51–60 of 66 posts
> While Microsoft Office for mobile is a satisfying success ... Are there numbers supporting this claim? A cursory search revealed no publicly released usage statistics
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I too like my Lumia more than any previous phone I've had. Unfortunately there's one key problem which means I won't be getting another one - I have no way of getting an offline copy of my phone backups. I didn't realise for a while after purchase and it's not such an issue to make me immediately want to get a new phone, but I refuse to relinquish that control by choice.
Nasty regression then. On my lumia 800 (wp7) I could do offline backups to my computer.
"Cliff Simpkins (Sr Product Manager, Windows Developer) responded:
Currently, the platform provides a number of SMS Access from a system eventing perspective (as of Windows Phone 8.1), and Windows Phone supports sms backup/restore for consumers as part of the base OS (Settings Backup). What we don’t provide is a backup API."
The only backup offered is in form of Outlook cloud, there is no way of retrieving your backup from the cloud, you can only restore into another windows phone device. If you happen to have non Lumia device and want data you need to first backup to cloud, then restore into Lumia branded phone (that you bought/borrowed for the occasion), and then backup again using Lumia proprietary backup app that lets you store locally. YAY M$
They do with Cyanogen what they did with Xenix: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
I don't know why people would suggest that Microsoft fork Android. Windows Phone is by far and away the best experience i've had on a phone, and my Lumia 930 is the nicest phone i've used (after coming from a series of iPhones). Don't get me started on the Surface Pro 3, which is probably the most impressive device i've ever had. Microsoft's devices strategy wont be clear until after Windows 10 is launched, I feel, a…
I think the most obvious reason is lack of adoption, both by users & developers. There are lots of apps out there for Android & iOS. Microsoft has such a small market share and, in the eyes of many outside the Microsoft ecosystem, have little change of growing it. Meaning the cost-benefit for developing Windows versions of your apps just isn't there.
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> I think people need to get over that period in Microsoft's history. Are you saying they righted their wrongs in this regard? I don't think so. They are slightly better than before may be, but they have a lot of old baggage left. I can't say they stopped their lock-in tactics already and became friendly to open standards. Others have their wrongs as well, but the article is about Microsoft.
It is just how to world operates. You are powerful -> you take measures to keep that power. I don't know what all the fuss is about. It's the most natural thing. Did they take it over the top? Yes. Did the DoJ cut them in half for it? Yes. At this point I think it's hipster boys mindless repeating a mantra they haven't even thought about more than 2 minutes in their lives.
It's not an excuse for such practices. Or one can use it to excuse any dictator as well. There is no "fuss". Such practices are straight despicable and unacceptable.
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I frankly think that Microsoft more nefarious tactics have hurt them more than helped them over the long run. Take the browser wars as an example. Bundling IE got massive share which then bred arrogance, stagnation, and lack of standards compatibility. That set that stage for IE becoming reviled for all of those things and the rise of Chrome/FireFox. There was certainly a bad ride for consumers along the way, but the…
Those tactics took them from being a big PC software company to one of the largest and most powerful corporations on the planet, that was just printing money under the "flat years" of Ballmer. Are you suggesting that those tactics are so ingrained that they cannot be repaired? Sure ie isn't the thought leader, but who gives a shit when you are printing money like they are? I think the hipster chic only matters for gr…
Resiliency in crooked tactics is not a good trait.
I don't know why people would suggest that Microsoft fork Android. Windows Phone is by far and away the best experience i've had on a phone, and my Lumia 930 is the nicest phone i've used (after coming from a series of iPhones). Don't get me started on the Surface Pro 3, which is probably the most impressive device i've ever had. Microsoft's devices strategy wont be clear until after Windows 10 is launched, I feel, a…
In many ways Windows Phone reminds me of the rebooted Palm Inc. webOS provided a far superior user experience to iOS and Android circa 2008-9, but in the end "meh" hardware and limited carrier support weighed them down more than great UX could lift them up. Microsoft has more money to burn trying to break that cycle than Palm did, of course -- but on the other hand iOS and Android are far more solidly entrenched in the top 2 positions than they were seven years ago.
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Office for Android doesn't suck. That was a big missing piece.
But why is MS any better or different than Google?
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For popular devices, the bottleneck with Android updates isn't really the resources to develop them, it's the carrier certification process. You can see that when the same device gets updates on some countries/carriers and not others. CyanogenMod doesn't address that, it just evades it via unlocked bootloaders and flashing. The more official they try to be, the more they will run into the same problems.
Why is carrier certification a thing? The carrier supplies a SIM card and as long as the device cna properly use its antenna and the SIM card the carrier should not need to do anything else.
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Office for Android doesn't suck. That was a big missing piece.
But why is MS any better or different than Google?