Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#281

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 11:36 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #175

blibble wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's one of the pathetic excuses I've ever read they're an OS developer and they can't spend a day figuring out a floating point bug? maybe redirect some of the time integrating Candy Crush

Windows 7 came out in 2009, at least three years before candy crush. > they're an OS developer and they can't spend a day figuring out a floating point bug? Maybe it’s bad to argue by appeal to authority, but I take Raymond Chen’s side that it was a hard problem to debug in the time available over some internet sneering that it must have been easy, any day.

> Windows 7 came out in 2009, at least three years before candy crush.

Well they haven't ported it in the decade since.

> in the time available

Same response.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#282

Post by sbierwagen » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

omaranto wrote: post #246

AlphaWeaver wrote: post #21

This is a real shame. We have (had?) a Microsoft Store in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham), and my visits to that store were always really enjoyable. I made several warranty claims in-store, and they went above and beyond to help me out, even when my grounds for a claim were kinda shaky. Microsoft did a really good job of hiring diverse talent, and every store-clerk I ever interacted with was smart, nice, and seemed to…

I have funny story of being helped in a Microsoft store. I once bought a BLU Windows Phone in a Microsoft store. I really liked having a Windows Phone mostly because no one I ever met had seen one before and both Apple and Android users were shocked when they saw it. :) After a few years my phone's battery indicator started failing, or at least that's what I think the problem was. The phone would suddenly say it was…

>After a few years my phone's battery indicator started failing, or at least that's what I think the problem was.

You describe the classic symptoms of a failing battery. The charging efficiency of a battery at the end of its life drops through the floor. This confuses the columb counter in the charge indicator: it sees an amp hour go into the battery, but most of it becomes heat, and maybe ten percent is useful charge. Therefore, the battery indicator happily says the battery is at 90% right up to when it abruptly dies.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#283

Post by omaranto » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

sbierwagen wrote: post #282

omaranto wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have funny story of being helped in a Microsoft store. I once bought a BLU Windows Phone in a Microsoft store. I really liked having a Windows Phone mostly because no one I ever met had seen one before and both Apple and Android users were shocked when they saw it. :) After a few years my phone's battery indicator started failing, or at least that's what I think the problem was. The phone would suddenly say it was…

>After a few years my phone's battery indicator started failing, or at least that's what I think the problem was. You describe the classic symptoms of a failing battery. The charging efficiency of a battery at the end of its life drops through the floor. This confuses the columb counter in the charge indicator: it sees an amp hour go into the battery, but most of it becomes heat, and maybe ten percent is useful charg…

No, my phone's battery indicator reported a much lower number than what I knew to be true. Say I fully charged the battery and turned on the phone. The indicator would start at 100% and go slowly down as I expected. Then at some point, around 70% the indicator would suddenly jump down to a much lower number, say 30%. If I kept using the phone the indicator would slowly go down at the expected rate, until at some point it would suddenly jump down to like 4%. The phone would then warn me it has extremely low battery and turn itself off.

Now, at this point I could estimate what the true remaining percentage was, just based on how long I had been using the phone. If often turned itself off when I reckoned it should be at 60%. If I turned the phone on again without charging it at all, the battery indicator would tell me that it did indeed have around the 60% charge I estimated.

The battery seemed to be holding charge just fine. If I added up all the usage I got out of a single charge, that time seemed to be about the same as before (a little over a day), it was just interrupted by several rounds of the phone thinking it had no battery left, turning itself on, me turning it on again and the phone sheepishly recognizing then it actually did have a lot of charge left.

