3 ms·

It's hard to imagine the market shifting entirely to one side when it's between a quality (if pricey and controlling) product and a spyware platform that exists

It's hard to imagine the market shifting entirely to one side when it's between a quality (if pricey and controlling) product and a spyware platform that exists solely to push ads. Manufacturers allowing themselves to get fully tied to becoming Google subcontractors has absolutely destroyed them.

toast0 3y ago
What choice do manufacturers have? Apple won't let them license iOS. Microsoft won't let them license Windows Phone/Windows Mobile and anyway Microsoft sabotaged that. Blackberry X wasn't licensable either. KaiOS is Android underneath and less capable on top. Samsung has gobs of money and couldn't make Tizen work. Amazon Fire Phone was a joke in the market (although the hardware was nice). If you want to make and sell phones and you're not Apple, Android is it, take it or leave it, for better or worse.
- tw04 3y ago
  > Microsoft won't let them license Windows Phone/Windows Mobile and anyway Microsoft sabotaged that. Google sabotaged that by refusing to support YouTube on windows mobile and actively blocking Microsoft’s native app. Honestly surprised they didn’t get destroyed by anti-trust laws. As for licensing, they absolutely offered to license it to vendors, they were all in bed with google already though. That’s why they bought Nokia, realizing the only way it would work was to build their own phones. I wish they had stuck it out longer or RIM hadn’t imploded, we really need a third player IMO. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Windows_10_Mobile_devices https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Windows_10_Mobile_de...
  - toast0 3y ago
    > Google sabotaged that by refusing to support YouTube on windows mobile and actively blocking Microsoft’s native app. Microsoft sabotaged it first by not letting Google (and others) leverage the native apps they built for WM 6.5 on WP7. Having a terrible browser and not letting established browsers into the store (Mozilla was interested in porting to WP, but Microsoft rebuffed them) was sabotage too. But that's in the past anyway. Manufacturers could have licensed WP/WM, and several did, but it's not available anymore.
  - hbn 3y ago
    Windows Phone diehards liked to blame the YouTube thing for the downfall, and not Microsoft's incompetence in cobbling together something of a competent OS by the time the iPhone dropped. And even a decade later they had done 3 major reboots, never letting the platform mature. They didn't have a real potential competitor to the iPhone until the release of Windows Phone 7 in 2010, 3 years after the iPhone hit the market. Then they rebooted it again in 2014 with Windows Phone 8, and again in 2016 with Windows 10 Mobile. They didn't even have a notification shade until Windows Phone 8.1 in 2014. And no, as cool as the live tiles were, they were not a replacement for a notifications shade which shows you only your notifications, rather than scrolling your entire list of apps and scanning your eyes around for relevant information as shit's appearing and disappearing cause all your apps are constantly animating. It was an absolutely bizarre UX. And if we really want to talk about the YouTube thing, I have a hard time blaming Google for what they did. They didn't want to put the resources into making an app for a platform that nobody was using and likely wouldn't have broken even on resources/money spent, and they weren't going to let Microsoft handle creating and distributing a fake "official" app that represents their brand. Google didn't kill Windows Phone, Microsoft did.

toast0 3y ago

What choice do manufacturers have? Apple won't let them license iOS. Microsoft won't let them license Windows Phone/Windows Mobile and anyway Microsoft sabotaged that. Blackberry X wasn't licensable either. KaiOS is Android underneath and less capable on top. Samsung has gobs of money and couldn't make Tizen work. Amazon Fire Phone was a joke in the market (although the hardware was nice). If you want to make and sell phones and you're not Apple, Android is it, take it or leave it, for better or worse.

tw04 3y ago
> Microsoft won't let them license Windows Phone/Windows Mobile and anyway Microsoft sabotaged that. Google sabotaged that by refusing to support YouTube on windows mobile and actively blocking Microsoft’s native app. Honestly surprised they didn’t get destroyed by anti-trust laws. As for licensing, they absolutely offered to license it to vendors, they were all in bed with google already though. That’s why they bought Nokia, realizing the only way it would work was to build their own phones. I wish they had stuck it out longer or RIM hadn’t imploded, we really need a third player IMO. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Windows_10_Mobile_devices https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Windows_10_Mobile_de...
- toast0 3y ago
  > Google sabotaged that by refusing to support YouTube on windows mobile and actively blocking Microsoft’s native app. Microsoft sabotaged it first by not letting Google (and others) leverage the native apps they built for WM 6.5 on WP7. Having a terrible browser and not letting established browsers into the store (Mozilla was interested in porting to WP, but Microsoft rebuffed them) was sabotage too. But that's in the past anyway. Manufacturers could have licensed WP/WM, and several did, but it's not available anymore.
- hbn 3y ago
  Windows Phone diehards liked to blame the YouTube thing for the downfall, and not Microsoft's incompetence in cobbling together something of a competent OS by the time the iPhone dropped. And even a decade later they had done 3 major reboots, never letting the platform mature. They didn't have a real potential competitor to the iPhone until the release of Windows Phone 7 in 2010, 3 years after the iPhone hit the market. Then they rebooted it again in 2014 with Windows Phone 8, and again in 2016 with Windows 10 Mobile. They didn't even have a notification shade until Windows Phone 8.1 in 2014. And no, as cool as the live tiles were, they were not a replacement for a notifications shade which shows you only your notifications, rather than scrolling your entire list of apps and scanning your eyes around for relevant information as shit's appearing and disappearing cause all your apps are constantly animating. It was an absolutely bizarre UX. And if we really want to talk about the YouTube thing, I have a hard time blaming Google for what they did. They didn't want to put the resources into making an app for a platform that nobody was using and likely wouldn't have broken even on resources/money spent, and they weren't going to let Microsoft handle creating and distributing a fake "official" app that represents their brand. Google didn't kill Windows Phone, Microsoft did.