3 ms·
It's a great question. The same should be asked of many recent Microsoft initiatives. It's okay to roll the dice, but someone somewhere should have noticed. My
by davepeck 16y ago
It's a great question. The same should be asked of many recent Microsoft initiatives. It's okay to roll the dice, but someone somewhere should have noticed.
My friends on the Kin team seem to have been caught by surprise. Those of us who watched for years from the outside: less so.
- rbanffy 16y ago> My friends on the Kin team seem to have been caught by surprise And that's the whole point. There must have been some serious reality distortion inside the company for this project to go on for as long as it did. It was obvious, from anyone but the most clueless on the outside, it was doomed. Why smart people inside the company could not realize it will be studied for decades and will spawn many papers and books.
- jonhohle 16y agoI've worked on a few projects that seemed extremely stupid at the developer level, but were financially successful (despite being stupid). Microsoft has a lot of weight so maybe they thought they would have some leverage for a certain demographic. Though they would have had to sell a _lot_ of Kin's to break even on their investment (if rumors around Redmond are true).
- joezydeco 16y agoI talked to someone who was at Motorola when the Kin was out for hardware bid. They repeatedly asked what the strategy was, why was a separate O/S needed, and eventually turned it down. I believe Panasonic eventually got the bid, but pretty much stole Motorola's design according to my friend.
- gruseom 16y agoIt sounds like you've observed some of what's going on at MS more closely than most of us here. Care to elaborate?
- davepeck 16y agoThis is a little old, but here was my take on things a couple years back: http://davepeck.org/2008/12/12/meditations-on-microsoft/ http://davepeck.org/2008/12/12/meditations-on-microsoft/
- TomOfTTB 16y agoWhat's funny (sad) is whoever maintains the official Kin twitter account was unaware as of an hour before the news broke: http://www.twitter.com/kin/status/17438337303 http://www.twitter.com/kin/status/17438337303 I bet thats going to be one interesting event in San Antonio tomorrow