent several minutes figuring out how to start the presentation file. Finally, a Samsung employee succeeded in turning it on. But then the Q1 suddenly flipped through every page of Yoo’s presentation file in a just few seconds. ‘Now you have seen all the contents in advance,’ Yoo said, and made a very brief presentation,” Cho Jin-seo reports. “Lastly, Lee Hee-sung, president of Intel Korea, had his turn. Going up to the podium, the energetic Intel Korea CEO pronounced that he would ‘do it in my own way as my predecessors have had a difficult time.’ But Lee also failed to kick off his presentation by himself, and had to be helped by the staff who looked as if they were expecting the same kind of problems to happen again.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “If you’re looking for a computer that’s easy to use, there’s still only one way to go – get a Macintosh.” – Apple’s “Crowd” TV commercial circa 1996. Watch it here or here or here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews reader Mike Buonarroti for the reminder.]
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Related articles:
Origami: another Microsoft product in search of a market – April 04, 2006
The elephant in the room: Will Microsoft’s ‘Origami’ ultramobile PCs run Apple’s iTunes? – March 09, 2006
Microsoft’s Origami Project revealed – March 07, 2006
Microsoft practices the art of vapor-folding with ‘Origami’ – March 03, 2006
Origami… So revolutionary, even a CEO can’t use it!
Ouch! Stuff stuff as nightmares are made on….
The fault being that its still based on the much flawed and over complicated Windows XP. Smaller crap is just bird poo.
Not much Mac news about this, but funny none the less.
you could start a joke like this … How many Korean CEO’s does it take to start Origami? They Can’t becuase Origami is Japanese. whatever..
idiots…all of them…they don’t get it. Sales people, who don’t really care..trying to push more crap.
Shame they don’t have video. That’d be sweet.
MW: arms; as in, a baby with no arms could’ve done better.
There isn’t much more to say than “Wow”.
Take a hint from Microsoft’s Longhorn and Vista work groups, boys: Don’t release a product till it actually works.
LOL! Good old MS software…you just can’t beat it for reliability!
From the Oxford Dictionary:
——
origami |ˌôrəˈgämē|
noun
the Japanese art of folding paper into decorative shapes and figures.
——
Culturally alot of presentations such as these involve the fear of losing face. I realize that software can screw up, but wouldn’t you at least expect the CEO’s to have been better briefed on how to get the presentation started/turned on? Or is showing the boss what to do mean a loss of face also?
Maybe they’ll get smart and have a Mac running Boot Camp & Windows at the ready when things like this happen…
The Jobs-isms they all forgot:
1. Practice…practice…practice…
2. Have working back-ups ready-to-go at the flip of a switch.
“he tried to do the presentation in a Steve Jobs style”
Wow – stand up on a stage and give a presentation and this was never done before Steve Jobs???? LOL.
(Or did they mean that things don´t work like they are supposed to when Steve Jobs gives his presentations…)
From now on, whenever you find yourself unable to start your presentation or find your files at work, you can just declare “Excuse me, I’m having a Samsung moment.”
Or better yet, any time you just can’t think straight, accomplish anything, or find yourself just staring blankly, when confronted you can say “It’s ok, I’m just having a Windows moment.”
I’m sorry, not being able to start and or advanced the presentation software is generally not the issue if you’ve practice “all aspects” of your presentation, including the things you have to do, and not just reading the slides.
Steve Jobs looks so cool when he does his presentation, because he’s practice a lot, often for weeks, until the last detail is ironed out. He practices with the presentation, with the equipment, even with the placement of various items. No detail is too small. That’s very different from, ‘slide three is the laptop image, so I want to say…”.
What I don’t get, is why they just didn’t have an IT person start the presentation for them in the first place. If your not going to practice controlling the machine and making it do what you want, why then assume that the machine will do what you want when you need it to. Let the people who were controlling the machine for you during your practice, do so during your presentation.
That said, that sucks when your trying to sell a product that your own officials can’t use.
Amature!
Shoulda used Keynote!
Origami, the high-tech paperweight for the Windows user on the cutting edge
It reminds me of Apple’s, now 10 year old, commercial…
http://www.theapplecollection.com/Collection/AppleMovies/mov/crowd.html
Some things never change!
Here’s an idea for MS and Samswansung:
Get Apple to design your little gadget, then everytime we see an ad for it it’ll say “Designed by Apple” in a little bug down at the bottom of the screen with a cute little sound.
That’s why for truly critical presentations:
Have the full presentation (pre tested) on at least two laptops.
Have two projectors available — minimum (you can count the presentation hall’s [or customer’s] projector as one of the two but always bring a spare).
Have the full presentation (including video loops) on a 4 GB USB stick.
Have the full presentation on a DVD.
Use at least a two person team to give any critical presentation. IF something goes horribly wrong one can be switching to backup equipment or backup files (USB stick or DVD) while the other fields questions from the floor.
Oh, and practice, practice, practice — *and* discuss what to do *when* (not if) something goes wrong, as it eventually will.
Requiring technicians to fix THE ONE laptop or other hardware you are using during the presentation can be fatal as occasionally failures are permanent (e.g., a RAM module goes bad, the DLP chip in the projector goes bad, etc.).
For people who’ve done several dozen or more presentations all these things seem pretty obvious, but as these CEOs found out violating any of them can be disastrous.
I used to even travel with my own screen to project onto, but it folded up into a nice little case that looked too much like a rocket launcher. After 9-11 I stopped traveling with it.
Another suckessful product from Microsoft, sucks batteries too
Take the present out of presentation and all you are left with is a silly looking “ation.” They should have had shadow puppets for backup.
MW: past, as in “pastation?”
Billionare CEOs know nothing about the real world. They have their secretary’s secretary’s secretary turn on the lights and dial the phone. God knows if they can reload their toilet-paper holders in their private washrooms.
If one of them brought his secretary’s secretary’s secretary to turn the thing on, all would have been well.
How many people did they fire to save face?