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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