6 ms·

I’m curious if Microsoft is regretting not pursuing the Windows phone and universal apps strategy with more pathos, seeing now how successfully is Apple executi

by lifty 5y ago

I’m curious if Microsoft is regretting not pursuing the Windows phone and universal apps strategy with more pathos, seeing now how successfully is Apple executing incremental changes to get to a homogenous cross device experience. At this point there is no other company that even comes close in terms of replicating this kind of experience, natively across 3 classes of devices (phone, tablet, computer). I’m really wondering what is Google and Microsoft strategizing when they see Apple’s progress.

dmitriid 5y ago
Microsoft always relied on external partners to deliver physical products for Microsoft software. That's why Zune was 10 years late. That's why they still don't do much beyond Surface. As the saying goes, "it's in their DNA". Additionally, Microsoft doesn't have a good tradition of clean breaks (they are rightly anal about backwards compatibility and decades-long support windows). And they've never had to cannibalize their own products with new, better products. As for Google, Google never understood why it would ever need hardware. Their livelihood is online ads and tracking people behaviour across devices. Custom Google-only hardware is a colossal money sink with negative-to-zero ROI compared to their software that is currently anywhere and everywhere thanks to Android and Chrome.
- muterad_murilax 5y ago
  What about Xbox?
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    I was thinking about Xbox, but that never translated into whatever I wrote :D Xbox has always been a weird one for Microsoft, it seems: they never made money on the actual hardware, and it originally existed only to compete with Sony as the media box for the living room. I'd say Microsoft still doesn't really know what to do with it because it's so far removed from everything else Microsoft does.
- canadianfella 5y ago
  > That's why Zune was 10 years late. 5 years after the iPod and 1 year after the first color iPod is 10 years late?
- solarkraft 5y ago
  Hardware doesn’t matter that much to what Apple is doing with software. You can do almost all of these things with off the shelf hardware. I mostly see „but they control the hardware“ as an excuse (as supported by macOS also being great on my Hackintosh laptop).
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > You can do almost all of these things with off the shelf hardware. At what cost though. When you control every single aspect, and know exactly what hardware you have, this simplifies things enormously. Also, this evergreen article from Ars Technica on owning the stack (it's more about the politics and money of controlling everything): https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/owning-the-stack-the-legal-war-for-control-of-the-smartphone-platform/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/owning-the-stack...
  - nxc18 5y ago
    It isn’t necessarily critical, but it does get them a few things: - Because their processors are so overpowered, their phones last a long time. This adds to the premium experience (e.g. put a 3 year old galaxy and a 3 year old iPhone side by side). - Fast hardware lets them innovate on the edges; e.g. folks here don’t take AR seriously because they use androids and AR sucks on Android; the power just isn’t there to make it work well. 3 year old iPhone runs AR experience at 60fps no problems. Not many people use it daily, but if you need it, it is nice to have. - Being able to sell 3 year old devices as new allows Apple to target multiple market segments without having to develop separate low end hardware. They don’t need iOS Go because all recent hardware can run iOS with a flagship like experience, even the low end SE. They also don’t take the reputation hit of selling a $400 device that doesn’t work well or runs ads on the Lock Screen to get a subsidy. - By ensuring all components in their devices work to a minimum standard, they make the rest of the system look good. Example: compasses in android devices, even flagships, are of variable quality. No one ever writes reviews about the compass, so it goes unnoticed, but trying to get a mapping application working well on Android is an absolute nightmare by comparison. Similar situation applies to: GNSS receivers in phones, gyro/accelerometers, trackpads in laptops, haptics in phones and watches, screens on all devices, among others. They also benefit from being able to assume every recent device has a secure element and a UWB radio, among other features. - They’re able to innovate through connection to other hardware in the ecosystem. Spatial audio seemed like a gimmic, but I’ve recently come around. It is amazing to have an almost theater-like experience watching Hulu on my iPad in the gym. Microsoft and Google can’t really do that because they don’t ship high-quality earbuds at anything like Apple’s scale/reach. Microsoft and Google can’t use my Watch to log in or authorize purchases because they don’t have a watch business (I mean google’s been trying, they might get somewhere with it someday). Microsoft can’t use their smart speaker as surround sound for the Xbox because they don’t sell a smart speaker. I count the integrations and broad business as part of Apple’s hardware advantage.
- lifty 5y ago
  I get your point, but in terms of “vision of personal computing” I like Apple’s vision the most and it’s sad to see there are no other companies that even try to go in that direction. Microsoft gave up on it and Google is too beholden to its “everything is a browser” strategy. So only Apple is left with a truly native ecosystem of apps with tight integrations across devices. And Apple knows this, hence why they hold us hostage in their ecosystem and want to extract as much value as possible… because they can.