Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/24/23930478/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-mobile-windows-phone

by pjmlp • 3 years ago

144 198 3 years ago

I really liked my windows phone. The colourful live tiles and the physical design were great. What it lacked was 3rd party apps.

generj• 3 years ago

I also deeply enjoyed my Nokia Lumia.

They clearly took many design cues from Zune, which was another excellent product I loved that did not take off.

I think if MS Phone had stuck it out a bit longer hybrid apps may have helped bring some developers in.

It sounds like Nadella still doesn’t get it though. MSFT tried several times to “reinvent the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones” and none succeeded. Windows 8 UC targeting tablets and native apps was a disaster and ate up a lot of goodwill. With tablet PCs and netbooks Microsoft had the right idea too early and with poor technical implementation.

doubled112• 3 years ago

I liked mine too. Sometimes I think I was the only one, but now I know there were at least three of us.

I had what I think was the lowest end Lumia at the time, a Lumia 520 maybe? It did what it did really well.

The camera was surprisingly OK. The tiles meant I could see what I needed without tapping around. It was much more responsive than other phones in its price range from what I remember too.

pathartl• 3 years ago

I think he does get it, though. Windows 11 is the most touch friendly version of the OS to date. While Windows tablets aren't as common as say, the iPad, they're inherently more useful.

I will say, they do need to get their heads out of their asses for MAUI.

zaxpr• 3 years ago

yes, windows phone UI and their basic apps were pretty great and easy to use for a none tech-savvy person. Lack of 3rd party apps actually provides a nice distraction-free experience. lol

brnt• 3 years ago

I am by no means a Windows fan (Linux only sinds 2003) but Windows Phone/mobile was (and is, I have one still) awesome. Snappy, no frills, yet feature complete. Pretty interoperable. Pretty. Pity it's over.

chithanh7• 3 years ago

I remember that quite differently. Windows Phone 7 lacked many basic functions like Bluetooth file transfer, the audio player didn't support gapless playback, alarm clock could not turn on your phone (a staple Nokia feature), Internet Explorer was always behind in supporting web standards (and Microsoft did not allow other browser engines). WP7 didn't even support front cameras until Mango Update.

The snappiness of apps was also hindered by network I/O in the UI thread (I mean wtf Microsoft).

WP8 did some things better but it was too little, too late. Nokia at some point bitterly complained about Microsoft's inertia in getting important features implemented that Nokia needed in order to sell phones (besides the apps, but that is another whole can of worms). https://www.techspot.com/news/53405-microsofts-slow-developm...

Clamchop3• 3 years ago

And it never got that ecosystem because of inscrutable mismanagement so scatterbrained and perplexing that I can't wait for the insider-tells-all book about this post-iPhone period at Microsoft that I assume will arrive in a decade or two.

Zune, Phone, Surface, Windows 8, Windows RT, Bing, Cortana, Continuum, Project Astoria, I'm sure I'm forgetting. Apple and Google execs must have been amused.

pjmlp17• 3 years ago

If you watch the Windows UI community talks on YouTube, at least on public channels, whoever is in charge doesn't seem to grasp how much all those rewrites killed the ecosystem, and they keep asking people to invest into WinUI/WinAppSDK, which not only is yet another rewrite, the tooling is a joke versus UWP.

No wonder that Windows developer community decided to ignore whatever is related to WinUI, and focus on the stable technologies from the past.

gardenhedge• 3 years ago

Isn't Bing now a competitor to Google? It's results are nearly as good and Bing Chat is available to users and will soon be rolled out to enterprises.

eichin2• 3 years ago

Kin! lasted 48 days in the US, never launched at all in Europe (squarish smartphone for "the younger set".)

marklubi• 3 years ago

They tried with the 3rd party apps. I still have the developer phone they gave my company to port our app.

It was a fun project, and the live tiles and flat style provided a lot of inspiration that resulted in the next version of our app for iOS and Android.

CSMastermind• 3 years ago

Lacking 3rd party apps was more of a symptom than a root cause in my opinion.

