Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#601

Post by c-smile » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 3:31 AM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #431

je42 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At the mean time we are celebrating 10 years with the same UI engine: https://sciter.com/from-skeuomorph-to-flat-ui-evolution-of-o...

The only major thing: added Direct2D H/W accelerated backend to support high-DPI and multi-DPI systems. Yet incremental addition of CSS features.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#602

Post by c-smile » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 3:37 AM UTC

theduncan wrote: post #366

philliphaydon wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah iphone was launched in 2007. We are in 2017 and if you want to take marketshare from your competitors then you need to be releasing your products in all major markets. Not a couple of them. Windows phone was quite popular in Asia yet it died due to lack of devices. My mum still rocks an HTC HD7 tho.

I remember the HD7, I was eyeing it off for a while, I could buy one, I just couldn't find a phone store near me that would let me try one. I moved to Android and the HTC Desire HD. I had been a Windows Mobile 6.1 user.

I really would like to know why they abandoned Windows Mobile / CE at that time. It was quite strong foundation. Metro could be built on top of it easily.

Mystery.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#603

Post by tomelders » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 4:17 AM UTC

MS really doesn't understand why people don't like their products. And that's a bit bonkers. People get paid lots of money to think about that problem everyday, and they still can't figure it out.

Nobody trusts you. They don't trust your vision. They don't trust your commitment. They don't trust your ability. They don't trust your execution. And they don't trust your intentions.

no one trusts Microsoft. Well maybe some people do, but how's that working out for you?

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#604

Post by AndrewKemendo » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 4:50 AM UTC

dc443 wrote: post #472

pjmlp wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give it a few more OS releases and Android will be the only one supporting GL.

Would Apple really drop OpenGL? They are smarter than that... They could do it, though. They could.

They are definitely not helping. They promote SceneKit and Metal over all else. Granted Metal is WAY better than OpenGL

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#605

Post by throwaway613834 » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 5:09 AM UTC

cesarb wrote: post #508

throwaway613834 wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My surprise wasn't at the fact that someone would give up money due to morals; my surprise was at the fact that helping Microsoft (or putting ads in software, in VLC's case) would be considered a moral wrong. That sounds like quite an exaggeration to me. Microsoft has done a lot of good things too, and so have ads. The fact that they have negative aspects doesn't mean anything less than 90 degrees away from their dir…

In VLC's case, it's a question of trust. The users of VLC trust the developer to not put ads on that software; it's breaking that trust that would be the moral wrong, not necessarily the ads.

I don't understand what notion of trust this is. If it auto-updates, maybe? But if you make the change clear before they update I don't see where there's a breach of trust.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#606

Post by indiepop12 » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 5:14 AM UTC

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…

I had the same experience while working on WP in 2012-13.

In early 2013, I reported a bug when some of the elements inside LongListSelector would disappear randomly on scrolling. LongListSelector is WP’s counterpart for iOS’s tableView.

So I started a discussion on Microsoft forums on this bug. Someone from Microsoft confirmed this bug.

I tracked this bug for 9 months. And guess what they never fixed it. They never fixed a critical bug in the most used UI component of mobile apps.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#607

Post by JohnBooty » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 5:45 AM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #487

narrator wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My pet theory is that this is because the dev tools department at Microsoft is not a pure cost centre with the sole task of improving the platform, they have Visual Studio licenses to sell. If there is any truth in that, we should see a slow decline in "API of the year" as non-subscription licenses (where customers are prone to skip an update when it does not have enough "revolutionary must-haves") are slowly phased…

    My pet theory is that this is because the dev 
    tools department at Microsoft is not a pure cost 
    centre with the sole task of improving the platform, 
    they have Visual Studio licenses to sell.

This is the single most baffling thing about Windows to me, and it always has been. Why insist on trying to sell Visual Studio licenses, instead of maximizing the amount of software written for your platform(s)?

It doesn't even seem like they're acting in rational self-interest by doing that.

I suppose their rationale is that they give a lot of development tools away for free, and you only really have to pay for the really enterprise-y editions. I guess? Still dumb to me.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#608

Post by garfieldnate » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 6:21 AM UTC

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…

Yes! I love my Windows 8 phone! I hated Windows 8 for desktops because it felt like they were trying to turn my PC into a cell phone. But the design is great for an actual phone! Unlike on iOS, the app icons can be dynamic and you can change their size and what's displayed. My Lumia 928 feels better in my hand than anything else I've ever handled, and the screen contrast and true black is great, even in direct sunlight. I love having a dedicated camera button, too. I actually don't personally care too much that there are so few apps.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#609

Post by chrisco255 » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 6:27 AM UTC

amigoingtodie wrote: post #548

smitherfield wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never mind that at launch iphone was more fancy featurephone than smartphone. Not really. iPhone was the first phone ever that shipped with a real, full-featured, non-crippled web browser. This was an astonishing achievement at the time, and one which made its existing competition look like "fancy featurephones," not the reverse. (Really an astonishing achievement period, considering it had 128MB of RAM).

But no 3rd party apps. That was an after thought.

> But no 3rd party apps. That was an after thought.

Barely any platform had 3rd party apps. No one had a streamlined app store, SDK and monetization process like iOS came out with in 2008.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#610

Post by chrisco255 » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 6:30 AM UTC

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…

Screw mouse hover. iOS had the mind blowing pinch to zoom feature which made full page websites actually readable on mobile. They didn't even have to wait for mobile friendly. If you tried browsing the web on any phone pre-iOS it was a shit experience fraught with frustration.