Microsoft Convinced That Windows 10 Will Be Its Smartphone Breakthrough 445
jfruh (300774) writes At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, handset manufacturers are making all the right noises about support for Windows 10, which will run on both ARM- and Intel-based phones and provide an experience very much like the desktop. But much of the same buzz surrounded Windows 8 and Windows 7 Phone. In fact, Microsoft has tried and repeatedly failed to take the mobile space by storm.
Breakthrough? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Breakthrough? (Score:5, Funny)
This will also be the year I win the lottery!
Come on 123456!
Re:Breakthrough? (Score:4, Funny)
This will also be the year I win the lottery!
Come on 123456!
Who told you my password?!
Re:Breakthrough? (Score:5, Funny)
You have the password to the Lottery?????
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No, just his luggage.
Hail Scroob!
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I once read an article which was entitled something like "How to win more at lotery". I though it was a fake at first glance, but it turned out pretty informative.
Yes, 123456 has the same chance of winning than any other combination. But if you win, you will share the prize with all the other people that played this very combination. It turned out the article was about choosing combinations that were the least likely to be chosen by someone else.
I thought it was smart at the time.
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Smart article yes, but it's still incredibly stupid to buy a lottery ticket.
Re:Breakthrough? (Score:4, Interesting)
When the lottery reaches over a hundred mill, it's fun to get a ticket and day dream. And probably a better use of a few dollars than getting a burger and fries.
I call it, "paying the idiot tax".
Re:Breakthrough? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you think it's fun to play. Idle daydreaming about what you'd do if you won; the excitement as the numbers are called; the rollercoaster of emotion as you realize you may win - no you won't - oh but you did get a small price.
It's only stupid if you see it as an investment. See it as entertainment and it's no more dumb than paying to watch a movie.
Re:Breakthrough? (Score:4, Interesting)
The impact to your life is far greater earlier in life, so buy all 40 years of tickets when you're in your early 20's.
If you win in your 60's, the real cost is 40 years of unnecessary labour + $2,080.
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The only point I was trying to make is that people waste money on things with absolutely no payoff, all the time.
Given the meager cost, and extremely high payoff (albeit incredibly rare odds) there are far more illogical things people spend money on. =/
Leave it to the autists as always to not see the forest for the trees.
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Due you have any idea, just any idea at all, that the income from that mom and pop add to their local community versus sending it all away to a multi-national corporation so some douche bags can wallow in billions. Wall street is nothing but psychopathic greed, main street supports the whole community that it is a part. You just come off as a typical PR liar, neither smart nor dumb just totally disingenuous.
Re: Breakthrough? (Score:3)
Yeah because someone with an income of $35000 in the US has exactly the same life as someone with the same income in India. Being in the top 1% of earnings is irrelevant if you live in a country with an expensive standard of living. Damn psychopaths wanting to feed their children and pay their rent.
Re: Breakthrough? (Score:4, Funny)
Let me give you a hint: take statistics.
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This will also be the year I win the lottery!
Come on 123456!
It has to win eventually.
Did A Comedy Central Piece hit /.? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Did A Comedy Central Piece hit /.? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe Charlie Brown will finally kick that football...
Re:Breakthrough? (Score:4, Interesting)
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That didn't work (Score:3)
What will make Windows Phone succeed is the same thing that will make OS X succeed and it mainly boils down to apps.
Microsoft already tried that though - they paid a lot of money to developers in order to bring many of the most popular titles to Windows phone from iOS/Android.
Even with that it will still not enough to track consumers...
Re:Breakthrough? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, Windows has some penetration on low-end devices, but you know that's not where they really want to be.
Interestingly enough, Microsoft is now in the same position on the phone as Linux is on the desktop. They have an extremely competent offering, but they can't seem to really break though to make significant gains in the market. As we've seen time and time again with Linux, it's not enough to offer something "almost as good" to get someone to switch. You can't even compete with "just as good". You need to provide something that's significantly better than the competition in some fashion - some significant advantage that will compel people to move from Android or iOS to Windows phones.