Instead of being scrappy and trying to do whatever it took to gain marketshare in an area they were behind in they put a ton of limitations on their platform and it tanked adoption because the people who were willing to switch and try something new were by definition people who were going to be frustrated with this behavior.

Things like not supporting multitasking or apps running in the background, blocking all exes from even being downloaded, not giving access to the underlaying file system, categorically blocking applications like video game emulators, restricting the ability to tether your phone, etc.

Yes there wasn't third-party app support and yes their maps sucked but I think both of those would have been fixed over time if they didn't take a super arrogant big brother approach to the operating system.

Example of what I'm talking about: http://i.imgur.com/JfFiuO4.png

chithanh7• 3 years ago

Microsoft both directly and indirectly turned app developers away from Windows Phone.

Mobile games at the time were all OpenGL ES, which Microsoft refused to support in favor of Direct3D.

Then there was Microsoft's perpetual need to start over. WM6.5 to WP7 broke app compatibility. WP7 to WP8, entirely new APIs. WP8 to WM10 there was UWP and Continuum, again forcing major rewrites if you wanted the new features.

And finally how Microsoft treated the devs themselves. Ad-supported apps depended on Microsoft's ad network which was artificially kept alive by Microsoft injecting money for Xbox and Office ads. Once Microsoft stopped, the whole thing folded, leaving developers with a sudden loss of income.

Developers from countries in Microsoft's 2nd tier additionally reported poor treatment and Kafka'esque bureaucracy preventing them from publishing apps: https://toshl.com/blog/why-publishing-on-the-windows-phone-m...

This is why I think the app situation would not have fixed itself over time, and MS efforts to ease transition like Project Islandwood were doomed from the start, because those fixed a problem but not the problem.

wvenable3• 3 years ago

Just a couple of years ago, while cleaning up the office we found an old Windows Phone in a drawer and powered it up. I could see why some people liked it, it was actually very snappy/smooth compared with Android/iOS from the same era.

jkestner• 3 years ago

Loved my Lumia 800 and 925. I actually considered the limited ecosystem a feature because I didn't want to be more addicted to the phone. And the concept of glanceable icons and all the stuff intended to keep you from getting lost in apps—great to me, but unfortunately not great for the app business model. So it died.

skeeter20202• 3 years ago

the hardware was amazing - you'd get top of the line processor / screen and memory for a few hundred bucks. The OS was great too; so much nicer than the "pages of apps" on other phones, mostly because there never were pages of apps available on a windows phone :(

jacobgorm• 3 years ago

The Lumia 940 with Windows Phone is the only Microsoft product I have enjoyed using and that miss using even today. The iPhone launcher is still years behind it today.

DonnyV• 3 years ago

Do I smell a round 2 for a Windows Phone?

Imagine a new Windows Phone....that runs Android apps.

Qworg• 3 years ago

There are devices - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/surface-duo-2/9408kgxp4xjl...

tight-ship2• 3 years ago

I think there are a Android launchers the mimick the WP aesthetics. No need for a new OS or device for that.

toast03• 3 years ago

Microsoft had an Android compatability layer in WM10 betas, as well as an iOS layer. They didn't launch either, afaik, running the apps without platform services isn't great, so then it's a push towards developers --- port your app to WM10 much easier... But there's still work, and IMHO, the user share on WM10 wasn't compelling enough for new developers to do the work.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/3447036-microsoft-android-a...

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-officially-cancels-...

fy20• 3 years ago

They did actually release phones running Android with a Metro skin:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_X_family

https://m.gsmarena.com/nokia_x-6067.php

vitorgrs• 3 years ago

iOS layer was launched - and is open source if I recall well. Candy Crush was made using the layer. Not sure if still use currently on Windows

colordrops2• 3 years ago

I know a few people that loved the windows phone, but frankly, I'm glad they failed. We didn't need another walled garden with a closed-source proprietary ecosystem. If they opened up the OS it could have been a good thing but there was no evidence that they had such plans.

boxed• 3 years ago

We did need competition and new ideas though. Badly.

georgyo• 3 years ago

Did, and still do.

com2kid3• 3 years ago

Previous Windows Mobile kernels had their source available for download on the web. Although not MIT licensed or anything, they were radically open for the Microsoft of the time (early 2000s!)

