6 ms·

Microsoft tried, and all they delivered was an extremely ugly tiled UI with garish colors that no one liked. They gave up on it.

by magduf 8y ago

Amezarak 8y ago
I think most people like Windows Phone. I certainly did - it was the best phone OS by far imo. Writing this from my iPhone only because the Nokia died. The real problem was the app story, and part of that was due to the influence of Google.
- sithadmin 8y ago
  >I think most people like Windows Phone. The sales figures disagree.
  - Amezarak 8y ago
    A lot of great products beloved by a lot of people fail in the market despite their quality for all kinds of reasons. In this case, the lateness of the product, the continual burning of their phone platforms, anticompetitive behavior of Google and some of its associated companies, carrier disinterest, and a lackluster marketing campaign are among the reasons it failed. I doubt you will find many people who tried or used the phone who didn’t like it.
  - RussianCow 8y ago
    I think what they're saying is that most people liked the OS itself, but didn't like the lack of apps, which is what ultimately killed it.
  - kerng 8y ago
    Not necessarily, it was the best OS in the later revisions, but too late. Ecosystem with apps lacked behind- that's the reason it didnt succeed.
    - bitL 8y ago
      No, it wasn't. I have one with WP10. They at some point killed external storage as well and I couldn't fit 120GB of HERE maps data to my main storage, which killed the only reason I was still using it.
- bitL 8y ago
  <10% users liked WP/Windows 8 design. There were some stats about it. Don't you remember how much people complained when Win8 was released? You could consider yourself "elite" or an "outlier" if you liked WP/W8.
  - Amezarak 8y ago
    Windows Phone 8/8.1 and Windows 8/8.1 are different things and on different platforms. The stats apply to the desktop OS, not the phone OS. Even if you wanted to pretend they were the same, the most frequent complaint was I don't want a phone OS on my desktop. You can still see this in most reviews, too - reviews of Windows 8/8.1 are generally pretty negative, while reviews of WP 8/8.1 on the same site are positive to glowing. Windows Mobile 10/Windows 10 are the only ones that are nominally the same and still are in fact very different. Again, if you talked to people that actually picked up and tried (or bought) a Windows Phone, they were almost universally very pleased with the phone UI and OS. The single biggest complaint you will see is about the app selection.
    - bitL 8y ago
      That's not true. I even remember talking to some Nokia guys that expressed how everyone hated WP7 design and how much rather they would have gone with Meego or Android. There were polls at that time where like 7% of people liked WP design. Just because MS spent some money on marketing to get nice reviews doesn't tell much, but if you want to stay in that echo chamber, it's your choice. And please don't be condescendingly academic about WP/W8 distinction. The "ugliness" of UI people here talk about is present on both platforms and you still have to do some work to hide it on W10 (e.g. manually unpinning tiles from start menu after each upgrade, confusing system settings, disjoint set of options in old vs new UI etc.).
      - Amezarak 8y ago
        I don't know anything about WP7, except that it was completely different from WP8. Searching for screenshots shows some basic design similarity, but it ultimately looks nothing like the OS I used. It is one of the reasons that the WP platform was floundering, since WP7 apps did not work on WP8. Either way, remembering a poll can be a tricky thing. > And please don't be condescendingly academic about WP/W8 distinction. The "ugliness" of UI people here talk about is present on both platforms I googled "Windows Phone 8 review". This is typical of the results I get. https://www.cnet.com/reviews/windows-phone-8-review/ https://www.cnet.com/reviews/windows-phone-8-review/ Windows Phone 8 makes significant changes while remaining true to its core. It's sharp, colorful, clean, and simple, but also hip and a bit exuberant. New features include a surge of NFC actions, greater customization, and a heavy peppering of more-minor additions and adjustments; yet it's the tile-based interface that continues to be the operating system's most distinctive and defining characteristic. The UI is virtually always called out as great and great looking, even if the reviewer ends up not liking the rest of the package.
chronogram 8y ago
Hey, I and others really enjoyed the WP8 user interface. Your fact of “no one liked” is already wrong now.
Neff 8y ago
I really enjoyed the Metro UI. I felt like the tiles displayed the right level of information where I could quickly glance at my phone and see if there was anything important that needed my attention, while helping to reduce the mindless time I spent getting distracted by noise. When I was using my Windows Phone it felt like the UI was built to decrease interaction with the device, which was a positive to me. It was trying to get the right information in front of me so I could get back to being detached from the screen. But that is a sample size of 1.
- magduf 8y ago
  I tried one once, and I'll admit it wasn't a bad idea and seemed to work well, but, like with everything Microsoft makes, it was just plain ugly. HN users are completely discounting the importance of aesthetics here, as is typical for technical people. Just look at pre-MacOSX Apple: they always concentrated on aesthetics and made very pretty computers and UIs, even if the OS on a technical level was total garbage (no pre-emptive multitasking!), and that kept them alive long enough to become the behemoth they are now, where technically they're still not that great, but aesthetically they do well and have legions of loyal fans. The other thing that killed them, as many have noted, was the lack of apps. That's because they were too late mainly; they were a me-too after iPhone and Android had already established their dominance. What app developer wants to spend a lot of time and resources developing a 3rd version of their app for a new platform that no one is using yet?
  - okcando 8y ago
    I didn't think Windows Phone was ugly at all but that's unimportant; I feel pretty confident that aesthetics didn't contribute much to the platform's failure. It did alright in Europe but overall, the Windows Phone campaign was inexcusably mismanaged to such a degree that it seemed deliberate. It felt abandoned almost from day one. It was unlikely you'd see one anywhere, in any store, because it'd been relegated to retail backwaters like the Microsoft Store. It was frustrating to watch. Essentially the whole Zune thing on replay. Microsoft does not do a good job of presenting a united force to get a product in front of the eyes of consumers or generating any sort of hype. And then they ran Nokia through a corporate shredder, just in case you were worried that Windows Phone might have a future.
kerng 8y ago
Actually, the UI was the best from all vendors. It was, after couple iterations, extremly slick and useful at the same time! The OS was the best probably too, but the ecosystem with apps sucked. The good thing, MS still has all that in the pocket to pull something off down the road- certainly, they must be working on something in that area.
bitL 8y ago
Metro UI started to look good once they allowed fully transparent tiles without those horrible predefined solid-color boxes, i.e. you could select a background image and it was then tiled to launchers: https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/Windows-Phone-App-of-the-Day-Transparent-Tiles-Maker-465951-2.jpg https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/Windows-Phone-Ap... If they had that from the day one, it could have ended up with a lot less resistance (just the ugliness of the default palette was unbearable; they must have hired an expert for achieving the most negative impression with those original tiles/colors).
pjmlp 8y ago
I have two Lumias around that I still use. And until end of this year they will sum up more updates than most of Android devices combined, and VS offers a much saner development environment.

