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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

#561

Post by flukus »

CharlesC wrote: post #350
cjsuk wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't believe an company so vested in the enterprise market can do such a terrible job of allowing companies to deploy enterprise software. Click once isn't supported in VS anymore, and was always horrible when it came to things like CI servers anyway. Windows 10 store requires running on azure which make it a no go, doesn't allow push updates anyway. The best options have always been third party ones like chocolatey or NSIS, but they are limited as well, chocolatey does not allow push based and NSIS is pretty weird.

19 years after the first release of apt-get and I'm still waiting for MS to give me something half as good.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#562

Post by s73ver_ »

WorldMaker wrote: post #170
jbigelow76 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 problem of the lack of an initial user base. The one thing MS didn't try to incentivize independent app developers was to eliminate the 30% revenue cut MS would take on the sale of paid apps. I always thought it would have been a good differentiation as there were always…

I recall they announced promotions like that as well. At one point I recall they would auto-cut at least in half for some amount of time if your app was chosen for the front page of the Store. Since the Anniversary Update last year, sideloading has been enabled by default, too, if you wanted to sell apps outside the store, and that didn't magically attract indies either.

Sideloading is a thing on Android too, but it really doesn't attract a lot of devs or users. Most users stick to the stores, cause they don't want to go chase down and give their payment info to infinity different sites.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#563

Post by amigoingtodie »

mark-r wrote: post #433
throwaway613834 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

HP48GX

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#564

Post by s73ver_ »

rodorgas wrote: post #198
tomaskafka wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure it would have helped. Any rational high-profile dev will compute that 70 % * 100 000 downloads is better that 100 % of 1000 downloads.

Sure, but it's not like they have to choose one or another. And 100% of 1000 downloads is better than 70% of 1000 downloads.

There are only so many hours in the day. And, given the choice between fixing bugs and adding features for the many users on Android & iOS, or taking a gamble on a much lower userbase on WP, I'd probably take the first one.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#565

Post by IgorPartola »

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 wonder what would have happened if they competed on pure price. Like if they basically gave away 10m devices. That’s a small amount but it could have kickstarted something. App developers have to choose which platforms to support. The cost is nearly doubled if you go from just one to both dominant platforms. Adding a third would nearly triple it. It is not worth it if suddenly you can reach a whole lot of people. Going after developers is good if there isn’t a market already. Going after consumers might have created a critical mass where developers would have just showed up on their own.

Maybe a campaign to hand a new Windows phone to every college kid on campus would have worked. College kids aren’t flush with spending money, so a free phone would be a boon. But college kids also graduate and get jobs, making future phone purchases a possibility. Plus college kids tend to be trend setters for technology in situations like this.

Eh, I am rambling. People much smarter than me have probably already thought of this.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#566

Post by limeblack »

kuschku wrote: post #559
limeblack wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. This is the most infuriating feature ever. Google implemented it in 2014 in Android, and you couldn't properly disable it. Not even today. I frequently need to connect to intranets where Google services are blocked for security reasons, and it's…

Then in my opinion it sounds like it is still not "properly implemented" with a toggle. Thank you. I have always been curious about Android. I do agree it's probably better not to have this feature by default then to have without a toggle. Just depends on use case.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#567

Post by s73ver_ »

Sephr wrote: post #444
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…

There's an obvious incentive they haven't tried: guaranteeing a lower app store margin like 1-2% instead of the 30% cut that Microsoft currently takes. Google and Apple have already convinced a sufficient number of users users that their app stores are essential, so they can continue to charge whatever they like. Microsoft didn't have the same luxury, so they needed to change this. They never made the change and it's…

A good amount of the "key apps" are free anyway, so a lower margin wouldn't have helped there.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#568

Post by at-fates-hands »

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…

Good to hear from someone who was valiantly trying to create apps for this platform. I always wondered why developers never flocked to the MS platform since it always seemed wide open with not a lot of competition compared to the IOS and Android platforms.

Thanks for laying bare why it failed so badly.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#569

Post by mobilio »

pcwalton wrote: post #558
cjsuk wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. 15 years ago I kind of enjoyed it. Win32/winforms is still less horrible than the web these days.

Win32 is in no way less horrible than the Web. Win32 doesn't have any device-independent layout, at all. Forget about handling HiDPI sensibly. RegisterClassEx/CreateWindowEx are incredibly verbose. WndProcs are a mess compared to individual event handlers. The mishmash of COM and inconsistently named C APIs is terrible. COM involves a monstrous amount of boilerplate. COM requires you to deal with apartment threading,…

Yeah... because compatibility here is MUST.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#570

Post by kuschku »

limeblack wrote: post #566
kuschku wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is the most infuriating feature ever. Google implemented it in 2014 in Android, and you couldn't properly disable it. Not even today. I frequently need to connect to intranets where Google services are blocked for security reasons, and it's…

Then in my opinion it sounds like it is still not "properly implemented" with a toggle. Thank you. I have always been curious about Android. I do agree it's probably better not to have this feature by default then to have without a toggle. Just depends on use case.

Oh, they have a toggle. They've just changed it every time, and broken it in subtle ways every time.
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