Microsoft’s had a variety of weird and wonderful consumer devices over the years that haven’t gone so well. Jon Friedman, now chief designer of Office 365, has been at the center of Microsoft’s notorious product failures, including the SPOT watches from 2004, ultra mobile PCs, the KIN phone, and the unreleased Courier device. At Microsoft’s Build developer conference this week, Friedman reflected on his personal career at the software giant and why some of these products weren’t successful.

“We were ahead of our time, Bluetooth phones weren’t really around, the smartphone hadn’t really taken off,” explains Friedman, discussing the Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) watches. Microsoft released these…

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