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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

#521

Post by julian_1 »

thisoneforwork wrote: post #455

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft, I have worked for Microsoft before and quit, and come back. I love the company, but I am no zealot (tried to standardize a company on Macs during my six years away, because it made sense). I never worked on Windows Phone, but I know the company and the tech well. Here is where we fucked up: 1. We were, for a long time, a company, where every product/business group had to pay for its o…

> We could have: Offered the mobile OS for free from day one. Given Office on Mobile for free from day one. Bought or OEMed Xamarin a lot sooner. [...] Made dev tools (Studio CE) free earlier.

Quoted for emphasis. It's remarkable in hindsight that Microsoft didn't try to leverage it's own already successful products with their inherent network effects, to buy market-share.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#522

Post by MentallyRetired »

I actually really like windows 10 mobile, but as a developer my attention span is limited and the market just wasn't there.

That said, I think if they announced convergence on all devices, released some really nice hardware (surface phone anybody?), and marketed convergence as the Next Big Thing, they could have made some serious in-roads in market share.

"Your all-in-one wonder device is ready!"

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#523

Post by jarym »

Windows Phone had potential. All MS needed to do was to show some real commitment to it by keeping APIs relatively stable and not impose any onerous requirements.

APIs were never stable for very long and all the weird UI decisions they tried to force down peoples throats really backfired. The marketing hype around universal apps backfired too - the developer APIs were not at all aligned with the marketing vision.

Truthfully, I think Microsoft is adjusting to being a corporation without a monopoly. That's what it comes down to - away from the desktop users had more attractive options (iOS/Android) and even on the desktop users just avoided upgrading (I skipped both Vista and Windows 8) while others have totally ditched desktops altogether.

Bye bye WiMo.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#524

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

I didn’t say “make iOS”.

What I’m saying is that an operating environment built around Office and its functions would be more useful than the cruft built around Windows that is mostly redundant.

Windows is a boat anchor on Office.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#525

Post by nashashmi »

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #289
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 ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the problem of the lack of an initial user base. Is anyone else surprised that "giving away free windows phones" was not a recipe for success in terms of incentivising capable app developers? Most every app developer already owns their favorite phone because they can afford it.

They should have also given away free phones to end users. And for the other users who bought stuff, they should have given them 100$ of credit to buy apps.

And then periodically rewarded great users with 100$. it would have been like a tax break for the users to spur the app economy.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#526

Post by smitherfield »

v-yadli wrote: post #520
smitherfield wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean full-featured in the sense of end user experience. If you have any example prior to 2007 of a mobile browser rendering the full New York Times website perfectly,[1] I'm all ears. But as I remember the below link was, for good reason, the biggest "wow" moment of any demo Steve Jobs ever gave. [1] https://youtu.be/RIRQg8AJxuw?t=41m24s

I partially agree with you, in that the rendering of the page is good-looking in circa 2007 standard on a mobile device. But rendering one page nicely does not prove it is full-featured. It has to go through some kind of benchmark, which reflects the general ability to process trillions of other pages out there. It loses to Opera Mobile or Symbian browser on the test I just googled (not sure about how accurate it is…

iOS Safari has always supported Javascript and was never "reduced" in any meaningful way (that's the point of Jobs' demo) except that (as now) it didn't support Flash, and deliberately ignored onmouseover, :hover and other such features that don't work well with a touchscreen interface.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#527

Post by nunez »

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…

Which is a real damn shame because WP was such a fine OS and was the REAL competitor to the iPhone in terms of UX and hardware design (Lumia line).

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#528

Post by nunez »

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…

This reminds me of a Timer app I downloaded when I had a HD8 that didn’t actually alert you when your time was up because of the way the native Alarm SDK was written (something to do with being unable to dispatch an alarm notification at exactly a given time). It made things...difficult.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#529

Post by megy »

limeblack wrote: post #390
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…

> that at no point had even a single feature that wasn't available better on iOS and Android According to the dates[0] I found online says Windows was the first to have a feature that would automatically connect to your cellular connection if the Wifi didn't work. Most consumers don't care but it is something I was surprised iPhones[1] and Android[2] didn't have at least at the time. In addition continuum is unique/b…

> I found online says Windows was the first to have a feature that would automatically connect to your cellular connection if the Wifi didn't work.

If the wifi doesn't work, no phone will use it. If the wifi is BAD, that is completely different.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#530

Post by nunez »

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…

Man the more comments I read the more I begin to remember. There was ONE dev who was churning out VERY high quality apps to popular platforms. I think Snapchat or Instagram was what he got known for. Instead of MS embracing his work and helping it flourish, they let him get taken down by a C&D.

LOTS of people got heated when that happened.

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