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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

#341

Post by ZenoArrow »

spoiledtechie wrote: post #53
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…

Im still on the platform. I was holding out, hoping for something. But I guess my current phone will be my last windows phone. Sad.

I'm still on the platform as well (typing this on a Lumia 635). To be honest I only bought it as I wanted a cheap smartphone but it's served me very well. I don't really use that many apps (Baconit and Metrotube are the two I use the most), but the WinPhone 8.1 UI is probably the best phone UI I've ever used (I prefer it over iOS and Android). Thankfully I've already got my next phone lined up (Librem 5).

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#342

Post by 201709User »

emodendroket wrote: post #286
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 biggest frustration, to me, is that WPF was basically left on the vine while they pursued this WinRT stuff.

Yeah, and what enterprise have done? It had to switch to legacy crap of JS and HTML(5). Sinofski was an evil moron.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#343

Post by 201709User »

r00fus wrote: post #340
201709User wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now we have two garbage GUIs without pressure to improve. More competition is better!

Hey, PalmOS was there early and with a decent UI. But the hardware was not up to the task. It's really a pity that no one interested in mobile picked up Palm. HP - what did they do with it other than throw it away?

HP did a cheap tablet give away :P.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#344

Post by hesarenu »

dbmikus wrote: post #185
herbst wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I just installed the latest version of Linux Mint and the default graphics card driver had a bug that caused my entire system to freeze after a few hours of inactivity. To be able to replace Apple or Microsoft, not only do you need user friendliness for how the machine works, but you also need to get rid of all the miscellaneous tech and configuration problems that crop up. As I understand it, Linux laptop sleep/susp…

I am on high Sierra. Just today I clicked on an update which broke while updating. First it was displaying Mac os not found. Restart again. Restart would hang up and say some installer is missing. I had to Google, run some commands to eventually make it work.

On clean of windows I used to download drivers from ubuntu since windows did not load them.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#345

Post by mattnewport »

arenaninja wrote: post #196
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 bought someone a Windows phone and they had the same feedback - big name apps not available (whatsapp, instagram, etc.) I wanted to buy a Windows phone since I use none of these apps, but there was no hardware refresh or major announcements around Windows phones and that deterred me. I don't understand how MS went on to a successful Surface and failed phones, I would think they're similar markets - hype-driven, tak…

There's definitely a shortage of apps compared to Android and iOS but I have WhatsApp and Instagram installed on the Windows Phone I'm writing this comment on right now. You can tell the Windows Phone version of apps are not a priority for the developers though.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#346

Post by garganzol »

WorldMaker wrote: post #314
garganzol wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with sideloading is that it requires a lot of hops. So many hops nobody does this. Usually "a hop" is represented by some required certificate, a special "container" the app needs to follow, a special API voodoo call you should make to sideload the app. It quickly decays from being a reliable reproducible computer science, and turns into the joke of marketing greed you would never trust.

From a user experience standpoint: sideloading is just "install this app". Click a link on a website to an APK for Android or APPX for Windows and watch it install. It doesn't get much easier than that. Fewer hurdles and security concerns than installing some random EXE that may be a wrapper for an MSI and needs Administrator rights to your machine for who knows what reason. The install experience for an APPX link is…

The given problem is not in the UX standpoint, it's a developers' problem.

As a developer of WinAPI app, I can just click on .EXE file. I can use CreateProcess to run it. I can use command shell to run it, right? And so on. I'm free.

The UWP is a different story: as a developer, I can do exactly nothing. I cannot run .EXE. I cannot run .APPX. I cannot run from command shell. I cannot distribute .EXE. I cannot distribute .APPX.

Instead, as a developer of an UWP app, I have to use exclusively Visual Studio in order to run my app. That's all. I cannot launch my just compiled app from command line. I cannot launch automated UI test. I cannot distribute the app. I cannot use XCopy. Bummer, nothing. I'm a monkey in a dystopian walled garden.

Why would I invest in such a platform? Why should I play bureaucracy games with certificates on my own machine? Why, as a developer, I have no access to "Launch from Layout" API, but Visual Studio has? Doesn't anyone think it's not competitive, to say the least?

The list goes on and on. But yes, from a MBA or an occasional lurker standpoint the skies are blue. Really, what could go wrong.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#347

Post by ChuckMcM »

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…

My wife complains bitterly that she is unable to keep her Windows phone. I wonder sometimes if this ecosystem was killed by "expectation disease" where success was defined as '1/3 the market or better'. It is a common problem of insecure BigCorp type thinking when trying to break into a market, it has killed Google in the social space. This is the kind of issue that really needs a 'peanut butter factory'[1] approach.

[1] The 'peanut butter factory' has been a silicon valley euphemism for a small team of engineers from a "big" company that have gone off to build a new project without having the big company drag them down.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#348

Post by r00fus »

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…

Did they do what Apple did and setup a seed fund to get startups ready to compete with the big platforms?

See iFund (2008): https://www.macrumors.com/2008/03/06/ifund-to-offer-100-mill...

The fact is, you should incentivize funders/investors, not developers. The developers will follow if they have a hot new startup where they can (potentially) mint money using your seed capital.

However, I agree this only works if you aren't seriously late to the party.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#349

Post by ameliaquining »

hinkley wrote: post #308
nathantotten wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to consider this in the context at the time. Yes it would have been expensive, but Microsoft was investing BILLIONS into Windows Phone. Microsoft and partners spent something like $700 million dollars just on marketing for the launch of Windows Phone 7[1,2]. To spend that kind of money on marketing and then not dedicate resources to the actual product seems foolish. And I am not saying they should have done…

To spend that kind of money on marketing and then not dedicate resources to the actual product seems foolish. Sounds like a Hollywood strategy to me. Overadvertise a stinker to try to recoup your investment.

That works for movies because they're trying to maximize the number of people who are interested enough to go see it once, more or less. A successful phone ecosystem requires building something that people want to use over the medium term.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#350

Post by CharlesC »

cjsuk wrote: post #291
emodendroket wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the legacy stuff continues working long after it's the hot new thing, though.

Until you hit a bug. The one that killed us was we had to deploy a registry fix to 2000 workstations at hundreds of companies because they broke ClickOnce in IE9 and later. It still isn't fixed today. We still have to eat the administrative cost. Over time, that's a shit ton of cash leaked out on a mistake the vendor has made.

Clickonce is such garbage. I'm sorry I ever heard of it.
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