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Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#581

Post by rodorgas »

itsmenotyou wrote: post #30

I was working in Microsoft about 5 years ago and Satya's not lying when they say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of the company at the time. For keystone apps they tried to partner with developers doing most of the work for them. For more niche apps they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the pr…

I think Microsoft could greatly improve developer support. I've sent my Edge extension in April and still have no response.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#582

Post by titanix2 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #431
je42 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OMG. MFC ? You mean Microsoft Foundation Classes ? mmh. that stuff is still supported ? eventhough there was/is all the .NET crazyness. That's actually pretty good of MS. I guess the main question is: how do you in advance if you got a MFC-like library from MS with 20+ year support vs a library like Sliverlight where they drop support and let you alone with a migration to a different platform ?

As someone that worked on migrations to Silverlight and then to UWP, I still don't understand why these are seen as such big deals. The APIs were more similar than they were different and XAML is still XAML. (The only big loss from Silverlight was being able to browser-host it, but even then that was probably worth losing for the greater good to avoid terrible plugin websites.) The only thing they really dropped was…

These frameworks are by no way equivalent. Silverlight was running on multiple versions of Windows and Mac OS. It should have being kept just for that awesome feature.

On the other hand Win8/10 apps don’t run on anything than the OS they were released on. Which is totally laughable because it means choosing the MS stack allow one to target less Windows OSes than third party tools. So these SDK were doomed from the beginning as thay couldn’t leverage the existing Windows userbase.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#583

Post by dethswatch »

itsmenotyou wrote: post #30

I was working in Microsoft about 5 years ago and Satya's not lying when they say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of the company at the time. For keystone apps they tried to partner with developers doing most of the work for them. For more niche apps they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the pr…

It was the first phone I'd bought in 7 years that didn't let you add your own ringtones.

That's how far behind it was.

I didn't get copy/paste for about a year. It's like you guys were -trying- to cargo-cult the iphone.

Unfortunately, Belfiore returned after his leave of absence.

God help you.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#584

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

dabockster wrote: post #389
pjc50 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outlook+Exchange is really the thing keeping Microsoft alive.

And Active Directory. I mean, I haven't found another platform yet that allows a sysadmin to control 10,000+ computers at the OS level simultaneously via one checkbox. Clear area for disruption here. But it's IT stuff, so no one wants to touch it because it's not a cool selfie app.

Novell's directory made Windows domains look like a toy. But Microsoft abused their monopoly status, and pushed Novell out of the space. I still miss it.

And then they made AD, and extended the LDAP spec so that 3rd-party clients had a hard time working with it. But I digress.

Microsoft continues to exist because they can setup a system -- for many millions of dollars -- that allow a Fortune 500 to lock down PC's to the point of, say, not allowing users to change the desktop background. And CIO's nod their heads, stroke their chins, and say, "Yes, we need this. Our data is INFINITELY valuable. The files we create in the course of manufacturing something that can easily be bought, disassembled, measured, and knocked off in China, needs AS MUCH PROTECTION AS I CAN POSSIBLY SPEND MONEY ON. Oh, and 'SOX'! Feel free to make the users' workflow as miserable as possible."

In my opinion, this is why Windows Phone didn't make it. Microsoft's continuing vision is in letting someone ELSE control your computing devices. A phone is too personal for that.

Azure has provided enough of this IT-end-user-abuse-control such that big companies are following right into their cloud product. For this, all I can do is tip my hat to Nadella. Well played, sir. Well played.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#585

Post by vacri »

notatoad wrote: post #403
dabockster wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Active Directory. I mean, I haven't found another platform yet that allows a sysadmin to control 10,000+ computers at the OS level simultaneously via one checkbox. Clear area for disruption here. But it's IT stuff, so no one wants to touch it because it's not a cool selfie app.

Sysadmins aren't big fans of disruption either. You could build the greatest active-directory replacement in the world and no IT department would touch it with a ten foot pole because it isn't what they're used to.

It would have to prove itself in smaller shops first. If you're running a multi-thousand-user shop, you'd be insane to be a first-adopter for something as critical as "can my employees even start working each day?". It's not a matter of "what they're used to", it's a matter of risk management. And with things this big, it's not IT's call to make, it's a business decision; it needs to come from the top, because the penalties of failure go well outside the IT department.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#586

Post by nikodunk »

microtherion wrote: post #355
narrator wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about the MS platforms that has always been an issue is that they change the developer APIs around all the time. Every year they come out with the latest greatest way to access a database or whatever and it really isn't that much better than what they had last year, but it still requires a rewrite.

Basically "Fire and Motion" in a situation where that strategy is NOT to their advantage. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/

Wow that was a great read.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#587

Post by TuringNYC »

kpxxx wrote: post #450
shanev wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) http://www.drumkit.co 2) Built in Objective-C with a custom audio engine in C++. Audio latency on Android was horrible at that time, MS was probably worse. It would have been a terrible app on those platforms if I did port it. This was before cross-platform toolkits existed. It needed to be a native app with low level access audio to hardware. I wasn't going to make an app where you tap a drum and wait 100ms to he…

> MS was probably worse. Not that this counters anything you said nor that relevant to this topic, but as a nerd I am genuinely curious if this was true. I used to write lowlat audio stuff for iOS so I was well aware of the situation Android vs iOS (and because of my large interest in audio Android in general always makes me puke in my mouth a little -- like it is one of those neat little hidden indicators that while…

Not knowing much about the topic (but knowing a lot of an adjacent topic of getting NDK working for video+cv on Android) -- sometimes it comes down to documentation, existing examples, StackOverflow content, etc. Even if it is possible, if it isnt well documented, it doesnt matter.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#588

Post by jimmies »

sametmax wrote: post #174
itsmenotyou wrote: post #30

I was working in Microsoft about 5 years ago and Satya's not lying when they say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of the company at the time. For keystone apps they tried to partner with developers doing most of the work for them. For more niche apps they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the pr…

They tried everything, except for open standards, foss, focus on user privacy or anything that would have have made them different.

That is pretty much the reason I didn't have a Windows phone. I would have considered it if it actually did promise privacy.

Free phone sounds nice, but tinkerers like me don't want to apply and get the approval lottery for shit. We wanted cheap phones. The Android ecosystem at that time was already matured to the point that you can get cheap no frills, no worries if you break it secondhands. It was an obvious choice when I could get a secondhand Android phone with all the stuff I could tinker with for $100, and that also gave me the unexplored freedom to get any ROM I want. I remember porting Cyanogenmod 9 on my shitty 2 year old OG Motorola Droid, and control every aspect of it.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#589

Post by megy »

jasonlotito wrote: post #435
philliphaydon wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t matter. Subsequent iPhones are launched globally. Microsoft does not launch subsequent products globally. The surface takes many many months to reach many parts of Asia. Surface studio is only in a hand full of countries. Surface laptop is only in a handful of countries. Surface book is almost non existent. The only thing Microsoft makes that it launches well is the Xbox.

> It doesn’t matter. Yeah, I remember this argument. It depends on whether it benefits Apple or not. For example, when Apple moved off of Google for it's mapping, people were saying that this was just the first iteration, the first version of Maps, when it clearly wasn't, and that the fact that it lost features and information that were there before, people were okay with it because it was Apple's first map software…

And other people also said that it has to be as good as google maps now. And it has gotten better. Still not google maps good.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#590

Post by LeoNatan25 »

jasonlotito wrote: post #536
ClassyJacket wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard to see why Apple launching one iPhone in America only, a full decade ago, doesn't matter when the next nine iPhones came out everywhere.

Sure, but why tell me?

Because you are the one making nonsense arguments.
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