Microsoft tried, and all they delivered was an extremely ugly tiled UI with garish colors that no one liked. They gave up on it.

by magduf 8y ago

Microsoft tried, and all they delivered was an extremely ugly tiled UI with garish colors that no one liked. They gave up on it.

Amezarak 8y ago

I think most people like Windows Phone. I certainly did - it was the best phone OS by far imo. Writing this from my iPhone only because the Nokia died. The real problem was the app story, and part of that was due to the influence of Google.

sithadmin 8y ago
>I think most people like Windows Phone. The sales figures disagree.
- Amezarak 8y ago
  A lot of great products beloved by a lot of people fail in the market despite their quality for all kinds of reasons. In this case, the lateness of the product, the continual burning of their phone platforms, anticompetitive behavior of Google and some of its associated companies, carrier disinterest, and a lackluster marketing campaign are among the reasons it failed. I doubt you will find many people who tried or used the phone who didn’t like it.
- RussianCow 8y ago
  I think what they're saying is that most people liked the OS itself, but didn't like the lack of apps, which is what ultimately killed it.
- kerng 8y ago
  Not necessarily, it was the best OS in the later revisions, but too late. Ecosystem with apps lacked behind- that's the reason it didnt succeed.
  - bitL 8y ago
    No, it wasn't. I have one with WP10. They at some point killed external storage as well and I couldn't fit 120GB of HERE maps data to my main storage, which killed the only reason I was still using it.
bitL 8y ago
<10% users liked WP/Windows 8 design. There were some stats about it. Don't you remember how much people complained when Win8 was released? You could consider yourself "elite" or an "outlier" if you liked WP/W8.
- Amezarak 8y ago
  Windows Phone 8/8.1 and Windows 8/8.1 are different things and on different platforms. The stats apply to the desktop OS, not the phone OS. Even if you wanted to pretend they were the same, the most frequent complaint was I don't want a phone OS on my desktop. You can still see this in most reviews, too - reviews of Windows 8/8.1 are generally pretty negative, while reviews of WP 8/8.1 on the same site are positive to glowing. Windows Mobile 10/Windows 10 are the only ones that are nominally the same and still are in fact very different. Again, if you talked to people that actually picked up and tried (or bought) a Windows Phone, they were almost universally very pleased with the phone UI and OS. The single biggest complaint you will see is about the app selection.
  - bitL 8y ago
    That's not true. I even remember talking to some Nokia guys that expressed how everyone hated WP7 design and how much rather they would have gone with Meego or Android. There were polls at that time where like 7% of people liked WP design. Just because MS spent some money on marketing to get nice reviews doesn't tell much, but if you want to stay in that echo chamber, it's your choice. And please don't be condescendingly academic about WP/W8 distinction. The "ugliness" of UI people here talk about is present on both platforms and you still have to do some work to hide it on W10 (e.g. manually unpinning tiles from start menu after each upgrade, confusing system settings, disjoint set of options in old vs new UI etc.).
    - Amezarak 8y ago
      I don't know anything about WP7, except that it was completely different from WP8. Searching for screenshots shows some basic design similarity, but it ultimately looks nothing like the OS I used. It is one of the reasons that the WP platform was floundering, since WP7 apps did not work on WP8. Either way, remembering a poll can be a tricky thing. > And please don't be condescendingly academic about WP/W8 distinction. The "ugliness" of UI people here talk about is present on both platforms I googled "Windows Phone 8 review". This is typical of the results I get. https://www.cnet.com/reviews/windows-phone-8-review/ https://www.cnet.com/reviews/windows-phone-8-review/ Windows Phone 8 makes significant changes while remaining true to its core. It's sharp, colorful, clean, and simple, but also hip and a bit exuberant. New features include a surge of NFC actions, greater customization, and a heavy peppering of more-minor additions and adjustments; yet it's the tile-based interface that continues to be the operating system's most distinctive and defining characteristic. The UI is virtually always called out as great and great looking, even if the reviewer ends up not liking the rest of the package.

