The Pain (And Hilarity) Of Old Press Releases
Harry McCracken at Technologizer gathered a bunch of old press releases from technology companies and retailers and annotated them based on what we now know.
Some of these are more Engadget-worthy, like the release where Apple tried to say web apps were the future of iPhone app development, or the bizarre announcement of the Palm Foleo (which was the equivalent of a tech company saying "We don't know what we're doing right now, please look away.") But there are some entertaining Consumerist-worthy examples too:
- Circuit City's March 2007 announcement that it was "separating" veteran associates who the company felt were being paid too much money. Here they spin it as the first stage in a huge turnaround for the company, instead of the great big push into failure that it really was.
- Microsoft's overlong announcement in January 2007 of a new era of computing with Windows Vista and Office 2007. What's best about the release is how it conflates Office with Vista and mixes up their feature sets. It's almost as confusing as Microsoft's general rollout of Vista two and half years ago.
"The Press Releases of the Damned!" [Technologizer]
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Comments:
lol @ Microsoft.
I love how these press releases say absolutely nothing in the most verbose way possible. For example, "evaluating spans of control and layers of management to ensure that our front-line Associates are empowered". What the hell does that even mean?
To quote Lennon, "Everybody's talkin', and no one says a word."
I didn't dig all the way through the article, but I didn't see one for "The Shack"... While they are still around, they have made plenty of blunders that are surely worthy of mocking on the site.
@GuinevereRucker: I have to LOL harder @ the concept of web apps. It was a shitty concept from its inception.
1. No internet? No web apps.
2. Slow internet? Slow web apps.
3. Web apps (running simultaneously)? Slow web apps.
4. AT&T being a douche about unlimited data (limited in reality)? No web apps.
5. Server down (DDoS a la Twitter/Facebook)? No web apps.
6. Server compromised? Your web app data is fucked.
7. Developer decides to call it quits (not only in terms of developing newer versions but in hosting the app as well)? No web apps.
Really, really, really ridiculous to have had it as an initial solution.
CCity also extended their fiscal quarter by one day several years ago, thereby "borrowing" from the next quarter's sales. Always a sign of a company going down the tubes.
Maybe I'm just a purist, but "separating" sure is a strange choice of words to use. Makes me think of the term "mechanically-separated"...and now I'll be looking at those cans of Vienna sausages in a whole new light. o_O
What a fantastic piece by Technologizer . . . It would be interesting to go back and talk with the key people in each case and (collectively) uncover the common threads of why things didn't go according to plan . . . something about neglecting recognition of the past guarantees future failure, etc.
In regards to Circuit City, I keep seeing people forget about the fact that the *real* start of their downfall was in 2003, when they decided to move off of commission sales, and go to an hourly pay schedule.
In order to get this done, they layed off a very large number of their best sales people (anyone who made over 15.50 an hour or so) in order to not have to pay them a comparable hourly rate equal to their commission sales.
This, in my opinion, was definitely the beginning of the end. The salespeople they layed off in 2007 were those who survived the original layoffs, and weren't the top salespeople, which included me. Luckily I got the hell out of dodge shortly after the commission switch.