3 ms·

I completely agree and I used to work at Microsoft. Microsoft lost because they didn't have the users or the apps. It's an instructive story of how an inferior

I completely agree and I used to work at Microsoft. Microsoft lost because they didn't have the users or the apps. It's an instructive story of how an inferior product can win. I'm not saying that happens all the time or that it's inevitable, but I think it's safe to say that's sort of what happened here.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
A platform without users or apps and years late is not one I'd call superior. Good ideas are not nearly enough, as they often say around HN.
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  I thought it was pretty clear from the poster's message he was talking about product sans network effects.
robocat 8y ago
> Microsoft lost because they didn't have the users or the apps I wonder how much of it was because they had a sorry arse mobile browser? Not supporting ontouchstart etc events must have been a killer. MSPointerEvent was awfully buggy in the initial release, and what dev wants to rewrite their web app/page to use PointerEvent? Why wouldn't you make sure Hybrid apps (Cordova etc) work well? Why not just copy WKWebView (20/20 hindsight now!). Their equivalent of WKWebView is some sort of zombie IE11 version (not edge, with different features and flaws than IE11 desktop). Hideous. Disclosure: we developed a Hybrid app for Windows Phone (based on Xamarin).
- gregopet 8y ago
  Not just the browser, the whole platform was crap to develop for. My company ported a bunch of apps by a major app publisher to various versions of Windows Phone and the documentation was shitty, the APIs were shitty, everything shifted with each new version and everything was buggy. We kept asking our local Microsoft branch for help (backed by the publisher we were porting for) and more often than not they were powerless to help. A far cry from developers, developers, developers.
  - guitarbill 8y ago
    Even Microsoft themselves dropped the ball, when it took over a year for them to release Skype - which they owned - for their own mobile platform (if I'm remembering correctly, i had a Windows Phone and rather liked it).
AtlasBarfed 8y ago
Or maybe it's because your company has screwed over people and lazily abused a monopoly position for decades to the detriment of many, destroying trust and building resentment. Must feel strange getting beaten by an "inferior" product, considering how many inferior products Microsoft dumped on the market leveraging their business practices and monopoly position. Microsoft may be behaving better now so that people will run their linux instances on Azure. And android may be somewhat inferior, but it is far more open and is pretty damn good. Windows phone may have had a nice intro screen and some nifty features, but who knows if/when it could have handled the massive app variety and bad actors that android does. With the security reputation of windows, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't. The alternative phone OSs we should be mourning are PalmOS, Ubuntu mobile, and similar efforts. Microsoft's continued existence will have to be tolerated, but any product of theirs that fails or acquiesces is a victory for the consumer.
mtgx 8y ago
An inferior product can win because this inferior product you talked about had already won by the time this superior product came along. Microsoft just didn't want to admit it.

mixmastamyk 8y ago

A platform without users or apps and years late is not one I'd call superior. Good ideas are not nearly enough, as they often say around HN.

JamesBarney 8y ago
I thought it was pretty clear from the poster's message he was talking about product sans network effects.

robocat 8y ago

> Microsoft lost because they didn't have the users or the apps I wonder how much of it was because they had a sorry arse mobile browser? Not supporting ontouchstart etc events must have been a killer. MSPointerEvent was awfully buggy in the initial release, and what dev wants to rewrite their web app/page to use PointerEvent? Why wouldn't you make sure Hybrid apps (Cordova etc) work well? Why not just copy WKWebView (20/20 hindsight now!). Their equivalent of WKWebView is some sort of zombie IE11 version (not edge, with different features and flaws than IE11 desktop). Hideous. Disclosure: we developed a Hybrid app for Windows Phone (based on Xamarin).

gregopet 8y ago
Not just the browser, the whole platform was crap to develop for. My company ported a bunch of apps by a major app publisher to various versions of Windows Phone and the documentation was shitty, the APIs were shitty, everything shifted with each new version and everything was buggy. We kept asking our local Microsoft branch for help (backed by the publisher we were porting for) and more often than not they were powerless to help. A far cry from developers, developers, developers.
- guitarbill 8y ago
  Even Microsoft themselves dropped the ball, when it took over a year for them to release Skype - which they owned - for their own mobile platform (if I'm remembering correctly, i had a Windows Phone and rather liked it).

AtlasBarfed 8y ago

Or maybe it's because your company has screwed over people and lazily abused a monopoly position for decades to the detriment of many, destroying trust and building resentment. Must feel strange getting beaten by an "inferior" product, considering how many inferior products Microsoft dumped on the market leveraging their business practices and monopoly position. Microsoft may be behaving better now so that people will run their linux instances on Azure. And android may be somewhat inferior, but it is far more open and is pretty damn good. Windows phone may have had a nice intro screen and some nifty features, but who knows if/when it could have handled the massive app variety and bad actors that android does. With the security reputation of windows, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't. The alternative phone OSs we should be mourning are PalmOS, Ubuntu mobile, and similar efforts. Microsoft's continued existence will have to be tolerated, but any product of theirs that fails or acquiesces is a victory for the consumer.

mtgx 8y ago

An inferior product can win because this inferior product you talked about had already won by the time this superior product came along. Microsoft just didn't want to admit it.