“Once again, it’s Mobius time! Mobius is an invite-only event, hosted by Microsoft, where the invited guests are shown what Microsoft is doing in the mobile space,” Jason Dunn reports for WIndows Phone Thoughts.
MacDailyNews Take: WinMo market share charts marked Double Black Diamond? Microsoft code monkeys staring at their cubicle walls until it’s time to punch out? Trotting out Ballmer T. Clown to talk up a whole bunch of gibberish about yet another epic, dead-in-the-water Microsoft failure?
Dunn continues, “After the day of presentations, where each attendee received a 32 GB Zune HD.”
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, fer cripes sake. Here, the photo speaks at least a thousand words:
Full article here.
They look bored.
Ouch! Would like to see what the rest of the invitees were rockin’.
They do look bored. A Zune as a present? When I first read that, even though I know it’s a MS event, I thought MDN was joking.
It is like when Steve Ballmer was on the TV news talking about the new Windows 7 and behind him was Windows 7 running on the Mac screen. Any Mac person would see it and Ballmer had know idea what was going on.
How can Microsoft stand it? It’s fairly ballsy of the attendees, maybe each one of them said “maybe they won’t notice just one”
Wonder if the netbooks are Hackintoshes.
what in the hell are they going to do with Zunes? What a stupid thing to give someone.
I’m surprised they were able to fill an entire day with what they were doing in the mobile space.
Heeheeheehehehe, muahahahahahahaha!
The author of the original article purportedly claimed (in a tweet) that the distribution was more like 50-50 (Mac – Win), and that he was sitting on the “win” side, with a better view of the Mac folks (just by coincidence).
Even if that is true, it means that in a MS-sponsored event, where participants are supposedly heavy MS developers and influencers, HALF of them actually CHOSE a Mac notebook!!! This in fact does not surprise me all that much (if you actually know something about computing, developing software, etc., you’d be hard pressed to choose anything but Mac). I’m sure it is a complete shock for MS.
Out of about 17 comments (till now) on the original article (coming from true MS fans), more than half mentioned the picture. “That image must have made MS marketing wince in pain” (paraphrasing one of the posters). And they were giving away their new Zunes to all these Mac-using folks! I’m sure those Zunes will be on eBay come Monday…
Will their new Zune even plug into their Mac’s?
LOL! I don’t see any problem with the guess showing up wearing Armani suits at a Walmart event!
Priceless, Apple should use this shot in the TV ad.
I wonder just how many 32 GB Zune HD were found in the trash after the event was over?
They gave away Zunes ’cause they had a bunch of extras
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Let me put it another way, what better way to “show what Microsoft is doing in the mobile space” than to give a Zune HD to Mac users and tell them to go sync it?
Not everyone is using a MacBook…
…see the guy in the background texting on his iPhone?
@The Other Steve:
I love it: “go sync it” has to become the new FU phrase from M$!
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Look for a bunch of Zunes on e-bay shortly
@Original Shiva: Those are all the attendees.
@The Other Steve: If they’re running windows on those Macs they can indeed plug in their Zune. Besides, they have to clear out the stock.
If you read the original article, it’s clear these weren’t developers at this fully-paid, invite-only junket, but tech writers and bloggers. That half of them use Macs is surprising — I thought it might be even more!
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At least Microsoft and their partners are totally above board in flat-out buying good press: Microsoft paid the airfare, meals and hotels for the invitees, and they were given not only Zune’s, but some other “high-end” WinMo mobile device.
The best press coverage money can buy. Gotta love it.
I was attending some keynote presentations yesterday at INTEROP (and Web 2.0) in New York. You could clearly see it in the audience, and there were hundreds of people watching these events. At least 50-50 was the ratio between $1k+ Mac laptops and sub- $500 everything else. And these were tech folk. And the event was quite a disappointment, with very few major exhibitors and few major speakers.
