Friday 22 October 2010

No wedding, we’re afraid…

 

If you recall the last traditional weddings you might have been invited to, you will certainly remember the bride arriving to the ceremony. And if you squeeze a bit your brain, you might as well remember that she probably was late a reasonable time for. It is actually expected from her to be late on purpose, in order to increase expectation around her. But not too much. Arriving later than a reasonable timing is as worse as not arriving late at all. Like many other things in life, too much is as bad as too little, and finding the right balance becomes almost a form of art, not really at the reach of many people.

                                                             

There is still a second wave, a second wow effect, which spins around the scenery and the atrezzo around the bride. People will pay a lot of attention to any details of her costume, hairdo or make up.

All this wow thing is only justified for the uniqueness brides have around them during the wedding day. It is her guests want specifically to see, to talk to, or to get a nice picture with.

Being too late will, therefore, be a terrible sin for a bride on her wedding day… But still guests are likely to be a little tolerant and magnanimous as they are predisposed in favor of her. (Please note we are prudently avoiding to mention the classical guest, normally being the mother-in-law of some guest that justifies its mere existence with a lot of venomous critic they really enjoy spitting on the bride, the ceremony, the banquet and specifically on any guest younger then themselves). Being in this tolerant mood, should the sin occur, it might be forgiven if (and this is a big “if”) the bride avoids the second (and unforgivable) one, which is not looking magnificent form the top of her head to the end of her toes. If she doesn’t, there will be not a well-equipped enough toilet nor closet in miles around to fix a very bad first impression.

Should the bride have the slightest stain in her dress, the most unperceivable scratch in her make up, or simply one single hair out of its place, then the “someone’s-mother-in-law” effect will be unleashed as a thunderbolt throughout the guests and relatives, and something that was planned to be the most wonderful day in her life will turn into the worst, slowest and longest possible nightmare for both mortal sins, eventually leading to psychological issues for the bride and potential divorce in record time.

We have no idea about the social life or family setup of the guys responsible for the Windows Phone 7 launch at Microsoft. No idea either about their education nor manners.

                                                                              

But we seriously suspect the so-long-planned wedding between the market and WP7 operating system may not end like fairy tales. No matter if the bride’s father (ultimately a certain Steve Ballmer) is planning to throw in $400 million to ensure the most wonderful celebration. It could very well be ten times as much, result will more than probably remain unchanged.

First Sin: The bride has arrives real late. Too much even for the most unconditional fans and supporters of Microsoft, who, by the way, had not had too good experiences with previous girlfriends (ie Windows Mobile different versions), and while waiting for the bride, have been exposed to very nice-looking, well-educated and good-mannered alternative ladies (ie RIMM, IOS4, Android –yes, yes, we admit “Android” is not what you would call a nice-looking lady precisely). Even another late arrival as WebOS or an old-fashioned veteran like Symbian might be better considered than WP7 at this point.

Second Sin: Despite expectations, and knowing before-hand what the other ladies had been doing around for a lot of time, WP7 came handicapped: No matter how “Pure and Virginal” (Microsoft claims it was built brand new from scratch, breaking a historical family tradition of patching and patching it once and again, Service Pack 1 to Service Pack n), Apps are (very) limited, in the scale of 1 to 300 compared to IOS4, for instance; as well, App Developers are seriously restricted (no access to camera, for example) and basic features like “cut&paste” or flash capabilities simply do not exist. WP7 alone, conveniently hosted and supported by Microsoft, of course, threw away all the majesty that a proper bride needs for her wedding day.

If this were not enough, there is yet more…

In the classical marketing approach that Microsoft has accustomed all of us for years, once more they are overdoing themselves. Not happy with deserving eternal damnation without relief (those of you who have read some of the Bible know what we are talking about), they have already announced (vaguely, but they have) future upgrades and improvements that sound as scary as Service Pack Release Notes.

So Microsoft is planning to get the dollars from the customer and give him in return a limited product with limited development possibilities (already declined by some of the top guys there, like Layar or Fring), and a promise of having to travel though the desert for an unspecified period of time to eventually get to the end state they are supposed to have paid for. Simply fantastic… but only for making the script for a Hollywood B-series moviestarred by Barbra Streisand, Diane Keaton or Meryl Streep, so sad a romance this sounds like.

Whoever ends up willingly with the knot tied must really love this bride…

…what probably is a sacrifice Apple, HP, Nokia, HTC and others may be willing to assume.

4 comments:

  1. Haha! This time I did notice quite a few "mistakes" in your English. But I think it's because you are not a natural typist, and like me, you don't bother to read through what you have written before clicking the "Submit" or "Send" button.

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  2. It looks like we need to get back to our English grammar books... Thanks for the comment, we will try to be more careful with our typing for the next time.

    Thanks again. Hope you enjoyed the post besides the language mistakes.

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  3. I don't see how they are too late, being that 70% of the phone market does not have a smartphone at all. Not to mention, there is an opportunity for a new phone to displace my old phone every two years minimum. If a vendor makes a good product it has a chance.

    Sure they are behind. But you can either give up, or participate. Google was not the first to do Search, XBox was not the first to do a console (nor was Sony). iPod was not the first Mp3 player. Either you put out a good product or not. 1 month of sales means little. Lets check back in a year or two and see who is where. WP7 has gotten mostly good reviews...at least enough to see potential going forward as a legitimate contender. Maybe one of the top players will get a divorce to borrow your analogy.

    I think your analogy is a bit forced, and I suspect you just don't like Microsoft very much, so you go with the standard criticisms (why blog this, I see the same simple criticisms in comment sections by haters all day).

    I think the phone has some compelling features with the UI, ZunePass, XBox live, Facebook integration. At the same time it does need to catch up in other areas such as EAS policy support, Multitasking, Copy/Paste we know is coming soon.

    If they update quickly like Android (were they late?) they can do well. If they don't, I would imagine they will lag behind.

    Are you actively rooting against them for some reason?

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  4. Thanks a lot, Frank, for reading and commenting. We would like to see more of these valuable comments.

    We do not hate Microsoft, don't get us wrong. They are a great company, and have been very successful so far. As well, they dfo have potential for being even more successful in the future.

    The criticism we place here is a bit exxagerated as if it were a written cartoon (sometimes to make your point better understood, you may want to stretch analogies a bit), and of course, this is just an opinion to open debate. Again, we would like to open some healthy debating.

    You are very right: Smartphone market is very open. And there is room for iphones, bberries, microsoft, nokias and even for the super late Palm. And while the market develops, indeed contenders will slowdown, speed up, introduce changes and so forth. We meant more the actual current situation, were certainly MS is late, though not as much as Palm. More a snapshot for the moment than a long term prediction therefore. As an example, we could quote Galaxy from Samsung, above 1 million units sold already. Much faster ramp up than MS, isn't it?

    Again, thank you for your comments, thanks for the criticism (constructive, we take it) and please feel free to contribute with more opinions about this blog. We will seriously consider anything you write, and take good note of anything that can help us to improve.

    The Acid Edge

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