8 years ago today: Microsoft threw this dreadful parade to celebrate the "death" of the iPhone
Sometimes, it can be difficult to foretell how future events are going to unroll. Other times, we think we should have been a bit more far-seeing, considering all the clues the present serves us.
On this day, 8 years ago, Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to throw a parade to celebrate the completion of its brand spanking new mobile operating system: Windows Phone 7. Microsoft had announced the new platform 7 months earlier to a cautiously positive reception, and was now finally ready to ship it to its partners. So, what better way to mark this milestone than to throw a terrible and distasteful parade!
Organized as an internal company celebration, the main theme of the show (if there was one) was the burial of the iPhone and BlackBerry. "Bury those stagnant operating systems, and welcome the fresh and new Windows Phone 7", Microsoft must have been thinking at the time. Thanks to photos shared by witnesses, we know that the dreadful parade featured a couple of real hearses (one for iPhone and one for BlackBerry), with a bunch of Microsoft employees escorting the vehicles for a more lifelike procession.
Microsoft daydreaming of burying the iPhone
We say the theme of the event was unclear, because apparently there have also been a few platforms with masked and/or dressed up people, a fat Darth Vader on a motorbike, and a zombie mob doing the dance from Michael Jackson's Thriller. An artistic mixture too complex for even the most literate critic to interpret.
Well, as well all know, it turned out that Microsoft got nowhere close to burying the iPhone, but it did bury Windows Phone after a few painful and unsuccessful years.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to predict the future with certainty. But, looking back at this impressively distasteful spectacle Microsoft threw for its employees back in 2010, we think we should have seen the tremendous flop coming.
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