That was kind of obvious a year or two ago when Microsoft gutted 99% of the Nokia division.
Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile
61–70 of 724 posts
Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile
#62I was working in Microsoft about 5 years ago and Satya's not lying when they say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of the company at the time. For keystone apps they tried to partner with developers doing most of the work for them. For more niche apps they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the pr…
I loved the UI, design, consistency, etc. I liked it because it was straightforward and rarely notified me about anything.
I left because of w10m specifically. They took away the consistency. It felt as janky as Android does.
After I dropped and broke my last WP8 device, I had to decide whether I wanted to order another old WP8 phone online or just switch to Android. I switched to Android.
It's not nearly as nice as WP8 was but what can you do?
Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile
#63This surprises no one. I'm more interested in: what's the future for UWP apps now? Another dead end like silverlight? A cross platform UI library that runs on .Net core (ie. windows, mac, linux, android, ios), some kind of hybrid of ??? and Xamarin forms could potentially be quite a nice tool... but its pretty hard to be excited about the prospect with their track record of killed off UI frameworks so far.
UWP apps wouldn't be so bad for Windows if maybe Microsoft extended their functionality a little and kept improving their performance.
However, what scares me to death as a user is that if UWP is let's say super-popular with developers 5-10 years from now, and everyone builds their apps as UWP apps for Windows, then Microsoft will eventually restrict "normal" users (read: most "consumer" Windows machines) from even side-loading apps from outside of the store.
If that's something that has even crossed the minds of Microsoft's leadership, then I definitely don't want UWP to gain any sort of real traction. And I'd rather see Microsoft improve user security through instant virtualization for apps, like what they're doing with App Guard for Edge, even if it's only an option users could choose, and not something that works by default for most or all apps.
Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile
#64This is why the latest tool I did for Windows still was based on WinForms. Because you know the old crappy stuff will be supported forever and the new shiny better stuff (WPF was pretty cool!) will be deprecated within two years and probably will not get significant developer traction. With a lot of confusing marketing from Microsoft. I don't think even the guru's within Microsoft itself can sum up all the different…
As a punishment, the .net framework owners should be forced to learn and recite by heart the .net standard compatibility matrix!
That's just part of growing pains. I imagine that when Microsoft finishes their long term plan for .NET the layers will basically be:
.NET Core - implements .NET Standard.
Everything else is layered on top of .NET Core: .NET Framework (Windows), Xamarin (Linux, MacOS GUI, Android, iOS).
So basically everything in use will support .NET Standard.
Retconning is a bitch :p
Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile
#65I was working in Microsoft about 5 years ago and Satya's not lying when they say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of the company at the time. For keystone apps they tried to partner with developers doing most of the work for them. For more niche apps they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the pr…
This is a stretch IMO. I was working there too at the time and the focus on apps was never as strong as it should have been. Yes, they paid out lots of money to get devs to build apps, but they never really dedicated the resources to building quality apps. The prime example was Facebook. This was an app built by Microsoft with FBs blessing, but it was always far behind in terms of features and quality. Developement o…
>Had Microsoft put quality dev teams on building high quality third-party apps I think the chances of success would have greatly improved.
For one app? For an app they would have to give away for free? For an app that would always be behind the FB built ios/android apps?
Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile
#66On what hardware platform does Microsoft earn money on? Xbox and keyboards? Will Microsoft go back to a pure software maker?
Surface
Not sure if Microsoft has earned back it's investment on the Surface line yet. First years it was a big loss, then it has started to earn money, but it has started falling again.
Compared to Xbox, Surface revenue is about a 25% of Xbox.
Of total earnings Surface is about 3%.
Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every enterprise I have worked at had both linux and mac available to developers. Is this not your experience? You seem to present as truth the opposite of what I have lived.
Is this not your experience? Not at all. Linux can sometimes be made available on servers if necessary, but if you want Linux on your desktop you have to use a VM (ideally without telling IT). Never worked at a large place where Macs where readily available. Macs used to be more popular ~10 years ago or so with the marketing and communications people doing a lot of DTP and design work, but even that seems to have gre…
In my experience, it’s depressingly common for companies to have one single Mac that they dust off once a year to test something in Safari.
Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile
#68It feels inevitable, but it's still a shame. I think the Windows Mobile interface was the most functional of the mobile UIs. I switched to Android years ago, but I still miss it.
After my dad had a stroke, he needed a new phone that he could use easily. We ended up with a Nokia using Windows Phone because the large tiles and keyboard buttons were something he could handle. The iOS and Android interfaces required more precision than he was able to do.
To be fair, this was 5 or so years ago and I didn't delve very far into accessibility settings for anything. WP worked fine out of the box, though.
Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile
#69I was working in Microsoft about 5 years ago and Satya's not lying when they say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of the company at the time. For keystone apps they tried to partner with developers doing most of the work for them. For more niche apps they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the pr…
Can confirm. Microsoft offered me $10k and free help with development to port my app.
Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile
#70At least they did it with a tweet. It's a sign of respect, right?