I believe Windows CE 7 also had its source available.

FWIW CE7 was an amazing operating system that had a minimal OS image of around 8MB on disk. (Numbers are from memory, might be horribly wrong, it was a long time ago that I worked on it.)

It was also incredibly power, CPU, and memory efficient. Windows Phones could run at a rock solid 60FPS with 1/2 the RAM of an Android phone that was dropping frames all the time.

The entire CE operating system is an example of a huge "could have been". Microsoft really never knew what to do with it, and the Windows org obviously wanted it dead, and they eventually got their way. Of course that involved stopping all Windows Phone development for years while they rewrote all APIs, lost functionality, and lost customer trust, in the transition from WP7 to WP8. WP8 eventually became a good OS, but moving to the Windows kernel means the resource usage advantage was lost, and of course app developers got fed up when a new OS came out that had less API features than the previous version.

simonh• 3 years ago

Microsoft thought the way you do for years after the iPhone came out. They thought they’d be fine competing using CE based systems. They completely underestimated the advantages a modern, secure, pre-emptive multitasking OS with proper process isolation, fine grained multi threading, and all the other features you get that a workstation class Unix OS bring to the table. That 8MB footprint sound great, until you consider all the things you’re giving up in order to hit that target.

wvenable3• 3 years ago

I think Moore's Law was always going to kill CE. It has several limitations that could not be worked around and were irrelevant 25 years ago but very relevant today.

In a world where Apple just stripped down their desktop OS to make a phone OS, there is no future for something like CE. This is why Microsoft just moved to using their desktop kernel for future versions of Windows Phone -- it makes porting software so much easier.

VyseofArcadia5• 3 years ago

One of the things I find very frustrating about Microsoft (and to a lesser extent Google) is how they will walk back nearly anything at the slightest pushback and cancel anything that isn't an immediate overnight success.

The Kinect was really, really cool tech, and I dream about what could have been if MS had not made the Kinect thst came with the XBox One optional pretty much right after it was announced.

RockRobotRock• 3 years ago

Out of all the examples, why Kinect? They did the right thing and made it accessible for developers, but why would the Kinect ever work for Xbox players who are on average 33 year old males? It was gimmicky and fraught with bad silliness from the beginning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Milo

eichin2• 3 years ago

The Kinect (and especially the cheap knockoffs that followed) changed the field of amateur robotics, just not gaming... in robotics, there was a lot of "it was great for us but we really have no idea why they did that" :-)

jnwatson• 3 years ago

Microsoft tried the Kinect for 13 years. How long are they supposed to let a product run?

It was a cool tech solution in search of a problem.

VyseofArcadia5• 3 years ago

You're glossing over a big part of the story.

It is hard, really, really hard, to convince game developers and publishers to make games that require an optional accessory. It's been tried again and again and it is never more than a mild success and usually an abject failure. They want to target the base platform, which will always have a dramatically larger install base.

Thr original Kinect was just such an optional accessory, and yeah, didn't have much in the way of third party support.

The XB1 could have, and would have, encouraged more devs to use and experiment with the Kinect because devs could be assured that every single user would have one hooked up.

Except that Microsoft chickened out instead of sticking to their guns. As usual.

spencerhakim• 3 years ago

The Kinect is great at full-body tracking for VR, Microsoft was just a decade too early in their attempt to bring the technology to market.

akhosravian2• 3 years ago

The Kinect was released in November 2010. Are you suggesting they’re still running it?

My understanding is it died ~six months after the Xbox one released (early 2014) when they stopped bundling it with that console. They kept selling it for several years after, but it was inconceivable it would do anything but die at that point.

tibbydudeza• 3 years ago

A product in search of a problem - that game "Milo" was such a scripted farce.

