The crazy Sidekick data mess might be the least troubling thing to happen to fans of the platform. The latest rumors, which build off of previous Pink rumors, say that the platform is pretty much dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead.
https://gizmodo.com/t-mobile-sidekick-out-r-age-your-datas-probably-gone-f-5378805
According to Channelweb, the Premium Mobile Experiences (PMX) team has caused, either by layoffs or by pissing them off, a large chunk of the Danger team to leave Microsoft. Danger is the team that actually built the Sidekick, and Roz Ho was siphoning off their resources into the Pink camp in order to make sure the latter could survive. By doing so, it seems like she’s killed off both groups, which might be why Microsoft keeps denying that they’re going to make phone hardware.
https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-on-phone-hardware-no-were-not-going-to-do-5375547
Channelweb’s tipster sounds similar to the tipster last week that talked to MobileCrunch about management ineptitude and lousy business choices. To summarize, Roz Ho, Microsoft’s “head of mobile experiences”, seems to be making so many bad choices that naming the project after Pink, the angry singer, seems like one of her best choices.
https://gizmodo.com/danger-for-microsofts-project-pink-5374973
If Microsoft somehow manages to push Pink out the door, CRN says that it won’t even include a calendar app or an alarm clock app. That’s a feature that if you saw was missing on a dumb phone, you’d politely hand it back to the salesman while asking him to show you something in a less shitty variety. Not only that, it won’t ship with a mobile app marketplace—which makes sense, since it’s also rumored that they’re not really smartphones anyway.
https://gizmodo.com/turtle-and-pure-pink-phones-may-be-just-next-gen-sideki-5366906
The bottom line is that massive data outages might be just the kind of early warning users need to abandon the Sidekick and get on another device before the decision gets knocked out of your hands like the punchline to a standup’s retort. [CRN]
