“Microsoft workers celebrated the release to manufacturing of Windows Phone 7 last week by parading through their Redmond campus with iPhone and BlackBerry hearses,” Tom Warren reports for Neowin.
“Employees dressed up in fancy dress and also modified cars to include Windows Phone branding,” Warren reports. “Aside from the crazy outfits the workers made fake hearses for giant BlackBerry and iPhone devices. Employees cheekily claimed they had buried the competition with Windows Phone 7.”
Warren reports, “Windows Phone 7 is expected to be available in late October for those in Europe and November for those in the US.”
Full article, with more and larger photos, here.
And then they did this:
MacDailyNews Take: Unmitigated hubris from the perennially outclassed and hopelessly mismanaged. Par for the course.
Okay, TGIF! Hoist! May Steve Ballmer remain Microsoft CEO for as long as it takes!
Related articles:
More blood on Apple iPhone’s Multi-Touch™ screen: Microsoft Kin is dead – June 30, 2010
Verizon slashes prices on Microsoft Kin phones – June 29, 2010
RUMOR: Microsoft has only sold 500 ‘Kin’ phones – June 18, 2010
Microsoft unveils ‘Kin One’ and ‘Kin Two’ phones for kids – April 12, 2010
How incredibly lame and embarrassing.
@ Steve516
Everyone says that and it’s completely untrue. Actually, you see more iPhones and white earbuds than anything else.
Apple is doomed!! Darth Vader! (1:12)
Well at least they are admitting they have to beat Apple now. It’s kind of flattering if you think about it.
I’m sure this will be in the next presentation Apple does. Just like when Steve’s obituary came out. tongue and cheek.
I’m just going to get a good laugh when this thing just fails miserably. They claim it’s the most tested mobile platform Microsoft has shipped. It hasn’t even come out yet.
HTC, Samsung, and Motorola are going to be having a Menage Trois with Android and Windows 7.
This just can’t end well, can it?
@ Mark
I’ll say. These were the same people that went to pep assemblies in high school.
I hope Jacko comes back to haunt all of em.
Or, instead of Kin One AND Two, maybe they will bury it next to the Courier, a vaporware device that never saw production, which will probably be said of this crap!
And is that the new dance MS employees are performing in their stores? What is that number up to? Four?!
What I see here is Microsoft putting together a party and a pep rally for the people they had been working very hard. These people, in their own world, are essentially developers, working in the trenches, many of whom are very gifted, dedicated and creative. They also likely genuinely believe that their joint effort was really, really good this time around. Since Microsoft is an entirely vertical organisation, individual teams are silos and nobody knows what others are doing. You don’t really get to see the entire picture, and aren’t allowed to, so teams overlap, do redundant work, often competing against each other (sometimes even without knowing). Ballmer has been working them to death over the last few months, and they sincerely believe the result must be spectacular (lots of talent + lots of work = excellent product; if it were only that simple…).
You can’t blame MS grunts from wanting to celebrate the completion of their very hard labour. You also have to let them do this while they still believe the result of all that great work will be success. There is plenty of time for a sad realisation that all that work was for NOTHING…
Warren reports, “Windows Phone 7 is expected to be available in late October for those in Europe and November for those in the US.”
europe first? ……………….. not a good sign
So was that Ballmer’s idea of a “team building exercise”? Or is it that working at M$ sucks the life out you until you become a zombie?
(no comment)
Seriously, how pathetic. Reflective of their CEO?
This is just sad. I mean new levels of embarrassment. Worse than the cheerleaders at the MS store opening… handing out Zunes to the 3 people who showed up early to wait “in line.”
I don’t blame the MS drones. They’re probably really nice people who like the Pacific NW and are coding along.
Occasionally, I work with people from MS and 1/3 (out of the 20 I regularly work with) openly use iPhones.
C1,
That’s what I was going to ask – where were you in the video?
Glad that SmallAndFlaccid lets you work from home. I bet that campus is cringe-inducing.
I remember when Apple had their own mock funeral. It was for OS9. They know that to be the best, you have to better yourself – not try and beat other people.
“The report of my illness grew out of his illness. The report of my death was exaggeration.” Mark Twain
WTF?! Is this for real?!!!
I think she does have a cock
they forgot to grab their crotch.
@ Cubert
SHUT UP.
Yes, it kind of is. (sigh). But my Contrator Hovel isn’t even there anymore, it’s down the road a few miles. I haven’t been there in months.
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One can afford to engage in childish bits of theatricality if one’s company is a market leader. Microsoft has bungled its mobile ambitions in a huge way with the whole WIndows Mobile/Kin/Phone 7 situation and thus must resort to stunts like this to give the appearance of exuding confidence, but, of course, it comes across as somewhat desperate. Phone 7 will get some users. Will it prove compelling enough to stop the iOS and Android juggernauts? I think not. Tardiness is going to prove fatal here. Android’s traction with manufacturers and users has come at the expense of Phone 7, not iOS. A clunky UI doesn’t help. Microsoft thought it would dominate mobile as it did the desktop OS market. It will be lucky to get 10% market share and even that figure is probably overly optimistic.
There was Dart Vader or was it Steve Ballmer?? Shiny head…
Whenever I think that Microsoft cannot be any more stupider, they surprise me with a jackass stunt like this.
Thing is, I don’t hate them. In fact, I want to have them around, coz, if they go away, hackers and criminals have no other choice than to finally attack the Macs. And they can co-exist with Apple. Jobs purposefully stepped away from their playground, while letting them play in his.
It’s a pity that they have a pea-brained monkey-boy of a CEO with serious self-esteem issues who doesn’t recognized that it would be the most prudent choice for him to partner up with Apple.
A little foreshadowing with the black windows…..DOA…..Duh!
Windows phones , LOL !!!!!!!!!
Anyone remember how windows version of the Palm Treo was supposed
To be the Dream Combination !!!!
Turned out to be a Major Flop !!!!!!!