Sorry if I didn't explain this understandably in the original comment.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#284

Post by sbierwagen » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 4:21 AM UTC

omaranto wrote: post #283

sbierwagen wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>After a few years my phone's battery indicator started failing, or at least that's what I think the problem was. You describe the classic symptoms of a failing battery. The charging efficiency of a battery at the end of its life drops through the floor. This confuses the columb counter in the charge indicator: it sees an amp hour go into the battery, but most of it becomes heat, and maybe ten percent is useful charg…

No, my phone's battery indicator reported a much lower number than what I knew to be true. Say I fully charged the battery and turned on the phone. The indicator would start at 100% and go slowly down as I expected. Then at some point, around 70% the indicator would suddenly jump down to a much lower number, say 30%. If I kept using the phone the indicator would slowly go down at the expected rate, until at some poin…

Behold in terror and glory the lithium-ion discharge curve: https://siliconlightworks.com/image/data/Info_Pages/Li-ion%2...

This is great for the powered device, since it's nice and flat, but annoying for determining state of charge from terminal voltage, since it's awful and flat. I have not personally developed a state-of-charge indicator, but I would guess that one might use columb counting for the first half of the curve, then voltage monitoring for the second half, introducing odd discontinuities in the 80%-30% range. A truly clapped out battery will up and die before it got to the second half; a merely old battery will just be strange and inconsistent.

>If I turned the phone on again without charging it at all, the battery indicator would tell me that it did indeed have around the 60% charge I estimated.

Another delightful behavior of battery cells is "voltage sag". Battery voltage drops under load. The more current you draw, the bigger the drop. If you draw a big whack of current, then leave the battery alone, the voltage will drift back up: https://www.powerstream.com/x/Christopher-Suozzo-engine-cran... Additionally, the more you ask of a battery, the less capacity it will have https://www.cloudynights.com/uploads/monthly_09_2014/post-21... (1C is 1x the capacity rating of the battery. A 1C discharge of a 2 amp hour battery is 2 amps, 2C 4 amps, etc) and the shorter its lifespan will be https://www.batteryuniversity.com/_img/content/DST-cycles-we...

Combine these factors, we discover that while your phone was behaving very unintuitively, it might not have been lying. If you hit an old cell phone with a big enough draw, (prime95, bitcoin mining, opening a cnn.com story without adblock) the battery indicator could correctly say that only 4% of the battery is left. Shut it off, letting the battery recover a bit, then turn it back on, and ta dah, by the voltage curve with a light idle discharge, it's got 60% left.

Cell phone batteries generally last two or three years. Four years+ requires light discharges and not recharging it fully. Essentially, not using it at all.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#285

Post by nolok » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 9:34 AM UTC

alexchantavy wrote: post #202

legitster wrote: post #198

Microsoft stores are (were?) magical places full of bizarre and weird devices. I actually had fun going in and seeing all sorts of gadgets and devices and playing with demos. A candy store for futurists. In comparison Apple stores are dystopian places full of rows of identical looking people looking at rows of identical beige phones. But I think it's pretty telling that I loved hanging out in them, but never spent an…

So funny that 10 years ago views about Microsoft and Apple were near the exact opposite of what you described here.

They really weren't. Ten years ago Apple had even more conformity and less choice than now, while Microsoft offering already full of fun stuff that would not exist anymore 3 years later.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#286

Post by omaranto » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

sbierwagen wrote: post #284

omaranto wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, my phone's battery indicator reported a much lower number than what I knew to be true. Say I fully charged the battery and turned on the phone. The indicator would start at 100% and go slowly down as I expected. Then at some point, around 70% the indicator would suddenly jump down to a much lower number, say 30%. If I kept using the phone the indicator would slowly go down at the expected rate, until at some poin…

Behold in terror and glory the lithium-ion discharge curve: https://siliconlightworks.com/image/data/Info_Pages/Li-ion%2... This is great for the powered device, since it's nice and flat, but annoying for determining state of charge from terminal voltage, since it's awful and flat. I have not personally developed a state-of-charge indicator, but I would guess that one might use columb counting for the first half of t…

Interesting! I thought the battery itself wasn't the problem mainly because the battery life hadn't gone down (I was still getting the same number of hours between charges if you added up the time my phone was on), but I also didn't know the symptoms I did see were consistent with battery problems. Thanks!