TulliusCicero• 3 years ago

The Kinect is a bad example of this. It was fundamentally gimmicky and didn't seem to have somewhere to go.

tiernano4• 3 years ago

bit of an anecdote on testing the Kinect. I was working in the Office devision at the time it launched and managed to (some how) get into the beta test team. They sent me one, originally with the plan of wanting it back, but in the end they said we could keep it. I still have mine somewhere with the Microsoft Asset tag on it... Anyway, after the first couple of weeks, testers got a general email about testing the device. "Please wear clothes when testing the Kinect". Anyway, on what i think it could have been, Cortana on the Xbox with a Kinect and the video features would have been perfect for a lot of things. The vision stuff for games is good, but think watching for fall detection of people in rooms, if you are out and it sees movement (given it could turn to an extent) and the ability to tell it to call someone on Skype with video! That would have been useful in 2020! It was just way too early, like a LOT of Microsoft stuff (Pocket PC, Windows Smart Phone (CE editions), Windows Phone (NT Kernel), Microsoft Tablets (XP) etc. All just a little ahead of the time...

HomeDeLaPot• 3 years ago

Wish they would have done this with Teams

danw1979• 3 years ago

I agree… if you can’t even make the scroll bar on a chat history work, it’s time to give up.

leeman2016• 3 years ago

I feel like there is an entire OS starting up behind Teams, when I start/open it up

akhosravian2• 3 years ago

Teams has the advantage of being able to juice their numbers by counting everyone with an office license as a customer.

happymellon• 3 years ago

I wish they would do this to Edge.

glimshe• 3 years ago

Quite the contrary, in my opinion. Microsoft kept going with XBOX despite of years of criticism, especially during the early cablegate days. Kinect was a feature only enjoyed by a niche audience, no disrespect intended. Despite being an avid gamer, I never even once considered buying Kinect.

oblio3• 3 years ago

For me the saddest thing is not Windows Phone going away, it's Nokia not going all the way with their Qt based Linux distro, Meego. I had a Nokia N9 smartphone, the UI was amazing. It took 5 (I think?) years for iOS and Android to sort of copy the gesture based UI, badly.

Damn internal corporate politics at Nokia.

gandalfian• 3 years ago

I miss Psion which ironically abandoned the market because they thought Microsoft would dominate it. Some of their ease of use has never been replicated.

rbanffy4• 3 years ago

I miss WebOS, which was criminally cancelled by the imbecile HP hired.

It took years for any other mobile platform to catch up to the convenience of my beloved Palm Pre.

zerr• 3 years ago

Nokia acquisition of Trolltech gave us LGPL Qt.

NewJazz• 3 years ago

Which I guess later gave rise to Unity8/UBPorts, or at least factored in.

zyang• 3 years ago

Blackberry went all the way with QNX and it didn't pan out either. There just wasn't room for a third player.

tiernano4• 3 years ago

Might be wrong, tell me if i am, but Blackberry, especially here in Ireland, was expensive because of the extra plan to get it to work with mail. I remember spending weeks trying to get my Exchange server at home to talk to Blackberry mail... Gave up and took me 5 min to get it working on Windows Phone with Exchange Active Sync, and later with the iPhone. And for Blackberry, i had to spend extra per month for it to get it enabled. I ended up canceling that part and staying with standard data and all went well on iPhone and Windows Phone.

rospaya• 3 years ago

There just wasn't room for a third player

It took something like four years until Apple and Android passed Nokia's market share. They had their chance to fight.

hahn-kev• 3 years ago

Yeah no one would make apps for 3rd place, Android already has the problem of being the 2nd target for many new apps. It's worth it for services but a lot of times the Apple app is better because users pay more.

oblio3• 3 years ago

The third player would have been Linux + Qt.

Much easier sell than random new OS.

pengaru• 3 years ago

Didn't it live on as SailfishOS and Jolla, before dying for lack of customers?

I too had an N9, and while I wouldn't describe it as amazing, it was reasonably good for the time and probably the best we've ever had in terms of a functional multitouch "linux phone".

