You can really tell who the trolls are here, the hardcore trolls aren't even posting in this thread because they know it's a fail, the wannabe trolls are all saying "hey this could be big"...
I'm pretty sure what 15 year olds want are things that they've been explicitly told are "for kids." And that they should ignore the cool college age stuff until they're in college. That'll work.
That MS web page is a horror show. And people give Apple shit for being for hipsters and posers?
You can really tell who the trolls are here, the hardcore trolls aren't even posting in this thread because they know it's a fail, the wannabe trolls are all saying "hey this could be big"...
the lack of even rudimentary 3rd party app support makes this a step backwards from even 7 year old sidekick products.
You're right, based on my experience.
I meet up with my friend and her two kids, a 9 year old boy, a 13 year old girl. First thing he does is grab my iPhone.
My colleagues' 8 year old basically owns his dad's iPod Touch.
It's the apps they're after. Not the social networking thing. They do that by IM and texting but it's secondary to the apps.
I think there's a danger that any kid who turns up at school with this will be laughed at. They may have interviewed X,000 kids about how they use their phones, but they didn't ask them how they used them. It'd be like asking them what sports they like playing in their Nikes, then designing a shoe based on that, completely missing the fact that people don't wear Nikes to play sport...
So Microsoft is back stabbing its "partners" yet again. I do not get the strategy...these terrible devices, that lack games, use the horrible Zune service which has failed miserably in the marketplace, and have no 3rd party support are going to compete with the existing WinMo makers, the upcoming Windows 7 Phone Series makers, and somehow are going to compete against the iPhone and Droid. LOL. Give me some of what Ballmer is smoking!
What's this? A well-balanced article from Prince about a competitor -- and it isn't laced with venom? Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeet, what has the world come to?
That being said, this should be great for tweeners on up to high schoolers -- nothing more, nothing less. College-age kids are gonna want something a bit more versatile.
I'm still scratching my head over HD video & 5MP camera, do they think kids really want their face to be caught in all it's pimply glory?! 4 & 8 gig, mmmmm, that doesn't help the HD video & photos.
Still, probably will be a hit, smart to go after the kiddy crowds, give parents a device they don't mind if their kids break.
This thing has the potential to be really successful. There are so many young people out there who don't wanne work, play or use apps on their phones. Seriously. The Zune Pass music streaming feature over 3G is a killer, IMO.
Yeah. I noticed that kids really hate playing games on their phones.
Here's the thing. Kids already know how to do social networking on the phones they have. They're really good at it. They know how to upload their pictures. They know how to update their Facebook page. They know how to text, which is 90% of the "social networking" they do.
To make a phone that makes all of that "easy" just smacks of old people trying to get on the bandwagon. Here comes grandpa MS, with his cool new phone: "IT'S GOT THE TWITTER AND THE MYFACE AND THOSE DAMN CAMERA THINGS YOU LOVE SO MUCH! HERE'S SOME VIDEO OF MY GRANDCHILDREN DOING THE BOOGIE! AT THE NIGHT PARTY PLACE THEY GO! SEE HOW EASY? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'RE ALREADY DOING THAT?"
The trouble with MS is that don't just set out to make the best product they can, they have some kind of horrible internal demographic strategery focus-group bullshit that convinces them they can divvy up markets into winnable segments. It's like they're an advertising company that happens to make hardware.
It looks like a great phone for youngins and those that don't have a hard on for smartphones. Pending price this could be a hit, and data requirements (if it costs as much as a full smartphone data packages it would be stupid to buy).
Looks like a great feature phone which is really all it is.
Sucks that companies like Palm are going under while Microsoft get to put out crap like this because of their windows/office money printing machines.
Really, how many of these do they expect to sell
Didn't really think about how much one of them resembles the Palm Pre.
Also interesting to note that businesses have been the real market keeping windows mobile os alive, now they are going to try to break into the "cool" market. Cool has never really been Microsoft's thing, just not sure they'll be able to do it. I'm skeptical too that this will go anywhere.
How many do you expect for them sell? Smartphones are not the only phones being sold and this is not a smartphone, but a highly specd feature phone and these phones still do sell quite well.
If the Kin and Kin two can be had for under 100 bucks and say a messaging/data package for 30 combined (this can't stream video iirc) this would be a pretty good deal in my opinion.
Here's the thing. Kids already know how to do social networking on the phones they have. They're really good at it. They know how to upload their pictures. They know how to update their Facebook page. They know how to text, which is 90% of the "social networking" they do.
Nobody said that social networking is impossible to do on other devices. It's about efficiency and experience. Have you seen the videos?
Even because the Kin is just different in almost every aspect from an iPhone owned by their parents makes it attractive to teens. Just take a look at the packaging or the whole marketing.
Although I love my MBP and most things Apple...I had to laugh, having read the article's headline on appleinsider, after having read Engadget's, BGR's and Gizmodo's articles...I know that this website is pro-Apple, but I don't think that it even pretends that it's not unabashedly subjective and highly critical of all things non-Apple. "social media phones for kids" --> this is the first and only article about the Kin phones today to have such a negative tone to it - dismissing the Kin phones as those befitting of "kids."
