11–20 of 85 posts
tl;dr: Guy keeps buying shitty MS mobile products, MS dutifully keeps making shitty mobile products. Very reminiscent of Apple fans in the '90s, buying crap products because they've defined themselves to be on Team Apple.
tl;dr: Guy keeps buying shitty MS mobile products, MS dutifully keeps making shitty mobile products. Very reminiscent of Apple fans in the '90s, buying crap products because they've defined themselves to be on Team Apple.
Microsoft's an interesting beast. Things that "should" matter to them, like Windows, somehow reach the point of almost falling apart (see Windows Me or Vista). Then, groups that are practically losing money build great things like the Xbox 360 and Kinect. Some products that stumble end up dead, like the Zune, while others are dragged back up to par (see IE9 and Windows 7). This current mess could mean anything from "…
Windows ME was a result of MS moving their top talent to the NT group. ME should have never been released, but Win2K wasn't ready to be the consumer OS. When you don't have the company riding on you, you can take bigger risks. It will be interesting to see what Windows 8 ends up becoming. Vista was largely a failure because they were overly ambitious, despite common belief. I fear that this failure will prevent Windo…
Microsoft's an interesting beast. Things that "should" matter to them, like Windows, somehow reach the point of almost falling apart (see Windows Me or Vista). Then, groups that are practically losing money build great things like the Xbox 360 and Kinect. Some products that stumble end up dead, like the Zune, while others are dragged back up to par (see IE9 and Windows 7). This current mess could mean anything from "…
That's the thing I never understood about Microsoft. When they really focus, and spend more time on producing a product versus marketing a product, the seem to do some great things (SEE: Windows 2000/NT). It seems like MS could really use from some user centric project managers or something to really get them on the course to consistent delivery, because that's what's lacking. Vista was a bust, 7 was a phenom by MS s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Windows ME was a result of MS moving their top talent to the NT group. ME should have never been released, but Win2K wasn't ready to be the consumer OS. When you don't have the company riding on you, you can take bigger risks. It will be interesting to see what Windows 8 ends up becoming. Vista was largely a failure because they were overly ambitious, despite common belief. I fear that this failure will prevent Windo…
For the record that's not really true. By the time Windows ME came out windows development had been split into two pieces. There was the Shell group that was consolidated under Brad Silverberg. And then there was the core operating system group that was under Jim Allchin. So Windows ME actually was the work of the shell group being grafted onto what was still Windows 98. So the reason it sucks so much was because it…
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/reviews/the-road-to-gold...
A couple of key quotes:
"Previously, the Consumer Windows team had been lumped under Jim Allchin's Windows team, which was furiously working to complete Windows 2000, the company's enterprise OS product. But when it became obvious that a consumer version of Windows 2000 was out of the question, the stagnating Consumer Windows team finally got its wish: To create a final release in the Windows 9x product line"
and
"Just a year earlier, at the 1998 version of WinHEC, Bill Gates had announced that Windows 98 would be the end of the line."
There wasn't supposed to be a Win ME, and there shouldn't have been. Win 2000 was supposed to be the merge point of consumer and enterprise, but wasn't ready.
Maybe it was Silverberg that led the consumer team to create WinME, I don't know. What I do know is that most of the talent was working on the NT side by that point (not to say that the ME folks were hacks, but they weren't the strongest OS team MS had).
I think this attitude has been the downfall of a lot of developers over the years. You fall in love with the development environment and then you transfer that love to the platform itself. The problem is sometimes great platforms aren't paired with great products. Microsoft is at least two generations behind Google and Apple at this point. Some would argue three generations. I'm a .net developer who loves C# too so I…
It feels like MS isn't putting enough skin in the game. They shipped the OS in September. Great. That gets you a toe in the door. They should have rev'ed that OS at least as many times as Apple has theirs. Apple has shipped 5 updates to iOS since September. MS -- one (the update to prepare for future updates, so really not even a real update). That's embarrassing that the market leader, with 300k apps in the appstore and 100M devices on the market is more agile. And as a developer, you have to ask yourself, "Is this a platform I want to get in bed with?" At this point, I wouldn't.
And have there really been NO bugfixes or patches (other than the notorious one he mentioned)? That's insane. Microsoft has got to know how far behind the ball they are... why aren't they pulling out all the stops on this?
For Microsoft: This isn't Windows. You can't wait 3 years (or more) for every release.
-- Android resets your phone to factory settings without asking you or even giving a warning if you port a number to it. This deserves a class-action lawsuit. See here: http://androidforums.com/droid-x-support-troubleshooting/131...
-- Using the built in email application, sent emails often stuck in the outbox. See here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=6d4...
-- Wifi on the phone does not work if SSID is hidden. See here: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1041
-- Bluetooth on the device is unable to connect to a desktop to transfer files or sync. See here: http://www.bing.com/search?q=android+bluetooth+paired+but+no...
-- Once you sign in into Google Account using any Google app (like Gmail), you cannot sign out, ever! Only way to "sign out" is to reset the phone to factory defaults, which means loosing all your data and needing phone activation again. See here: http://www.sizzledcore.com/2009/12/27/how-to-remove-change-g...
-- They have artificially blocked use of Google Calendar app on the phone from functioning unless using a Google Account. Of course Google isn't interested in Outlook Sync, but even third-party developers suffer. Many have started providing their own calendar apps. See here: http://www.syncdroid.net/
If you follow the links, you may notice that many of the issues have been open for a few years, some since Android version 1.6, etc. Google just does not care.
To fix the issue with sent emails stuck in the outbox, people have started from the source code of the built-in email app and created K-9 mail, which is 10X more powerful, and works.
I wonder what this experience is like compared to early Android adopters? Was there similar issues, with bugs and then updates not coming for them?
I got a bunch of very confused texts from him before we figured that one out. Now whenever I text him, I have to append (This is Erik).