IMO what killed it was the closed off nature of Harmattan and the lack of support from Nokia in encouraging hacking the OS. No reproducible firmware, no trivial flashing of community builds standing on the shoulders of what Nokia shipped on the phone. We'd be in a very different place today had the N9 been where the PinePhone is in terms of ability to easily derive and swap out distros, and the vibrant community this enables.

bzzzt2• 3 years ago

I had the predecessor (N900) at the time, but I don't think the OSS community would have helped. Lots of effort was directed to typical 'hacker' uses of the phone, not stuff your regular 'end user' would need. It was fun to see a full port of OpenOffice on the thing but it needed a full minute to start and was useless on the small screen. Also, most end users don't know what to do with the terminal ;) While I think they improved a lot with the N9 Nokia was already severely outclassed by Apple, followed by Google by then. Directly stating the N9 line was unsupported at release time was the nail in the coffin.

Apocryphon• 3 years ago

Sailfish is still around, albeit very barely

pjmlp17• 3 years ago

Symbian was too strong internally.

idonotknowwhy4• 3 years ago

Elop was clearly a mole.

I use the Nokia N9 alarm clock was an example of a perfect piece of software.

pjmlp17• 3 years ago

This keeps being told.

It was the Nokia board that decided to hire him.

It was the Nokia board that gave him a contract with a bonus clause if he managed to sell Nokia Mobiles business unit, as discussed on the Finn press at the time.

herbst• 3 years ago

The saddest aspect for me is that every alternative had so much better battery potential than whatever android is doing.

Phones, watches, TVs all are slow and battery hungry just because nobody would opt in for a little less functionality (or app selection)

alberth2• 3 years ago

Title: "and mobile was a mistake".

That's misleading as the article correctly states, that it was admission the company made some serious mobile mistakes (in strategy / approach).

Not that "mobile was a mistake".

kevinventullo• 3 years ago

Read it as

“Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admits giving up on (Windows Phone and mobile) was a mistake”

alberth2• 3 years ago

My memory is fuzzy but was:

Windows Phone == Nokia?

Or was Windows Phone not Nokia?

nerdjon• 3 years ago

I always felt like Microsoft was in a hard place when it came to Windows Phone.

If they tried to market it as a third party alternative to Android, why would manufactures give up an OS they can customize and not have to pay to license (Do you have to pay of the play store?).

Locking down Windows Mobile in the iPhone way is counter to how Microsoft runs Windows right now and would be a major uphill battle. The iPhone kinda lucked out being able to pull this off due to when it came out I think.

All of this leads to them needing a healthy enough install base to get developers to make apps.

Personally I don't think they gave up too soon, I think they were fighting an uphill battle that they were likely never going to Win. It didn't really matter how many good ideas they had when they were up against 2 very entrenched platforms.

The problem was, they were too late.

In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones.

Why does that quote give me Windows 8 vibes? The idea of a single platform and UI for everything? That worked super well.

rjsw• 3 years ago

There was an article a couple of days ago on Windows CE going out of maintainence. I worked on building a touchscreen tablet that used it, I don't see why Windows Mobile should have been any less configurable than Windows CE.

microtherion• 3 years ago

The problem was, they were too late.

Ironically, they were in the phone OS space before Apple and Google, so arguably, they were too early, inasmuch as the experience they acquired blinded them to the possibilities of smartphones just as the category truly took off.

lotsofpulp4• 3 years ago

Personally I don't think they gave up too soon, I think they were fighting an uphill battle that they were likely never going to Win

They did give up, because hardware development and support costs a ton of money, and they preferred the margins from selling Excel licenses.

They could have done what Apple did and invested heavily in hardware development for 10 years. They even had Microsoft stores rolled out, with clean Windows computers without malware installed by default.

But there was no stomach for lower profit margins and a longer term play.

sirbranedamuj• 3 years ago

I loved my windows phones so much. lumia 900 and 920. I totally bought in to the microsoft ecosystem because I wanted to keep using that phone OS and those phones. but the ecosystem sucked ass. none of microsoft's google/apple equivalents were up to par. one night when xbox music said I didn't have license to play any of my music on a long car ride home was the last straw. I bought a galaxy note 3 that evening when I got home.

windows phone come back :(

skeeter20202• 3 years ago

How long did we have live tiles before such a thing made it onto other brands?

suddenexample• 3 years ago

Is it just me or is Windows phone looked back on with really heavy nostalgia? I never found it to be revolutionary or beautiful, and while I would welcome more players in the mobile space, I think Microsoft's behavior in every other part of its business makes me glad that their foray into mobile never took off.

peruvian• 3 years ago

Windows Phone and Zune are looked back with nostalgia. As someone that had both (including a Zune HD), I don't get it either. I wish I could go tell my teenage self to get over my short-lived "anti-Apple" phase and just ask for an iPod Touch in 2009.

hakfoo• 3 years ago

I wonder if part of it was that they filled a gap that was sort of broken.

