Microsoft's Next of Kin

• Report this Comment On July 01, 2010, at 11:13 AM, Ivan0310 wrote:

  Most likely due to the fact that its 'eclectic' design was nothing if not ugly and a totally non-utlitarian form-factor (this is the Kin One of course). The Kin Two tried to apologize for it with something that in my opinion was easily confused for another Samsung smartphone or something closely resembling a Palm Pre.

  That being said, Samsung's new offerings in the Android platform are far more appealing in their power, performance and overall user experience. As well, Palm's webOS has been hailed many times for being one of the most beautifully designed and user-friendly/intuitive interfaces.

  The Microsoft Kin was nothing but a featurephone which failed to deliver the rich end-user experience craved by its target audience, which lives in a world almost totally saturated by the iOS and the ever emerging Android platforms.

• Report this Comment On July 01, 2010, at 11:29 AM, CPACAPitalist wrote:

  Microsoft's time is better spent securing and expanding its successful ventures - focusing on software and xbox projects is the key to staying relavent. The only "cool" product offered by MSFT is xbox, they aren't going to be apple in the music/tech gadget arena. Jury is still out on their attempts to grab market share of web searches from Google, but I think its going to be a similar story in the long run.

• Report this Comment On July 01, 2010, at 11:42 AM, jmullina wrote:

  As a Kin owner, I disagree with the thinking in this article.

  First, Kin sharing does not require other people to own a Kin. It actually works best with Facebook (and Windows Live), but you can tweet, etc, too.

  To be clear, the main premise of your article -- that Kin failure was due to lack of other Kin owners to share things with is just plain wrong, and as a result most of the article is nonesense.

  Second, I agree with you that the Kin has some great sharing features. It's not a perfect phone, but the software and hardware are excellent. In particular:

  - Best camera on a phone that i've seen.

  - Automatically syncing (and geotagging) photos/videos

  - Pic and video sharin is best in the world, IMO. Both iPhone and Android users have said to me "Wow - i wish my phone could do that.".

  - Innovative user interaction design - especially the "The Spot", which is very similar to the "The Pocket" that was shown in the Courier prototype videos.

  - Streaming music over-the-air with Zune Pass. This worked really well, and i often use it to send music to my car stero via bluetooth.

  I'm surprised a Bing Search (with navigation) capability is not built in, and the calendar situation is an issue for me. But overall, my Kin 2 is a great phone.

  Rather, it's the business equation is that doesn't seem to work.

• Report this Comment On July 01, 2010, at 7:14 PM, InfoThatHelp wrote:

  Until Cloud Computing is mature, social networking is a pipe dream. What's social with belonging to a Twitter club, FaceBook group, or MySpace. Being social is like the subconscience versus the conscience part of our brain. Going clubbing for example, is to meet someone you have never met before, or have absolutely no idea who you would meet or what kinds of things would happen. The current crop of Twitter/FB/MySpace is simply not much more than flopping through your old wrinkled little black book with all your known friends and circles. Imagine how excited Christopher Columbus will going around in circles discovering all the places he had been a hundred times? This is the sad truth about today's social networking, they're more like daily high-school reunions.

  iPhone offers a totally new genre of social networking. You will see.

  If you miss the lethargic Microsoft Kin already, don't despair, Rim had cloned the Microsoft Kin as the Blackberry Taladega running under the predated OS 6 to be released in the 'future' date sometime this September, and that is if Rim is successful in cloning the relatively simple Kin.

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