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  If Microsoft had incredible hip credibility and some more luck, the Zune could’ve been a success in line with a solid distant but respected number two. It wasn’t that late. The advanced iPod video and colors etc were closer to Zune time frame. The public perception of it and likely any product would’ve killed it. Google Wave, Google Glasses, many other products that are otherwise not bad, never got close to a fair shot. Maybe Apple’s Newton was similar? That’s out of my time frame and knowledge. Anecdotally, all my friends mocked the Windows Phone. This is after they didn’t care about webOS too but didn’t actively mock it. The few people I knew who did have a WP, three others, all loved their phones. We all gave up on it as the public and Microsoft gave up on it too. I do think Microsoft should’ve kept on with the Windows Phone. But If they were never going to be able to have even a 3rd of the top couple hundred apps, how would they ever survive? Common rhetoric is to say most people don’t use many apps. Core basic apps are enough. That isn’t the same thing as the general zeitgeist and perception of the device though. Windows Phone was looked down on. They didn’t ever have a majority of the top used social media and other core apps. But I bet even if they did. The PR battle would’ve been a bigger hurdle. Other major hurdles would’ve been Google being in my opinion anti competitive as hell. How they treated Google Maps, YouTube, etc, on Windows Phone. Two apps you need to have on your mobile platform. My fantasy is for Microsoft to have consumed webOS much earlier on. Fast tracked development of that and merge their code bases to that more than change webOS to their code base. If webOS stayed at 7.5% worldwide penetration in the west and 10% in other countries (cheap phones, deals, etc), I’d still be on that and likely never would’ve left it.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > If Microsoft had incredible hip credibility and some more luck, the Zune could’ve been a success in line with a solid distant but respected number two. True. I only used it briefly and I really liked it. There was some anti-monopoly trial around that time, and some of the unsealed documents (which are now impossible to Google for) where emails from Bill Gates where he raged "why can't Creative make something similar to iPod? Bring them here, give them money, get them early API access". In the end they had to do everything themselves :) And they didn't do a bad job of it! > I do think Microsoft should’ve kept on with the Windows Phone. True. And it was the only one daring to explore something new with phone UI/UX. As with Zune, it wasn't half bad. I'd even say WIndows Phone was good, and onto something new. > The PR battle would’ve been a bigger hurdle. Other major hurdles would’ve been Google being in my opinion anti competitive as hell. Sadly, also true. > If webOS stayed at 7.5% worldwide penetration in the west and 10% in other countries (cheap phones, deals, etc), I’d still be on that and likely never would’ve left it. Ah, the lost opportunities that never came to be :(
vogon_laureate 5y ago
Don’t forget Apple Watch.
- contriban 5y ago
  The screen is so small you can hardly see any shared elements with the other OSs. They might share some components underneath, but from a user perspective only the apps’ icons are somewhat similar.
  - lifty 5y ago
    True, but the integrations with Apple Watch are very well done, even if the functionality is not strictly overlapping across platforms. The improvements in user experience caused by this tight ecosystem integration feed into each other, vastly outpacing what competitors without this kind of ecosystem ownership. It’s sad in a way because there is no incentive to build open standards, especially for Apple.
  - Eric_WVGG 5y ago
    well we're talking about "cross device experience," yes? Messages and WhatsApp and FaceTime Audio "just work" in exactly the way I would expect with no configuration, health features synchronize seamlessly with Health.app on the iPhone (again with no setup), ApplePay… what are you asking for here, Safari or Finder on the Watch?
    - lifty 5y ago
      It’s like psychedelics, if you haven’t experienced it, it’s hard to understand it.
Seanambers 5y ago
Microsoft got too good at killing their own mobile paradigms with rewrites to care. And yes, Elop in retrospect looks like the perfect mole. And even that is stretching it, all they had to do to get started was to throw a gsm modem into a zune and ship it in the first place. Inept, is more like it.
- tedd4u 5y ago
  They … kinda did throw a modem in the Zune? Microsoft Kin Discontinued After 48 Days https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/technology/01phone.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/technology/01phone.html
  - Seanambers 5y ago
    Oh, I didn't know about that one, but I understand why it got discontinued, looks like something out of Nokia's year 2000 playbook. I was thinking more along the lines of Zune HD.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    You'd think the point of having billions of dollars is that you don't need to give up when you fail, just keep going and gain market share by throwing money at it, like with Bing...
    - lifty 5y ago
      You need to have some kind of vision and conviction. When it comes to personal computing vision, MS lost it, so they’re more reactionary to what’s happening on the market.
      - mavhc 5y ago
        They've spent the last 10 years focused on Azure and O364, which is working out well, just not consumer facing at all.
loftyal 5y ago
I really wish Google would just come out with its own fully fledge desktop linux OS, rather than ChromeOS. They're probably the only company out there that could feasibily get linux on the desktop, as it could use its large resources to really polish user experience on the same scale as macos/windows (drivers, UI, centralised app store, encourage 3rd parties to develop for the platform, etc)
- ac29 5y ago
  Isn't ChromeOS already largely there? Installing a full version of Debian is a couple clicks away from within ChromeOS (no developer mode or re-flashing needed). You can run more or less whatever you'd like inside it, including GUI apps like GIMP or Firefox.
- astrange 5y ago
  Why would they want to? It looks like they're trying to replace Linux with Fuschia on their own platforms, and they have their own libc and such rather than using the standard ones.
remir 5y ago
No company can be strong in all markets. Apple is entirely focused on the end user while Microsoft is focused on the enterprise market and corporate developpers. Both are very successful in their respective ways. For Microsoft to replicated Apple's success with their ecosystem experience, they would need an entirely new OS built from the ground up for that. Essentialy breaking free of Windows legacy and possibly their partners-driven strategy to have tight control over hardware and software. But past a certain point, the investment and risk would be massive and success uncertain. Microsoft made the call to focus on what they do best wich is enterprise and "productivity" and they're doing really well.