Low-end Android phones used to suck. Hell, even high-end ones. There was a lot of jank, battery life was mediocre, software looked and felt patched together.

Windows Phone delivered a really good experience even on the bottom-of-the-line hardware, Things were smooth, and most stuff (because it was either first-party or from committed devs) was built to fit the design language.

ravenstine2• 3 years ago

I never understood Microsoft's desire to use "Windows" in their mobile device marketing. That might have barely made sense back when computing was dominated by geeks, but nobody in 2023 truly cares whether their phone runs a form of Windows, just as they wouldn't care if an iPhone runs iOS instead of macOS; they want a device that does the things they want. Windows today represents more of a necessary evil than something to be excited about. Microsoft should have dropped the Windows angle entirely and named their phone platform something else, even if it actually did use Windows under the hood.

wvenable3• 3 years ago

Windows Mobile as a brand came out in 2003. The "Windows" brand itself was massive in that era.

Apple branding isn't too much more inspiring (Mac to iMac to iPhone).

prmph• 3 years ago

Many people confused Windows Phone with Windows Mobile, which came with all sorts of baggage of bad experiences. So I agree with GP, that dropping the Windows name would have been a smart move

raydev2• 3 years ago

Apple branding isn't too much more inspiring

I think you are conveniently ignoring the explicitly bad rep Windows had, even for people who bought and used Windows in their homes. It had none of the draw that Apple had following their iMac/iBook/iPod era.

Zune was building a good customer base, but MS threw that away too of course.

firecall• 3 years ago

You missed off iPod!

Mac -> iMac -> iPod -> iPhone

Obviously the iPod gives us AirPods and HomePods.

I imagine there are users of *Pod devices that have never seen or used an iPod!

ravenstine2• 3 years ago

Besides the confusion with Windows Phone that someone else here mentioned, 2003 was a different era. We have Windows today, but it represented something else back then. There weren't really other good examples of full-blown computing at the handheld scale back then. Yes, there are some arguments to be made for other platforms, but let's face it, having Windows in the palm of your hand would have meant the power of a desktop/laptop in your hand. Today, and even starting ~15 years ago, the novelty of having any particular operating system in the palm of your hand largely diminished in favor of whomever could do it right, regardless of what the underlying OS was. In other words, a diminishing number of everyday people are loyal to any particular OS or architecture. If anything, calling something else "Windows" will give them the wrong set of expectations. At best, it will make people expect it to mimic Windows, and at worst people will associate it with things like viruses, blue screen of death, etc. A totally new name would have given Microsoft's phone line a clean slate in terms of branding.

tiernano4• 3 years ago

Funny you say that. I was watching the Apple iPhone keynote, the first one, and one of the things Jobs mentions is it runs Mac OSX.

worthless-trash• 3 years ago

"Almost the truth, but not" slogan, Wait till you see their now redacted page about how they were the first large opensource company.

mackrevinack• 3 years ago

the name was a bit of a mouthful as well "windows phone 7 series". or even worse if "microsoft's" had to be added at the start of it

genericacct• 3 years ago

The development tools were quite advanced, i loved my htc

rossant• 3 years ago

I loved Windows Phone. I had one of the very first devices (Samsung Omnia 7). I developed several apps at the very beginning. Too bad it never caught up with Android and iOS, I felt it was superior in many aspects (except the ecosystem, of course).

wenc• 3 years ago

I doubt it would have succeeded. The latent associations with the unreliable and bloated Windows CE was too strong which had a halo effect — the vibe was that Microsoft tried to shoehorn Windows into mobile devices where it doesn’t really work.