My apologies up front - you're kidding yourself.
Go to the 'Markets' and read what they have to say about the Kin and the chances of it being any kind a 'game changer' for MS in it's hope to make increase it's mobile market share.
BTW. While you're there (if you bother to be more informed) read some of what they're saying about RIMM and why there is little chance they'll be heading UP in the near future.
(Sorry I can't link all the market reports for you here as I'm posting this from my iPhone sitting inn traffic at 6:15am in Western Australia )
Anybody know who Microsoft's equivalent of Jon Ives is? Well, whoever it is doesn't quite have the industrial design thing down yet.
I doubt anyone at Microsoft has the freedom to do what he/she wants with designs (to a point, of course) as Jonny Ive does. Ive has the flexibility to do things his way, whereas Microsoft probably has a project lead, and about 50 different middle managers throwing in their two cents until it becomes something completely neutral and boring.
I also think it's funny how Microsoft knows it can't afford to be irrelevant in the mobile space, yet there is absolutely nothing they can do about it, no matter how many half-a$$ed products they put out there.
So this cool hip new studio that holds ALL these kids' photos, videos, emails, text messages, etc. is going to run in the same Microsoft cloud service that lost all the data of Sidekick users last year?? HAhaha!
1. It wasn't a cloud service by MS. They bought it. Right. So they were responsible but it was not based on MS technology.
No, it was Sun and Oracle that restores that data, not Microsoft. Microsoft claimed all data was lost and apologized, and the Sun swooped in and saved the day.
Nobody said that social networking is impossible to do on other devices. It's about efficiency and experience. Have you seen the videos?
The only videos I've seen are of attractive young people having fun times in the city, courtesy of MS' Kin site. There's virtually no information there.
Anyway what does "efficiency and experience" mean for social networking? Are my social networking behaviors a churning mass of time sensitive, cross-compiled updates that require efficiency? It's not that doing things on existing phones is something less than "impossible", it's that it's easy. Plenty easy to do what you want. Maybe you can describe to me the specific scenario wherein the efficient experience makes the Kin a good choice.
Quote:
Even because the Kin is just different in almost every aspect from an iPhone owned by their parents makes it attractive to teens. Just take a look at the packaging or the whole marketing.
Non sequiturs are fun, sure, but the fact that MS is marketing a phone to kids does not support that notion that kids will find their blandishments persuasive. Not sure where you got the idea that the iPhone has already become "your parents phone." Maybe like the fact that your parents have an iPod is why teens went rushing en masse to the Zune?
Comments
That MS web page is a horror show. And people give Apple shit for being for hipsters and posers?
You can really tell who the trolls are here, the hardcore trolls aren't even posting in this thread because they know it's a fail, the wannabe trolls are all saying "hey this could be big"...
And what does that make you?
the lack of even rudimentary 3rd party app support makes this a step backwards from even 7 year old sidekick products.
You're right, based on my experience.
I meet up with my friend and her two kids, a 9 year old boy, a 13 year old girl. First thing he does is grab my iPhone.
My colleagues' 8 year old basically owns his dad's iPod Touch.
It's the apps they're after. Not the social networking thing. They do that by IM and texting but it's secondary to the apps.
I think there's a danger that any kid who turns up at school with this will be laughed at. They may have interviewed X,000 kids about how they use their phones, but they didn't ask them how they used them. It'd be like asking them what sports they like playing in their Nikes, then designing a shoe based on that, completely missing the fact that people don't wear Nikes to play sport...
What's this? A well-balanced article from Prince about a competitor -- and it isn't laced with venom? Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeet, what has the world come to?
That being said, this should be great for tweeners on up to high schoolers -- nothing more, nothing less. College-age kids are gonna want something a bit more versatile.
I'm still scratching my head over HD video & 5MP camera, do they think kids really want their face to be caught in all it's pimply glory?! 4 & 8 gig, mmmmm, that doesn't help the HD video & photos.
Still, probably will be a hit, smart to go after the kiddy crowds, give parents a device they don't mind if their kids break.
The "Kin Spot" feature is a brilliant UI idea for what it is supposed to do:
http://kin.com/
This thing has the potential to be really successful. There are so many young people out there who don't wanne work, play or use apps on their phones. Seriously. The Zune Pass music streaming feature over 3G is a killer, IMO.
Yeah. I noticed that kids really hate playing games on their phones.
Here's the thing. Kids already know how to do social networking on the phones they have. They're really good at it. They know how to upload their pictures. They know how to update their Facebook page. They know how to text, which is 90% of the "social networking" they do.
To make a phone that makes all of that "easy" just smacks of old people trying to get on the bandwagon. Here comes grandpa MS, with his cool new phone: "IT'S GOT THE TWITTER AND THE MYFACE AND THOSE DAMN CAMERA THINGS YOU LOVE SO MUCH! HERE'S SOME VIDEO OF MY GRANDCHILDREN DOING THE BOOGIE! AT THE NIGHT PARTY PLACE THEY GO! SEE HOW EASY? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'RE ALREADY DOING THAT?"
