17 ms·

I worked 3 years as a windows phone dev and i'm sorry to say but Microsofts efforts were ... almost insultingly bad. It started with windows phone 8 and the Me

by dtx1 9y ago

I worked 3 years as a windows phone dev and i'm sorry to say but Microsofts efforts were ... almost insultingly bad. It started with windows phone 8 and the Metro UI. Bad Idea. The UI was too far away from Android/iPhone to be easily ported and adding corporate design to it was hard as it was too different. Silverlight and XAML was okay for the time. Then came windows 8.1 and windows desktop 8 which was universally hated. The whole fullscreen apps debacle was just horrible and all the unnecessary restrictions on store apps for desktop made no one ever consider porting their desktop app to a store app. The whole phone and desktop app in one was a joke aswell since it was (and still is!) horrible implemented. Did I mention they broke compatibility from 8.1 to phone 8? I didn't even bother starting all over again for windows 8.1 i just straight up skipped it. Then windows 10 came and it finally looked like the UWP Plattform might do the trick. Well nope. The SDK is garbage. Scaling from phone to desktop is hidiously bad and afaik still not solved. The Live-Tiles got even worse since you couldn't programm them like the windows 8 ones. Just a whole mess. Couple that with the hillariously bad store interface (backend aswell as frontend) and 0 User engagement and it was bound to fail (as will all UWP apps) You guys build a, I'm sorry to say but after 3 years of frustration it's fair to say, half-baked half-assed phone plattform that at no point had even a single feature that wasn't available better on iOS and Android, restricted the developers unecessarily, broke compatibility once a year requiring a complete rewrite and frankly build a product that only microsoft liked but was universally hated by their users. It's a story of too little too late and a whole lot of arrogance on microsofts side. Oh and don't even get me started on microsoft completely ignoring the european market where they actually got up to 15% marketshare of new devices sold for a while.

