I don’t understand how Android is the dominant phone platform.
- Thread starter Exordium01
- Start date
I agree with you, but I wonder if even that would have mattered.
I actually have some limited sympathy for Ballmer here. He still deserves every brick you threw at him just now, but I can see why he was seduced into some sort of attempt at a merger between Windows Desktop and Windows Phone. Even from the outside looking in, the pressure to do so was enormous.
Meanwhile, if he had forced Microsoft to disrupt itself, what then? We don't know, but the problem is, it ends up an essentially whole new product with weak links to Windows or at least no better than whatever Apple and Android were doing.
I don't know; maybe he could have faked it, made a whole bunch of noise about some alleged superior integration and so made a name for the product even if there wasn't much actual integration for a while. It's the path not taken, so who knows?
But I think it is as likely as not that a whole from-scratch, "disrupt yourself" product would have been. . .just another Blackberry. Because, again, it was late. Thus, there was a big chance that the self-disruption would have even gotten less attention than their actual product did. What would have been special about it, after all? Where's the differentiator?
The whole reason pundits made a fool of themselves, for years, predicting MS to get a 20 per cent phone share was always promulgated on the idea that somehow, some way, it's desktop Empire could be leveraged. If they abandoned that, it's just not clear what their value proposition was nor how they could get the phone vendors (already maxing out on freedom of choice from splintered Android) to pony up for the Not Windows Windows Phone.
Maybe this was Microsoft's Kobiashi-Maru.
Well, they had a nascent phone business unlike google. So It's even harder for them. They had a reasonably substantial piece of an admittedly much smaller pie.
I also think that in the US market though, you can't underestimate the importance of Verizon ditching MS and going to Android with the DROID.
I think the only way MS could have won would have been to not just shift from Windows Mobile to Windows phone earlier, but also bend over backwards to keep/get a carrier for that phone. Shift the licensing style to match google's from day one.
All of this required that Microsoft saw that the iPhone would be a market disruptor and also be willing to spend the money to undermine their existing business in the space.
You are correct, it's not an easy choice.
I also think that in the US market though, you can't underestimate the importance of Verizon ditching MS and going to Android with the DROID.
I think the only way MS could have won would have been to not just shift from Windows Mobile to Windows phone earlier, but also bend over backwards to keep/get a carrier for that phone. Shift the licensing style to match google's from day one.
All of this required that Microsoft saw that the iPhone would be a market disruptor and also be willing to spend the money to undermine their existing business in the space.
You are correct, it's not an easy choice.
It is no coincidence that Google didn't release those apps and Google made Android. They blocked those apps because they didn't want the competition to Android.
Google holding out hurt. It wasn't the only thing, but it contributed. The year when they launched mediocre updates and no real "flagship" also hurt. Their reboots of the OS also hurt.
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.
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.
They had tons of options, but seemed to choose the wrong one each time.
And to me the common thread to all the poor decisions was a lack of urgency:
- 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.
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.
WP7 probably never should have happened. They probably should have gone to WP8 immediately. OR, they should have gone to WP7 earlier instead of mocking the iPhone.
Sounds fair. Same with missing apps...it'll be fine, people will just find alternatives.
carrier issues...it'll be fine, they'll have to carry us when we're huge.
Or, at least by the Windows 8 timeframe, a scleroic software infrastructure.
While I have repeatedly stated that every institutional imperative called for "leveraging Windows" on the phone and they succumbed to it, it is hard to underestimate the amount of added software integration doing so caused.
Android had it comparatively easy. It was just a bunch of client/server apps. The apps could have as much of a clean slate as they needed. They had to deal with the Google server/services side, but it would still allow for a large amount of independent development.
On the Windows' side, I don't think this is nearly so true. I don't know that they swallowed the whole history of Windows and its APIs (surely not Win32 for instance??) but I strongly suspect they swallowed enough of it to slow development to a crawl. This would also impact hardware too, sometimes.
I don't know/remember, and this sort of thing is not always made readily available to the public. But if the desktop infrastructure, even in part, got in the way of the phone app suite, or especially the phone OS, then that by itself might explain a lot of the critical slowdown.
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.
Again, the failure was Ballmer laughing at the iPhone instead of immediately ditching winmobile as it existed and moving to WP8 or at least WP7 and then backing a dumptruck of money up to Verizon to stave off the Droid.
