4 ms·

MS had a halfway decent mobile OS, but pretty much stopped there leaving a barren software ecosystem. I had an HP ipaq w/ windows before the iPhone and as an O

MS had a halfway decent mobile OS, but pretty much stopped there leaving a barren software ecosystem. I had an HP ipaq w/ windows before the iPhone and as an OS it was okay. I could do basic web browsing, email worked fine, RSS reader. I could even tether it to my laptop for reasonable pageload speeds online, I think around 1 Mbit. (Yeah, this was before the days of >3 MByte dumps on every page.) But that was about all, and the mobile web was mostly non existent at the time. iPhones had the same problem to a lesser extent, but IIRC safari was smart enough to mostly make text readable. It was only after a few years that "mobile first" became the dominant mantra for sites. As far as consumer appeal the ipaq was also crap on product design: it screamed business user, and I felt awkward taking it out in public and holding it up to my head. Whereas the original iPhone was sleek and instantly cool & fashionable, and not as clunky & big, it fit in the hand very well. So MS had a passable mobile OS, they just failed in practically every other way, and their manufacturing partners never seemed to understand that a smartphone could break out of the enterprise mold.

MBCook 5y ago
Agreed. I had a Dell PDA with the latest version of Windows Mobile shortly before the original iPhone came out. It should have been quite capable but the interface was holding it back. I’ve heard the OS was good underneath. But that couldn’t fix the legacy of how the UI was designed.
indymike 5y ago
> MS had a halfway decent mobile OS, but pretty much stopped there leaving a barren software ecosystem I had a WindowsCE device (an HTC slider) before I got my first Android (a Tmoble G-1). Android was vastly superior in every way it could be. It was so superior, that I never gave WinCE and Windows Phone another thought.
badsectoracula 5y ago
> MS had a halfway decent mobile OS, but pretty much stopped there leaving a barren software ecosystem. MS had Windows CE for a very long time, they could have tried to make the UIs a bit more touch friendly (they were already pen friendly) while keeping backwards compatibility with the tons of existing software and development tools instead of forcing everyone twice to abandon their existing code for their mobile platform (once by forcing everyone to use C# and again with the new Metro stuff). Developers simply lost trust in Microsoft for doing the most anti-Microsoft thing with ignoring backwards compatibility.
- lostmsu 4y ago
  You could program Windows CE with C# pretty easily. But those programs would not have worked on Windows Phone.
lallysingh 5y ago
I did some dev on a few windows mobile devices at the time. The OS could do stuff, but it was awkward garbage. In 2007 was usability wise, a decade behind the iphone. Just painful.
deleted 5y ago
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MBCook 5y ago

Agreed. I had a Dell PDA with the latest version of Windows Mobile shortly before the original iPhone came out. It should have been quite capable but the interface was holding it back. I’ve heard the OS was good underneath. But that couldn’t fix the legacy of how the UI was designed.

indymike 5y ago

> MS had a halfway decent mobile OS, but pretty much stopped there leaving a barren software ecosystem I had a WindowsCE device (an HTC slider) before I got my first Android (a Tmoble G-1). Android was vastly superior in every way it could be. It was so superior, that I never gave WinCE and Windows Phone another thought.

badsectoracula 5y ago

> MS had a halfway decent mobile OS, but pretty much stopped there leaving a barren software ecosystem. MS had Windows CE for a very long time, they could have tried to make the UIs a bit more touch friendly (they were already pen friendly) while keeping backwards compatibility with the tons of existing software and development tools instead of forcing everyone twice to abandon their existing code for their mobile platform (once by forcing everyone to use C# and again with the new Metro stuff). Developers simply lost trust in Microsoft for doing the most anti-Microsoft thing with ignoring backwards compatibility.

lostmsu 4y ago
You could program Windows CE with C# pretty easily. But those programs would not have worked on Windows Phone.

lallysingh 5y ago

I did some dev on a few windows mobile devices at the time. The OS could do stuff, but it was awkward garbage. In 2007 was usability wise, a decade behind the iphone. Just painful.

deleted 5y ago

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