In the article, Microsoft stated that a Microsoft phone would provide a "more consistent experience across smartphones, tablets, and PCs". Interestingly, that was exactly why I hated Windows 8 so much, because it was obviously a mobile UI bolted rather clumsily on top of my desktop. Windows 10 is unfortunately using the same "modern fugly" visual design, but is at least fixing the usability and integration problems. So, in theory, a cross-platform app store could end up being a win for them. If you can buy an app and run it on all three of those platforms, I could see that as being attractive for consumers.
Another possibility is if they provide businesses some great tools to help manage mobile corporate devices. Apple has been notoriously bad at this - not sure how easy it is with Android. But for consumers? I don't know. At the moment, I just don't really see how they're going to crack into this extremely competitive market.
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Yes, breaking through the Windows with an axe saying "Here's Clippy!"
I think I may have just given myself nightmares.
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My best guess is there are a lot of apps out there with the following pseudo-code.
If (OS_Name.contains("9")) {
throw "YOU MUST BE USING Windows XP or better"
}
This is why Plan 9 OS never got popular as well.
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How many models of phone does Microsoft make? Add to that, how many models of phones are available from other manufacturers running the Windows Phone OS?
How many models of phone does Apple make?
I don't think Microsoft is losing in the mobile space because of giving customers too few options.
Blackberry (Score:5, Interesting)
They can join BlackBerry in the "any day now, we'll be on top!" movement.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Blackberry (Score:5, Interesting)
Blackberry is still hoping yesterday will get better.
I don't know, have you seen the latest blackberry offerings? [blackberry.com] Also, they run Android apps, so that's something more than you get with WP10.
Though frankly I don't see much changing for either company.
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Blackberry is still hoping yesterday will get better.
I don't know, have you seen the latest blackberry offerings? [blackberry.com]
These are yesterday's phones. Old SoC, no innovation. High prices.
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No innovation? There's nothing else like them in the market.
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No innovation? There's nothing else like them in the market.
Because the market left that space years ago...
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No innovation? There's nothing else like them in the market.
So if I start a buggy whip company am I now innovative?
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Your information is astonishingly out-of-date.
Re: Blackberry (Score:2)
They just released 10.3.1
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Except it doesn't because phones run on ARM rather than x86 and windows phone is still on ARM. That means no backward compatibility with x86 software. Not to even mention the whole "wrong human interface devices" problem.
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Bluetooth keyboard mouse and an HDMI jack. Am I missing something for using your phone as a computer?
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Shhh! People in these parts still think that devices can't have a CPU if they don't also have a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, a 17" CRT display, and a power brick the size of a 1611 King James Version.
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Re:Blackberry (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has to prove that they won't mess up the smartphone like they did with the desktop. Consumers who use Windows do so because they have to not because they want to. Microsoft never was able to get a strong foothold in the mobile market, because there was too much bad feeling about having to use Windows on their PC. With the problems that were prevalent during the mid-late 1990's still sticks in people head.
Blackberry biggest mistake was not being more developer friendly. Once apple allowed for custom Apps, and Exchange compatibility, that started to put a nail in blackberry dominance.
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Microsoft’s taking the right steps to becoming relevant in mobile again, tying software like Office 365 and services across all devices, O’Donnell said on the show floor.
O’Donnell projected Windows 10 to have a 10 percent smartphone OS market share by 2020.
Office 365 and services across all devices are going to save Windows Phone. I think that was last year's big push. Or even two years ago.
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As much as I need to access such documents on my phone, I can. I can't conceive of actually wanting to work on such documents on a smartphone, but to view them, Google Docs seems to a reasonably good job, and when I had an iPhone, Apple's ability to view Office files was good enough in most cases.
That's always been MS's problem, they bring nothing to the table that isn't delivered by Google or Apple, and the things that they could bring to the table, like AD integration, they don't. Coupled with an absolute
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the almost-death of Blackberry may help Microsoft somewhat here. Microsoft's strongest market is basically "business", mostly traditional business that isn't "hip" enough to be using Apple products. People who want nice Exchange integration, connections with Office 365, etc. Previously that market was totally sewn up by Blackberry, but as they're collapsing Microsoft might grab some of that market.
Try and try again. (Score:5, Informative)
It is actually kind of sad if you know their history.
