Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Packaging

It's over 19 years old, but this video is a brutal but hilarious commentary on Microsoft's inherent dysfunction when it comes to product naming and packaging. Still on point decades later. ▶ this video

Many tech products are still sold on feature lists. Few people care any more. This great (short and funny) internal video from Microsoft was supposed to be a wake up call, but nothing really changed: ▶ this video The fact that Apple doesn't really play that game seems to drive some people wild.

It's just a few lines of text complain about Windows, and some windows UI screenshots copied onto a max desktop. Not worth 2 minutes of video. The original "Microsoft iPod" video from 2006 is much better ▶ this video

This is supposedly an MS-produced parody of it's marketing efforts. It's very old now (I think it uses a 1st gen iPod?) but is still worth a laugh: ▶ this video Thankfully MS have learnt a lot of lessons since.

This reminded me of a 20 year old 'viral' video "Microsoft Designs the iPod Package" : ▶ this video

Oof, you're reminding me of Microsoft Redesigns the iPod Packaging video: ▶ this video For those lucky 10,000 just learning about that today, for extra frisson , enjoy the fact that that video came from Microsoft itself : link

Related: (parody): if you haven't seen it, this is a critique - from microsofties I think - of MSFT product branding ▶ this video

Even 20 years ago, Microsoft knew they had problem with its naming and marketing[0], but I guess it didn't matter. [0] ▶ this video

As far as I can recall, this has been their branding strategy: 1996: Rename everything to "MSN" including a news TV channel 2000: Rename everything ".NET" even if it's not a programming language 2005: Rename everything that remotely touches the internet to "Live" 2013: Rename everything to "365" 2025: Rename everything to "Copilot" even things that are not just an LLM Also sprinkle "Windows" liberally over everything in the late 90's-00's Did I miss anything? Edit: was reminded of this classic ▶ this video

Reminds me of the "Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Packaging" video[1] from nearly 2 decades ago (wow, I feel old). It was funny because all of Microsoft's brand looked exactly like that back in those days, and you could really picture them screwing the product marketing up that badly. 1: ▶ this video

reading all of these comments, reminded me of the old "Microsoft iPod" video, had to dig it up and still kinda relevant---it's 18 years old (!!!) ▶ this video

> so threw some shit on top and called it a cherry Do you mean metaphorical feces or do you mean "shit" in the general sense of a collection of unspecified materials? I think the canonical example of deciding chocolate wasn't good enough and throwing shit on top was what happened to the LP400 [0] or "Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Packaging" [1]. 0. link 1. ▶ this video