If WP7 had come out earlier and been the premier "smart phone" device on Verizon vs. the Droid, That would have sold handsets at the critical time. Android might not have even made it into the market in a meaningful way. IF they had done that, the switch to WP8 would have been less painful and they could have had the time to work out app compatability. Instead they were constantly under the gun.
And that of course doesn't address the very real challenges with siloed nature of Microsoft under Ballmer. That also worked against them at every step of the way.
Again, the failure was Ballmer laughing at the iPhone instead of immediately ditching winmobile as it existed and moving to WP8 or at least WP7 and then backing a dumptruck of money up to Verizon to stave off the Droid.
If WP7 had come out earlier and been the premier "smart phone" device on Verizon vs. the Droid, That would have sold handsets at the critical time. Android might not have even made it into the market in a meaningful way. IF they had done that, the switch to WP8 would have been less painful and they could have had the time to work out app compatability. Instead they were constantly under the gun.
And that of course doesn't address the very real challenges with siloed nature of Microsoft under Ballmer. That also worked against them at every step of the way.
If this line of thinking had been more widely accepted, we could have averted endless pages in the BF re: phones.
Once Droid got its foothold, that turned out to be that. Some timeframes are really much more equal than others when it comes to long term product share.
I don't know if this is true, but it rings true. At any rate, I seem to recall Gates doing whatever it took when it became clear to him the internet was going to be the big deal. This was Ballmer's equivalent and he whiffed.
Ballmer should have not only done what you suggested, he should have been willing to reorganize the whole company around it if need be, at least enough to eliminate this problem. But that would have required a foresight that may have escaped a lot of people.
Indeed, many here, long after the war was lost, thought there was still time for MS to recoup. And not just BF denizens either. I recall endless predictions by supposedly savvy pundits that MS would reach 20 per cent share Real Soon Now because. . .reasons that turned out not to work/matter.
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.
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.
Windows Mobile 6 and below 100% used Win32 even though it wasn't the headline framework. I had to do some development for 6 and you had to drop down to Win32 to do really basic things sometimes like programmatically showing a drop down menu. .Net Compact stripped out a bunch of features supposedly to keep the size down, but then dragged along a whole bunch of Win32. MS didn't really put in a good effort until 7 and just coasted until they got caught truly flat footed.
This a little unique to my exact timeframe, but devices were starting to come out with GPS and the OS had no native support for them. You'd have to either read the raw data which varied by device or go out and license a library for it. There were also a lot of miscellaneous other issues too that made it just so unpleasant to work with. When the iPhone came out, even the SDK-less original OS was so much capable for the project that was on my desk, and I just had bang my head every day.
Wasn't that during the stack ranking days? Microsoft could never finish anything back then, because coworkers were enemies. Sabotaging their products was the best way to keep your job, or to promote your division at the expense of others. Advanced technology products require a ton of people working in close coordination, so destroying incentives to cooperate is a profoundly stupid thing to do at a tech company.
At least in tech, stack ranking is one of the all-time worst management ideas. Windows Phone sucking so badly is probably a direct consequence of that toxicity.
edit: I mean, it was so bad back then that the hardware division for Microsoft, which made the (fantastic!) Sidewinder Force Feedback joystick, couldn't get the software division to host their drivers. You literally could not download the Sidewinder drivers from anywhere at Microsoft, because their internal divisions were enemies. You had to use the CD, and if you lost or broke it, you were shit out of luck.
At least in tech, stack ranking is one of the all-time worst management ideas. Windows Phone sucking so badly is probably a direct consequence of that toxicity.
edit: I mean, it was so bad back then that the hardware division for Microsoft, which made the (fantastic!) Sidewinder Force Feedback joystick, couldn't get the software division to host their drivers. You literally could not download the Sidewinder drivers from anywhere at Microsoft, because their internal divisions were enemies. You had to use the CD, and if you lost or broke it, you were shit out of luck.
The Microsoft Silos are different from Stack Ranking. Large numbers of companies used Stack Ranking. It was a GE corporate invention as many questionable management ideas used to be.
Again, I'm no fan of Stack ranking, but I don't think it was responsible for any of the culture issues you attribute to it. There have been multiple corporations that used some form of it in the past 20 years that thrived. It's correlation not causation.