Back in the day they were competing with Palm, and had Windows CE and Pocket PC 2000. When PocketPC 2002 came out my employer switched over from Palm and I got to rewrite a bunch of tools. They did pretty good for a while with Mobile 2003, and Windows Mobile 5. It knocked Palm down several notches in the mobile market, with Palm losing value and getting bought out in 2005.
The fun thing about that era is that there were phones with PDAs in them, you can go back to "Pocket PC Phone Edition" for that. Each version of Windows Mobile supported running in phones, but they never took off.
The iPod was getting some power and some apps, but I loved that with a single CF card I could have my entire music library on my device; the Axim x51v used the same audio chipset as the iPod of the era coupled with better playback software where you could mix and such. It also offered all kinds of apps making the device useful for the other common tasks of the time like calendar, email, and web over both wifi and bluetooth.
Again you could get phones running WM5 and WM6 with all their apps, and in late 2006 they had 51% of the market. Blackberry had 37%, Palm was 9%, and Symbian at 9%.
Then came the iPhone. At the time I didn't really see the reason for the hype, when it came to processor power, memory, and even 3D graphics the iPhone was less powerful than my Windows 6 phone.
As the numbers came back, iOS rose and WM feel by the same percent; the other companies were flat in market share. By early 2007 Windows Mobile drooped to 42% and iOS was at 11%. By 2008, WM had 29% and iOS 19% and Android had entered at 2%. By 2010 Windows Mobile devices had dropped to 7% market share, Blackberry had dropped to 25%, Palm to 3%, and Symbian at 2%.
Phones running Windows Mobile continued to exist, but that's about it. Three more versions of Windows Mobile, the three editions as Windows Phone, they have never been able to get their market share back anywhere near 2006 levels.
Re: Try and try again. (Score:2)
The fact that you didn't understand the excitement over the iPhone makes you a perfect match for Microsoft.
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And it's important to note that, by and large, iOS devices still cost more and do less while being pretty. They have much better processor and graphics hardware today, relatively speaking, but they're still a small market segment overall. It's just that individually, each phone holds a large percentage of the marketplace.
Re: Try and try again. (Score:5, Interesting)
The iPhone when it came out was far less useful than any of the windows phones, but it took off because it cost more, and did less, while being pretty.
Nope. Multitouch was simply worlds better than stylus + soft or slide out keyboard.
"Visual voicemail" or whatever it was called kicked the ass out of dial-in voicemail which was still the default on windows mobile devices.
And the whole UI being designed for touch instead of stylus made it a LOT easier to use.
Yes, you definitely gave up lots of functionality in terms of the iphone not having stylus, and only being able to interact with it with your fingers; editing a spreadsheet on an iphone 3G was terrible compared to Windows Mobile 5/6... but making a call or appointment or sending a text message was orders of magnitude better.
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I think that's an exaggeration. What the iPhone -- even first gen -- could do, it did miles better than the WinM 6* or any of its competitors did. Did it lack a lot of features? Of course. But like just about everyone who couldn't get their heads around the idea that features aren't the end-all-be-all of gadgets (and yes, that's what all of these things are), what it could do at release was 99.999% of what people wanted a mobile connected gadget for -- text message, make phone calls, play music/videos on a
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You must have lost your mind. I used Windows Mobile for years. I had to install task managers to kill apps before they killed my battery. I had to install a registry editor and fiddle with settings to get even basic functionality working. IE on WM was a sick joke. I rebooted the phones every other day just to keep working.
iOS was better in every way. It had a real grown up browser. Shit just worked. The fluid animations were just icing on the cake.
Powerful but flaky is useless.
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I am currently an avid Android user.
I used to be an avid Windows Mobile user. WM5/6 were actually, when they existed, the MOST power-user/business-friendly mobile OSes out there. They were more geek-friendly than any of the horrifically locked-down "Linux-based" mobile OSes.
Then Microsoft dropped WP7 on the world - an OS which was unusable for nearly 100% of the core WM5/WM6 user base. At the same time, Android was coming onto the scene, which had everything that WM5/WM6's core user base wanted. MS neve
Re:Try and try again. (Score:5, Informative)
WM 5/6 was a piece of shit of a great magnitude. You mush be some kind of shill to even pretend it was worth anything. You had to reboot the phone basically on a daily basis to get anything running. The second day the photo app would stop working, the next one the alarm clock and the third day your phone would not even ring when called. I got several of them at the time.
