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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

#711

Post by fpig »

WorldMaker wrote: post #707
maxxxxx wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But again they have no upgrade path. They just produce something new and expect everyone to jump on board. My expectation is that UWP will last 2-3 years and then they will have something else that does the same but in a different way and UWP is in maintenance mode.

You may be confused. .NET Standard 2.0 support for UWP means the upgrade path is (finally) here today. Start a UWP project in VS 2017.4, make sure the project targets the Fall Creator's Update (the Windows 10 feature update to be released at the end of this month), and from that UWP app you can now add a reference to almost anything on NuGet you want. .NET Standard 2.0 support means that if it ran on the .NET Framewo…

Wait so are you saying UWP apps can now access the machine they're running on in a sane manner (so, limited only by the privileges of the user who ran the app, without additional limitations enforced by the platform itself)?

Because that was the main limitation of Metro apps, you couldn't really do anything useful with them, you couldn't even access the hard drive normally or edit the windows registry. This is why you couldn't "upgrade". It wasn't an upgrade to any previous tech, it was a downgrade as the platform literally had less capabilities. It is, or at least was, basically a platform for making sandboxed mobile apps that you can run on the desktop...

This is why they clearly weren't (at least Metro, I haven't worked with UWP) an "upgrade" to anything. Silverlight wasn't an "upgrade" to WPF for the exact same reason. It was a more limited platform and you couldn't switch WPF apps over. So MS calling Silverlight or Metro a new version of WPF would have been retarded.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#712

Post by WorldMaker »

fpig wrote: post #711
WorldMaker wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be confused. .NET Standard 2.0 support for UWP means the upgrade path is (finally) here today. Start a UWP project in VS 2017.4, make sure the project targets the Fall Creator's Update (the Windows 10 feature update to be released at the end of this month), and from that UWP app you can now add a reference to almost anything on NuGet you want. .NET Standard 2.0 support means that if it ran on the .NET Framewo…

Wait so are you saying UWP apps can now access the machine they're running on in a sane manner (so, limited only by the privileges of the user who ran the app, without additional limitations enforced by the platform itself)? Because that was the main limitation of Metro apps, you couldn't really do anything useful with them, you couldn't even access the hard drive normally or edit the windows registry. This is why yo…

Things are still sandboxed, but the sandbox has grown a lot since early Windows 8 ("Metro" era). Depending on your definition of "sane", it seems rather "sane" to me to have at least some sandbox protection of the applications to run. Yes, Windows 8 felt like a straight-jacket more than a sandbox to some, but current UWP, especially with .NET Standard 2.0 support in the FCU, at least builds with most of the libraries even if some of them are essentially no-ops or (security) exceptions at runtime.

So, you still can't touch the registry by default, but why would you want to? There are much better places to store stuff.

The UWP is meant to be a replacement for Win32, so it shouldn't be a shock that a lot of Win32 components aren't available by default.

However, you can use the Desktop Bridge and request permission in your app manifest for more privileges, including things like registry access. The Desktop Bridge has a lot of examples out there on things you can do. You can use the Desktop Bridge to transition a WPF app slowly to UWP over time. For instance, you could launch UWP screens from your WPF app, allowing you to move piece-at-a-time if you wanted. There are even samples on how to migrate settings currently stored in the registry (ugh, why) over to Local AppData storage like a proper application, to transition away from Win32 bad practices. (Of course, the parts of the application that need the Desktop Bridge will only work on Windows with a Win32 subsystem.)

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#713

Post by dpark »

asveikau wrote: post #708
dpark wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The set of people interested in running external DACs for their phones is vanishingly small. I’m pretty sure that losing that market wasn’t what doomed Windows Phone. Regardless, my point wasn’t that the hardware was perfect for everyone or every use case. The point was that there were premium Windows Phone devices before the 950 showed up. The 950 arrived after the end state for Windows Phone was pretty obvious.

> The set of people interested in running external DACs for their phones is vanishingly small. The point is that everybody is a different niche. If you start this attitude that feature X is uncommon and not worth the effort, then you do that for a thousand feature X's, eventually you make a product for no one and since you can't predict what niche feature X will suddenly become more important later, the future doesn'…

The “features” missing from Windows Phone were mostly high quality 3rd party apps. Windows Phone had a ton of great features in itself.

As a dev (at Microsoft), I’m well aware of the potential risk of dismissing features. However, I’m also aware that features are not free. Everyone who actually ships has to make tradeoffs. You can’t ship every feature so you have to cut ones that you think are low value (to the customer or the business, depending on how you look at it).