by lifty 5y ago

dmitriid 5y ago

Microsoft always relied on external partners to deliver physical products for Microsoft software. That's why Zune was 10 years late. That's why they still don't do much beyond Surface. As the saying goes, "it's in their DNA". Additionally, Microsoft doesn't have a good tradition of clean breaks (they are rightly anal about backwards compatibility and decades-long support windows). And they've never had to cannibalize their own products with new, better products. As for Google, Google never understood why it would ever need hardware. Their livelihood is online ads and tracking people behaviour across devices. Custom Google-only hardware is a colossal money sink with negative-to-zero ROI compared to their software that is currently anywhere and everywhere thanks to Android and Chrome.

muterad_murilax 5y ago
What about Xbox?
- dmitriid 5y ago
  I was thinking about Xbox, but that never translated into whatever I wrote :D Xbox has always been a weird one for Microsoft, it seems: they never made money on the actual hardware, and it originally existed only to compete with Sony as the media box for the living room. I'd say Microsoft still doesn't really know what to do with it because it's so far removed from everything else Microsoft does.
canadianfella 5y ago
> That's why Zune was 10 years late. 5 years after the iPod and 1 year after the first color iPod is 10 years late?
solarkraft 5y ago
Hardware doesn’t matter that much to what Apple is doing with software. You can do almost all of these things with off the shelf hardware. I mostly see „but they control the hardware“ as an excuse (as supported by macOS also being great on my Hackintosh laptop).
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > You can do almost all of these things with off the shelf hardware. At what cost though. When you control every single aspect, and know exactly what hardware you have, this simplifies things enormously. Also, this evergreen article from Ars Technica on owning the stack (it's more about the politics and money of controlling everything): https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/owning-the-stack-the-legal-war-for-control-of-the-smartphone-platform/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/owning-the-stack...
- nxc18 5y ago
  It isn’t necessarily critical, but it does get them a few things: - Because their processors are so overpowered, their phones last a long time. This adds to the premium experience (e.g. put a 3 year old galaxy and a 3 year old iPhone side by side). - Fast hardware lets them innovate on the edges; e.g. folks here don’t take AR seriously because they use androids and AR sucks on Android; the power just isn’t there to make it work well. 3 year old iPhone runs AR experience at 60fps no problems. Not many people use it daily, but if you need it, it is nice to have. - Being able to sell 3 year old devices as new allows Apple to target multiple market segments without having to develop separate low end hardware. They don’t need iOS Go because all recent hardware can run iOS with a flagship like experience, even the low end SE. They also don’t take the reputation hit of selling a $400 device that doesn’t work well or runs ads on the Lock Screen to get a subsidy. - By ensuring all components in their devices work to a minimum standard, they make the rest of the system look good. Example: compasses in android devices, even flagships, are of variable quality. No one ever writes reviews about the compass, so it goes unnoticed, but trying to get a mapping application working well on Android is an absolute nightmare by comparison. Similar situation applies to: GNSS receivers in phones, gyro/accelerometers, trackpads in laptops, haptics in phones and watches, screens on all devices, among others. They also benefit from being able to assume every recent device has a secure element and a UWB radio, among other features. - They’re able to innovate through connection to other hardware in the ecosystem. Spatial audio seemed like a gimmic, but I’ve recently come around. It is amazing to have an almost theater-like experience watching Hulu on my iPad in the gym. Microsoft and Google can’t really do that because they don’t ship high-quality earbuds at anything like Apple’s scale/reach. Microsoft and Google can’t use my Watch to log in or authorize purchases because they don’t have a watch business (I mean google’s been trying, they might get somewhere with it someday). Microsoft can’t use their smart speaker as surround sound for the Xbox because they don’t sell a smart speaker. I count the integrations and broad business as part of Apple’s hardware advantage.