Stack ranking is everywhere. Like it or loathe it, I don't believe that on its own it has cost a company much.
If it is used as a cover for toxic practices, which is pretty easy, frankly, then the company won't thrive with stack ranking. But in that case "stack ranking" is just window-dressing for a desire to shed as many people as possible (for instance). Or, to do rapid layoffs at the drop of a hat and they use this years stacking instead of, say, the last three to five years of someone's performance.
In other words, it's there to give cover to other things. It's the underlying toxic practices that are the thing that matter.
If it is used as a cover for toxic practices, which is pretty easy, frankly, then the company won't thrive with stack ranking. But in that case "stack ranking" is just window-dressing for a desire to shed as many people as possible (for instance). Or, to do rapid layoffs at the drop of a hat and they use this years stacking instead of, say, the last three to five years of someone's performance.
In other words, it's there to give cover to other things. It's the underlying toxic practices that are the thing that matter.
Uh, again, there are dozens if not hundreds of tech companies that use stacked ranking and have thrived.
Now, Stacked Rank is no longer trendy and companies are moving away from it, especially in tech, but at it's height, when MS was doing it, so were many many other tech companies that were quite healthy.
Now, Stacked Rank is no longer trendy and companies are moving away from it, especially in tech, but at it's height, when MS was doing it, so were many many other tech companies that were quite healthy.
Please list 5 that "thrive" with stack ranking.
Stack ranking is a piece of shit management style. Even if you have an excellent team that works well, this shit style means at least one person is always at risk of losing their job, even if they happen to be "worst" of the best of the best.
There's something I don't understand: How anyone could defend stack ranking.
Stack ranking is a piece of shit management style. Even if you have an excellent team that works well, this shit style means at least one person is always at risk of losing their job, even if they happen to be "worst" of the best of the best.
There's something I don't understand: How anyone could defend stack ranking.
I mean, I guess Amazon, which from what I understand has an even more toxic version, seems to be doing extremely well.
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.
Far be it from me to defend anything Apple (that's a joke for the long time posters)...there are some nice things about Apple products. A couple of little things that I notice are when you get text message with a code from website/app...it automatically copies it to your clipboard. Nice. Another, which I wish Google would put into Maps is how some of the directions are given by Apple "Turn left at the next red light".
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.
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.
Well hell...I guess it is just Samsung then. It never copies codes for me.
Financially well sure, for now. If you're thinking about installing screaming booths in your workplace then I'm guessing your workforce is not doing so well.
The last time I was between jobs, which was some time ago, there were suspiciously many Amazon recruiters trying to hire me. I didn't want to go to the Pacific Northwest anyhow, but while I never had trouble finding work, the sheer number of Amazon guys that came out of the woodwork suggested that the then-scathing reviews on Glassdoor had it right and maybe I should look elsewhere.
There's more, but it is little more than anecdote and rumor. So, I'll spare you. But I never heard much in the way of good about working at Amazon.
Still, supposing the alleged toxicity is actually true or selectively true, the business has survived and even thrived. If it really was that bad, and stayed that way, at some point, the technical debt from all the churn is going to catch up to it. But not for ten years, not so far.
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.
That's just not clear. It wasn't immediately obvious that people stabbing their fingers against a hard, unyielding surface was going to catch on. I'll give Apple props for its execution, here. I think it mattered.
People didn't like the whole Google Glasses thing. No way to predict that failure or success until it was given a try. Who knows, someone might come up with a future version of it (in some indescribably "less clunky" fashion) that somehow catches on. That seems daft today, but a lot of things seem daft in prospect and obvious in retrospect.
Nobody in the '60s (the days of "do not bend, fold, or mutilate" punch cards) would have predicted that an entire generation would cheerfully give up its privacy (even including hints to their passwords) on a daily basis.
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.
.Blackberry was more corporate controlled, so this wasn't a particular problem for it (which accounts for it's relative success at the time). Windows Phone and early Android mostly avoided this problem because iPhone was already out by then and all the other carriers were looking for something sort of like it.
About the only really good smartphones before iPhone were the Windows CE and Palm devices, but those did suffer somewhat from this problem, if less so than Symbian. (Seriously, Symbian was bad. It was basically the smart-feature phone).