Comment by nhashem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nhashem | Hacker News Reader

We could debate whether this would "work" on a practical level as if this was a Powerpoint presentation for Steve Ballmer and we're supposed to predict how he'd react. But I'm really just finding myself appreciating the "space/science fiction" metaphor for technology.

Steve Jobs has often quoted Apple as "advancing the human race." I feel like this takes it to the next level. I felt myself wanting this company to exist just on pure principle. Whenever I read older science fiction, occasionally I'll recognize the story is supposedly set somewhere between 2000-2100 A.D., and yet we wear spandex and zoom around with FTL travel and fight aliens with lasers and make food with replicators, etc. And I'll smirk and think, "heh, he was way off," but beneath that cynicism, there's just a bit of regret that we just didn't actually evolve in that way. And I guess this is why the branding here resonated with me so much -- it touched that part of me and convinced me that this company could make all that reality after all.

As an engineer I feel like I have a hyper-literal mindset where most branding and advertising just washes over me. I live in a world where it matters what things "do," not how they "feel," so some guys playing volleyball with girls in bikinis while drinking Coors Light just washes over me as a bizarre way to stay hydrated while at the beach. But as I said earlier, I wanted this company to exist. I wanted to feel the things that this branding made me feel. I wanted to strap myself into this spaceship that this company was building and fly wherever it would take me. Practically speaking, that company probably won't be the one we all know as the bloated monopolistic entity that makes most of its profits from boring office productivity software.

But this made me wish it was.

The "slate" logo is okay. The promise of delivering the future is brilliant. I had the same exact reaction to it - there needs to be a multi-billion dollar company devoted to this philosophy! I think microsoft is in a unique position to become this company - they suck right now and they have the resources. I also think Ballmer probably will see this. I bet he'll see it and he'll like it, but worry that it's too big of a shift.

I don't know what they're working on internally, but if I were in his shoes, I'd go for it. Bundle the phone with the laptop and do whatever it takes to allow tethering at no extra fee. That's not going far enough. Create an ecosystem with clear direction that upsets the market, under the banner of delivering the future of science fiction.

I'm a mac, and I want to be excited to buy microsoft.

Bundle? One reason why microsoft is so hamstrung in the last ten years is because of that word. That, and "anti-trust".

Apple has been behaving well enough not to be on anti-trust watch, and that gives the company so much more freedom to innovate.

And I say that as a penguin.

Point taken, bad idea. But they would need to back up a rebranding with new and innovative products that demonstrate vision. I shouldn't pretend to know what those products should be, or how they should be sold.

Some of Google's projects seem ambitious in the way you are describing. The self-driving cars, in particular, are straight out of sci-fi.

Just curious. If microsoft decided they really liked this concept, could they legally use it since the artist made this 'for microsoft'? Or would the artist be able to demand $5m in commissions before microsoft can use this design?

The problem is that space as a branding device can't be owned, it also tires easily. Indeed you can swap out microsoft for any vaguely tech related company here, they'd have equal claim and relevance.

Also consider the default apple desktop backgrounds/screensavers have been space imagery for a while with even the time machine interface presenting a flying through space appearance.

Space inspires wonder and technology, but as a brand it doesn't speak microsoft, nor apple... it speaks NASA and sci/fi.

This campaign is almost a return a Microsoft branding vision from years ago - their "Where do you want to go today?" line of ads. But where those ads where often very "corporate looking", the integration of photography into the proposed slate logo is appealing and its what I want technology to be all about.

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