Not mentionning you had to spend your days in the task manager killing the apps that you launched during the last hour to get back some memory and hope to run other apps.
Ah, and updating the OS or apps for that matter would take 205 steps on your computer.
I got an iPhone 1 (a gift) in early 2008 and the difference was just that the shit was working. It was inferior to both my former windows phones in terms of spec (ALL of them save the screen size) but the shit was just running smooth. What a relief! I remember the firs time I updated iOS. I realized the phone had been running for TWO MONTH without a reboot. Whishful thinking coming from WM5/6. And it didn't even have apps !
To all the naysayers that will deny Apple their "revolution", man, there was one and of a great magnitude. But it was not the hardware. It was software that worked on the hardware. This made all the difference.
Sounds like (Score:4, Insightful)
More than enough reasons to keep Win 10 off my desktop
This just in (Score:5, Funny)
Company convinced of their own success, at least in their own marketing materials. News at 11.
Yet again (Score:2, Interesting)
Next Year: We have a completely new api and are going to make the old one irrelevant yet again
Year of the windows phone? (Score:2)
Will it be the year Microsoft takes the smart phone market from Android (aka:Linux)?
This is starting to sound a lot like the year of the Linux desktop.
If it can run some win 10 apps (Score:4, Interesting)
Universal apps are what might make or break Windows phone 10.
The OS really is good. It is light, intuitive, and bug free. With no apps and a requirement for developers to write to 2 different operating systems with niche market shares hurt both.
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Universal apps are what might make or break Windows phone 10.
Isn't this why they forced metro on desktop users in Windows 8 so people would write "Silverlight" apps for PC that could run or trivially port to Windows phone?
Unless Microsoft allows software to be installed without clearing it first with Microsoft and allows devices to be usable without requiring a Microsoft account and constant uploading everything to Microsoft servers with no recourse or option to stop then as far as I'm concerned windows phone has no future.
They have technically a good platform but th
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And if they were really smart, they would include tools in there so that existing WIN32 code could be re-purposed for use in jump-starting an app in the new platform-agnostic toolset. Existing WIN32 code is their biggest asset, and from Windows 8 on, they've done their best to piss on it - and the developers that spent years writing it. Big mistake.
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I agree with you that it's all about the apps. Unfortunately, Microsoft has a problem. Nobody is making apps for the phone because nobody uses Windows Phone because there are no apps for it. Universal apps aren't going to help, except for certain verticals, maybe. It's not like Windows desktop is a hotbed of development anymore (except for games). Excluding games, what's the last Windows title that was mildly interesting to the general public?
iOS and Android are all that matter and I can't see that changing
They still don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
"... and provide an experience very much like the desktop"
Which is exactly what people don't want.
Microsoft should finally pull their collective head out of their backside and stop making everything into a PC with Windows. A phone isn't a PC, it isn't used in the same way, so a "desktop experience" is very counterproductive on a phone.
One would think that they have learned something already ...
Re:They still don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is exactly what people don't want.
Speak for yourself.
The more "PC" like my mobile devices get, the happier I am. A Surface Pro is far more in-line with the wants and needs of the average user than is a Kindle Fire or an iPad. I would hope that this would extend in mobile phones as well. They're one of the few companies with an offering that could make me give up my BlackBerry.
The computer in my pocket should be a computer. Android, while popular here, can't even handle simple task-switching.
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I want to do simple things like switch between tasks. I'm not in the minority here. Lots of people want that feature. Think: "Can I deal with this notification and get back to my game?"
Android, obviously, can't handle that. Most of the time, it just closes the other program when you change tasks. There's no warning, and nothing you can do to stop it. It drives my wife crazy. She was spoiled by her old PlayBook, which could not only handle task-switching, but true multitasking.
I want my phone to just work and not require constant maintenance.
Me too, which is why I o
Re:They still don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is exactly what people don't want.
Speak for yourself.
The more "PC" like my mobile devices get, the happier I am. A Surface Pro is far more in-line with the wants and needs of the average user than is a Kindle Fire or an iPad. I would hope that this would extend in mobile phones as well. They're one of the few companies with an offering that could make me give up my BlackBerry.
