Instagram had an official WP app eventually.
Ballmer made a pour choice to not disrupt their own existing market.
But Facebook and other big apps did certainly exist and so that wasn't the problem.
Name the other "big apps" that came to WP. Not Instagram, and API attempts were aggressively pulled. Not YouTube, as you've noted, which is a death-knell all on its own. The cycle of "no users means no apps means no users" sank the platform, period. MS's few years of fumbling meant that they missed out on the gold-rush of user scooping, which Android benefitted from, after the iPhone make everyone kinda go "oh, yeah, I can see why having a computer in your pocket could be nice".
Facebook and twitter were there. Instagram was actually an oddball holdout. Foursquare, Yelp, Here maps, Tapatalk.
Like I said, all of the talk about the missing apps was an effect, not a cause. Having an instagram app wasn't going to suddenly right the ship. Having a youtube app wouldn't either. At least not in the US. There was a lot of talk about needing a bank app, but when the WellsFargo app came, it didn't cause a spike in sales. The apps were always a second order effect.
Ballmer made a pour choice to not disrupt their own existing market. Then Google got aggressive with Verizon and Microsoft just never fought back with the urgency they needed.
It's a shame, because it was a good OS, but alas. It goes with Amiga and OS/2 in the dustbin of history.
Windows Mobile had overwhelming technical debt. MS had 2 options: a) work incrementally and steadily on the pain points in order from most painful down or b) try to pay down all the technical debt in one fell swoop by tearing out the guts and unifying with Windows proper. The first strategy would have allowed them to gain momentum and sales - visibly demonstrating the product getting better rapidly. Instead they chose the latter which led to stagnation at a crucial time in the market.
In contrast, IOS and Android both chugged away at their respective code bases, adding features over time. AppKit sucked at the beginning. Apple just kept adding a couple features a year until it was feature rich.
Obviously there’s no way we can peer into an alternative universe, but I think if MS hadn’t gone the ‘unification’ road, but had instead invested heavily in incrementally improving Windows Mobile… Microsoft would still be in the phone game today.
And to me the common thread to all the poor decisions was a lack of urgency:They had tons of options, but seemed to choose the wrong one each time.
This isn't what they did though. Windows phone 7 didn't rewrite anything to unify the Phone and PC OS and WP8 unified the Kernel which hardly matters to a user and was actually they did a good job. But by the time they did that with WP8, they had already messed up and were screwed. All of this happened after they'd already made the critical failures. This was them trying to claw back and failing.Windows Mobile had overwhelming technical debt. MS had 2 options: a) work incrementally and steadily on the pain points in order from most painful down or b) try to pay down all the technical debt in one fell swoop by tearing out the guts and unifying with Windows proper. The first strategy would have allowed them to gain momentum and sales - visibly demonstrating the product getting better rapidly. Instead they chose the latter which led to stagnation at a crucial time in the market.
In contrast, IOS and Android both chugged away at their respective code bases, adding features over time. AppKit sucked at the beginning. Apple just kept adding a couple features a year until it was feature rich.
Obviously there’s no way we can peer into an alternative universe, but I think if MS hadn’t gone the ‘unification’ road, but had instead invested heavily in incrementally improving Windows Mobile… Microsoft would still be in the phone game today.
And to me the common thread to all the poor decisions was a lack of urgency:They had tons of options, but seemed to choose the wrong one each time.
- Update Windows Mobile or complete rewrite - let’s do the rewrite, we’ve got time
- Release a flagship this year - nah, let’s skip a year. We’ve got time to win the flagship market later
- Leverage Office on Mobile - nah, let’s wait for the full rewrite to make it easier. We’ve got time
You can interpret just about every misstep as being driven or exacerbated by a lack of urgency.
You can interpret just about every misstep as being driven or exacerbated by a lack of urgency.
If WP7 had come out earlier and been the premier "smart phone" device on Verizon vs. the Droid, [etc]
And that of course doesn't address the very real challenges with siloed nature of Microsoft under Ballmer
Yeah, we've had our fun with the smartphone OS wars and I'm kinda over it. At least from a Microsoft perspective. Best to just get to the heart of the matter.
And of course I was a WP8 user. I, to an extent still wish I could be...but it's over now. She's ceased to be, if BF hadn't nailed this thread to the perch it'd be pushing up the daisy's. It is an EX-SmartphoneOS.
I don't think winmobile ever ran win32. By the time they actually worked to integrate the platforms with windows 10(as opposed to the office team's work or swapping to the NT kernel in WP8) they were already so far behind.
Ars just published a front page article on how Google broke Google pay and I’m struggling to understand why that matters, fundamentally because I don’t understand why anybody would use a Google product. Google is the least reliable tech company. They constantly relaunch products on new codebases which results in an inability to deal with bugs or issues because they break as many working things as they fix with each new release. I no longer own an Apple computer but am still happily ensconced in their ecosystem because it’s stable. I don’t really understand how Microsoft dropped the ball so bad or why Amazon wasn’t able to launch a competing platform, but Android users seem relatively happy with the platform
Ars just published a front page article on how Google broke Google pay and I’m struggling to understand why that matters, fundamentally because I don’t understand why anybody would use a Google product. Google is the least reliable tech company. They constantly relaunch products on new codebases which results in an inability to deal with bugs or issues because they break as many working things as they fix with each new release. I no longer own an Apple computer but am still happily ensconced in their ecosystem because it’s stable. I don’t really understand how Microsoft dropped the ball so bad or why Amazon wasn’t able to launch a competing platform, but Android users seem relatively happy with the platform
Wow. Google is by FAR the most innovative and reliable company when it comes to products and services people use. Sure they kill a lot of services but in tons of areas - web search, email, file sharing, maps, assistants - that people depend on every day, Google's offerings are the standard and leagues ahead of anything from Apple, whose products in these areas are a joke and only used by people happy to be locked into the Apple ecosystem. Almost every iPhone user I know uses gmail, google maps etc.
