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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

#431

Post by WorldMaker »

je42 wrote: post #412
criddell wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Microsoft's defense, they also tend to support their stuff for a long time. I work with MFC every day. It's 20+ years old and still being developed.

OMG. MFC ? You mean Microsoft Foundation Classes ? mmh. that stuff is still supported ? eventhough there was/is all the .NET crazyness. That's actually pretty good of MS. I guess the main question is: how do you in advance if you got a MFC-like library from MS with 20+ year support vs a library like Sliverlight where they drop support and let you alone with a migration to a different platform ?

As someone that worked on migrations to Silverlight and then to UWP, I still don't understand why these are seen as such big deals. The APIs were more similar than they were different and XAML is still XAML. (The only big loss from Silverlight was being able to browser-host it, but even then that was probably worth losing for the greater good to avoid terrible plugin websites.) The only thing they really dropped was Silverlight as (an unnecessary) brand name.

If they had semvered the whole thing: Avalon => UWP 0.x, WPF => UWP 1.x, Silverlight => UWP 2.x, Windows 8.1 UAP => UWP 3.x, today's UWP ~=> UWP 4.x, I don't think any developer would have blinked, I feel like we'd have a lot fewer people feeling they dropped support for things... Then again, developers like to complain when their cheese is moved, it could be just like Python 2 versus Python 3 or VB6 versus VB7.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#433

Post by mark-r »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #382
mark-r wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, now you're making me feel old. I knew those things through personal experience. I suppose you didn't know that HP made calculators either?

Haha, sorry about that! Didn't know HP started with calculators either! (I know they've all had these products, but I had no idea these are how they started.)

No, they didn't start with calculators, but they were well known for them at one time.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#434

Post by WorldMaker »

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.

I think the evolutionary path connecting WPF and "this WinRT stuff" is extremely clear and if you've built WPF you can build UWP. UWP .NET/XAML is great to work with if you know WPF, it's truly a successor to WPF in every way. (It'll be even better soon [as in next month] thanks to .NET Standard 2.0.)

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#435

Post by jasonlotito »

philliphaydon wrote: post #237
Gaelan wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the iPhone launch US-only?

It doesn’t matter. Subsequent iPhones are launched globally. Microsoft does not launch subsequent products globally. The surface takes many many months to reach many parts of Asia. Surface studio is only in a hand full of countries. Surface laptop is only in a handful of countries. Surface book is almost non existent. The only thing Microsoft makes that it launches well is the Xbox.

> It doesn’t matter.

Yeah, I remember this argument. It depends on whether it benefits Apple or not. For example, when Apple moved off of Google for it's mapping, people were saying that this was just the first iteration, the first version of Maps, when it clearly wasn't, and that the fact that it lost features and information that were there before, people were okay with it because it was Apple's first map software (when it really wasn't).

I just find it interesting the way this argument is used for and against Apple.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#436

Post by fpig »

Spooky23 wrote: post #188
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…

They threw about $500k at my employer at the time to hire some Eastern European company to build an app. They ended up stringing something together that got deployed on like 10 phones. The problem was that a big enterprise customer is clueless about mobile apps, and Microsft’s endemic NIH syndrome made it difficult to work with business systems that aren’t Microsoft platforms. O365 is a great example... the office pl…

I'm not sure what your beef with Windows as a client OS is but if you're saying that the UI should be dumbed down, remember how the attempt to do so with Win8 backfired and that Microsoft quickly reverted most of those changes in Win8.1.

As the older generation is dying off / retiring, the percentage of people who have been using a computer for a long time has increased immensely, the "secretary who can't figure out copy/paste" issue is becoming less relevant every day. These days the only people I need to help do basic tasks in Windows are my retired parents.

I don't see how an iOS-like UI would be an improvement for virtually anything I can imagine doing on a Windows PC.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#437

Post by bitmapbrother »

joenathanone wrote: post #220
philliphaydon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with windows phone / mobile is not the apps. It was Microsoft. When Apple launches an Phone, it’s avaliable world wide. When Microsoft launches a phone, it’s avaliable in America. My last windows phone was a Lumia 925, the last Lumia announced I waited 7 months for it to reach singapore before throwing in the towel and going android. There were no phones avaliable outside America, uk, Australia. Now I use…

You don't know how untrue this is, couple of things. First lets start with this qoute "According to Kantar's October 2013 report, Windows Phone accounted for 10.2% of all smartphone sales in Europe and 4.8% of all sales in the United States." and then this one "Microsoft announced new data from IDC indicating that Windows Phone is the second-most-used mobile platform in Latin America." Lastly, do you not remember the…

You're being very disingenuous with the numbers. That 10% marketshare, in a few European countries, was mostly composed of cheap subsidized phones. That business model was not sustainable and subsequently collapsed.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#439

Post by cm2187 »

nathantotten wrote: post #43
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…

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…

Intead they staffed their quality dev team on the Windows Mail app and Skype...

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#440

Post by megaman22 »

fpig wrote: post #436
Spooky23 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They threw about $500k at my employer at the time to hire some Eastern European company to build an app. They ended up stringing something together that got deployed on like 10 phones. The problem was that a big enterprise customer is clueless about mobile apps, and Microsft’s endemic NIH syndrome made it difficult to work with business systems that aren’t Microsoft platforms. O365 is a great example... the office pl…

I'm not sure what your beef with Windows as a client OS is but if you're saying that the UI should be dumbed down, remember how the attempt to do so with Win8 backfired and that Microsoft quickly reverted most of those changes in Win8.1. As the older generation is dying off / retiring, the percentage of people who have been using a computer for a long time has increased immensely, the "secretary who can't figure out…

Increasingly, I'm having trouble with interns who don't know basic computer interface paradigms because they've never used real desktop operating systems, just a ton of phones and tablets.
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