Microsoft begins Windows Phone 7 media blitz with new teaser ad - Page 3

Ah, it will be exciting to watch the creative attempts, while hilarious to watch Microsoft flush half a billion down the toilet.

And how many of the Windowsphone demographic are familiar with film history? Let alone something from almost 50 years ago?

Come on, you've obviously given up even trying to *appear* unbiased.

Now that would be magical.

I looked at the video and the first impression is, surprisingly, WP7 UI looks lifeless compared to iOS and Android. It should be the contrary but it's not.
I don't know why "unread" flag is so important to the reviewer but I never use it, so don't care for it.
Microsoft always gives more option in their interface. That also makes it unnecssarily more complicated.
The only strange thing about iOS email is you can not attach picture when in e-mail. I hope next version has file system so we can get rid of this shortcoming.

Liked the concept of the ad, but for whatever reason, didn't like the implementation. Maybe if MSFT has a more modern representation of riding in to save the day it might be more effective.

Also, the little bit of the phone that I saw had the same tiling stuff that I saw as part of the kin phone which I didn't like the look of before. For MSFT's sake, hopefully they will implement it well. I will take a look at it when it comes out and see what the feel of their new os but the MSFT disadvantage is the fact that there are a lot of people that are familiar with iOS and Android and like what they have so it may be difficult to get them to switch. MSFT needs to do something to attract people away from what they are used to as well as attract those that haven't taken the plunge into smart phone usage yet. I didn't see anything in the ad that was remotely interesting so hopefully the next ad will be better.

Neal

Something that works from MS, indeed a mirage.
I really believe that their marketing department deeply know the real value of their company.

Or would have someone at MS showed some form of self mocking irony ?\

I was just thinking, how long before someone creates a Kin spoof of this ad?

Just swap the phone for a Kin... and reverse... disappearing in a puff of smoke.

Why did the heat-haze suddenly vanish? Completely threw me.

Wait until some phones are reviewed. Those things are likely to be highlighted.

Crack open a thesaurus. There are better descriptions available. How about hypnotic? Fascinating? Compelling? Intriguing? Enthralling? Absorbing?

Or magical. But only if you like using words that way.

That is very childish.

Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Using number 3 and given that a majority of folks do not have an understanding of how electricity is generated much less how a collection of electronic parts achieves everything that an iPhone does - it is essentially a Magic device.

Using number 2 is what Apple is good at - MS tends to go too far into that realm.

Using number 1 indicates that some caution is warranted - just because we have all seen MS produce a number of failures doesn't mean they are incapable of success.

Microsoft got so much money, they don't bother to be picky on how to spend.

NO multitasking? Seriously? :O

"Windowsphone7" is a really awkward name. Compare that to someone who has an "iPhone" or a "Droid." Hey, what's that new phone you have? It's a Windowsphone7. Um, yeah, okay. Doesn't really roll off the tongue.

Maybe MS could try something shorter and snappier, like, oh, say, Kin. Or WindowsKin7. WinKin7.

Even BlackBerry has names like the Pearl, Torch, Storm, etc. Is "Windowsphone7" really the brand they're going to try to push?

Wow, what a piece of garbage. What a waste of 30-second. You need to grab people right away. I'll watch an ad, but I was grabbing the scrubber the fast forward to get to the point.

Now, let me address the more sensitive part of this. Someone is sure to take me wrong, maybe someone else brought this up... but the overall cultural sensitivity to the region in which is themed in this ad is not really very strong right now. Even if it is a subliminal dislike OR distrust. I'm not sure I would be linking a product to this theme at this point and time.

So who was the target audience for this ad? A rider coming out of blurry desert with suspenseful music does not exactly produce warm and fuzzy feelings. At least android appealed to the techy side of me. I guess is better then Sinefeld but then again just about anything is.

i wish it would have shown more of the phone, but i liked what i saw. the notion of something you can't quite makeout coming out of the desert and then becoming clear its the phone isn't terrible.
face it, you wouldn't say you liked ANY add that ms came up with....

maybe if they had jesus christ being flogged and the roman soldier stops to answer his phone 7 then goes back to flogging. that would be funny and tie into the dumb@$$ american mentality?
that better?
amerika, home of the ignorant.

you need to understand secret cinema and its theme for this showing. that is what it was intended for. not appleinsider.