chronogram 8y ago

Hey, I and others really enjoyed the WP8 user interface. Your fact of “no one liked” is already wrong now.

Neff 8y ago

I really enjoyed the Metro UI. I felt like the tiles displayed the right level of information where I could quickly glance at my phone and see if there was anything important that needed my attention, while helping to reduce the mindless time I spent getting distracted by noise. When I was using my Windows Phone it felt like the UI was built to decrease interaction with the device, which was a positive to me. It was trying to get the right information in front of me so I could get back to being detached from the screen. But that is a sample size of 1.

magduf 8y ago
I tried one once, and I'll admit it wasn't a bad idea and seemed to work well, but, like with everything Microsoft makes, it was just plain ugly. HN users are completely discounting the importance of aesthetics here, as is typical for technical people. Just look at pre-MacOSX Apple: they always concentrated on aesthetics and made very pretty computers and UIs, even if the OS on a technical level was total garbage (no pre-emptive multitasking!), and that kept them alive long enough to become the behemoth they are now, where technically they're still not that great, but aesthetically they do well and have legions of loyal fans. The other thing that killed them, as many have noted, was the lack of apps. That's because they were too late mainly; they were a me-too after iPhone and Android had already established their dominance. What app developer wants to spend a lot of time and resources developing a 3rd version of their app for a new platform that no one is using yet?
- okcando 8y ago
  I didn't think Windows Phone was ugly at all but that's unimportant; I feel pretty confident that aesthetics didn't contribute much to the platform's failure. It did alright in Europe but overall, the Windows Phone campaign was inexcusably mismanaged to such a degree that it seemed deliberate. It felt abandoned almost from day one. It was unlikely you'd see one anywhere, in any store, because it'd been relegated to retail backwaters like the Microsoft Store. It was frustrating to watch. Essentially the whole Zune thing on replay. Microsoft does not do a good job of presenting a united force to get a product in front of the eyes of consumers or generating any sort of hype. And then they ran Nokia through a corporate shredder, just in case you were worried that Windows Phone might have a future.

kerng 8y ago

Actually, the UI was the best from all vendors. It was, after couple iterations, extremly slick and useful at the same time! The OS was the best probably too, but the ecosystem with apps sucked. The good thing, MS still has all that in the pocket to pull something off down the road- certainly, they must be working on something in that area.

bitL 8y ago

Metro UI started to look good once they allowed fully transparent tiles without those horrible predefined solid-color boxes, i.e. you could select a background image and it was then tiled to launchers: https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/Windows-Phone-App-of-the-Day-Transparent-Tiles-Maker-465951-2.jpg https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/Windows-Phone-Ap... If they had that from the day one, it could have ended up with a lot less resistance (just the ugliness of the default palette was unbearable; they must have hired an expert for achieving the most negative impression with those original tiles/colors).

pjmlp 8y ago

I have two Lumias around that I still use. And until end of this year they will sum up more updates than most of Android devices combined, and VS offers a much saner development environment.