Microsoft Brings BSOD^† to Sidekick

The sources are thin, and speculation high, but here are some of the ways Microsoft has suddenly arrived in the Sidekick mobile phone scene.

In early 2008, Microsoft announced it had taken steps to bring its compelling and innovative vision together with Danger's ten years of experience and popular line of Sidekick mobile phones. Now, Microsoft delivers on its promise, metaphorically bringing its sigil Blue Screen of Death to the Sidekick experience, to rescue an audience long beset by depressing high reliability, a confusingly rich feature set, and a distressingly wide range of options.

Microsoft's inspired contributions are rumored to include:

• Contributing $500 million in pocket change to the inconsequentially tiny Danger.
• Immediately freeing scores of people from servitude to the Sidekick project, including providing guards to insure that freedom.
• Moving a number of people from working on Sidekick software - including a language never intended outside of a sandbox, and a quirky, backwater system based on a 1960's operating system popular with graybeards and hobbiests - to the modern marvel that is Windows CE.
• Providing a generous period for reorientation to those who have become addicted to their Sidekicks through Danger's nefarious operations.
• Defining a clear roadplan for customers to follow into a new age of devices (still under development) based on Microsoft's PINK project (still in development), which might or might not be available as early as 2010.
• Assisting in the weaning of current Sidekick customers by cleverly reducing the availability of their services, most notably by optimising a move of customer data to new servers into a decisive near-bricking of Sidekicks starting October 1. Even now, Sidekick users are rediscovering the lost art of written records as they eagerly discuss their expectations of the next move by their benevolent and caring new corporate stepparent.
• Proving their commitment to the smooth transition of the Sidekick community to a soon-to-be-hinted-at future device by proceeding with the weaning despite the tricky minefield of Danger's preëxisting contracts with T*Mobile.

In tribute to Microsoft's vision, Sidekick users are now clearly anxious to move forward to devices more reliable than their own, and are counting on Microsoft's proven track record in the PC industry for embracing challenges and extending a soothing, almost proprietary sense of druglike calm to their customers.

Sources

• http://www.hiptop3.com/archives/what-caused-the-sidekick-fail
• http://gigaom.com/2008/02/12/how-much-did-microsoft-pay-for-danger-find-out-here/
• http://www.mobiletopsoft.com/board/6529/t-mobile-data-outage-affects-sidekicks-everywhere.html
• http://www.zimbio.com/Sidekick+3+Ringtones/articles/171/Microsoft+Lays+Off+Danger+Employees
• http://addictomatic.com/topic/sidekick+outage

† metaphorically speaking