you predicted the future. Kudos, of some sort.

Ah, the irony.

Highly doubtful that a Zune Phone would be any good.

Microsoft bet the company on Windows Eveywhere but it has certainly not happened that way. XP is incompatible with Vista and 7 and Mobile 6.5 and Mobile 7 and now Mobile 8 is being talked about as “NT-based” that is going to happen a full 10 years after Apple as usual. Apple is running OS X in the iPod for years now for crying out loud.

Microsoft’s unique horizontal integration just cannot move fast enough for today’s world. By the time their hardware partners and their various divisions all get onto the same page, the era has passed. They are so monopoly fat that they can’t outcompete themselves from 2001 that is why XP still rules the Windows platform.

Meanwhile, Microsoft are not making iPhone apps, they’re not making Blackberry apps, just to spite those manufacturers. They should have invented Google Wave years ago for office users instead of 8 years of trying to replace XP and nothing to show for it.

But almost all of those had left before time MS did the acquisition — years of shitty management & no vision beyond more feature creep on Matias’s original design.

Baffled me at the time what MS was paying $500 million for, and I guess we now know the answer.

I still hold a soft corner for MSFT. It gave so much to software industry early on.

There is substantial lack of business ethics inside MSFT as well as complete lack of business understanding now.

I did some research on Linkedin. There are significant folks who left PME project recently. Some of them joined Netflix, Apple and Google.

Value the emp while they are there. There is a reason why folks from Danger left in last few months. I am sure the leak came from some of these. I am told that the veterans in the PME team treated the Danger folks with less than 0 value. That is the reason they left.

I hope there is a realization in MSFT old guards to accept new folks and respect them.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/09/exclusive-pink-danger-leaks-from-microsofts-windows-phone/

Quite incredible. Microsoft is becoming a shambles.

One wonders how far away the meltdown is…

Microsoft apparently retained literally zero Danger talent. Last night’s meeting must have been vicious, because at MIDNIGHT they called around and got three ex-dangerites (CJ, DJ, & MJ) to come in (from Netflix). They had no one in house who understood “device or service”. They laid off service team and offshored to Ukrane. Strangely, all three guys came in and worked all night and fixed something important.

Apparently OPS kept ZERO backups and upgraded SAN wiping ALL DATA. Last night’s heroics only restores SOME data.

Don’t know if those three are the real brains or just the only guys not working for a competing phone developer. “Device” people mostly went to Android or Palm, “Service” people to Netflix.

Laying off the service people makes me think they didn’t want the service features (patents) either. Claim is MSFT *management* wanted Danger to rescue Pink, but Pink team resented interference.

The WM7 is still CE based. Fortunately it is the last one. Then WM8 is NT based (whatever that means).
This info is from OEMs who were shown a roadmap recently. They hate it. They will have to wait beyond 2011 for WM8 while others advance.

Microsoft still thinks that they will win usual game of coming late/second and then lasting others till they win.

I like MSFT recent products but the sentiment here at least is bad about the pink project.

Microsoft seems to have retained founders Britt and Hershenson; it’s hard to find anyone else who seems significant.

If you can reach many of these people through your social networks, you’ll find that: MSFT had an entrenched Pink team who shut danger personnel out of contributing, the remaining ones quit (except of course for those desperate to remain employed, who aren’t the good ones); MSFT doesn’t use their for-sale products internally, they use ten-or-twenty-year-old branches of their products that have added feature not in the public product so they can’t switch AND they don’t invest in maintaining them. Their source control, their build system, and their builds are broken and obscenely slow. So it is unpleasant to move from out-of-microsoft to in. Even internally, MSFT substitutes P.R. & Marketing for fixing problems.

Danger integration was ordered at high level but not supported by mid-level managers (Roz Ho, etc.) and failed.

Danger services have been down for a week because MSFT out-sourced support to asia and those guys didn’t make backups before doing hardware maintenance.

Other speculation is that the entire half-bill purchase was to acquire patents Android is already in violation of.

Most telling is that in the middle of recession (one year anniversary) several senior engineers quit without having other jobs lined up.

Majority opinion is that original comments are bitter and just over half accurate, and pictures are long obsolete.