Ad was blah, other than I really liked the remix of the theme music.
It is a revolution for Windows Mobile, but not for phones in general as iOS, Andriod and WebOS beat it by years.

Actually a really nice commercial from Microsoft. And after all the marketing blunders Microsoft has had the past decade, they have to get it right with the phone. Because there is more then one big competitor in the phone market.

You nailed it.

The first rule of using the long slow reveal in advertising is that the payoff at the end has to be worth the wait. The longer the wait, the bigger the payoff. Here we have a whole commercial of waiting and the reveal at the end is ... a picture of a Win 7 phone we've all seen a million times.

Also, for those that missed it, how completely and utterly tasteless is it to use a desert and the word "revolution" written in faux Arabic type?

What were these people thinking?

if you do a little research and watch the premier vids on youtube of secret cinema LOA rather than acting like a typical over-reacting, oblivious, american you might just figure it out....

It changed everything?

I liked the Seinfeld and Gates ads. They did not do anything to promote Windows or Microsoft properly, but I thought they were entertaining. I just think that to spend a ton of cash of on a 45 second teaser ad for such a targeted audience is just dumb, especially in this day and age. I am not arguing anything other than it was short-sighted. If you guys are upset because there are more posts or because you really liked LoA then that's something that should be "checked at the door." More people are realizing that Microsoft is in trouble and management is digging a deeper hole instead of digging the company out.

"The revolution is coming". Na, sorry lads, you're about 4 years too late.

Think of the Win7 phone in terms of the $500 Million that MS will spend on the launch. It will generate hundresds of jobs or save a few hundred jobs. Hopefully it will raise the stock price, and create some competition for Apple and Google. All of these are good things.

For Apple it is better to loose market share to MS and Google rather than Google alone since fragmentaion is easier to target. Dissatisfied MS customers (and they will be dissatisfied - no question about that) are more likely to go to Apple than to Google (just my opinion - no scientific basis for it) and in the end that benefits Apple. Meanwhile Apple is under pressure to introduce some of the features that have been around in Android and Windoze for a long time which benefits us - the consumer.

I think a Win7 phone is a great idea all around - too bad it won't be around for too long.

I know one of the overriding concepts of WP7 was for the UI to take a back seat. Instead it's all about getting the data to the user in the most clean, clear and concise manner possible.

So in a very real sense it is, as you say, lifeless... however that is not an entirely bad thing as there can be a certain beauty in simplicity.

For another example look at just about any piece of hardware that Apple releases as they are just as lifeless as WP7. There are no multi-colored flashing lights, over-sized air intakes or visible fans with glowing LED back lights. Just simple shapes with clean lines and soft yet contrasting colors.


I made this point in another post but the importance of read/unread, email triage, flagged and urgent emails will be lost on non-business users.

The email clients make sense in a way as Microsoft would mainly get their user email statistics from Outlook (primarily a business tool) where Apple and Google would get theirs from web mail (primarily a consumer tool). The fact that Microsoft have managed to nail a business feature in v1 that Apple couldn't in three years really shows where their strengths lie.

The way the email client is built, along with the Office and SharePoint integration, is why I think WP7 is targeted at RIMs market share rather than Apple or Google's (even though Microsoft have explicitly stated this is a 'consumer' release, not a business one).

first of all "lawrence of Arabia"? What's the market for this thing. No one is going to get the reference under the age of 50. I've seen the movie and I still don't get it. (WP7 we came from nowhere? how true, just like the add out of left field) Second, that is the ugliest device I have ever seen, followed by the ugliest UI I have ever seen. It looks like an old Palm device Saying that MSFT has an uphill battle is an understatement. Droid and Iphone are going to kill WP7.

I disagree with this completely. The UI of WP7 is designed in a way to jump out at you with pictures after pictures and big fonts after big fonts. Kind of like a magazine art. And it's done a good job at tbat. Only the e-mail app shown on the video looks lifeless. I haven't look at the whole UIs but what I saw were very lively. Too lively for my taste in fact.


That's because Apple is design king. They know the "louder" it looks, the faster it'll go out of fashion.

Good analysis. Looks like they know their onions.

But in this case, they're not.