Android is a better mobile OS in almost every way, literally every single thing Android pioneered has since been copied by Apple, after insisting for years that those features were bad for users and Apple's way was the only way - large screens, copy paste, control panel, notifications, customization, the list goes on and on. Using iOS feels so locked down and restrictive even after all these years.
Android does cut/paste codes from SMS texting as long as it's aware what's going on. So when a site sends an SMS code for a 2nd factor, that's *usually* auto copied and auto inserted into the field (cutting out the clipboard step.) It's not 100% percent, but it works more than it doesn't for me.
Apple Maps does do some things around nav that are slightly different that may or may not be better for how some users think about navigation. In particularly they do a good job of marking the type of intersections you need to be aware of. Google does some pretty good user-aware stuff in different ways. If you say start nav from say your home going to a distant destination, the directions will be very terse if it knows you're on "home turf." If you're on a route you travel regularly, you'll get "Turn right" instead of "turn right in XYZ feet/meters at the 2nd intersection" because it assumes you know how that part of the journey should work. I find this particularly useful for when I'm using nav solely to manage traffic/fastest possible route (although usually in conjunction with the nav being muted.) If I'm out of town, then yes-- I want it to give me much greater detail and it does. Google Assistant is also better with fuzzy nav queries. Using Siri for Apple Maps isn't awful if you have a concrete destination in mind, but the results are not as good as "find me the closest pharmacy that's open right now" or "navigate me to the closest starbucks with a drive thru" etc.
I suspect that all of these products will continue to become more responsive to what their users prefer.
I mean, I guess Amazon, which from what I understand has an even more toxic version, seems to be doing extremely well.
If you're thinking about installing screaming booths in your workplace then I'm guessing your workforce is not doing so well.
As for the options? Well, Android outlived almost all of them.
Why buy Windows Phone? Why buy Blackberry? Why buy Symbian? Why buy any other oddball phone OS? They didn't make it. Android has. We have a duopoly and that's not going to change anytime soon.
As for the options? Well, Android outlived almost all of them.
Why buy Windows Phone? Why buy Blackberry? Why buy Symbian? Why buy any other oddball phone OS? They didn't make it. Android has. We have a duopoly and that's not going to change anytime soon.
Never mind that Symbian really was a trash fire horror show...
Really, the big problem for at the time was the carriers. Without their inflexibility, we would all be using some descendant of the Palm Pilot. But, at the time, Apple was big enough to tell the carriers to stick themselves, so, they got to invent the smart phone. Then it was a matter of someone making a decent imitator...
I think the keyboard would go away eventually in favor of the platonic ideal glass slab no matter who was running the show
As for the options? Well, Android outlived almost all of them.
Why buy Windows Phone? Why buy Blackberry? Why buy Symbian? Why buy any other oddball phone OS? They didn't make it. Android has. We have a duopoly and that's not going to change anytime soon.
Never mind that Symbian really was a trash fire horror show...
Really, the big problem for at the time was the carriers. Without their inflexibility, we would all be using some descendant of the Palm Pilot. But, at the time, Apple was big enough to tell the carriers to stick themselves, so, they got to invent the smart phone. Then it was a matter of someone making a decent imitator...
I think the keyboard would go away eventually in favor of the platonic ideal glass slab no matter who was running the show. How much longer it would have taken is anyone's guess.
As for the options? Well, Android outlived almost all of them.
Why buy Windows Phone? Why buy Blackberry? Why buy Symbian? Why buy any other oddball phone OS? They didn't make it. Android has. We have a duopoly and that's not going to change anytime soon.
Never mind that Symbian really was a trash fire horror show...
Really, the big problem for at the time was the carriers. Without their inflexibility, we would all be using some descendant of the Palm Pilot. But, at the time, Apple was big enough to tell the carriers to stick themselves, so, they got to invent the smart phone. Then it was a matter of someone making a decent imitator...
I think the keyboard would go away eventually in favor of the platonic ideal glass slab no matter who was running the show. How much longer it would have taken is anyone's guess.
The biggest problem with Symbian had less to do with the keyboard and more to do with the way that the carriers thought / still think about phones. Basically, it was the carrier's device, super locked down and designed to nickel and dime you for every feature it provided. Even developing for the thing was something that the carriers wanted locked down.
The biggest problem with Symbian had less to do with the keyboard and more to do with the way that the carriers thought / still think about phones. Basically, it was the carrier's device, super locked down and designed to nickel and dime you for every feature it provided. Even developing for the thing was something that the carriers wanted locked down.
See also: Blackberry, Windows Phone, Android (early days for WP and Android).
Ars just published a front page article on how Google broke Google pay and I’m struggling to understand why that matters, fundamentally because I don’t understand why anybody would use a Google product. Google is the least reliable tech company. They constantly relaunch products on new codebases which results in an inability to deal with bugs or issues because they break as many working things as they fix with each new release. I no longer own an Apple computer but am still happily ensconced in their ecosystem because it’s stable. I don’t really understand how Microsoft dropped the ball so bad or why Amazon wasn’t able to launch a competing platform, but Android users seem relatively happy with the platform