narrator 9y ago
The thing about the MS platforms that has always been an issue is that they change the developer APIs around all the time. Every year they come out with the latest greatest way to access a database or whatever and it really isn't that much better than what they had last year, but it still requires a rewrite.
- cjsuk 9y ago
  Yes. They also rewrite stuff half way through and tell you it's the same project just to piss you off. Windows Workflow and Windows Communication Foundation for example. I'm really disinclined to invest in any of their technology because my headspace is finite and I want to deliver business value, not change the unworn carpets once a year.
  - dtx1 9y ago
    It's also just such a bad idea because they never get to mature their features, add uniqueness or allow 3rd party devs to build the ecosystem. They just build the same thing over and over again while their competitors keep refining, innovating and adding features. Really a bound to fail strategy
    - cjsuk 9y ago
      Exactly that. The feedback loop is shit as well. Out falls a broken pile of shit for a CTP. No one accepts any feedback. It hits RTM, no one accepts any feedback. Two years down the line, the same bugs are open. You should hear the partner reps wanting to cry when you report a bug in something that you NEED a fix for and are paying support for. You get fuck all other than a registry fix or a hack even if the mainline product is falling to bits across a thousand or so users (which is what happened to us). Money where the mouth is as well. Typical shit: https://github.com/Microsoft/SCVMMLinuxGuestAgent/issues/2 https://github.com/Microsoft/SCVMMLinuxGuestAgent/issues/2 -> ignored. Regularly hoses our new VMs deploying windows on SCVMM. https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093 https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093 -> fuck you go away we're just going to take your data unless you set a magic variable even though no one wants to give it away as indicated by the ticket and there are bugs in the configuration and it causes people massive audit problems.
      - dtx1 9y ago
        From the second ticket > It's only a matter of time before some enterprising journalist looking for a scoop picks up on this. The headlines here are not good: "Microsoft caught with sneaky program to spy on companies" Let me take care of that... Edit: Wrote several of germanys biggest tech sites with focus on dataprotection aswell as the german ministry for cyber security with a link to that ticket. Let's see what happens
emodendroket 9y ago
The biggest frustration, to me, is that WPF was basically left on the vine while they pursued this WinRT stuff.
- 201709User 9y ago
  Yeah, and what enterprise have done? It had to switch to legacy crap of JS and HTML(5). Sinofski was an evil moron.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    That was probably going to happen anyway because the zero-installation, easy-update, relatively upgrade-safe environment of Web apps is really attractive to businesses.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  I think the evolutionary path connecting WPF and "this WinRT stuff" is extremely clear and if you've built WPF you can build UWP. UWP .NET/XAML is great to work with if you know WPF, it's truly a successor to WPF in every way. (It'll be even better soon [as in next month] thanks to .NET Standard 2.0.)
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    That may be so, but WinRT comes with a bunch of limitations, so there isn't really a no-brainer choice for application development, and also, considering how deeply it's associated with the unpopular Windows Store app and Windows phone, who wants to throw in their lot with it? Frankly it hasn't seemed worth investing that much time into any of them and I pretty much just end up reaching for yet another WinForms MVP app. But WinForms practically works against you in the effort to separate UI from behavioral code so that isn't that satisfying either.
    - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      I'm still maintaining a WinForms app, the only problem I've had is dealing with high dpi displays is really messy.
untog 9y ago
There's a semi-contradiction in your post that I think speaks to some of the issues MS had: "It started with windows phone 8 and the Metro UI. Bad Idea. The UI was too far away from Android/iPhone to be easily ported " "half-baked half-assed phone plattform that at no point had even a single feature that wasn't available better on iOS and Android" As someone who played around with WP7 when it first came out, I'd argue that the Metro UI was the best one available at the time. But the side effect of that is that it was different, and difficult to adapt an existing app to. Essentially, MS needed to make a bold new platform with inventive new features, but also make the platform very compatible with the other major mobile platforms. You can't easily square that circle. Now, MS also messed up in a million and one ways (like my phone never getting a WP8 upgrade...) but I think their fundamental challenge was very, very difficult.
- dtx1 9y ago
  Thats imo no contradictions. Metro did things different but in no way better and felt severly restricted compared to android/ios ui design at the time. They banked on having everything look the same in the whole OS but never considered that certain apps just straight up wouldn't work with the metro UI concept.
- thanatropism 9y ago
  My wife had several Windows Phones in succession. Her use of a phone is very practical: contacts, texting, weather information. All of this was available at a glance in a much much better way than either Android or the iPhone have. It was a better business UI. It was harder to use if you had many apps. But seriously, having a phone open to the equivalent of Windows 3.1's Program Manager (which is what Android and iPhone deliver) is not great!
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    The iPhone opens to something like the Program Manager (but with little numbers showing which apps have active notifications). Android opens to something like a Desktop, with some combination of Widget apps and/or app shortcuts. Mine is configured to show a clock, mini calendar, and weather. Incoming e-mails, SMSes, or other messages are visible in the notification bar. I could configure it to show me little previews of messages, but I chose not to.
limeblack 9y ago
> that at no point had even a single feature that wasn't available better on iOS and Android According to the dates[0] I found online says Windows was the first to have a feature that would automatically connect to your cellular connection if the Wifi didn't work. Most consumers don't care but it is something I was surprised iPhones[1] and Android[2] didn't have at least at the time. In addition continuum is unique/better in many ways although that is more recent. It has been a while since I have used a Windows Phone. [0] Windows 8.1 definitely had it in 2014 according to this https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10652/windows-phone-cellular-and-sim-settings https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10652/windows-phone... I'm pretty sure Windows Phones predating this also had it although documentation seems lacking. [1] Wi-fi assist was introduced in iOS 9(2015). https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205296 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205296 [2] There are apps for Android that do this but at least this one is 3rd party. No sources says it predates 2015. I have not experimented with this on Android. https://www.guidingtech.com/54831/get-ios-like-wi-fi-assist-android-using-speedify/ https://www.guidingtech.com/54831/get-ios-like-wi-fi-assist-...
