Ouch, what if Microsoft designed the iPod box

That was hilarious. But strangly surreal. This isnt something that could be far off. Windows media mp3 player?

Diego: if you can’t learn from your competitors you’re doomed.

the user will have to reboot the ipod everytime you play a song

this is great. loved the add-ons around the use and warmth of the message and packaging. The sys reqs with the fold out were great.

“If that bothers you you can always decide not to read my blog. ”

I’m not bothered by your hypocrisy; I’ve been experiencing it for over 3 years. I’m just pointing it out: you bitch and whine when someone grabs your content or don’t cite true original sources, and now you pass us through Channel 9 for no reason to get hits. When I ask you why, you don’t answer: you just say it’s my blog, fck off.

Sure, it’s your blog. But why are you passing us through a site that has nothing to do with this video?

By the way, I’m pretty certain I’m close to proving that this was not done by Microsoft: neither the Channel 9 poster or the YouTube poster work for Microsoft to begin with.

You making the absurd claim that Microsoft produced I think needs to be defended. Otherwise, I’ll have to keep harassing you about it like the money you owe me for welching on our bet.

met,

1. front row: it’s a 1.0 product and is meant to be simple. The “Pro” Mac solution was to install Salling Clicker on your phone 3 years ago.

2. iPod does have an equalizer, but it is a simple one. But the “pro” solution is to have music that is produced properly equalized, not to bump some settings around because you think distorting bass is “pro”, it’s actually “amateur.”

3. Mac OS X has been around for over 5 years and has always had right click. Prior to it, numerous mouse manufacturers supported it and or you could program it with apps like QuickKeys. Is that too “pro” for you?

4. There are numerous customizations you clearly aren’t aware that are quite exposed by Apple. There are many, many more that can be done with simple plist hacks and other tricks. There are many apps to modify the desktop. There are numerous skins. I can think of 4 ways to close a window.

As I said, Apple doesn’t stop you from being a “pro”; you have stopped yourself.

I don’t care if its amateur, I want to change the equalizer settings.
I want to have a right click button on my powerbook.

If frontrow is meant to be simple it is not supposed to be compared to media center.

the stupid disclaimer any mac user has to put up forward : I also own a powerbook, I like it for what it is – and hate it for some of what it is.

And to the person who said that Apple is at the forefront of innovations (of course they are doing stuff in areas where they have to fight – thats why the company is still alive).
What have they done to the iPod in the past 3 years that was so innovative?
Now think if Apple were in MS’s position, what kind of innovation would they be doing?

I have to (somewhat ashamedly) admit that I like the dino campaign…

“I don’t care if its amateur, I want to change the equalizer settings.”

But you said you wanted to be able to behave as a pro, and not you want to act as an amateur? (btw, you get bass and treble control starting today.)

“I want to have a right click button on my powerbook.”

This has nothing to do with the “being allowed to be a pro” though…

“If frontrow is meant to be simple it is not supposed to be compared to media center.”

Correct. It doesn’t. Apple doesn’t. Silly fools who “love” Media Centers, but really know it’s not very good make the comparison because they know that when Apple has a full offering it will be better.

I thought it was kind of funny but I would have to side with more information being displayed rather than just pictures and a word.

I vote for the internally Microsoft-produced video scenarion. I clearly hear the voice of the product/brand team trying to embarrass/cajole senior management to keep from piling on… you know the VP-ish add never subtract that goes on up the chain. An warning shot to keep it clean.

I don’t believe the video came from Microsoft. If the Softies were capable of producing that video, they would not make the mistakes the video is about. No. As one sees with most of the Microsoft people who comment here, they are not about to say or do anything that would conflict with the status quo, including producing such a video.

Met’s problem is rather obvious. Despite owning Apple products, he doesn’t know much about them. I suspect that if he owned Microsoft products, he would not know much about them either.

met,

you cannot seriously compare the command line environments of Windows and OS X and say that OS X “doesn’t allow”you to be a pro.

You cannot overlook that OS X lets you install a fully functional X11 environment, which MS doesn’t ship standard with XP, and say that OS X “doesn’t allow” you to be a pro.

Apple *GIVES AWAY* all of its dev tools, and you get them with the OS distribution. MS gives you? Keep waiting on that. But in your world, OS X “doesn’t allow” you to be a pro user?

You imply that until the Mighty Mouse, there was no support for multiple mouse buttons, which is incorrect.

You say that Apple doesn’t let you move things around, completely ignoring that you can with ease, move the dock on three sides of your screen, and with a single defaults command, put it on the top of your screen. You overlook that you can easily not have drive icons of any kind on your desk if you don’t want. you overlook dozens of ways to customize the UI that ship with the OS.

If you own a Mac, have you actually used it, or is it still in the box?

Criminally funny!

