Microsoft workers buying iPhone for ‘Research Purposes’
by DJ Neawedde | 1st July 2007
At the Apple Store in Seattle a few Microsoft employees were found stand in line awaiting the iPhone. Adrian, who didn’t want his last name used, said there were also two other Microsoft peeps from the Windows Mobile division in line, but wouldn’t point them out. According to PC World, “Adrian’s friend Anna, also a Microsoft employee, agreed to come along to buy two additional phones for him. Apple set a two-phones-per-person limit Friday.”
There has already been buzz about a possible Microsoft phone, like a Zune phone or similar. So this is really just another piece of hard evidence that Microsoft is really working on a super phone, and I think it’s inevitable.
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Keep your hopes up my friend. The use of the adjective “super” is a bit over optimistic in my view. I would guess that they would also abandon their Windows Mobile OS development similar to what happened to “play for sure”. After all, their mobile OS penetration has stalled in a minor market position.
July 1st, 2007 at 12:30 pm
“So this is really just another piece of hard evidence that Microsoft is really working on a super phone” … Steal and copy. Again.
July 1st, 2007 at 2:05 pm
yeeeaahh, reee-search…..riiight!!
July 1st, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I expect Microsoft’s Zune division will call the new iPhone copy “Turd 2″ in loving memory of the original Zune turd.
July 2nd, 2007 at 1:39 am
Surely one would expect competent engineers to look closely at whatever significant products are released in their field.
But I don’t see Microsoft producing anything even close in short order. Vista doesn’t *really* rival OS X. Win CE is a joke. And the Zune (and what goes with it) is nothing like as well-designed, or attractive as a package, as the iPod/iTunes/iTunes Store combo. *And* the Zune was essentially bought from Toshiba, anyway, not designed from scratch. Microsoft don’t really do hardware design and presumably lack the expertise. By contrast, I’m sure there are people who know a lot about software at MS. Nevertheless, the company’s software seems deeply mired in outdated and unsatisfactory designs, owing to a management attitude that “good enough” will do, further compounded by market dominance and the concomitant need for backwards compatibility. They simply haven’t got anything like OS X and the Cocoa frameworks.
If they can’t get their desktop OS or a DAP and supporting software and infrastructure right, when they’ve had time and to spare, they’re not going to rival something as complex as the iPhone any time soon.
As Steve Jobs said, if all you needed to come up with good products was money, Microsoft would have them.
July 2nd, 2007 at 4:47 am
The iPhone is a major jump forward for UI design on mobile devices, if Google and MS both come out with a decent offering then that’s great news.
Maybe in a couple of years we’ll have the choice between a few really good devices, at prices that are reasonable - because of competition.
July 2nd, 2007 at 5:53 am
@ Matthew
Dude, Apple is in bed with Google.
Google is competitor to Microsoft.
Google (also YouTube)+Apple= destruction of Apple empire.
I really like Apple’s strategy. Microsoft’s strategy is really just to own every market in the universe but Apple’s strategy is to unite with the big guns to produce an even better, more expertise made product.
Microsoft: stick to what you do best: keyboards
July 3rd, 2007 at 1:16 pm
err I meant to say destruction of Microsoft empire.
July 3rd, 2007 at 1:16 pm