- dtx1 9y ago
  > If I recall correctly Windows was the first to have a feature that would automatically connect to your cellular connection if the Wifi didn't work. Most consumers don't care but it is something I was surprised iPhones and Android didn't have at least at the time. I remember having an app on android that did that long before windows phone had it. It was able to turn on/off your wifi based on your location. Great battery saver. > In addition continuum is unique/better in many ways although that is more recent. It has been a while since I have used a Windows Phone. Samsung cloned it for their S8 Series and it seems to be actually usable from the start compared to windows continuum. Though by the time continuum was available, wp was dead.
  - limeblack 9y ago
    > I remember having an app on android that did that long before windows phone had it. It was able to turn on/off your wifi based on your location. Great battery saver. That is technically different although similar. I have updated with dates. Windows Phone definitely appears to have been first in this scenario unless you count rooted devices which may have something I don't know about.
stillsut 9y ago
> it finally looked like the UWP Plattform might do the trick. Well nope. The SDK is garbage. Scaling from phone to desktop is hidiously bad and afaik still not solved. A lot people tell me Xcode is garbage, Eclipse is a nightmare, but these apps keep getting cranked out. The Android / iOS language and platform api's are SNAFU, but people get still get into the IDE and start making, without any promise for a set of conversion-frameworks + XML files that will make the app for All The Things. At the rate an app builder is adding features, the universal-platform paradigm is cognitive overload. I think a No-XML based approach to app development, similiar to VB6 / VBA, would have been greatly appreciated. If MS gives me a stable API to an email client, a calendar, a shared drive, and a messaging or video chat service, I'd spend the 5 hours to automate a 5 minute inconveneince. A windows phone with a bunch of "lifehacks" apps would tremendously useful to much of the smartphone market, as long as they had the cant-live-without-apps too.
- orbitur 9y ago
  > A lot people tell me Xcode is garbage, Eclipse is a nightmare Xcode is absolutely sits at the bottom of the IDE rankings, but Eclipse shouldn't even be a concern for Android devs. Android Studio is a very nice IDE and no Android dev should touch Eclipse ever again. It's a shame it's tied to the Android platform, honestly. I'd kill to have Android Studio's functionality when developing for iOS. (And no, AppCode doesn't make the cut)
  - kuschku 9y ago
    > It's a shame it's tied to the Android platform, honestly. It's not, it also supports Java, C++/C/ObjC, Go, Python, PHP, JS, and many more. Find the other Jetbrains IDEs at https://www.jetbrains.com/ https://www.jetbrains.com/
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Android Studio is a fork of InteliJ, you cannot use it as InteliJ, because the options are tailored for Android, If you use InteliJ with Android plugin instead, then you will always be behind the curve of the actual Android development, as JetBrains catches up.
windows8q 9y ago
> Then came windows 8.1 and windows desktop 8 which was universally hated. The whole fullscreen apps debacle was just horrible and all the unnecessary restrictions on store apps for desktop made no one ever consider porting their desktop app to a store app. The whole phone and desktop app in one was a joke aswell since it was (and still is!) horrible implemented. Did I mention they broke compatibility from 8.1 to phone 8? I didn't even bother starting all over again for windows 8.1 i just straight up skipped it. What was so horrible about it? I almost invested in a surface just off the strength of the UI; I rather liked that they were trying to merge desktop and tablet. Why was the experience so bad?
- fpig 9y ago
  Windows 8 "metro" UI caused an uproar for many reasons, some of the biggest ones being: - the start menu covered the whole screen - applications could only run full screen, even the simplest ones. You literally couldn't have 2 applications on the screen at the same time. - it was hard to close applications - it was very difficult to find the shutdown/reset/etc options - the metro versions of "default" apps looked bad and were vastly inferior to the "old" versions. A lot of system settings ones had this problem, too (not relevant to the average user, but I use a VPN that is impossible to set up to work in the simple "metro" VPN app, but if you find and start the old win7 app which still exists, you can set it up correctly and you can even connect to it from the "metro" VPN app after that) - a lot of computer games that worked on 7 didn't work on 8 (likely unrelated to metro UI but still a reason for many people not to update) Some problems were fixed in Windows 8.1. In Windows 10, most of these things are fine (although Win10 gets hate because of its update system and because it installs unwanted apps, but it seems to have much more acceptance overall). Windows 8 basically offered nothing to the average user except annoyance so people didn't want to update. It had a very nice improvement for developers in the form of Hyper-V, which is the only reason I upgraded, and only after 8.1 was released. The root problem with Windows 8 UI was that it was clearly not designed with the intention of being a better desktop UI. It was designed with the intention of forcing users to get used to the Windows Phone-style UI on their desktop computer, in hopes that they will then buy Windows Phones out of familiarity. Basically desktop Windows had to "take one for the team". We can see here how much that helped WP.
nunez 9y ago
This reminds me of a Timer app I downloaded when I had a HD8 that didn’t actually alert you when your time was up because of the way the native Alarm SDK was written (something to do with being unable to dispatch an alarm notification at exactly a given time). It made things...difficult.
at-fates-hands 9y ago
Good to hear from someone who was valiantly trying to create apps for this platform. I always wondered why developers never flocked to the MS platform since it always seemed wide open with not a lot of competition compared to the IOS and Android platforms. Thanks for laying bare why it failed so badly.
indiepop12 9y ago
I had the same experience while working on WP in 2012-13. In early 2013, I reported a bug when some of the elements inside LongListSelector would disappear randomly on scrolling. LongListSelector is WP’s counterpart for iOS’s tableView. So I started a discussion on Microsoft forums on this bug. Someone from Microsoft confirmed this bug. I tracked this bug for 9 months. And guess what they never fixed it. They never fixed a critical bug in the most used UI component of mobile apps.
anjc 9y ago
> at no point had even a single feature that wasn't available better on iOS and Android Not only is this untrue for years past, it's still untrue (See Continuum + UWP)

