Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

Windows Phone has overtaken iOS in Latin America and holds the number two spot for mobile devices. Windows Phone has also overtaken iOS in Italy, and is less than a percentage point away from taking over in Germany as well. Across Europe Windows Phone market share has doubled from this time last year, while iOS continues to decline. Windows Phone is the fastest growing mobile OS worldwide. Nokia's customer satisfaction has surpassed all Android manufacturers and is right on the heels of Apple. None of this evidence supports your claim that Windows Phone is "absolutely ignored".

Bing handles roughly 30% (Bing + Yahoo) of internet search traffic in the US. A far cry from being "largely ignored".

None of this paints a picture of "an experience that no one cares about". Your statements show clear bias with no evidence to support it. You're certainly entitled to your opinions, but the sweeping statements you are making are simply wrong.

So a game controller is a (rather terrible) mouse? Do you understand that Metro was made for touch because such a move the cursor interface is entirely unlike a touch interface? There is a discord here that I don't think you are understanding.

The Windows Phone, Windows 8 Metro (on touch screens and tablets) and Xbox One UI are all great and very information dense compared to what you see on competing devices.

This information density thing comes up a lot, with absolutely nothing to demonstrate or prove it. Personally I find the Metro interface to be very information poor, and I cannot comprehend how such a claim could even be considered. That dearth of information (form far before function) has been one of the primary complaints about Metro.

only DNA from your list

Are you talking from a marketing perspective or something? Because no, my list is precise for its intended purpose: Those are cases where Microsoft thought that "unifying" was going to save the day, and the end result was anything but. Where divisions were essentially forced into a vision that didn't match the actual needs of their products because synergy or something.

As to .NET, it was the primary reason SQL Server went five years between versions of 2000 and 2005, coming out with little changed but for added .NET integration, to find that close to no one actually uses, and a "built in .NET" management studio that had far less features than the version before it, while using dramatically more resources. All so they could talk about unifying.

XNA Studio is yet another example of unifying technologies in poorly considered ways, and that alone close to killed independent game creation on the Xbox.

Are you going to argue that being able to reuse all of the code behind an app's user interface across all of Microsoft's products isn't a good direction to move?

If it's for dogma, or if it's trying to mash together highly dissimilar products, yes, it's a demonstrably terrible direction to move. The single and only group that cares at all about this overlap are lazy amateur Microsoft-world developers, and the result of their ill considered efforts does absolutely nothing to advance Windows Mobile, Windows Desktop, or the Xbox. I mean seriously, Windows Phone remains a death pile of largely terrible apps, and the few decent apps Microsoft had to essentially pay the developers to make. Where is this great advantage yielded? As for the Xbox, 0% of professional game developers care one iota that there is anything in common between platforms. They really don't. Hell, they care more about abstractions that make it easier to port between the Xbox One and PS4, and eventually to iOS and Android.

Windows 7 was a great OS after a disastrous Windows Vista. Windows 8 is again an unmitigated disaster. 88M users out of 1 billion install base?

http://www.neowin.net/news/there-could-be-885-million-window...

Even Steve Ballmer himself said that Windows 8 was not selling enough.

http://www.neowin.net/news/ballmer-states-that-windows-is-no...

No one wants to upgrade to Windows 8. That's why they are backing away from their Metro strategy. Yet another integration attempt that has completely blown up in their face.

You are also wrong about Bing's search traffic. It's 18%. As I said, largely ignored. 4 out of 5 people ignore Bing. Bundling Yahoo as disingenuous since most people don't know it's Bing. I worked at Yahoo. I know how inertia works, and given that their search share hasn't changed much since they had their own search engine, it's being used by people that just don't care. You could switch Yahoo's backend to Google and no one would know the difference, because they don't care.

Sure, Windows Phone may be a small success in Latin America, if you consider selling dirt cheap phones with no margin a success. It's still the #2 phone to Android and Windows Phone is still 3-6% marketshare worldwide. 94 people in the world out of 100 ignore Windows Phone. It's absolutely ignored. That may change in the future, if Microsoft gives away their phones for free. But as of right now, they are absolutely ignored.

Microsoft is unable to create a single experience on any of their platforms that bring happiness to their users, except for X-box. I don't have an X-box one, but many of my coworkers are complaining like hell about Microsoft's need to change the X-box one's experience to more like Metro's. I can't speak to how accurate this statement is. If they were smart, they would be battling PS4 and trying to make the best gaming console they can, instead of having another agenda of some failed integration that is unnecessary.

Who said anything about a mouse? I haven't use a mouse to interact with my computer (out side of games) in years. Windows 8 "modern" apps are designed to work well in touch environments, and they succeed at that. And yes, there is a lot of overlap between how you use a touchscreen device and how you use a controller. Many UX concepts are the same when using either input method.

This information density thing comes up a lot, with absolutely nothing to demonstrate or prove it.

Perhaps we have a different definition of information density. The Windows Phone home screens can provide you with a lot of information without launching a single app. iOS provides a wall of icons to launch apps. Android has widgets, and some of them are beautiful and work well. Live tiles are much more consistent though and trivial to add to your application which means they are included more often.

XNA Studio is yet another example of unifying technologies in poorly considered ways, and that alone close to killed independent game creation on the Xbox.

No, Microsoft policies and practices are what almost killed independent game creation on the Xbox. XNA was a great engine for building games and that should be evident by the interest and support around MonoGame. MonoGame is probably the best engine to build a cross platform game at this point. Using MonoGame you can support iOS, Android, Windows, OS X, Linux, Windows 8 Store, Windows Phone 8, PlayStation Mobile, and OUYA. I wouldn't be surprised if Xbox One and Playstation 4 were added to that list soon.

Hell, they care more about abstractions that make it easier to port between the Xbox One and PS4, and eventually to iOS and Android.

The abstractions already exist for iOS and Android. Using Xamarin you can use C# to build apps for iOS, Android, Windows (desktop and mobile) and OS X. As I said above, MonoGame will likely fill a gap enabling you to write a game that targets both PS4 and Xbox One. Granted, AAA titles aren't going to be interested in MonoGame because they are trying to squeeze every last drop of performance out of the system, but it's a fantastic option for more causal or indie games.