lifty 5y ago
I get your point, but in terms of “vision of personal computing” I like Apple’s vision the most and it’s sad to see there are no other companies that even try to go in that direction. Microsoft gave up on it and Google is too beholden to its “everything is a browser” strategy. So only Apple is left with a truly native ecosystem of apps with tight integrations across devices. And Apple knows this, hence why they hold us hostage in their ecosystem and want to extract as much value as possible… because they can.
skinnymuch 5y ago
If Microsoft had incredible hip credibility and some more luck, the Zune could’ve been a success in line with a solid distant but respected number two. It wasn’t that late. The advanced iPod video and colors etc were closer to Zune time frame. The public perception of it and likely any product would’ve killed it. Google Wave, Google Glasses, many other products that are otherwise not bad, never got close to a fair shot. Maybe Apple’s Newton was similar? That’s out of my time frame and knowledge. Anecdotally, all my friends mocked the Windows Phone. This is after they didn’t care about webOS too but didn’t actively mock it. The few people I knew who did have a WP, three others, all loved their phones. We all gave up on it as the public and Microsoft gave up on it too. I do think Microsoft should’ve kept on with the Windows Phone. But If they were never going to be able to have even a 3rd of the top couple hundred apps, how would they ever survive? Common rhetoric is to say most people don’t use many apps. Core basic apps are enough. That isn’t the same thing as the general zeitgeist and perception of the device though. Windows Phone was looked down on. They didn’t ever have a majority of the top used social media and other core apps. But I bet even if they did. The PR battle would’ve been a bigger hurdle. Other major hurdles would’ve been Google being in my opinion anti competitive as hell. How they treated Google Maps, YouTube, etc, on Windows Phone. Two apps you need to have on your mobile platform. My fantasy is for Microsoft to have consumed webOS much earlier on. Fast tracked development of that and merge their code bases to that more than change webOS to their code base. If webOS stayed at 7.5% worldwide penetration in the west and 10% in other countries (cheap phones, deals, etc), I’d still be on that and likely never would’ve left it.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > If Microsoft had incredible hip credibility and some more luck, the Zune could’ve been a success in line with a solid distant but respected number two. True. I only used it briefly and I really liked it. There was some anti-monopoly trial around that time, and some of the unsealed documents (which are now impossible to Google for) where emails from Bill Gates where he raged "why can't Creative make something similar to iPod? Bring them here, give them money, get them early API access". In the end they had to do everything themselves :) And they didn't do a bad job of it! > I do think Microsoft should’ve kept on with the Windows Phone. True. And it was the only one daring to explore something new with phone UI/UX. As with Zune, it wasn't half bad. I'd even say WIndows Phone was good, and onto something new. > The PR battle would’ve been a bigger hurdle. Other major hurdles would’ve been Google being in my opinion anti competitive as hell. Sadly, also true. > If webOS stayed at 7.5% worldwide penetration in the west and 10% in other countries (cheap phones, deals, etc), I’d still be on that and likely never would’ve left it. Ah, the lost opportunities that never came to be :(

