Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read it as “Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admits giving up on (Windows Phone and mobile) was a mistake”
My memory is fuzzy but was: Windows Phone == Nokia? Or was Windows Phone not Nokia?
Windows phone killed Nokia
Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
101–110 of 205 posts
Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
#102One of the things I find very frustrating about Microsoft (and to a lesser extent Google) is how they will walk back nearly anything at the slightest pushback and cancel anything that isn't an immediate overnight success. The Kinect was really, really cool tech, and I dream about what could have been if MS had not made the Kinect thst came with the XBox One optional pretty much right after it was announced.
Wish they would have done this with Teams
Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
#103One of the things I find very frustrating about Microsoft (and to a lesser extent Google) is how they will walk back nearly anything at the slightest pushback and cancel anything that isn't an immediate overnight success. The Kinect was really, really cool tech, and I dream about what could have been if MS had not made the Kinect thst came with the XBox One optional pretty much right after it was announced.
bit of an anecdote on testing the Kinect. I was working in the Office devision at the time it launched and managed to (some how) get into the beta test team. They sent me one, originally with the plan of wanting it back, but in the end they said we could keep it. I still have mine somewhere with the Microsoft Asset tag on it... Anyway, after the first couple of weeks, testers got a general email about testing the dev…
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Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
#104I always felt like Microsoft was in a hard place when it came to Windows Phone. If they tried to market it as a third party alternative to Android, why would manufactures give up an OS they can customize and not have to pay to license (Do you have to pay of the play store?). Locking down Windows Mobile in the iPhone way is counter to how Microsoft runs Windows right now and would be a major uphill battle. The iPhone…
> Personally I don't think they gave up too soon, I think they were fighting an uphill battle that they were likely never going to Win
They did give up, because hardware development and support costs a ton of money, and they preferred the margins from selling Excel licenses.
They could have done what Apple did and invested heavily in hardware development for 10 years. They even had Microsoft stores rolled out, with clean Windows computers without malware installed by default.
But there was no stomach for lower profit margins and a longer term play.
Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft tried the Kinect for 13 years. How long are they supposed to let a product run? It was a cool tech solution in search of a problem.
You're glossing over a big part of the story. It is hard, really, really hard, to convince game developers and publishers to make games that require an optional accessory. It's been tried again and again and it is never more than a mild success and usually an abject failure. They want to target the base platform, which will always have a dramatically larger install base. Thr original Kinect was just such an optional…
IIRC, the Kinect was supposed to be an integral part of the XB1 package, but was made optional to compete (price-wise) with the PlayStation 4. Pretty unfortunate.
Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
#106Do I smell a round 2 for a Windows Phone? Imagine a new Windows Phone....that runs Android apps.
Microsoft had an Android compatability layer in WM10 betas, as well as an iOS layer. They didn't launch either, afaik, running the apps without platform services isn't great, so then it's a push towards developers --- port your app to WM10 much easier... But there's still work, and IMHO, the user share on WM10 wasn't compelling enough for new developers to do the work. https://seekingalpha.com/article/3447036-microso…
They did actually release phones running Android with a Metro skin:
Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
#107I really liked my windows phone. The colourful live tiles and the physical design were great. What it lacked was 3rd party apps.
I am by no means a Windows fan (Linux only sinds 2003) but Windows Phone/mobile was (and is, I have one still) awesome. Snappy, no frills, yet feature complete. Pretty interoperable. Pretty. Pity it's over.
I remember that quite differently. Windows Phone 7 lacked many basic functions like Bluetooth file transfer, the audio player didn't support gapless playback, alarm clock could not turn on your phone (a staple Nokia feature), Internet Explorer was always behind in supporting web standards (and Microsoft did not allow other browser engines). WP7 didn't even support front cameras until Mango Update.
The snappiness of apps was also hindered by network I/O in the UI thread (I mean wtf Microsoft).
WP8 did some things better but it was too little, too late. Nokia at some point bitterly complained about Microsoft's inertia in getting important features implemented that Nokia needed in order to sell phones (besides the apps, but that is another whole can of worms). https://www.techspot.com/news/53405-microsofts-slow-developm...
Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using WinUI is really easy to do. Whether you're using WinUI 2.8 with UWP or WinUI 3. So native GUI development isn't difficult at all. XAML is similar to HTML in a lot of ways. If you have your mind set on web development and want a native GUI, you could go with React Native for Windows.
Yeah, if one wants to have fun debugging all the issues that are still open since Project Reunion was announced in 2020, with less capable tooling than .NET Native and C++/CX, specially fun having to deal with CsWinRT and C++/WinRT, the latter already in maintenance, stuck in C++17, as the team is now having fun with Rust/WinRT. At least Native AOT might support WinUI in .NET 9, something to look forward to, for anyo…
I think the alphabet soup thrown around in this thread alone is indicative for what‘s wrong with Microsoft‘s native user interface story…
Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
#109I loved my windows phones so much. lumia 900 and 920. I totally bought in to the microsoft ecosystem because I wanted to keep using that phone OS and those phones. but the ecosystem sucked ass. none of microsoft's google/apple equivalents were up to par. one night when xbox music said I didn't have license to play any of my music on a long car ride home was the last straw. I bought a galaxy note 3 that evening when I…
Is it just me or is Windows phone looked back on with really heavy nostalgia? I never found it to be revolutionary or beautiful, and while I would welcome more players in the mobile space, I think Microsoft's behavior in every other part of its business makes me glad that their foray into mobile never took off.
I wonder if part of it was that they filled a gap that was sort of broken.
Low-end Android phones used to suck. Hell, even high-end ones. There was a lot of jank, battery life was mediocre, software looked and felt patched together.
Windows Phone delivered a really good experience even on the bottom-of-the-line hardware, Things were smooth, and most stuff (because it was either first-party or from committed devs) was built to fit the design language.
Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
#110I really liked my windows phone. The colourful live tiles and the physical design were great. What it lacked was 3rd party apps.
Lacking 3rd party apps was more of a symptom than a root cause in my opinion. Instead of being scrappy and trying to do whatever it took to gain marketshare in an area they were behind in they put a ton of limitations on their platform and it tanked adoption because the people who were willing to switch and try something new were by definition people who were going to be frustrated with this behavior. Things like not…
Microsoft both directly and indirectly turned app developers away from Windows Phone.
Mobile games at the time were all OpenGL ES, which Microsoft refused to support in favor of Direct3D.
Then there was Microsoft's perpetual need to start over. WM6.5 to WP7 broke app compatibility. WP7 to WP8, entirely new APIs. WP8 to WM10 there was UWP and Continuum, again forcing major rewrites if you wanted the new features.
And finally how Microsoft treated the devs themselves. Ad-supported apps depended on Microsoft's ad network which was artificially kept alive by Microsoft injecting money for Xbox and Office ads. Once Microsoft stopped, the whole thing folded, leaving developers with a sudden loss of income.
Developers from countries in Microsoft's 2nd tier additionally reported poor treatment and Kafka'esque bureaucracy preventing them from publishing apps: https://toshl.com/blog/why-publishing-on-the-windows-phone-m...
This is why I think the app situation would not have fixed itself over time, and MS efforts to ease transition like Project Islandwood were doomed from the start, because those fixed a problem but not the problem.