by dtx1 9y ago

narrator 9y ago

The thing about the MS platforms that has always been an issue is that they change the developer APIs around all the time. Every year they come out with the latest greatest way to access a database or whatever and it really isn't that much better than what they had last year, but it still requires a rewrite.

cjsuk 9y ago
Yes. They also rewrite stuff half way through and tell you it's the same project just to piss you off. Windows Workflow and Windows Communication Foundation for example. I'm really disinclined to invest in any of their technology because my headspace is finite and I want to deliver business value, not change the unworn carpets once a year.
- dtx1 9y ago
  It's also just such a bad idea because they never get to mature their features, add uniqueness or allow 3rd party devs to build the ecosystem. They just build the same thing over and over again while their competitors keep refining, innovating and adding features. Really a bound to fail strategy
  - cjsuk 9y ago
    Exactly that. The feedback loop is shit as well. Out falls a broken pile of shit for a CTP. No one accepts any feedback. It hits RTM, no one accepts any feedback. Two years down the line, the same bugs are open. You should hear the partner reps wanting to cry when you report a bug in something that you NEED a fix for and are paying support for. You get fuck all other than a registry fix or a hack even if the mainline product is falling to bits across a thousand or so users (which is what happened to us). Money where the mouth is as well. Typical shit: https://github.com/Microsoft/SCVMMLinuxGuestAgent/issues/2 https://github.com/Microsoft/SCVMMLinuxGuestAgent/issues/2 -> ignored. Regularly hoses our new VMs deploying windows on SCVMM. https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093 https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093 -> fuck you go away we're just going to take your data unless you set a magic variable even though no one wants to give it away as indicated by the ticket and there are bugs in the configuration and it causes people massive audit problems.
    - dtx1 9y ago
      From the second ticket > It's only a matter of time before some enterprising journalist looking for a scoop picks up on this. The headlines here are not good: "Microsoft caught with sneaky program to spy on companies" Let me take care of that... Edit: Wrote several of germanys biggest tech sites with focus on dataprotection aswell as the german ministry for cyber security with a link to that ticket. Let's see what happens

emodendroket 9y ago

The biggest frustration, to me, is that WPF was basically left on the vine while they pursued this WinRT stuff.

201709User 9y ago
Yeah, and what enterprise have done? It had to switch to legacy crap of JS and HTML(5). Sinofski was an evil moron.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  That was probably going to happen anyway because the zero-installation, easy-update, relatively upgrade-safe environment of Web apps is really attractive to businesses.
WorldMaker 9y ago
I think the evolutionary path connecting WPF and "this WinRT stuff" is extremely clear and if you've built WPF you can build UWP. UWP .NET/XAML is great to work with if you know WPF, it's truly a successor to WPF in every way. (It'll be even better soon [as in next month] thanks to .NET Standard 2.0.)
- emodendroket 9y ago
  That may be so, but WinRT comes with a bunch of limitations, so there isn't really a no-brainer choice for application development, and also, considering how deeply it's associated with the unpopular Windows Store app and Windows phone, who wants to throw in their lot with it? Frankly it hasn't seemed worth investing that much time into any of them and I pretty much just end up reaching for yet another WinForms MVP app. But WinForms practically works against you in the effort to separate UI from behavioral code so that isn't that satisfying either.
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    I'm still maintaining a WinForms app, the only problem I've had is dealing with high dpi displays is really messy.