The trouble with MS is that don't just set out to make the best product they can, they have some kind of horrible internal demographic strategery focus-group bullshit that convinces them they can divvy up markets into winnable segments. It's like they're an advertising company that happens to make hardware.
Looks like a great feature phone which is really all it is.
Really, how many of these do they expect to sell
Sucks that companies like Palm are going under while Microsoft get to put out crap like this because of their windows/office money printing machines.
Really, how many of these do they expect to sell
Didn't really think about how much one of them resembles the Palm Pre.
Also interesting to note that businesses have been the real market keeping windows mobile os alive, now they are going to try to break into the "cool" market. Cool has never really been Microsoft's thing, just not sure they'll be able to do it. I'm skeptical too that this will go anywhere.
Really, how many of these do they expect to sell
How many do you expect for them sell? Smartphones are not the only phones being sold and this is not a smartphone, but a highly specd feature phone and these phones still do sell quite well.
If the Kin and Kin two can be had for under 100 bucks and say a messaging/data package for 30 combined (this can't stream video iirc) this would be a pretty good deal in my opinion.
Here's the thing. Kids already know how to do social networking on the phones they have. They're really good at it. They know how to upload their pictures. They know how to update their Facebook page. They know how to text, which is 90% of the "social networking" they do.
Nobody said that social networking is impossible to do on other devices. It's about efficiency and experience. Have you seen the videos?
Even because the Kin is just different in almost every aspect from an iPhone owned by their parents makes it attractive to teens. Just take a look at the packaging or the whole marketing.
(Why do I have to be the advocate of the Kin?)
Although I love my MBP and most things Apple...I had to laugh, having read the article's headline on appleinsider, after having read Engadget's, BGR's and Gizmodo's articles...I know that this website is pro-Apple, but I don't think that it even pretends that it's not unabashedly subjective and highly critical of all things non-Apple. "social media phones for kids" --> this is the first and only article about the Kin phones today to have such a negative tone to it - dismissing the Kin phones as those befitting of "kids."
My apologies up front - you're kidding yourself.
Go to the 'Markets' and read what they have to say about the Kin and the chances of it being any kind a 'game changer' for MS in it's hope to make increase it's mobile market share.
BTW. While you're there (if you bother to be more informed) read some of what they're saying about RIMM and why there is little chance they'll be heading UP in the near future.
(Sorry I can't link all the market reports for you here as I'm posting this from my iPhone sitting inn traffic at 6:15am in Western Australia
Anybody know who Microsoft's equivalent of Jon Ives is? Well, whoever it is doesn't quite have the industrial design thing down yet.
I doubt anyone at Microsoft has the freedom to do what he/she wants with designs (to a point, of course) as Jonny Ive does. Ive has the flexibility to do things his way, whereas Microsoft probably has a project lead, and about 50 different middle managers throwing in their two cents until it becomes something completely neutral and boring.
I also think it's funny how Microsoft knows it can't afford to be irrelevant in the mobile space, yet there is absolutely nothing they can do about it, no matter how many half-a$$ed products they put out there.
This has to be a joke.
So this cool hip new studio that holds ALL these kids' photos, videos, emails, text messages, etc. is going to run in the same Microsoft cloud service that lost all the data of Sidekick users last year?? HAhaha!
1. It wasn't a cloud service by MS. They bought it. Right. So they were responsible but it was not based on MS technology.
2. They restored all data. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8309218.stm
1. It wasn't a cloud service by MS. They bought it. Right. So they were responsible but it was not based on MS technology.
2. They restored all data. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8309218.stm
No, it was Sun and Oracle that restores that data, not Microsoft. Microsoft claimed all data was lost and apologized, and the Sun swooped in and saved the day.
Nobody said that social networking is impossible to do on other devices. It's about efficiency and experience. Have you seen the videos?
The only videos I've seen are of attractive young people having fun times in the city, courtesy of MS' Kin site. There's virtually no information there.
Anyway what does "efficiency and experience" mean for social networking? Are my social networking behaviors a churning mass of time sensitive, cross-compiled updates that require efficiency? It's not that doing things on existing phones is something less than "impossible", it's that it's easy. Plenty easy to do what you want. Maybe you can describe to me the specific scenario wherein the efficient experience makes the Kin a good choice.
Even because the Kin is just different in almost every aspect from an iPhone owned by their parents makes it attractive to teens. Just take a look at the packaging or the whole marketing.
Non sequiturs are fun, sure, but the fact that MS is marketing a phone to kids does not support that notion that kids will find their blandishments persuasive. Not sure where you got the idea that the iPhone has already become "your parents phone." Maybe like the fact that your parents have an iPod is why teens went rushing en masse to the Zune?
(Why do I have to be the advocate of the Kin?)
Have no idea. Seems like a thankless job.