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#714

Post by asveikau »

dpark wrote: post #713
asveikau wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The set of people interested in running external DACs for their phones is vanishingly small. The point is that everybody is a different niche. If you start this attitude that feature X is uncommon and not worth the effort, then you do that for a thousand feature X's, eventually you make a product for no one and since you can't predict what niche feature X will suddenly become more important later, the future doesn'…

The “features” missing from Windows Phone were mostly high quality 3rd party apps. Windows Phone had a ton of great features in itself. As a dev (at Microsoft), I’m well aware of the potential risk of dismissing features. However, I’m also aware that features are not free. Everyone who actually ships has to make tradeoffs. You can’t ship every feature so you have to cut ones that you think are low value (to the custo…

I spent time at MS too, and I have worked on a WP app, and I don't think my comment has been grokked here. It was the app platform I was thinking of the most that was missing lots of features, and I would say the whole approach to how the app platform people exposed device capabilities was both wrongheaded and not at parity with what the other guys did. And instead of being aware of this gap and taking corrective action, they doubled down into Raymond Chen style "every feature starts at minus 100 points", which works well if you have a desktop monopoly but not as well in a truly competitive market, and meanwhile can be used to justify a lot of bad behavior.

I don't think the whole answer fits in a comment box though. If you have interest in learning more offline I can explain it further.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#715

Post by jasonlotito »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #590
jasonlotito wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but why tell me?

Because you are the one making nonsense arguments.

My argument? I wasn't making an argument about the iPhone, merely commenting on the hypocrisy of those making these claims and how they were used before to bolster Apple.

You can't hold both to be true at the same time. Either Apple was wrong with it's Maps release, or Microsoft was fine when not competing. You can't say Apple was right and Microsoft was wrong. It's illogical.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#716

Post by dpark »

asveikau wrote: post #714
dpark wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “features” missing from Windows Phone were mostly high quality 3rd party apps. Windows Phone had a ton of great features in itself. As a dev (at Microsoft), I’m well aware of the potential risk of dismissing features. However, I’m also aware that features are not free. Everyone who actually ships has to make tradeoffs. You can’t ship every feature so you have to cut ones that you think are low value (to the custo…

I spent time at MS too, and I have worked on a WP app, and I don't think my comment has been grokked here. It was the app platform I was thinking of the most that was missing lots of features, and I would say the whole approach to how the app platform people exposed device capabilities was both wrongheaded and not at parity with what the other guys did. And instead of being aware of this gap and taking corrective act…

I didn’t build anything for Windows Phone (or any phone) so I don’t have much experience with the platform’s SDK weaknesses. I mostly heard that programming for it was pretty nice but that it just wasn’t worth it because of the user base. That’s just my anecdote though.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#717

Post by erikpukinskis »

nova22033 wrote: post #442
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…

> the top 25 apps for mobile at the time This list keeps changing every month. Remember Pokemon Go?

6 million daily active users remember Pokémon Go and spent $1B on it in 2016.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#718

Post by erikpukinskis »

megy wrote: post #589
jasonlotito wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

And other people also said that it has to be as good as google maps now. And it has gotten better. Still not google maps good.

You don't need to be better than your competitors on every axis. You need to be good enough on every axis, and better on at least one axis that is a common purchase decider.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#719

Post by erikpukinskis »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #72

Windows Mobile is my favorite example of ecosystems being more valuable than individual user experiences. They came out later and really managed to hit a bright spot in between the customizability of Android and the sleekness of iOS. But without the deep app ecosystem backing them up, I'm not sure we're going to see any new players emerge in this current form factor of mobile computing. So far we've seen: - Amazon fa…

> it's a bet on being able to muscle into the absolutely massive mobile ecosystem.

The difficulty there is at least 90% of the AR market will be passive experiences, and at least half of those will be hand held, which basically means Apple and Android have already won half of the AR market, they can just photocopy their way to market share the way Microsoft did in the 90s.

And the trouble for headset makers is that handheld market will put some serious network effect pressure on them.

The hope I see is that technical differentiation will provide the moat against Apple and Google, but I have a hard time imagining what tech is going to be so hard for them to copy.

The most sensitive users will just stick to handheld where fidelity doesn't matter. And the most adventurous users will just go where the content is. The HiFi segment is the entirety of VR early adopters right now, but I see them as a thin minority squeezed between those other groups in the endgame (motion averse and content focused).

Although fidelity has some virtuous cycles with content production. So there might be a strategy there for Facebook or Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#720

Post by emodendroket »

vidarh wrote: post #670
emodendroket wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be implying they were much more readily available in the United States, which seems like a stretch.

I didn't imply anything about actual availability at all, but about how perceived availability matters.

To restate my point more clearly, the situation was much the same in the US.
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