John Gruber and Dan Benjamin diss the name Windows Phone 7:
Benjamin: Most absurd name for a device ever…
Gruber: They should not have called it Windows, It’s as if they called the iPhone the Mac phone… I think it’s stupid.
Benjamin: It’s a mistake.
Their marketing critique sent me back to the now classic video, Microsoft designs the iPod package:
It turned out the video was produced by Microsoft as “an internal-only video clip commissioned by our packaging [team] to humorously highlight the challenges we have faced RE: packaging and to educate marketers here about the pitfalls of packaging/branding.”
It’s not clear that they learned its lesson.
Gruber earned Techmeme attention via Dan Frommer earlier in the week for favorable comments on the Windows Phone 7 interface after he played with a prototype for 5 minutes at a cocktail party.
If Gruber’s right, my previously noted questions around Microsoft and the touch interface may be wrong.
Windows Phone 7 is set to debut Monday in New York and London.