It wasn’t until later than Windows Phones came out but the association with Windows was just too strong. I owned a Nokia Lumia and to be honest it was an ok experience with the tiles and everything but the iPhone just felt so much more polished as a consumer device. The Windows branding was a liability to be honest.

Microsoft’s design language felt too corporate and if you look at any of their OS interfaces today they’re just so uncool. Smart phones are lifestyle devices and being too corporate is a liability. (Unless you’re BlackBerry but somehow there’s a coolness to the BlackBerry branding — even Obama used one. I doubt he would have used a Windows phone. )

kyriakos• 3 years ago

If I am not mistaken Windows Phone had some steep competition from Google, Google was actively trying to block any of its services (e.g. youtube) from working on the platform. With popularity of google products at the time it was very hard to convince people to stick to the platform.

idonotknowwhy4• 3 years ago

Microsoft were the ones who made Windows Phone IE only and a walled garden like iOS

chithanh7• 3 years ago

About YouTube, Microsoft could have done the same as Amazon on the Fire devices, put the website into an app. Instead they used some non-public API to access videos, presumably due to the deficiencies of their browser engine. Of course Google shut that down.

andrewmcwatters• 3 years ago

They’ve practically given up on Windows, too, considering it stays put while macOS continues year by year to improve by adding useful features and ecosystem integration.

steve19775• 3 years ago

I’ve been using macOS at home for about 23 years now, but what was the last really useful new feature they added?

chithanh7• 3 years ago

Just to name an example: There is excellent integration between iDevices.

With Windows you have Phone Link which allows access to messages and notifications, but it is a far cry from Apple Continuity. For things like access to the phone camera you still need 3rd party software.

faeriechangling3• 3 years ago

The AirPods audio switching between devices for me is a KILLER feature, although Google is cloning it. Yes I’m aware Bluetooth multipoint exists.

They just improved the performance too.

pjmlp17• 3 years ago

Plenty of them, at least for software developers targeting Apple demographics.

lotsofpulp4• 3 years ago

Microsoft still has no equivalent to the Preview app. Signing and filling out PDFs is a common use case.

fooker• 3 years ago

I was horrified with the out of the box experience of Windows 11.

How did this shitshow get past hundreds of developersc, testers, and product managers?

pjmlp17• 3 years ago

Marketing and sales department, unfortunely.

scblock• 3 years ago

Yeah because how can they unethically push you to use Edge if you're not running a Windows OS. And think of all the telemetry they aren't gathering because they don't have Windows on phones. Terrible thing.

MattBDev2• 3 years ago

If they ran their app store the way they run the Microsoft Store now then they would have had tons of apps. Developers being able to self-host their apps and list it in the store would have seriously helped the app gap.

O1111OOO2• 3 years ago

Microsoft has this habit of trying to enter a new market like a bully. They toss billions of dollars around, they schmooze whoever needs schmoozing, millions in advertising, start name-calling competitors... brutes. Knuckle dragging brutes.

Off the top of my head: Zune (belittling Apple), Search (remember they started name-calling Google), CompuServe (paid shills brutally attacking people online), Operating Systems (attacks on Linux (FUD Advertising), BeOS (Licensing)). So much more.

What they don't do is create a product out of love or passion or belief, usually...

I was surprised when the surface lineup of tablet/laptops... surfaced. They seemed to actually care about what they were doing and really put some thought behind it. I was impressed with the hardware and I very much dislike Microsoft.

I'm glad they got owned on mobile by Google and Apple. I feel comfortable in saying they would not have brought anything positive to this market. A villain was defeated and we are better off.

Mozilla's Firefox OS, however... that's a different story. We all lost when they pulled out.

