Microsoft intros Windows 7 beta, Songsmith app at CES - Page 2

Dude, that video was lame.

The Songsmith commercial is one of those silly internal Microsoft commercials, they do from time to time, right?

Nope! That's from the actual page promoting the software. It's linked in the story.

That piece of video was excruciating to watch. It's over now. Just keep repeating, "I took one for the team... I took one for the team... I took one for the team..."

If you tried to parody this in the most deliberate way you would have an exact copy of the actual commercial. It's just that tacky.

Just when you were certain you already lived thru the day irony died, something like this comes along and proves you wrong.

It is apparently certain that:

a. No one in Redmond has any idea how an actual song is written (hint: you don't just sit down and spit out melody and lyrics simultaneously)

b. None of the actual musicians who wrote the pre-arranged jingles for this monstrosity had the plums to tell MS that they were so far off from the actual act of songwriting that they should all be spanked and sent to bed straight away with no supper or dessert.

c. A whole bunch of people connected with this project no doubt high-fived each other raw upon completion of this turkey.

The commercial shows a whizzy tool for documenting improv singing which is exceedingly difficult for the average person. Garageband was originally aimed at people with keyboards lying fallow or people with no musical talent who could leverage the expert loops to build something nice.

And oh yeah I see a BIG lawsuit coming from a class composed (sorry) of at the very least Clive Anderson, Richard Vranch, Laura Hall, Greg Proops, Brad Sherwood, Mike McShane, Drew Carew, Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie and Wayne Brady.

Fan boys please your making the rest of us mac users look really bad. First of all this program on the ad is being used by a 9 year old girl so it obviously is not aimed towards music pruducers. It is just supposed to be fun. The first laptop is a Sony vaio and even if it was a mac whether u run windows 7 on a PC or a mac microsoft still makes their money. Let's stop being immature. And to one of the other posters the new taskbar looks nothing like the mac dock. Also if you google "windows 7 circle dock" you will see they took the idea of the dock and changed it. Anyway please let's grow up. If youlike your mac like I like mine then don't buy a PC. You sound so fearful of windows getting it's edge back with this new OS. Which if u already have a mac you like then shut up.

How did you all miss the biggest news item from the story: Dell is going to preinstall Facebook on very PC sold. I'm going have to buy a Dell.

OK, it's been said by a lot of people but my word, that video is just incomprehensibly awful. I can't tell if they're trying to be serious, or irreverent, or quirky, or what. Whatever they were going for, it horribly missed the mark, and is instead a bottomless pit of suck.

quote "he first laptop is a Sony vaio and even if it was a mac" well you just said it wasn't a mac. I looked at the video I don't think it was a sony. Your right it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but it is ironic that a mac was (imho) used.

I'm not a fanboy, but now I own several macs, and hardly use a WIN-PC much. Like many people, I don't worry that MS will come bounding back with Windows 7. First I doubt they will, but if Windows 7 is as much an improvement on OS-X as OS-X is over previous MS 'languages' I will simply replace OS-X with Win7

Its not immature to air ones views about a very tacky, puke inducing advert. If it were just poor, it may not be mentioned, but it really seems to have sunk new depths of a properly produced piece of junk

That video hurt me so much.

The most bizarre thing is how Microsoft couldn't resist tying Songsmith into the workplace! An enterprise app success!

thats disgusting, I need to wash my eyes out with soap.

Watch the Ad in HD (click the youtube link). It's a Powerbook with the Logo covered and a silicon skin over the keyboard

Image 1: Image 1

Image 2: Image 2

It was like diving into vomit.

Yikes. Btw, heard of punctuation?

(If you think that's a Vaio, you have no clue what an MBP looks like; of course, it's possible that the Mac you say you own is not an MBP).

Its fun to mock the inflicted.

PS: do everyone a favor and shut up yourself.

Ignoring the ad, what is the actual use of this product anyways? If i were singing at my laptop along with crappy and repetitive music playing, especially in public, I would feel like an ass.

I believe SmartMusic offers similar functionality, but you use it with instruments in practice situations. This does not seem to have any point besides being able to produce extremely low quality and stale songs. In a few respects it also seems to be an entirely automated, barebones form of garageband, but it takes away all the creativity, possibility, and freedom that came with garageband.

The sad part is that many people are going to actually use this product because they have not experience anything else. (These users are defiantly going to be the annoying bragging type that blab on and on about how "tech savvy" their children are for creating "awesome" songs.)

