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Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

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Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

#191

Post by JeremyNT »

akhosravian wrote: post #150
jnwatson wrote: post #40

Earlier 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.

The Kinect was released in November 2010. Are you suggesting they’re still running it? My understanding is it died ~six months after the Xbox one released (early 2014) when they stopped bundling it with that console. They kept selling it for several years after, but it was inconceivable it would do anything but die at that point.

I mean, it was a better gimmick than the Wii, but it turns out the Wii was good enough.

People didn't want to pay a premium price for a motion gimmick. The Wii hit the sweet spot for casual gamers and they didn't care that the fidelity was lousy.

Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

#192

Post by steve1977 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #188
steve1977 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I was rather talking about the operating system itself, not the apps. But if you want to take this particular example, it’s very simple to just download Acrobat Reader or some alternative.

Acrobat reader does not let you edit PDFs. And trusting 3rd party programs on Windows is not something I would advise for non tech savvy people. My point is Windows has a known malware problem, editing PDFs is a common need these days, and Microsoft has the resources to provide a built in non malware PDF editor. Yet they do not bother to fulfill a simple need for their customers.

Acrobat Reader does let you sign PDFs and fill in forms, those were the two use cases you mentioned.

Windows has a built-in PDF reader with basic editing functionality in the form of Microsoft Edge actually (although I've never used it for that purpose to be honest).

As for a non-malware PDF editor, I'm not sure if Preview.app is such a great example in light of the recent image processing zero-days ;)

Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

#193

Post by tibbydudeza »

jnwatson wrote: post #40
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #16

One 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.

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.

A product in search of a problem - that game "Milo" was such a scripted farce.

Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

#194

Post by pjmlp »

chithanh wrote: post #190
pjmlp wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One random dude on HN isn't numerous comments from game developers. The effort to port between Windows and Windows Phone was way less than between Windows and XBox.

The comment which I linked was just an illustration. And I was talking about porting mobile games from iOS/Android to Windows Phone. Besides that, porting wasn't easy even for apps which worked on Windows already. The API was quite different, and not in a good way. For example none of the standard Windows file I/O API was available. There was DirectX but it was DX11 FL9_3 which is not how you access GPUs on desktop W…

An illustration without market relevance.

It was still DirectX and Win32 for the most part.

Only FOSS indie devs make such an uproar of OpenGL and friends.

Walk around GDC, PAX, GDCE to see how much professional game developers care.

Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

#195

Post by [deleted] »

jnwatson wrote: post #40
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #16

One 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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

#196

Post by musicale »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #128
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, there is absolutely no way to integrate the Kinect into games in a meaningful way. Name just one example where it was done so that you would think "wow this has potential". Throwing grenades by gesture in call of duty? Biggest LOL ever. When I'm playing a competitive multiplayer title, I want precise, quick controls, and not let go of my controller to gesture around like a brain-damaged monkey. With Kinect, you h…

> Name just one example where it was done so that you would think "wow this has potential"

Dance Central 3 and Just Dance 2015 (?) were terrific.

Kinect was great for music/rhythm/dance games in general.

Now I want to go back and try Fruit Ninja, Kinect Adventures, and the Gunstringer.

Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

#198

Post by jinushaun »

Clamchop wrote: post #39
doubled112 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked mine too. Sometimes I think I was the only one, but now I know there were at least three of us. I had what I think was the lowest end Lumia at the time, a Lumia 520 maybe? It did what it did really well. The camera was surprisingly OK. The tiles meant I could see what I needed without tapping around. It was much more responsive than other phones in its price range from what I remember too.

I remember a lot of positive commentary on Windows Phone's UI and concepts. It was distinctive from iPhone and Android, which, with Android largely aping iOS, were pretty same-same, so it was a refreshing reinterpretation. And besides that, a third credible competitor was and still is welcome. I think you were far from alone in your disappointment watching it wither on the vine.

I owned a windows phone. No. It was bad. It had all the misguided UX problems of Windows 8, but in your pocket. Such bad usability. Given more time, I don’t think it would’ve gotten better based on other MS software offerings in 2023

Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

#199

Post by jinushaun »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #178
steve1977 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been using macOS at home for about 23 years now, but what was the last really useful new feature they added?

Microsoft still has no equivalent to the Preview app. Signing and filling out PDFs is a common use case.

IIRC, MS is not legally allowed to make an PDF editor that would compete with Adobe. The DOJ monopoly case against MS really killed innovation at MS.

Re: Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

#200

Post by rbanffy »

pjmlp wrote: post #163
rbanffy wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the things that made WebOS interesting and a competitor to both iPhone and Android (and Blackberry, and Windows) are gone and not usable in the TV interface. I remember some people did have a half-working port to the PinePhone, but I don't know how far did it go.

If it was a worthy competitor it would have stayed around in mobile devices, I was never impressed with the Web based UI in the Psions. Nokia had already tried it a couple of years before with the Web runtime for Symbian, and it wasn't great either, nor the failed Firefox OS. It lives on as TV OS, and actually the experience is much better than Android TV, regarding the UI junk (less of it), hence why I got it. And y…

> Nokia had already tried it a couple of years before with the Web runtime for Symbian, and it wasn't great either, nor the failed Firefox OS.

IIRC, WebOS was the first mobile to rely on WebKit for the whole UI presentation layer. Prior to that, nothing was fast enough.

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