Danger.com: Long live the HipTop

A little while back, my friend Jeff and I wrote a fun little application for the Danger Hiptop. Unfortunately, because it was considered an 'adult' application by T-Mobile, Danger was not able to get it distributed on their networks. It took them about 6 long pathetic months to be able to tell us that. This of course meant that the two months of work that we did on the application was totally wasted. It was a great learning experience, but what a bummer to not have the chance to sell a cool application to millions of people.

So, when the iPhone came out, I jumped ship within a month. No point in wasting my time with those guys anymore. Danger is tied to T-Mobile and T-Mobile doesn't understand that the market has just been turned upside down and inside out. Way to screw yourselves.

Now, word is out that Danger was bought by Microsoft. This is clearly a desperate move to try to buy a popular cell phone manufacturer to compete with the iPhone. The funny part is that the Danger devices are built entirely on technologies that M$ hates... Java, Perl, Oracle, Linux, etc. They are going to have to re-engineer the entire platform to make it run WinCE and all of the coolness left in the device (that wasn't instantly outdated by the iPhone) is going to go out the window. All of the talented engineers who were working for Danger have already left for other jobs. If anything, this move just helps Apple because now everyone will definitely jump ship.

Steve Jobs must be really enjoying himself right now.