untog 9y ago

There's a semi-contradiction in your post that I think speaks to some of the issues MS had: "It started with windows phone 8 and the Metro UI. Bad Idea. The UI was too far away from Android/iPhone to be easily ported " "half-baked half-assed phone plattform that at no point had even a single feature that wasn't available better on iOS and Android" As someone who played around with WP7 when it first came out, I'd argue that the Metro UI was the best one available at the time. But the side effect of that is that it was different, and difficult to adapt an existing app to. Essentially, MS needed to make a bold new platform with inventive new features, but also make the platform very compatible with the other major mobile platforms. You can't easily square that circle. Now, MS also messed up in a million and one ways (like my phone never getting a WP8 upgrade...) but I think their fundamental challenge was very, very difficult.

dtx1 9y ago
Thats imo no contradictions. Metro did things different but in no way better and felt severly restricted compared to android/ios ui design at the time. They banked on having everything look the same in the whole OS but never considered that certain apps just straight up wouldn't work with the metro UI concept.
thanatropism 9y ago
My wife had several Windows Phones in succession. Her use of a phone is very practical: contacts, texting, weather information. All of this was available at a glance in a much much better way than either Android or the iPhone have. It was a better business UI. It was harder to use if you had many apps. But seriously, having a phone open to the equivalent of Windows 3.1's Program Manager (which is what Android and iPhone deliver) is not great!
- khedoros1 9y ago
  The iPhone opens to something like the Program Manager (but with little numbers showing which apps have active notifications). Android opens to something like a Desktop, with some combination of Widget apps and/or app shortcuts. Mine is configured to show a clock, mini calendar, and weather. Incoming e-mails, SMSes, or other messages are visible in the notification bar. I could configure it to show me little previews of messages, but I chose not to.

limeblack 9y ago

> that at no point had even a single feature that wasn't available better on iOS and Android According to the dates[0] I found online says Windows was the first to have a feature that would automatically connect to your cellular connection if the Wifi didn't work. Most consumers don't care but it is something I was surprised iPhones[1] and Android[2] didn't have at least at the time. In addition continuum is unique/better in many ways although that is more recent. It has been a while since I have used a Windows Phone. [0] Windows 8.1 definitely had it in 2014 according to this https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10652/windows-phone-cellular-and-sim-settings https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10652/windows-phone... I'm pretty sure Windows Phones predating this also had it although documentation seems lacking. [1] Wi-fi assist was introduced in iOS 9(2015). https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205296 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205296 [2] There are apps for Android that do this but at least this one is 3rd party. No sources says it predates 2015. I have not experimented with this on Android. https://www.guidingtech.com/54831/get-ios-like-wi-fi-assist-android-using-speedify/ https://www.guidingtech.com/54831/get-ios-like-wi-fi-assist-...

dtx1 9y ago
> If I recall correctly Windows was the first to have a feature that would automatically connect to your cellular connection if the Wifi didn't work. Most consumers don't care but it is something I was surprised iPhones and Android didn't have at least at the time. I remember having an app on android that did that long before windows phone had it. It was able to turn on/off your wifi based on your location. Great battery saver. > In addition continuum is unique/better in many ways although that is more recent. It has been a while since I have used a Windows Phone. Samsung cloned it for their S8 Series and it seems to be actually usable from the start compared to windows continuum. Though by the time continuum was available, wp was dead.
- limeblack 9y ago
  > I remember having an app on android that did that long before windows phone had it. It was able to turn on/off your wifi based on your location. Great battery saver. That is technically different although similar. I have updated with dates. Windows Phone definitely appears to have been first in this scenario unless you count rooted devices which may have something I don't know about.

stillsut 9y ago

> it finally looked like the UWP Plattform might do the trick. Well nope. The SDK is garbage. Scaling from phone to desktop is hidiously bad and afaik still not solved. A lot people tell me Xcode is garbage, Eclipse is a nightmare, but these apps keep getting cranked out. The Android / iOS language and platform api's are SNAFU, but people get still get into the IDE and start making, without any promise for a set of conversion-frameworks + XML files that will make the app for All The Things. At the rate an app builder is adding features, the universal-platform paradigm is cognitive overload. I think a No-XML based approach to app development, similiar to VB6 / VBA, would have been greatly appreciated. If MS gives me a stable API to an email client, a calendar, a shared drive, and a messaging or video chat service, I'd spend the 5 hours to automate a 5 minute inconveneince. A windows phone with a bunch of "lifehacks" apps would tremendously useful to much of the smartphone market, as long as they had the cant-live-without-apps too.

