Windows Phone GM leaving Microsoft, with a rallying cry • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows Phone GM leaving Microsoft, with a rallying cry

#31

Post by nitrogen » Mon, Aug 08, 2011, 10:43 PM UTC

i2o wrote: post #27

jsz0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame that both Windows MCE and Windows Home Server never lived up to their potential. Possibly we can add WM7 to that list in a few years too. I can understand why he's leaving. It must be horrible to develop these really good products and see your company drop the ball on them.

MCE's challenge (at the time) was the cable networks death grip on the signal. It took years for CableCARD to surface, and even then it was limited in its deployment geographically and provider wise. If that had been solved much quicker I bet we would have seen a larger MCE ecosystem form. Nowadays the world is moving on to online streaming which presents other challenges. Looking at Boxee's solution shows how hard i…

MCE shares its victimhood at the hands of content companies with the other media center solutions, like MythTV, XBMC, etc. The lack of a simple way to get cable TV into the PC (coupled with lawsuits targeting automated commercial skipping, etc.) relegated HTPC use to the brave few who were willing to set up IR blasters on their cable boxes or just download content instead of recording it.

It is the geek's torment to remember always what could have been, and suffer under what really is, thanks to the mighty powers that be (in this context the content companies, patent holders, etc.).

Re: Windows Phone GM leaving Microsoft, with a rallying cry

#32

Post by DenisM » Tue, Aug 09, 2011, 1:05 AM UTC

pedalpete wrote: post #25

DenisM wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find a single product on this list that I could say, "yep, that was worth it". DCOM - a pile of complexity even most Microsoft employees couldn't understand. Different threading models, security problems, you name it. In my early days as Microsoft employee one unfortunate guy decided to implement an app to manage installing latest build of a (different) product and running tests on a couple hundred machines;…

Just because you don't like/use the products is no reason to assault somebody else's work like that. Some of these products have resulted in millions of dollars and (apparently) some happy customers.

It's not just me not liking a product. I claim these products (the ones I listed) have failed to achieve any significant goals, anything worthy of the opportunity.

For example, yes, WHS sold quite a few devices, and it would be a huge success for a startup, but when you have the entire power of Microsoft behind your back, your goals need to be ambitious. I have outlined what I think WHS goals should have been - a backup solution for 80 percents of all platform users. In version "next" they could add file sharing for 80% of the users.

Anything less than that is a waste of opportunity, and a huge disservice to Microsoft users, employees, and shareholders.

Re: Windows Phone GM leaving Microsoft, with a rallying cry

#33

Post by zmonkeyz » Tue, Aug 09, 2011, 2:12 AM UTC

9oliYQjP wrote: post #30

DenisM wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find a single product on this list that I could say, "yep, that was worth it". DCOM - a pile of complexity even most Microsoft employees couldn't understand. Different threading models, security problems, you name it. In my early days as Microsoft employee one unfortunate guy decided to implement an app to manage installing latest build of a (different) product and running tests on a couple hundred machines;…

I'm a bit nostalgic but I think IE3 was huge. I was still in high school but I remember staying up all night so that I could download it the moment it was available. Up until IE3 was released, Netscape Navigator was virtually unchallenged. It was only a few months, but Netscape Navigator's big new feature was Javascript. IE3 came out with JScript support only a few months later and nullified much of Netscape Navigato…

Yeah man I really liked IE 3 at the time.

Re: Windows Phone GM leaving Microsoft, with a rallying cry

#34

Post by politician » Tue, Aug 09, 2011, 2:50 PM UTC

solutionyogi wrote: post #6

politician wrote: post #4

This sounds like another nail in the increasingly metal-rich coffin of Silverlight, or am I reading too much into this?

How is this in anyway related to Silverlight?

The Windows Phone 7 API is (more or less) a subset of Silverlight, and they share the same tools viz Expression Blend, XAML. From what I've read here on HN, it seems like there has been something of an exodus of key people from the Silverlight/WPF teams to other projects or companies.

That's all. Maybe I'm way off base.