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#287

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 7:33 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #263

dangus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with this. The Microsoft Store was basically a bad version of Best Buy that happened to sell Microsoft's hardware products front and center. Why would a customer go to a Microsoft Store instead of a Best Buy? It has less selection, fewer locations, and likely worse prices, while selling essentially the same product categories. The Apple Store, in contrast, is arguably mostly possible because it's a mass…

Because you could buy a Windows PC at the Microsoft store and not have to spend hours removing all of the third party crapware from the OEM and even more crapware from Best Buy. Either that, or you have to go directly to the vendors website and buy one of the business laptops.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#288

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #279

WorldMaker wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every US city with an Apple Store had at least the mall kiosk version of the Microsoft Store, almost always within earshot or horizon distance from the Apple Store "coincidentally".

Why “coincidentally” in scare quotes? If one company is going to open an electronics store, they will put it where it is accessible to the most possible customers. If another company wants to open one they can either put it in the same place for the same reason - and now there are customers who go to that region to buy that kind of goods making it more desirable - or they can put it somewhere else where it is accessi…

Not so much "scare quotes" as "wink, wink" quotes, somewhere between a joke and reality.

Some of it was documented as intentional. The one specific one I know was that Microsoft was said very explicitly in location scouting in New York that their NYC store needed to be close the Apple Store.

Anecdotally, my city has two malls on the same side of the same street with an interstate in between them (and today owned by the same management company even). Apple for various reasons chose the smaller of the two with less overall foot traffic. Microsoft could have gone to the mall with more foot traffic, but didn't. While anecdotes are not proof, it is amusing sign.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#289

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #255

WorldMaker wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I'm in a similar place. I believe that Amazon's electronics "department" is little better than eBay these days and the amount of digging just keeps increasing that you need to do to figure out who is actually selling the device, what their business model is, and if you can trust their listing. (Are they a warehouse arbitrage just moving stuff from Wal-Mart/Target/Costco/etc around, based on who has the hi…

I mostly only buy if Amazon is the seller... at least returns are pretty consistent that way, though still subject to mingling. Same goes for using newegg... was really sad when newegg added 3rd party sellers, it muddied the site.

Thing to watch out for is that Amazon often is the shipper but not the seller and some of Amazon's greedier dark patterns make it tough sometimes to notice that a product that looks sold by Amazon just means it is shipped by Amazon. (It's one of the UX things were they have to be clear about it but are fighting themselves with how clear to be. Both phrases "sold by" and "shipped by" start with "s" end with "by" and you certainly have to imagine Amazon counts on you skimming the middle parts in some of their UI layouts.) Outside of "Amazon Basics" brand products, Amazon directly sells almost no electronics, from my anecdata, but they certainly ship for a large percentage of their 3rd party sellers (because of course they do, that's the easiest way to make items Prime Eligible and thus further their Amazon SEO quotients).

Though Amazon can be credited that they are consistent with returns in "shipped by" products as much as they are with "sold by" products. At least there their attempts at confusing the marketplace means they hold up some standards universally as well.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#290

Post by tracker1 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #289

tracker1 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly only buy if Amazon is the seller... at least returns are pretty consistent that way, though still subject to mingling. Same goes for using newegg... was really sad when newegg added 3rd party sellers, it muddied the site.

Thing to watch out for is that Amazon often is the shipper but not the seller and some of Amazon's greedier dark patterns make it tough sometimes to notice that a product that looks sold by Amazon just means it is shipped by Amazon. (It's one of the UX things were they have to be clear about it but are fighting themselves with how clear to be. Both phrases "sold by" and "shipped by" start with "s" end with "by" and y…

I'm pretty careful about that... I will almost always only order if Amazon (or the mfg) is the seller... and even then, I still favor Amazon (mostly for return hassles).