orbitur 9y ago
> A lot people tell me Xcode is garbage, Eclipse is a nightmare Xcode is absolutely sits at the bottom of the IDE rankings, but Eclipse shouldn't even be a concern for Android devs. Android Studio is a very nice IDE and no Android dev should touch Eclipse ever again. It's a shame it's tied to the Android platform, honestly. I'd kill to have Android Studio's functionality when developing for iOS. (And no, AppCode doesn't make the cut)
- kuschku 9y ago
  > It's a shame it's tied to the Android platform, honestly. It's not, it also supports Java, C++/C/ObjC, Go, Python, PHP, JS, and many more. Find the other Jetbrains IDEs at https://www.jetbrains.com/ https://www.jetbrains.com/
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Android Studio is a fork of InteliJ, you cannot use it as InteliJ, because the options are tailored for Android, If you use InteliJ with Android plugin instead, then you will always be behind the curve of the actual Android development, as JetBrains catches up.

windows8q 9y ago

> Then came windows 8.1 and windows desktop 8 which was universally hated. The whole fullscreen apps debacle was just horrible and all the unnecessary restrictions on store apps for desktop made no one ever consider porting their desktop app to a store app. The whole phone and desktop app in one was a joke aswell since it was (and still is!) horrible implemented. Did I mention they broke compatibility from 8.1 to phone 8? I didn't even bother starting all over again for windows 8.1 i just straight up skipped it. What was so horrible about it? I almost invested in a surface just off the strength of the UI; I rather liked that they were trying to merge desktop and tablet. Why was the experience so bad?

fpig 9y ago
Windows 8 "metro" UI caused an uproar for many reasons, some of the biggest ones being: - the start menu covered the whole screen - applications could only run full screen, even the simplest ones. You literally couldn't have 2 applications on the screen at the same time. - it was hard to close applications - it was very difficult to find the shutdown/reset/etc options - the metro versions of "default" apps looked bad and were vastly inferior to the "old" versions. A lot of system settings ones had this problem, too (not relevant to the average user, but I use a VPN that is impossible to set up to work in the simple "metro" VPN app, but if you find and start the old win7 app which still exists, you can set it up correctly and you can even connect to it from the "metro" VPN app after that) - a lot of computer games that worked on 7 didn't work on 8 (likely unrelated to metro UI but still a reason for many people not to update) Some problems were fixed in Windows 8.1. In Windows 10, most of these things are fine (although Win10 gets hate because of its update system and because it installs unwanted apps, but it seems to have much more acceptance overall). Windows 8 basically offered nothing to the average user except annoyance so people didn't want to update. It had a very nice improvement for developers in the form of Hyper-V, which is the only reason I upgraded, and only after 8.1 was released. The root problem with Windows 8 UI was that it was clearly not designed with the intention of being a better desktop UI. It was designed with the intention of forcing users to get used to the Windows Phone-style UI on their desktop computer, in hopes that they will then buy Windows Phones out of familiarity. Basically desktop Windows had to "take one for the team". We can see here how much that helped WP.

nunez 9y ago

This reminds me of a Timer app I downloaded when I had a HD8 that didn’t actually alert you when your time was up because of the way the native Alarm SDK was written (something to do with being unable to dispatch an alarm notification at exactly a given time). It made things...difficult.

at-fates-hands 9y ago

Good to hear from someone who was valiantly trying to create apps for this platform. I always wondered why developers never flocked to the MS platform since it always seemed wide open with not a lot of competition compared to the IOS and Android platforms. Thanks for laying bare why it failed so badly.

indiepop12 9y ago

I had the same experience while working on WP in 2012-13. In early 2013, I reported a bug when some of the elements inside LongListSelector would disappear randomly on scrolling. LongListSelector is WP’s counterpart for iOS’s tableView. So I started a discussion on Microsoft forums on this bug. Someone from Microsoft confirmed this bug. I tracked this bug for 9 months. And guess what they never fixed it. They never fixed a critical bug in the most used UI component of mobile apps.

anjc 9y ago

> at no point had even a single feature that wasn't available better on iOS and Android Not only is this untrue for years past, it's still untrue (See Continuum + UWP)