As to point number one, as I said before, probably half this board argued that, at best, multitasking was unnecessary, and at worst would hurt performance of the iPhone. So saying that the absence of an unwanted feature is a deal breaker is a bit odd but it is a valid concern.


As to point 2. Yet you are ok with being locked into apples app store? Sorry this is ms hating, which is no more valid than an apple hater

That Microsoft was willing to spend the ad money they did to produce a teaser ad specifically for this audience and this event, ignoring the fact that it would go "viral" via youtube and be questioned by the under 50 crowd as "wtf??" They are serious about spending the bucks to be recognized as a serious player (again) in the mobile space. Remember, Apple was described as being "late to the game" for both iPod and iPhone (and of course iPad), by pundits. This is a more dynamic arena than the mp3 player space, more players, the whole carrier system influence.

There are couple of areas where Microsoft has vulnerabilities in producing WP7: first they have a set of expectations that WinMo and WinCE users and devs bring to the table. They have to be careful around the interface, so they are constrained from being too innovative, but need to differentiate as well - show the world that they are capable of reaching beyond expectations - but not so far as to alienate their base.

Secondly, they need to be "fresh" enough in their interface to interest users on other platforms - produce enough "coolness" or "ease of use" (a fine balance point) to draw back users who have moved on to Android and iOS. I think there are more in the Android camp however, as hardware loyalty is a little higher than OS loyalty in the mobile space, and Google stepped directly into Microsoft's space with the handset makers. Apple did what Apple does and created the whole package themselves - which to Microsoft has not a viable approach in other markets, excepting Zune and XBox of course. But the opponent of my opponent is not necessarily my ally, so Apple is a target as well, as are Nokia and RIM. The question is, which one does Redmond see as the low-hanging fruit in the market, the most vulnerable to predation.

if you recall it was the nature of the multi-tasking that was in question. It was demonstrated time and again on other devices that unfettered and uncontrolled multitasking drained the battery very quickly - a consumer no-no. Apple decided to forego multitasking until they could provide a solution that had a much smaller impact on the power system. Same thing with C/C/P - it is not as straight forward in the touch interface as it is with pointing devices. Better to wait and get it "right" than to push out a half-assed solution to patch.

If (as an analogy) I were to be locked-in to a robust environment that had all the resources I desired to do pretty much whatever I wanted, then yes - of course. If you are locking me into an environment that has scarce resources that are marginally developed in all but a few cases - of course not. It is the resource issue that comes to the fore in this case not some generalist BS about whether something is locked or not. It's not MS hating - it's realistic expectations. The MS app store is even smaller than the Android Marketplace, and that is supposed to jazz the average consumer how exactly? We've seen, and some of us here have actually played with the WP7 beta, and follow the development of the ecosystem closely.

I hear this stated over and over again, and it makes no sense to me. Apple has all sorts of barely functional crap on the iPhone, like the compass and Voice Command. Both of them suck big time. Both of them were included nevertheless.

Other stuff doesn't suck, but is mediocre as hell, like the new Folders thing.

The arguement that Apple is missing features on its devices because they are very slow to figure out how to do stuff well makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Oh, I don't know... I think it's pretty 'magical' for one company to transform an entire industry on their first attempt! It's right up there with making a person disappear.

However, to be a Johnny Come Lately to that same industry with your version after everyone else has had theirs out for two, three, four years... what's "Revolutionary" about it?! That they finally spit one out???

What were they thinking? How does this sound? MS is sponsoring a special showing of LoA so why don't we make a commercial?

Further the desert scene is one of the most famous in film history and everyone in the audience will understand it.

See that wasn't too difficult now was it? I could probably make it even easier if it was.

What I find appalling is the intentional ignoring of the context of the ad. It is not like people here were at home watching their Teletubbies when the commercial appeared.

No it was shown to a group of people who made a special effort to go see a film that is almost 50 years old and is 5th on the AFI's top 100 films of all time

Thank you for understanding the argument! We get it, you "AppleInsiders" obviously love Lawrence of Arabia. But who cares, you're not the demographic that Microsoft needs. They need the 16-24 crowd to buy this phone or anything they make for that matter in order to stay relevant. But this attempt clearly shows that management and the creative team has no clue as to what it relevant these days.

FAIL!