Aleklart4• 3 years ago

How exactly they cared about surface? It was a premium toy that was never perfected for pros (these huge displays they discontinued) or e-waste (all 4gb go models). It cost twice for any minimal reasonable hardware configuration. It had insanely impractical weird IO (minidp from 10s in 20s) and fabric palm rest. It was targeted to push in enterprises where their sales noses are so deep they sometimes don’t even need to bribe CEOs to push their sales initiatives. Even corp drones refused to use it and returned to HP. Who even need this stand contraption for work? Who need touch on Windows? May be people just buy macbook AND ipad for the same price? They cancelled RT hardware without any delay while windows 10 mobile can run fine. What they did with surface phone? Right, dropped android support like a cheap chinese factory. Do you want to fix your out of warranty 3 yo surface? No sane technician will take it, even if you told him how MS is in (love) with right to repair. Surface is a joke. Well may be .NET developers can use it because how easy it is to develop LOBs with new .NET tools and how productive you feel all the time working with new cool features of C#.

O1111OOO2• 3 years ago

How exactly they cared about surface?

I think I found someone who dislikes Microsoft more than I do. Nice to meet you:-) LOL

Seriously... you are mostly correct about the hardware deficiencies, I won't argue this. The surface line started off very badly but... it engaged. To this date, I don't think you can even get Linux running on any of them w/o some effort.

Mine's was a quick comment and had more to do with Microsoft redefining the hybrid Tablet/Laptop market. It was, I think the only time that I could recall, when they finally took the lead on something. Some hiccups, of course, but overall an industry defining success. It was odd - for me - to see Microsoft leading the field in anything.

I always saw MS as a company that envied someone else's innovation and tried to replicate that success. From Office Programs early on, AOL competitor, VisiCalc/Lotus 1-2-3 competitor, Gaming, Browsers... the list is nearly exhaustive.

Even small things like sound formats, image formats... they needed to upend someone else's established format and replace it with their own. Even their original OS - DOS - wasn't theirs but a hacked version of someone else's effort.

I'm certain you know their history (comment meant for some others reading this).

Finally with Surface, they designed and helped re/define the Tablet/Laptop market in a design pleasing way. They also added Surface Studio - which I thought was very effective. I remember seeing videos on their thought processes, who they consulted when they created Surface Studio. After years of envisioning brutes, they presented themselves as polished professionals during these formative 'Surface' years.

Just wanted to expand on my previous quick comment for clarification.

tannhaeuser• 3 years ago

I'm wondering if we're going to hear regret giving up on IE/Edge or other web browser tech a couple years down the road.

Paraesthetic2• 3 years ago

The old edge engine was much better, but a struggle to get people to build webpages for.

mcoliver• 3 years ago

I loved my mpx200 when everyone else had their Nokia candy bars. Small flip phone, outside display, SD card, USB connectivity, windows platform. I still have it.

faeriechangling3• 3 years ago

I predict the death of Windows Phone will eventually cause Windows to be totally eclipsed by ChromeOS. Not today, not anytime soon, but Alphabet is in an INCREDIBLE strategic position JUST because of Android.

Paraesthetic2• 3 years ago

ChromeOS is absolutely flaming garbage, and its years from being suitable. Also no company in their right mind would trust google for privacy

faeriechangling3• 3 years ago

They also who’ve no business trusting Microsoft when it comes to privacy, this being a company who has infamously stolen its competitors products several times and later bankrupted them, yet that hasn’t stopped them from succeeding.

expertentipp2• 3 years ago

Had Lumia 620 for as long as it was viable to have one. Wasn't jealous if iPhones at all and Android was a misery in comparison. Poor selection of apps but also no parasitic gambling and micropayment apps, the absolute minimum of apps was there. I missed the tinder revolution though.

nvm0n2• 3 years ago

When will he admit that giving up on Windows was a mistake? Windows doesn't feel like an OS Microsoft actually care about, and hasn't done for years. The level of investment it requires to just pay down its horrendous levels of tech debt clearly aren't going into it, their own initiatives don't get adopted by their own developers and then there's the famous comment posted here asserting that the Windows UI designers all use Macs.

Microsoft hasn't just given up on mobile, they've given up on the desktop. At this rate Windows will eventually just become a fork of ChromeOS that uses Wine to run apps.

thewileyone• 3 years ago

My Nokia Lumia 1020 bricked. I still miss the Metro UI and the phone features.

Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake

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