4 ms·

I have no idea if they will try it again someday, but I would love to see Microsoft give this another go. I think strong messaging about "quality over quantity"

by sylens 5y ago

I have no idea if they will try it again someday, but I would love to see Microsoft give this another go. I think strong messaging about "quality over quantity" of apps would actually be a boon to them. I never go looking in the App Store for new apps anymore - just give me my video streamers, a Reddit client, Spotify, Slack, Discord, and Signal and I'm good to go.

criddell 5y ago
Google seems like they have lost a lot of their Android enthusiasm. I could see them making a deal with Microsoft for Android.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Does google have enthusiasm for anything anymore other than ads and search? Maybe cloud services? I would be afraid to use anything but open source tools on their cloud service given the kill rate they have for products...
  - fsflover 5y ago
    > Does google have enthusiasm for anything anymore other than ads and search? Does google have enthusiasm for anything anymore other than ads? Fixed that for you. More info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31094407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31094407.
sorenjan 5y ago
Exactly. Years ago the number of apps in each app store was portrayed as "more is better" and a moat against new platforms. But realistically, how many apps does the average mobile user actually use, now that the novelty has worn off? I would guess that 75% of all users actually care about maybe 50 different apps combined, like Facebook, Netflix, WhatsApp, Spotify, etc.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  It's been said many times that Microsoft could've won the mobile wars by simply taking a billion dollars, and paying the companies with the top 100 apps in the Apple app store to port their apps to Windows Mobile. That's $10 million each. Instead, they spent billions and billions of dollars trying to attract developers to their platform before eventually shuttering it. There was a phone with awesome hardware, an awesome mobile-first operating system, and practically no apps. Bill admitted his biggest mistake was being too preoccupied with the antitrust activity in Europe, and missing the shift to mobile computing cost him ~400 billion.
  - silverpepsi 5y ago
    I agree with this so strongly I was about to write the same and have held the theory a long time. I wonder if there is a data set out there to show 95% of the world population has substantially similar apps installed and the ones they care about enough to consider a deal breaker are even fewer and less diverse. I don't think MS would even have had to spend that much.
cmroanirgo 5y ago
I'm sure many would be reluctant to trust m$ as a 3rd party in the mobile phone stakes, particularly with their telemetry, which is the root of the cancer plaguing the existing platforms (including desktop) already.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Microsoft does jackshit of a telemetry compared to Big Google.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Most people aren’t using $ in words like Msft. Most likely find that weird. Same with caring about telemetry if they even know its definition. This is not even getting into not caring about all of this enough to call stuff “cancer”

by sylens 5y ago

criddell 5y ago

Google seems like they have lost a lot of their Android enthusiasm. I could see them making a deal with Microsoft for Android.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Does google have enthusiasm for anything anymore other than ads and search? Maybe cloud services? I would be afraid to use anything but open source tools on their cloud service given the kill rate they have for products...
- fsflover 5y ago
  > Does google have enthusiasm for anything anymore other than ads and search? Does google have enthusiasm for anything anymore other than ads? Fixed that for you. More info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31094407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31094407.

sorenjan 5y ago

Exactly. Years ago the number of apps in each app store was portrayed as "more is better" and a moat against new platforms. But realistically, how many apps does the average mobile user actually use, now that the novelty has worn off? I would guess that 75% of all users actually care about maybe 50 different apps combined, like Facebook, Netflix, WhatsApp, Spotify, etc.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
It's been said many times that Microsoft could've won the mobile wars by simply taking a billion dollars, and paying the companies with the top 100 apps in the Apple app store to port their apps to Windows Mobile. That's $10 million each. Instead, they spent billions and billions of dollars trying to attract developers to their platform before eventually shuttering it. There was a phone with awesome hardware, an awesome mobile-first operating system, and practically no apps. Bill admitted his biggest mistake was being too preoccupied with the antitrust activity in Europe, and missing the shift to mobile computing cost him ~400 billion.
- silverpepsi 5y ago
  I agree with this so strongly I was about to write the same and have held the theory a long time. I wonder if there is a data set out there to show 95% of the world population has substantially similar apps installed and the ones they care about enough to consider a deal breaker are even fewer and less diverse. I don't think MS would even have had to spend that much.

cmroanirgo 5y ago

I'm sure many would be reluctant to trust m$ as a 3rd party in the mobile phone stakes, particularly with their telemetry, which is the root of the cancer plaguing the existing platforms (including desktop) already.

kaba0 5y ago
Microsoft does jackshit of a telemetry compared to Big Google.
skinnymuch 5y ago
Most people aren’t using $ in words like Msft. Most likely find that weird. Same with caring about telemetry if they even know its definition. This is not even getting into not caring about all of this enough to call stuff “cancer”