The computer in my pocket should be a computer. Android, while popular here, can't even handle simple task-switching.
Speak for yourself. The average user wants a device that "just works". Something one can pull out of a pocket or back, press a button and have it do what they need done (looking something up on the internet, read the message from their grandmother, see their next meeting, what have you. A technical user might want to have the power of installing Adobe Flash or tweaking their registry to allow focus-follows-mouse or three versions of Firefox or an ssh client or vim or what have you.
If I want the power of a PC, I use a laptop or desktop. I want my phone to just work and not require constant maintenance.
Indeed. Remember "back in the day" when a Personal computer was a complicated, almost workstation like machine requiring high maintenance, but very powerful. As well there were "home computers" which were less powerful, but much easier to use: Slide the program cartridge in, turn it on, have fun.
Eventually home computers disappeared, and every Luddite and their mother had a PC. Then the calls started flooding in. The inability to do basic tasks, being easily tricked by malware, etc.
Mobile platforms bring back simple, straight forward approach that many users need. For many people all they need to be able to do is surf the web, check their email, and check facebook. Platforms such as iOS and Android excel at this. All the better for those users to use those machines, as long as higher performance PC's (Windows/OSX/Linux) exist for heavy lifting.
More and more on trips I pack my Android tablet and leave my laptop at home. Easier to fire up at the airport departure lounge, on the plane to watch a movie, or in the hotel: laptops usually involve hauling out all the accessories, cords, wait for it to boot, etc, while a tablet will immediately wake from sleep and sip battery. Smartphones also excel at being able to last all day on a charge, yet alert you instantly when you have a new email or other notification. That said I'd be at a loss without my i5 desktop at home.
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I think you're focusing on the UI too much. They've already said the UIs will be different between the devices(pc, tablet, phone).
What "desktop experience"? (Score:2)
They use new Windows to break into moblie (Score:2)
People keep asking why are they changing Windows when people like what they have? The answer is that new versions of Microsoft Windows will sell whether you like the new features or not. So they are using Windows for other goals. Specifically, they are using Windows for PC to accustom you to their Mobile offerings. That is their most logical way of making money and staying relevant. Just making you really like Windows 10 a lot doesn't really help them.
Define 'desktop' ... (Score:5, Interesting)
It too me a day or so to remove the crap from Windows 8.1 to make it look like an actual desktop.
So windows 10 will, what, be just as broken as the desktop was in Windows 8.1? Or it will try to suck less and be less like a tablet experience?
At this point, I'm forced to conclude (from a week or so of running my new Windows 8.1 machine) that most of the decisions Microsoft has been making indicate they no longer know how to write a UI for a desktop, and they're entirely focused on writing only stuff for tablets.
They keep betting they're going to be successful on the phone Real Soon Now ... and they're so busy playing catch up they might need to worry someone is going to come out with the next new thing before they can put out a copy of what everyone else has had for years.
So the same experience on a Windows 10 phone as a desktop? That's based on giving you a crappy experience on the desktop.
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Have you seen the demos? Win10 on PC will look more like 7, but have some metro stuff. The start menu will have a metro-like layout on it's right side. And I think you can still pull up the full metro view (if you REALLY wanted to). The 2 in 1 laptops/tablets will allow devices to switch easily and intuitively (if the program takes advantage of the api) between the desktop view and metro view. The phones will have the metro view that you see on Win7/Win8 phones.
So TL;DR to answer your question, it looks lik
SDK is lackluster (Score:3, Interesting)
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Trying to get a stack trace from an Unhandled exception? Nope can't do that. Want to find out what OS build you are on?
You're kidding right?
Neither of these things take more than a single standard method call to get an object filled with all the data you would expect.
Are you sure you're talking about the same thing as the rest of us?
Microsoft and mobile space .. (Score:2)
What Microsoft should do is - get the hardware manufacturers to pay Microsoft for each handset sold - whether they have Windows on them or not.
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They already do that with Android...
MS makes more money on Android than WM.
