“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!
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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
This is an insult to the Special Olympics. I expect an open letter drafted by Fester, in public apology. That was embarrassing to watch.
Please Oh Please MDN put this in the iCal….
I’d love to see this again in 6 months! Please!!!!
-Pi
I went to VSLive 2010 there a few weeks back and I can honestly say that they are as out of touch with consumers as they are embarrassing to their own cause.
hahahahahahahahahhaahahahaha… ha ha…. hah… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
That’s literally one of the sadest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The levels of delusion required for them to put on that little show there… It’s just…
Becoming a Microsoft employee really is like joining a cult, isn’t it? Except most cults probably have a better grip on reality.
Speaking of which, I decided to correct a slight error I found on one of the pictures in the article. Now it’s a lot more accurate:
Well, at least the poor bastards had the sense to wear masks.
There was a time – like in the 80’s – when I admired Microsoft. They seemed so hip back then. That was a long, long time ago… It’s kind of sad to see what Microsoft has become – just a shadow of itself and riding on past glories of the 80’s and the early-90’s.
I watched the video. So that’s what you look like after being strapped to a contract and a Windoze 7 phone!
Well, let’s put it this way: The prediction by M¢ (used to be M$, but the company’s market cap has shrunk dramatically) workers that the Windows 7 phone will bury the iPhone is just about as bad or worse than their ‘dancing.’ I wonder if M¢ borgs are required to attend some sort of Balmer Dancing Class??
Haha. Wow, 3 pages of comments! 😀
Haven’t followed the MS Win7Phone in detail, but haven’t seen anything really compelling from reading the tech-blogs.
I can see how the MS engineers want something memorable about the project they spent a lot of time on… I hope for their sake this isn’t the high point.
MS PR department seems to like these “ooh so edgy-hip-cool going-viral” type of stunts. Pretty pathetic, really. If the product has quality, it’ll stand on its own.
Apple’s products are usually met with initial skepticism by the press. “Anyone who believes the iPad is magical is an idiot!” But see how the iPod/iPhone/iPad/Mac products are doing now. Jobs has a pretty strong “reality distortion field” but his hype is much closer to the truth/vision than the PR drivel MS/Palm/Dell/etc. put out.
product quality >> fake hip
MacSE87
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Zune Tang is already promised to come to my party. Don’t do this to me again. You know how important this one is for me. You got him for the Kin launch, and now it’s my turn.
You can come to, I guess. Bring some beers. I plan to play these videos a lot too. It will be a real hoot.
Lame dorks stuck in their frat past!
Microsoft .. sick copycats.
Hmmm, Microsoft is like dancing corpses… I think i get that
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MDN, there is a mistake in the article: it’s actually called:
WINDOWS PHONE ’07
MDNWord: wrong…
So, did Balmer show up as the Young Frankenstein’s monster?
I agree with Huffter, this is a dance of the living dead.
I guess you have to have a sense of humor working for Microsoft or you’d just go mad.
I thought I heard Ballmer’s primate screams and “Woooohoo’s” in the video.
MS finally comes out with a usable os and ruins the brand name by calling their phone “Windows Phone 7”?
Really?
What’s the name for their next version?
Microsoft Windows Phone 7 SP1?
Could it be that Bill Gates was as important to MS as Jobs is to Apple?
Oh, come on, MDN, lighten up. Windows Phone 7 is gonna go down in flames — you’ll be able to quote this for years to rub MS’s face in it. No need to be the kid whose buttons are always so easily pushed.
Meanwhile the video was pretty funny — they should have had Ballmer dressed as Michael Jackson leading them. Now THAT I’d have paid to see.
Always wondered where Baghdad Bob ended up. Seems it was in Redmond…
Hey Mommy! Look!
It’s The Walking Dead!
Reconnect with this blog that MDN poster “Switched” gave us a long time ago, it was in the MDN link from this article:
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/
The July 6th entry is esp. interesting about employees quotes on the Kin.
I have to bookmark this blog, it’s entertaining.
Very interesting insider quote from that blog link:
“Similarly Windows Phone 7 has two years of development under his [Andy’s] watch. Based on his past performance, 99% chance this is also going to be a total catastrophe. It further doesn’t help that much of the Windows Phone 7 leadership team was kicked out of Windows when they screwed up Vista.”
‘JakeB’ sez: “they should have had Ballmer dressed as Michael Jackson leading them.”
Actually, during the video I kept hearing Monkey Boy ‘YOWOOO’ sounds emanating from the corpses. Then if you watch near the end of the Zombie Crawl you’ll see his apparition, or clone thereof, staggering toward the camera.
Don’t tell me that wasn’t deliberate. Ooo. Very naughty.
That exemplifies Microsoft to me. This “fun” event appears to be over analyzed and highly marketed to me. Like they bounced a bunch of ideas around a research group trying to come up with the best viral campaign for WP7.
Childish.