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Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#241

Post by vesinisa »

Grom_PE wrote: post #215

If only I could properly reprogram this WP8.1 phone I have here, it would've been much more interesting. But rooting/jailbreaking (in WP world called "Interop unlock") has always been awkward and possible only for the most popular types of WP: Lumia, Samsung. To write programs, it requires me to install Windows 8 or 10 — can't do with Windows 7 or Linux. Even if I write a program, this phone requires special develope…

The joke on Windows Phone was always the browser. It was essentially a stripped down version of desktop IE. They never fixed it - the only Microsoft phone to ship with a usable browser (Edge) was Windows 10 Mobile, and they silently killed the whole Microsoft smartphone product line on the same day it was officially released.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#242

Post by throwaway613834 »

pm90 wrote: post #113
rqs wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most Windows phone owners I know (myself included) loved the design (hardware and software) I don't love the design, but I like it. Maybe some people believe the tile home screen is ugly, but they are more informative compare to icon based home screen. Yes, there are some bad designs in the Windows 10 Mobile, but all of them are fixable. And once those problems get fixed, it will be gorgeous. I feel very sad about…

Its a free market, and the market has spoken. I think its the right strategy for MS to accept that the market is just not going to accommodate yet another mobile ecosystem. And its not for lack of trying: they've been trying for over a decade now to break into the mobile OS market. They had tablets running a version of Windows much before iPad; they had "Smartphones" running windows much before 2007. There's gotta be…

Wow, I didn't even know Intel was a RAM chip maker before doing microprocessors... or that Microsoft started with BASIC. Thanks for the historical notes!

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#243

Post by vetinari »

maaaats wrote: post #169
blackoil wrote: post #24

I was using WP since times of WP 7 and Lumia 710. At that time other options were either super costly iPhone or crappy lagging Android. WP had a fresh look, smooth OS and range of hardware from Nokia. Unfortunately, MS fumbled couple of times with internals while moving to WP 8 and WM 10. In the meanwhile Android fixed the kinks and improved UI. Motorola and Xiaomi improved value for money of Android.

Yeah, a $80-$100 Nokia ran as smoothly as an expensive Android at that time.

You may think it ran as smoothly, but it certainly didn't do as much.

Lumia 520 and Moto G were almost identical hardware (almost same CPU, same GPU, Moto G had double RAM and 720p display, Lumia only 800x480), for similar price, but the Moto G was way better device, that did stuff people wanted.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#244

Post by narrator »

dtx1 wrote: post #224
itsmenotyou wrote: post #30

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…

I worked 3 years as a windows phone dev and i'm sorry to say but Microsofts efforts were ... almost insultingly bad. It started with windows phone 8 and the Metro UI. Bad Idea. The UI was too far away from Android/iPhone to be easily ported and adding corporate design to it was hard as it was too different. Silverlight and XAML was okay for the time. Then came windows 8.1 and windows desktop 8 which was universally h…

The thing about the MS platforms that has always been an issue is that they change the developer APIs around all the time. Every year they come out with the latest greatest way to access a database or whatever and it really isn't that much better than what they had last year, but it still requires a rewrite.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#245

Post by Const-me »

criddell wrote: post #111
jk2323 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Sooner or later there will be x86 based phones Sure, but right now Apple and their ARM designs are running away from everybody else. Plus Windows is terrible from a security and power consumption point of view. Can Microsoft fix that without breaking everything? I think MS is conceding the entire phone space. Full screen form factors (like laptops is and large tablets) are very important but for small devices I don…

> Windows is terrible from a security and power consumption point of view

Windows is way ahead in both security and power efficiency.

About security, here’s an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10410833 In Windows, clipboard access was restricted to foreground app since WP7.

About power efficiency, WP is very restrictive on what apps can do in background. See this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh2029...

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#246

Post by throwaway613834 »

executesorder66 wrote: post #236
spoiledtechie wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wouldn't help Microsoft for $10000000. I'm sure many others feel the same.

Is that an exaggeration or do you mean that literally?

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#247

Post by tstrimple »

ssully wrote: post #79
nathantotten wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was going to chime in a little on it being a stretch. One of the promotions for students they did was near the summer of 2012 or 2013. The promotion was you got paid 100 dollars for every app published on the Microsoft store limit 5 for the mobile store and 5 for the regular store. So a total limit of $1000. My school actually had a Microsoft rep run a workshop over a weekend showing students how to publish an app…

This is unfortunately true, but it isn't representative of the entire effort put forth to acquire apps. I was part of the Microsoft org who was doing this at the time. We were split between breadth engagements (one to many like at universities or hackathons) and depth engagements (one to one). I was working depth engagements helping established companies port existing iOS and Android apps to Windows. The amount of investment from Microsoft in those depth engagements ranged from me helping out with technical barriers for a couple days to hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives and development effort. It was all about how desirable that name or brand was on other platforms.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#248

Post by roryisok »

tomaskafka wrote: post #181
dep_b wrote: post #31

This 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…

Aaah, WPF. It's basically React (Native and hw accelerated!), 10 years earlier. On one side, I'm glad that declarative app UIs can now be built on a web, on the other side - come on, Microsoft, we could have skipped a whole jQuery era and be somewhere else with the web now. And react is still missing a big library of standard, well documented components with accesibility, performance and all the edge cases built in.

> Aaah, WPF. It's basically React (Native and hw accelerated!), 10 years earlier.

I'd love if that were true, but of course the big selling point of React Native is that it works on several platforms. WPF works on one, and only a desktop one. Well, now that WP is dead at least.

If WPF ran on iOS / Android, hell even if it just ran on MacOS, I think there'd be a lot more devs building apps in it than JavaScript.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#249

Post by roryisok »

perseusprime11 wrote: post #212

The lack of a Youtube App from Google killed the Windows Phone. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/

definitely helped. MS put a lot of effort into building a slick YouTube app and Google changed the T&Cs the week after it launched or something. Basically issued a takedown of the MS app because it didn't conform to the new standard they'd just introduced. I believe it was that third party apps had to allow ads, even though the iOS and Android apps did not.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#250

Post by cjsuk »

narrator wrote: post #244
dtx1 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked 3 years as a windows phone dev and i'm sorry to say but Microsofts efforts were ... almost insultingly bad. It started with windows phone 8 and the Metro UI. Bad Idea. The UI was too far away from Android/iPhone to be easily ported and adding corporate design to it was hard as it was too different. Silverlight and XAML was okay for the time. Then came windows 8.1 and windows desktop 8 which was universally h…

The thing about the MS platforms that has always been an issue is that they change the developer APIs around all the time. Every year they come out with the latest greatest way to access a database or whatever and it really isn't that much better than what they had last year, but it still requires a rewrite.

Yes. They also rewrite stuff half way through and tell you it's the same project just to piss you off. Windows Workflow and Windows Communication Foundation for example.

I'm really disinclined to invest in any of their technology because my headspace is finite and I want to deliver business value, not change the unworn carpets once a year.

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