This is incredibly telling trend, no doubt. What’s most amusing is, MS still has no clue. “Win 7 is selling twice as many copies as any prior OS”, says Ballmer (not mentioning that it isn’t so hard when prior record was held by XP in 2001, when there were one fifth of current number of computers) ; “We’re still on 96 out of 100 computers” (which includes ATMs, cash registers and such). They just won’t know what hit them.
I see five Macs. That’s all? A picture of five Macs and you guys start talking about how MS is going out of business? I hope you guys save this stuff for the web and aren’t like this in real life. You’re probably weirding your coworkers out.
This remids me of the day I went to a microsoft convention to get a copy of windows nt server, and workstation.. the guy I was with fell asleep and started snoring.. we both promptly sold our copies… not only did we get free breakfast and lunch, but $$$ as well.. thanks douchbags!
Look for a sudden surplus of Zunes on eBay..
Arg.. shoulda read all the posts..
@northhills-
you don’t see it do you? you look back 5-6 years ago and there was MAYBE one Mac in a room of 100 PCs. Now 80% of the trendsetters/first adopters in the tech industry use a Mac. It’s painfully obvious at most tech related events…and NOW apparently even at the Microsoft centric ones… What does this mean you’re asking yourself? It means that Windows will continue on as the OS of choice for the cash registers, travel agencies and ATMs of the world (and that’s a BIG market) while the people, who vote with THEIR hard earned money, will increasingly choose the vastly superior Macintosh to actually work/create/play on! I bet you bashed the mouse in the 80’s (if you were even alive)…
As Ballmer says, just another rounding error…
Notice how all the people on macs are looking at their macs – and all the people on something else are looking bored and into the distance.
@noticehow,
damn I was going to point that out, probably they were waiting for their laptops to boot up…
“I see five Macs. That’s all?”
@northhills
and you can’t see the forest- the too many trees in the way.
I think it makes perfect sense for Microsoft to give away those Zunes. Afterall, they have to do something with all that excess inventory!
@Roberto
You’re right, just checked, there are 5 on ebay today.
Zune’s can be useful, everyone still needs a good paperweight now and then.
You know that ATMs are mostly Unix systems, don’t you all? I don’t think the AQA exam board would be wrong about that.
Just to clarify, I have heard this from computing students.
So … ~half of the portable computers there were $300-$700 “netbooks” while the other ~half were $999-$2,100 MacBook(Pro?)s. So … why in the world should Apple market a netbook or tablet computer?
Seriously.
What market would they be going for? The half using the tinker-toys will be switching soon enough. All they have to do is continue to whine to their boss, or talk to their boss’s boss. Or change jobs to work with a more understanding boss.
Isn’t the guy in black, at the right of the guy with the red netbook, not Zune Tang in person? Hum! Looks like he uses a Mac… after all!!!!!! lol
After the day of presentations, where each attendee received a 32 GB Zune HD
Burst into laughter over that shit ! Like someone really wants that !
Squzz me but did they give’em a zune PHONE ? What the hell does the zune have to do with win mo ?
In the interest of fairness and full disclosure, how many of them are running Windows on their Macs at the moment?
Yes, I know…Not That It Matters. I bet all the PC users moved to the other side because they didnt want to open pages and programs and have the guy next to them saying “WOW. Still hasn’t opened yet, huh? It’s cool. I’ll wait.”
“in my next slide, i wanna show you some of our plans for version 9… look at the way we were cleverly able to hide alot of the clutter and menus… we think it looks more… um….cool… like a…. like a….”
looks at the row of glowing white Apples…
“…right…”
and they gave away Zunes after an MS presentation?
gods talk about adding insult to injury.
For another scene of Macs around the table see:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/25/
Last scene is a cinema display with an apple in the upper left…
Gotta Love Hubble
I clicked on the picture for fun and it sent me to an blog article and the guy talked the whole time about the food they were all treated too by MS–never did talk about any product from MS–sad actually very sad
Did anyone check eBay to see if there was a sudden surge in the availability of 32GB Zune HD’s? That had to increase the total units in circulation by at least 5%
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