K, first off i dont hate microsoft. When i read all your negative comments about the Song video , i thought you guys were being over dramatic. But no, this was a cheese fest and really really REALLY should never have been aired. It made me NEVER, EVER want to buy that product. Secondly i am really really not feeling this whole windows 7 thing. I liked XP and run windows Xp on parrallels just incase i need to run something, but i never do, i mean ever. My mac can run everything i ever need it to, and the only time i go on Xp is to have a better msn. But the thing is that like i dont hate vista either, i just dont need a slower version of XP for the ammount i use it. Windows 7 will be faster, and may actually have some good things vista didnt, but again it feels as if its missing that push. I love my mac and i wouldnt be caught using Windows 7. That whole windows live thing is just a total piss off, and i dont care who they partner with, it will continue to be. If i want to facebook someone, i will go to firefox or safari, not IE and go to www.facebook.com boom! done! That was easy. I dont like the whole theme vista and 7 are going 4 and those features are cool, sure but then again, i have a better version of each at my finger tips right now, infact i just finished this message on a machine that has all those "new" windows 7 features. My 24" iMac. No i dont hate windows, but the people who use windows really wont have a reason to love it either.

That is one tragic, cringe inducing god awful infomercial. Not only does the product come across as completely lame and graphically misses the 'fun' market by a wide mile but the "Microsoft, huh? So it's easy to use" line is so utterly bad I am not sure this is for real. The creative process must have been such a travesty of bad ideas and bad decision making I am sure it would have made the perfect episode of The Office.

No, you shut up. First off, Microsoft or not, this video deserves everything it gets. Secondly you used the objectionable and sexist term 'fan boy'. Anybody who uses that term reveal an alarming level of stupidity. There is a lot of silly Microsoft bashing here and sometimes it is unreasonable but it rarely stoops to the level of using 'fan boy' as an all encompassing derogatory anti Apple term. Its very much at the same level as the video in question.

(Actually the first clue it was a Mac was when he simply snaps the lid closed and immediately walks away.)

Yep. There it is. Magsafe and all. Lameness, thy name is Ballmer.

This is right up there with an old Broderbund ad where they tried to take a product action shot in daylight with a CRT screen in it, realized their futility and scotch-taped a printout of the screenshot on the CRT glass. They *almost* made the tape disappear in the shot. Almost.

Wow. This is rarely seen in the wild. Someone on the actual border between "denial" and "anger". Please do come back and treat us to your versions of "bargaining" and "depression". We'll let you go through "acceptance" on your own, but please, do wave to us on your way into the local Apple Store.

This is too easy.

Apparently you didn't actually try to play it on your iPhone... Why don't you try it and come back because it works fine.

You miss their point, it's not that they're afraid of Microsoft, it's that the ad really was unbelievably bad. Part of selling an operating system is putting up a competent ad campaign and that was just plain bad.

Also, that's definitely a MacBook Pro. Sony Vaios have a circular hinge that is used as a fairly standard design piece and sony also places its logo much higher up on the lap-top's case.

And to one of the other posters the new <<insert Windows bug here>> looks nothing like the <<insert MacOS feature here>>. Also if you google "<<insert Windows bug here>>" you will see they took the idea of the <<insert MacOS feature here>> and changed it.

There. That'll make your next rant much easier.

There's a much easier way to tell: in the second image, he has a magsafe adaptor connected to it. Case closed.

I guess you were one of the ones who couldn't make it through the whole ad.

The 9 year old was the first.

The second was a professional making a jingle for a commercial

The 3rd was supposedly a professional musician writing a song for his band.

And it's been clearly shown that the laptop was macbook pro, not a sony.

You guys are so lame...

I don't think Microsoft cares that you have a Macbook... as long as purchase a copy of Windows and puts it on it.

As for the ad, sure it cheese but it does target the people that would be interested in it. And Microsoft nor the Media have EVER compared it to GarageBand. If they wanted to do that they would buy FruitLoops. Only fanbois are comparing it to GarageBand. (As you download it and start up Windows XP for the first time in a month).

Having tried Windows 7 6956 I will say its faster than Windows 7 and UAC is toned down, but not much else is different expept for the nifty taskbar. Which is sorta dockish, but quite alot different as the same time in that you still have a Start Menu and item pin to the left not center. In addition Windows has had since XP at minimum a button to go to the desktop. Also note that Windows 1 launched apps from a row of icons at the bottom of the screen. And you can change settings to include the name.

And to the person that mentioned the "Circle Dock" that was NEVER official but user renderings of what they wished Windows 7 would look like.

It's great to see that AppleInsider's Yoda-Speak Translator is back in working order.

