I really have no comments on this one:
Microsofts_sidekick_pink_problems_blamed_on_dogfooding_and_sabotage
Well, OK, of course I have something to say: the word sabotage is libelous. Dogfooding I would assume Every organization wants to run the solution they can best support and extend, whether they write that solution or not. But sabotage? Human errors can happen, no matter how many processes you put in place to keep it from happening. That’s life. To then say that loosing data for most SideKick users is sabotage is an unsubstantiated (yes, I read the whole article and saw no proof) and dangerous (no pun intended) statement, likely made as a result of a disgruntled and ultimately hostile former employee (breaking up is hard to do). Hey it’s a huge screw up. But I would assume that a free month of service from T-Mobile isn’t going to stop the lawyers who are right now trying to figure out how to make a pile of cash the size of my home town in a class action law suit against Danger/Microsoft/T-Mobile. Oh wait, they would have to find a few SideKick users to do that, but they’ve all moved over to other platforms (my guess would be mostly iPhone) ’cause other than the instant messaging client the SideKick has sucked for a long, long time.
Finally, this project was doomed from the beginning, not killed. Take a sub-par product, such as the Zune and another sub-par product, such as the SideKick and put them together. The sum of the two is greater than the parts: craptacularly greater in this case! If Microsoft wants to compete with the iPhone then they have more than enough engineers to nuke and pave any product and roll their own faster and technically better than almost anyone (it wouldn’t be half as pretty as my iPhone would be my guess). They don’t have to incur the wrath of the entire cloud industry for ending the honeymoon those guys have had and have the likely resultant legal action (unless of course they wanted to really pitch Software + Services – “see, this is why you want your own servers”). I would still expect a product to rise from the ashes of this debacle: maybe they should call it Phoenix – or Phaedra for the Danger conspiracy theorists…