Please, a moment of silence as we pour out of a bottle of the finest of malt liquors.

“Windows Phone dies today.” (Tip o’ the antlers to @ericdano.)

C’mon, Macalope. Funerary rituals for anthropomorphized mobile operating systems are just stupid. I mean, who does that?

The Macalope is so old he remembers when it was predicted that Windows Phone would overtake Android in market share by 2013. By which he means he is more than six years old. (Yes, the Macalope knows he uses that joke construction a lot, he will stop the minute people stop making ridiculous predictions that are proven wrong so quickly.)

Apparently that… [checks market share numbers] did not happen. Did not. Nnnnnope. Not even close.

As a matter of fact, the Macalope seems to remember reading somewhere that it’s no longer even supported anymore. Where was that?

Oh, right. In the article linked to up there near the top. How silly.

Now, don’t despair. Microsoft has replaced it with the jauntily-named Windows 10 Mobile OS. So, if you’re still hot to run an operating system with low single digit share in the smartphone market, you can totally still do that. Which is more than can be said for Ubuntu Mobile or Firefox OS (which was also expected to shove the iPhone out of the way and go phono-a-phono against Android), which are also both dead.

Even if Windows 10 Mobile OS PlaysForSure for Workgroups 3.1 Enterprise Edition doesn’t take the world by storm, there is always another phone waiting in the wings to kill the iPhone.

Remember Essential, the phone created by Andy Rubin that was going to be delivered in June and, according to The Verge, be OMG so awesome? Well… funny story.

“Andy Rubin’s Essential is staying quiet on the Essential Phone delay.”

The Verge’s follow-up piece is short on information because… well, there isn’t any.

Essential, the smartphone maker from Android co-founder Andy Rubin, is staying mum on whether its titular gadget has been delayed. News organizations began pinging the company last week when it was clear Essential missed its 30-day shipping deadline set by Rubin himself at the Code Conference in late May.

So, if it’s not delayed then it’s canceled? That’s… not an improvement.

A missed deadline is not that big of a deal, especially not for a device from [sic] that didn’t publicly exist until just 40 days ago (and from a startup, and not a big-name manufacturer, no less).

NO BIGGY. It’s cool how Andy Rubin’s name is plastered all over the product’s announcement to lend it credibility and increase the hype surrounding it but, please, don’t expect anything from him. How gauche would that be?

Well, look, if it isn’t Essential that’s going to kill the iPhone, we probably only have to wait a few months for the next iPhone killer.