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Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

bbc.co.uk

91–100 of 724 posts

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#91
post #81

Earlier 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.

What OS were the other 98% (i.e. non-devs) of employees using?

Usually Mac in my experience because nobody on their right mind would bother with Windows in a working environment.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#92
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like WPF will be supported for the forseeable future, but I get your overall point

We'll see. I think the netstandard -> all platforms approach, combined with the aggressive depreciation of old .Net 4.6.x versions is a road map for the future. Maintaining two entire release chains, the 4.x and the .Net core 2.x, is an impossible long term strategy. I would be absolutely astonished if the 4.x line is quietly folded away and depreciated ('unsupported') once the netstandard surface area means the code…

IIRC Winforms relies on core, proprietary, parts of Windows which couldn't be feasibly ported to .net core.

Not sure about WPF. It's a shame because it's a great development experience.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#93

I 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…

> For more niche apps they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc

I remember some of this vaguely. A friend of mine deep in the MS world was showing me some of what was going on, but this "ran promotions" - I dunno. I don't think I'm way out in "non-MS" land - I keep my finger on the pulse of a lot of tech communities. I didn't hear much about this except from a few friends deeply entrenched in MS. Perhaps there wasn't enough of an outreach program?

> 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.

Given that I've registered multiple times with them to download various SDKs in the past, perhaps... emailing me about what they were doing, because I might have had an interest in being part of that app development push?

Maybe some actual ads on non-MS tech-related websites, or outreach to local non-MS user groups might have helped? As someone who's run multiple local tech groups, and frequented many for years, this "big focus of microsoft" was never a blip on anyone's radar (AFAICR).

> giving away free phones

That's sort of the bare minimum you'd need to do.

I'm reminded a bit about the HP tablets with webOS. They charged $499 (because, IIRC, "that's the price for tablets" - because of iPads), sold for a few weeks, then discontinued. Loads of people picked them up at $150-$200, even with no apps. "Well, we can't win, let's close it all down", after spending $1B+ on acquiring the stuff they're giving up on in the first place.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#94

I 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…

"but the lack of apps ultimately made us move to another ecosystem" Nuts. People don't even use apps [i]. They may have facebook or netflix installed - but then it gets real thin. https://www.apptentive.com/blog/2017/06/22/how-many-mobile-a...

Yeah, I think that the focus on apps might have actually been part of their problem. How many consumers really saw anything about the platform that made it more appealing than competing platforms? Without a solid killer feature as a differentiator, the apps wouldn't matter.

I'm sure that it made a great measurable and a great excuse for failure, though. I don't doubt that the internal narrative would focus on that.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#95
post #2

This isn't surprising, really. Windows Phone has been poorly for a long time. While I understand Microsoft's efforts at trying to approach the mobile space, it does seem that it's often at the expense of their core product - very similar to how Google nearly crippled their core offering by integrating everything with Google+. I'm impressed that despite all of this, though, they've managed to keep desktop dominance, e…

Windows is extremely well sunk into the enterprise market, and neither Linux nor Mac are at all focusing sufficiently on it to displace them. Linux isn't user friendly enough, and Mac's support policy is a complete no go for enterprise.

If a Ubuntu in 2017 isn't user friendly I really don't know what that phrase is even supposed to mean.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#96
post #90

I 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…

It is my understanding that MS has given up on ARM. Sooner or later there will be x86 based phones, which partly solves the "app" problem. They just run a regular windows on the phone.

That doesn't make much sense, apps made for mouse and keyboard on a large screen won't magically become usable on a small touchscreen...

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#97
post #90

I 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…

It is my understanding that MS has given up on ARM. Sooner or later there will be x86 based phones, which partly solves the "app" problem. They just run a regular windows on the phone.

That UX will just be amazing

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#98
post #47

Windows Mobile 6 (2007, CE based) was pretty good. iPhone changed everything. Then Microsoft destroyed v6 with Windows Mobile 7 (CE based but incompatible to CE apps, Silverlight-only apps) Windows Mobile 7 got replaced by incompatible Windows Phone 8. Windows Mobile 8 got replaced by incompatible Windows Phone 10. Microsoft finally admits Windows Phone/Mobile 10 is dead. More on the "burning platform memo" of their…

There was no Windows mobile 7. It was already branded as Windows Phone 7 by then. They went back to Windows Mobile for 10, I think.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#99
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. Microsoft offered me $10k and free help with development to port my app.

10k seems reasonable enough to port it. Why didn't you?

My app was doing really well in the App Store, and Apple was featuring it on billboards and TV ads. As an indie developer, it was the best thing I could have hoped for. I didn't want to mess up that relationship with Apple in any way. Being anti-MS throughout my youth probably didn't help either.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#100
post #45

One cool move on Microsoft's part can be releasing Microsoft's version of Android. The main problem is Google Play Services. But since MS almost has parallel offerings for all Google Services they can create an "API" compatible version of Google Play services. This way users will be able to install all the current Android applications which are available on Play Store. This can convert Android into an Oligopoly inste…

Why would anyone bother with a copy of android when the original just works? it makes no sense. Microsoft strategy was just bad. It tried to copy the iPhone when it should have tried to copy its own strategy on PC, which is creating a OS and letting other companies build Windows Phones. The only person who got something out of the Nokia deal is Elop, which is curiously similar to how bad Macromedia/Adobe deal was. Wh…

Lab126 ships an Android-based OS that will never be Android. One reason was to extend APIs (edge peek events for the Fire Phone, for example).
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