Where I see Windows phones... (Score:4, Informative)
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Too Late (Ask Zune) (Score:5, Interesting)
If this thing came out in a parallel universe where the iPod didn’t exist, it would be hailed as a god. No, the problem is the iPod’s head start — its catalog of music, movies, apps and accessories are ridiculously superior to the Zune’s
The Zune was cancelled shortly thereafter. The product finally became good, but it was too late. I smell the same fate for windows phone.
good times (Score:5, Funny)
...provide an experience very much like the desktop...
Excellent! I always wanted my phone to BSOD in the middle of an important call!
Finally (Score:2)
What do people want? (Score:2)
I see this sort of news couched in discussions of "What do people /really/ want?" but that has little relation to what would be a market success.
That's like asking "What kind of food do people really want?" when the reality is that people cluster around multiple options in the market.
With plenty of room for debate, there are multiple clusters of success in the mobile market today. For the sake of argument:
- safe, pretty, predictable, simple, stable, walled garden -- apple totally owns this ~20% of the mar
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Ugly UI (Score:2)
Pastel colors and giant squares that cover up your entire background with "live tiles" that are less functional than widgets... There's no chance of success until they overhaul the UI.
But realistically... (Score:3)
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What choice does Microsoft have at this point? If they simple cede the mobile market, they risk Google marching right up the middle with a series of devices that come to resemble a full computing platform. And that most certainly is Google's intent. That's why they're putting considerable resources into Google Docs; they want it to be good enough, and once it is good enough, then suddenly that Chromebook looks like a pretty decent competitor to a more expensive Windows laptop.
At the end of the day, Microsof
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MS sucks, everything they make is BAD (Score:3)
Posting from a 9 year old Mac Mini that survived a house fire. Only lost the onboard sound card. Had another older one that was right in the line of fire AND took the full brunt of firehoses and still worked after, losing only the stuff at the bottom of the case.
ObRobotChicken (Score:2)
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Neither does saying "it is the greatest next thing", apparently.
My schadenfreude (Score:3)
"Schadenfreude", German for "harm-joy", is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. And that's what I feel when I see Microsoft finally slipping. I surely don't have to list all the shit they've done before, but in this specific case: their trojan horse Stephen Elop destroyed Nokia from the inside. He killed the most successful mobile platform ever (Symbian), and the one that had the most future potential (MeeGo), to push the Windows shit that no one wanted -- all for the benefit of an external party, not the one who had hired him. (how the fuck was he not sued for breach of fiduciary duty yet?)
By all means, Microsoft, keep trying! Keep wasting money on a project without future. I hope I'll live to see you crash and burn at last.
Sky is falling (Score:2)
MS has been trying to break into mobile for a decade, all while Apple, Google, and (for a while) BlackBerry did.
The Windows brand is tainted, even without the debacles of Vista and 8. Windows is everywhere else, and people are either tired of it (even subconsciously) or don't consider it a thing... it's dangerously close to becoming a generic trademark like Kleenex or Band-Aid, except that no one refers to their computers by the OS, if anything they refer to them by the OEM.
MS doesn't know how to connect w
Well, what did you expect them to say? (Score:2)
There is only one way for MS to achieve this (Score:3)
Clearly, an open platform that takes security seriously at all would be in demand. The difficulty here is that Microsoft hasn't communicated that they're making just that. Instead, it *appears* to the uninformed consumer that they're trying to make what we already have but with a different skin.
This is either a design issue or a marketing issue. Maybe if they put less effort into controlling online conversations and more effort into telling us useful stuff, that could be helped a bit. Remember the Ubuntu phone? Remember what people were excited about regarding it? Notice how it hasn't been achieved due to various business cockblocks, thus leaving the gate wide open for someone bigger to step in? Hint hint.
But what do I know? I'm going off the assumption that when consumers repeat themselves without variation for years on end, they're spelling out in the simplest possible terms what they'd just love to hand over their money to acquire. I could be wrong about that. Do consumers know what they want? We might as well ask if free will exists; that debate will never be settled.
Intel based phone could change the game (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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It still is. It markets to a very specific niche and has little to no traction outside it. The reason why they are so fabulously financially successful is that their niche represents some of the most economically successful demographics of our time.
When you cater to the specific very successful niche that happens to be growing steadily and you manage to lock them into your products as apple does, you tend to become wildly successful.
You keep using that word.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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So we need the Dr. Pepper of cell phones?
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