“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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Besides begging employees to write apps for their phone I also found:
“Microsoft week in review: Installment one of iPhone-to-WP7 app-porting tutorial”
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-week-in-review-installment-one-of-iphone-to-wp7-app-porting-tutorial-and-more/7355?tag=mantle_skin;content
“Jesse Liberty has stated a series of tutorials for iPhone developers that focus on the minimum you need to know to add Windows Phone 7 development to your skill set.”
Why bother? All that work only to be Zuned and Kined into oblivion.
Fsck me that is pathetic. However, after seeing Micro$oft’s SongSmith commercial for the first time the other day, maybe I was expecting this.
If anyone hasn’t seen the SongSmith Commercial;
Microsoft was already known as a total thing of the past… But nowadays, M$ really gets too deep down into ridiculous behaviours…
Someone send Balmer a crate of champaign!
Keep him at the top and they will always be 10 years behind Apple And 5 years behind everyone else.
Programmers dressed in costumes and dancing.
What has been seen cannot be unseen……….
@Jamie
Thank you so much for that link! It’s great fun to watch! – Is it real?!
Windows team, on developing the phone 7: “We made the decision to focus on things we will do really, really well. For those that we didn’t, we feel that we’re better off waiting until we can do them really, really well”
Look who grew a brain cell big enough to follow Apple’s footsteps, 4 years late.
Ok now I’ve read on wikipedia, Songsmith is real. I really thought it must be a fake, because of the line: “Microsoft, hmm, so it must be easy to use!”
Looking forward to Balmers explanation for the Windows Phone ’07 failure. This time, they cannot say it was just to try out, because they made all that noise before the launch…
Probably taken with an iPhone. No, wait, the video quality sucks. Probably taken with a Windows Mobile phone.
The Darth Vader “dancer” was most appropriate. The title of the event should have been “Welcome to the Dark Side.”
F@#%! Horrible dancers, painful to see this video. they danced like their leaders gates and Ballmer.
This is what they’re spending theyre time doing instead of making “competing” products? No wonder everything they make doesnt work right.
@Lemon,
Yes, scary, isn’t it.
At least the dancing monkey was in the video with an orange prop. You think Steve Ballmer saw this?
Sad. Very sad. Did you all notice that the X Microsoft guy now the CEO at Nokia isn’t using this new turd from Microsoft. He is going Droid. When the rats leave the ship it is because they know it is going down.
And they say Apple is nothing more than a marketing gig. Hell, at least Apple pairs their marketing with SHIPPING PRODUCTS.
You all have this event all wrong. MS is trying to cheer up the employees that worked very hard on the Win phone, since they know that they will all be crying from shame soon after it goes to market.
@MICROSOFT FTW!!
That was cute, but the picture you started with is interesting from another standpoint.
It really says something when MS can’t get a participating employee to use their vehicle and has to rent a vehicle to put their banner on.
I donno, I think the dancing is kinda cute and all in good fun.
(sent from my iPhone 4)
I think it’s cool. Maybe WP7 will be good. More competition for Google, and that’s a good thing.
Steve held a memorial service for Classic.
Even in death (real, wishful, or otherwise), Microsoft attempts to copy Apple.
I hope MS does well with Win 7. Competition is a good thing for everyone, but this attitude is just crazy. It’s like they are way too hard to seem cool or hip without being anywhere close to it. Meanwhile, companies that ARE the above (Google Android team and the Apple iPhone team) don’t feel the need to pull stunts like this…
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There are several things I like about Microsoft… but this is so beneath them. It’s one thing to believe that you have a superior product and you demonstrate that by showing how and why it is better. But this clown-show is pathetic. I’m at a loss to express my disappointment.
May Ballmer be CEO for as long as it takes.
@Jamie
That MS link is PRICELESS! Thanks, what a hoot! That one video sums up all of Microsoft in one swoop.
Andriod is winning right now because apple hasn’t had the chance to unlock the iphone for all carriers in some of the more lucrative markets – mainly the US. People are buying droids only because they make good “fake iphones” while one waits for the real thing to get off of AT&T.
Microsoft’s only hope of ever selling a Windows Phone 7 device is that every other competitor is not only dead but has never lived so nobody has ever seen what a decent phone is. Then Microsoft could force a few stupid people to use some of their shit devices until the others develop anything. Then of course Microsoft will die immediately as they have in the current reality.
This is pathetic, they have to do the overused Thriller theme. This was cool when some folks first though about it for there wedding and it was at least original. But here, it just representative of Microsoft lack of originality and how there corporate culture can’t even come up with even the smallest original idea.
Microsoft could make a theme park out of the introduction of Windows Phone 7 and it will still flop. The reason is that it is yet one more competing firm futilely attempting to emulate Apple. But with there own “twist”. Simply pathetic.