vogon_laureate 5y ago

Don’t forget Apple Watch.

contriban 5y ago
The screen is so small you can hardly see any shared elements with the other OSs. They might share some components underneath, but from a user perspective only the apps’ icons are somewhat similar.
- lifty 5y ago
  True, but the integrations with Apple Watch are very well done, even if the functionality is not strictly overlapping across platforms. The improvements in user experience caused by this tight ecosystem integration feed into each other, vastly outpacing what competitors without this kind of ecosystem ownership. It’s sad in a way because there is no incentive to build open standards, especially for Apple.
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  well we're talking about "cross device experience," yes? Messages and WhatsApp and FaceTime Audio "just work" in exactly the way I would expect with no configuration, health features synchronize seamlessly with Health.app on the iPhone (again with no setup), ApplePay… what are you asking for here, Safari or Finder on the Watch?
  - lifty 5y ago
    It’s like psychedelics, if you haven’t experienced it, it’s hard to understand it.

Seanambers 5y ago

Microsoft got too good at killing their own mobile paradigms with rewrites to care. And yes, Elop in retrospect looks like the perfect mole. And even that is stretching it, all they had to do to get started was to throw a gsm modem into a zune and ship it in the first place. Inept, is more like it.

tedd4u 5y ago
They … kinda did throw a modem in the Zune? Microsoft Kin Discontinued After 48 Days https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/technology/01phone.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/technology/01phone.html
- Seanambers 5y ago
  Oh, I didn't know about that one, but I understand why it got discontinued, looks like something out of Nokia's year 2000 playbook. I was thinking more along the lines of Zune HD.
- mavhc 5y ago
  You'd think the point of having billions of dollars is that you don't need to give up when you fail, just keep going and gain market share by throwing money at it, like with Bing...
  - lifty 5y ago
    You need to have some kind of vision and conviction. When it comes to personal computing vision, MS lost it, so they’re more reactionary to what’s happening on the market.
    - mavhc 5y ago
      They've spent the last 10 years focused on Azure and O364, which is working out well, just not consumer facing at all.

loftyal 5y ago

I really wish Google would just come out with its own fully fledge desktop linux OS, rather than ChromeOS. They're probably the only company out there that could feasibily get linux on the desktop, as it could use its large resources to really polish user experience on the same scale as macos/windows (drivers, UI, centralised app store, encourage 3rd parties to develop for the platform, etc)

ac29 5y ago
Isn't ChromeOS already largely there? Installing a full version of Debian is a couple clicks away from within ChromeOS (no developer mode or re-flashing needed). You can run more or less whatever you'd like inside it, including GUI apps like GIMP or Firefox.
astrange 5y ago
Why would they want to? It looks like they're trying to replace Linux with Fuschia on their own platforms, and they have their own libc and such rather than using the standard ones.

remir 5y ago

No company can be strong in all markets. Apple is entirely focused on the end user while Microsoft is focused on the enterprise market and corporate developpers. Both are very successful in their respective ways. For Microsoft to replicated Apple's success with their ecosystem experience, they would need an entirely new OS built from the ground up for that. Essentialy breaking free of Windows legacy and possibly their partners-driven strategy to have tight control over hardware and software. But past a certain point, the investment and risk would be massive and success uncertain. Microsoft made the call to focus on what they do best wich is enterprise and "productivity" and they're doing really well.