Really? Sick?

I fell off my chair laughing so hard. This is a joke video, it isn't real, neither is the product.
It's an early April fool's joke... I mean... it has to be.

I don't know a single kid over age 6 who wouldn't be embarrassed beyond belief to use something like this.
And creative professionals using it... HA... I think any creative pro would rather put a gun in their mouth and jump off a high-rise then use that software.

If it is real... then repent, the end is near. Millions of American kids making the worst music ever is the 1st sign of the apocalypse... isn't it?

It's not just that the commercial was so bad (I don't see how it could have been any worse), but the product itself is so unbelievably absurd. Songsmith looks like an inbred, illegitimate progeny of Microsoft Bob and Clippy. Or maybe it's as though all the worst ideas that Microsoft has ever had just kept accumulating until they reached a critical mass of badness that spontaneously spawned into existence an unparalleled monstrosity.

But at least they gave everyone something to laugh at.


To be fair, the "Play to" feature in Windows 7 does sound interesting.

You know the last lines of the Songsmith pitch meeting: "Hahahahahahaha...*snort*. Geez, you guys slay me. Nice touch with the MacBook. Okay, enough screwing around. So what's the actual product. No, really. C'mon guys. Somebody laugh. Ohdeargodno. We see Ballmer in :30. Please tell me that didn't ship. Please? Look, we can talk. A simple 'sdelete', this meeting never happened.. and we'll... we'll... vest your stock in ONE year and all the Odwalla you can drink! Whuddyasay, deal? Amigos! Hello?"

A video that makes "Knowledge Navigator" look like "Godfather II".

Well, now, to be fair, they could have animated it using Office's pinhead-stick-figure clip art and done the voiceovers in Esperanto. I hear Bill Shatner is between gigs.

Yeah, it seemed like a cheesy Disney musical from the 70's. Pete's Dragon comes to mind. That was really bad. Every freaky song was about the same beat and tempo.

That sure isn't a Garage Band competitor.

Let me tell everyone a small secret and this may explain why this junk is let loose on the world. Microsoft employees, a good quantity as least, are Mac users or wannabees. They may be sabotaging their own employer to save the Mac and hence Apple. Just look at the Zune as an example.

My aramaic is a bit rusty, but I believe the 1st is that A Second Son and A First Son of a Second Son shall both be seated in the House Of White and shall rule for Many Days and bring upon the land great wailing and gnashing of teeth and losing of shirts. But halfway through the second one the Lord looketh upon the Earth and sayeth "Yikes, that second doofus! I gotta top that? Oy. Let me think. I know... Lucifer - you can take this one - call the boys in Redmond, will ya? We need a sound that will wake the dead."

So technically you are correct.

Forget Songsmith, I want me some glow-in-the-dark towels.

WOW! I'm sure somebody has said something about this steaming pile of crap, but that is incredible. I can't believe they actually put that out in public. WTF?!?!

Who the hell would hire a musician that can't come up with I-IV-V chord progressions on their own?

I've never felt embarrassed for Microsoft before, but this is so so bad. They are F-ing clueless. Every song sounds like a GD Barney The Dinosaur soundtrack. Man.... Just when you think they can't get any worse.

Looks that way. The clue was the Microsoft Research Department title at the start of the video (and the fact that the application is still hosted at Microsoft Research). They occasionally do corny videos for this stuff (though even by their standards, this was particularly toe curling)

One thing to remember about stuff that comes out of this department, is that it is usually just a try out for some odd bit of technology that they want to experiment with. It may (or may not) end up as a final product.

Yeah, it was bad, but if it actually sells we'll all hear the same song over and over, haha. I can't believe they used a Mac. They could have at least covered up the whole apple.

Who wants to bet that the video was made with iMovie?

oh, and they could have hired some more attractive people, I know looks aren't everything but...really?

I found this on a blog about Songsmith... a pretty funny perspective.

************************************************** *********
I just ran across this ad for Microsoft's Songsmith program.

On the face of it, it is about the worst commercial ever. But it gets worse. In the ad, they are writing a jingle for glow in the dark towels.

"Sometimes its dark, but you still need to get dry. ... You can find your guests a towel, anytime night or day."

Any guesses what kind of towel you need to find in the dark to dry off your guests?

(And "guests" IS plural)

Talking of signs.. I noticed whilst looking at unix timestamps that the ascending order 1234567890 is next months date, and it falls on friday the 13th. Spooky! Well no not really, just a coincidence, but if I was a bored conspiracy theorist I could have made up a complete load on nonsense based round this find.