Proof yet again that the truth hurts!

You know, I’d say that it’s not accurate enough. I think someone at MS’s design department yells out “More clutter!” the way that Saturday Night Live skit did with “More cowbell!”

Hey met, is your name an acronym for “Microsoft Educational Team?”

You sound a lot like one of my coworkers who does training: He gives way too much information, confusing and (in many cases) hurting the heads of those he teaches. (It’s a bad sign when they’re willing to pay for – or bring in their own – headache medicine, and it’s only the first week or two.) They, in turn, do sloppy and unprofessional work at a slower pace. This, in turn, I often have to help clean up.

Microsoft often does the same thing, and oftentimes I get questions from people who forget that I mainly operate a Mac. (Nothing against PC’s, but I don’t have the money or time for both, and the Macs I have are old.) There have been plenty of cases where they were confused about something on the packaging, and went to get something worse. (Yes, folks, there’s worse things than Microsoft.) When they finally realize that they still must buy said MS product, who get’s the complaints?

No folks, that video is only part of the picture. Though I wish Apple would do something new, I’m glad they’re the ones doing the iPod and not MS. MS may have did right with the XBox, but they still have a lot to learn.

From Cy Hunter-Quick of Earth Base One

Greetings advanced beings,

I am one of those unfortunates at the bottom of the top class, so to speak. I scraped into grammar school in 1951 and into a well-known hi-IQ association in 1981. It has always been a privilege, therefore, to stand in the same room as the high-flyers. Sadly, sometimes I forget to keep my mouth shut (right now, I am risking it).

I merely wish to say that I bet I would not have understand a word of the above if I had read it. I did not understand the first line or two at the top so I pulled that thing down at the right to get to the end and am writing this.

I just want to say that I honour and respect all you guys who can do computing easily. I do not resent you one bit. Good luck to you all, bless your hearts. And when I curse at the machine with sarcasm and really rude words, it is neither any of you nor Mr Gates himself that I am getting at.

Who is it? I suppose it is myself.

Why do I still bother trying?

I expect it is my sad, pathetic attempt to get a life and bask in the periferal glory of the great ones as I lurk in the shadows, shyly hoping for, I don’t know, a thwack on the nut from a meatless bone? At least it would be attention.

Sorry to have bothered you.

Your humble borderline case, Cy

PS:

Have a look at my attempt at a web thingie. I call it ‘Earth Base One’ having thought of the title in 1989. I hoped to set up a space education centre and it seemed like a good name. (I tried in Southport, Truro, Plymouth and Hounslow West before volunteering for Space School at Brunel and crashing in flames.)

Now I see there are a whole lot of mentions of the name ‘Earth Base One’ on the Google results. I am astonished. It cannot have started from me, huh? Someone else must have thought of the name, ya?

(I bet I am contravening etiquette by advertising my web log thingie here. Let me know quickly, please, if so. Then I can stop it. Apologies in advance.)

Opps i have just blogged this http://akhater.wordpress.com/2006/03/01/microsoft-ipod-packaging-parody/
I thought I was the first should be visiting your forum more often…
If you’d like something else funny about Microsoft look at that http://akhater.wordpress.com/2006/03/01/microsoft-unsolved-mysteries/

As a copywriter who worked on Microsoft’s corporate marketing and design for over five years, I can attest to the fact that this video is dead-on. (In fact, I think that shot of the guy joyously listening to his headphones was downloaded directly from MS’s password-protected asset library).

Redmond is filled to the gills with way too many young, inexperienced middle-managers in charge of approving marketing and design by committee. Their only role is to spend their annual budget or else lose it the next year, so they beat every piece of marketing to death to validate their position. I can tell you 1,000 stories of their incompetence, but here’s one that comes to mind immediately: I once sat in a two hour Friday-night conference call with upwards of 10 marketing managers in Redmond who argued amongst themselves for the first 45 minutes of the call over what a brochure should be called–by their internal team. Not the headline, or concept, mind you, but what the actual initiative was going to be named. Asinine. If Bill Gates knew how much of his cash they were frittering away, he’d fire half his marketing and sales staff.

Funny. This is also a great allegory for how many popular web sites/pages are designed. Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, etc.

Oh, you mean like the back end of an ugly baby’s behind?

The person wishing for multiple mouse buttons on a Mac laptop should check out SideTrack at http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/ . The software allows programming the trackpad to receive clicks at corners, for example, or to use a pad tap to accompany with the button click.

I would like to concur with previous posters that Mac OS X as an environment, including playing together with applications by third party manufacturers, is inspiringly configurable. And better yet, coherent.

J

Yup. Funny video, but YouTube now says “This video has been removed by the user.”

I wonder how many teams of lawyers were responsible for that? I counted at least four different company’s trademarks being used there.