3 ms·

I know a few people that loved the windows phone, but frankly, I'm glad they failed. We didn't need another walled garden with a closed-source proprietary ecosy

I know a few people that loved the windows phone, but frankly, I'm glad they failed. We didn't need another walled garden with a closed-source proprietary ecosystem. If they opened up the OS it could have been a good thing but there was no evidence that they had such plans.

boxed 3y ago
We did need competition and new ideas though. Badly.
- georgyo 3y ago
  Did, and still do.
  - smackeyacky 3y ago
    Desperately still do. I've been an Android user for over a decade but haven't bought a phone for myself for a while. Samsung won't update the Galaxy S8 any more and my bank decided it was too old to run their app. The others in my family are iPhone users and I dragged an iPhone 7 out of the drawer to give it a go. Now that google's apps and Chrome are native on the platform you can set up an iPhone as almost completely a google experience. Embarrassingly all the google services work better on an iPhone than they do on Android. I used it for a day and liked it so much I picked up a newer iPhone and transferred to that. It will take something really bad to send me back to Android - you end up being a 2nd class citizen running Android especially around security and the amazing face recognition unlock that Apple have implemented. However, it's pretty troubling in terms of competition - the iPhone will hit a critical mass where choosing Android will be wilfully silly.
    - expertentipp 3y ago
      > Samsung won't update the Galaxy S8 any more and my bank decided it was too old to run their app. Just had a similar problem. My bank's iOS app didn't react for "confirm" button so I removed it which resulted with completely locking me out of online banking. Now I'm waiting for a bloody letter. The stale mobile duopoly, mobile as a first class citizen and web as a second class, plus "securitay" practices of banking are an infuriating experience.
com2kid 3y ago
Previous Windows Mobile kernels had their source available for download on the web. Although not MIT licensed or anything, they were radically open for the Microsoft of the time (early 2000s!) I believe Windows CE 7 also had its source available. FWIW CE7 was an amazing operating system that had a minimal OS image of around 8MB on disk. (Numbers are from memory, might be horribly wrong, it was a long time ago that I worked on it.) It was also incredibly power, CPU, and memory efficient. Windows Phones could run at a rock solid 60FPS with 1/2 the RAM of an Android phone that was dropping frames all the time. The entire CE operating system is an example of a huge "could have been". Microsoft really never knew what to do with it, and the Windows org obviously wanted it dead, and they eventually got their way. Of course that involved stopping all Windows Phone development for years while they rewrote all APIs, lost functionality, and lost customer trust, in the transition from WP7 to WP8. WP8 eventually became a good OS, but moving to the Windows kernel means the resource usage advantage was lost, and of course app developers got fed up when a new OS came out that had less API features than the previous version.
- simonh 3y ago
  Microsoft thought the way you do for years after the iPhone came out. They thought they’d be fine competing using CE based systems. They completely underestimated the advantages a modern, secure, pre-emptive multitasking OS with proper process isolation, fine grained multi threading, and all the other features you get that a workstation class Unix OS bring to the table. That 8MB footprint sound great, until you consider all the things you’re giving up in order to hit that target.
  - com2kid 3y ago
    CE6 and 7 had all of those. From CE6 onwards, CE was a fully modern OS. Not only that, it was a brand new OS written from the ground up that was designed to be modular and battery efficient. Sadly it never got a chance to shine, as internal politics killed it.
    - Aleklart 3y ago
      They would push Windows 8 AOL UI, mandatory NET mobile and usual API hell along with Store on it and CE would end similarly. At least it died without shame.

boxed 3y ago

We did need competition and new ideas though. Badly.

georgyo 3y ago
Did, and still do.
- smackeyacky 3y ago
  Desperately still do. I've been an Android user for over a decade but haven't bought a phone for myself for a while. Samsung won't update the Galaxy S8 any more and my bank decided it was too old to run their app. The others in my family are iPhone users and I dragged an iPhone 7 out of the drawer to give it a go. Now that google's apps and Chrome are native on the platform you can set up an iPhone as almost completely a google experience. Embarrassingly all the google services work better on an iPhone than they do on Android. I used it for a day and liked it so much I picked up a newer iPhone and transferred to that. It will take something really bad to send me back to Android - you end up being a 2nd class citizen running Android especially around security and the amazing face recognition unlock that Apple have implemented. However, it's pretty troubling in terms of competition - the iPhone will hit a critical mass where choosing Android will be wilfully silly.
  - expertentipp 3y ago
    > Samsung won't update the Galaxy S8 any more and my bank decided it was too old to run their app. Just had a similar problem. My bank's iOS app didn't react for "confirm" button so I removed it which resulted with completely locking me out of online banking. Now I'm waiting for a bloody letter. The stale mobile duopoly, mobile as a first class citizen and web as a second class, plus "securitay" practices of banking are an infuriating experience.

com2kid 3y ago

Previous Windows Mobile kernels had their source available for download on the web. Although not MIT licensed or anything, they were radically open for the Microsoft of the time (early 2000s!) I believe Windows CE 7 also had its source available. FWIW CE7 was an amazing operating system that had a minimal OS image of around 8MB on disk. (Numbers are from memory, might be horribly wrong, it was a long time ago that I worked on it.) It was also incredibly power, CPU, and memory efficient. Windows Phones could run at a rock solid 60FPS with 1/2 the RAM of an Android phone that was dropping frames all the time. The entire CE operating system is an example of a huge "could have been". Microsoft really never knew what to do with it, and the Windows org obviously wanted it dead, and they eventually got their way. Of course that involved stopping all Windows Phone development for years while they rewrote all APIs, lost functionality, and lost customer trust, in the transition from WP7 to WP8. WP8 eventually became a good OS, but moving to the Windows kernel means the resource usage advantage was lost, and of course app developers got fed up when a new OS came out that had less API features than the previous version.

simonh 3y ago
Microsoft thought the way you do for years after the iPhone came out. They thought they’d be fine competing using CE based systems. They completely underestimated the advantages a modern, secure, pre-emptive multitasking OS with proper process isolation, fine grained multi threading, and all the other features you get that a workstation class Unix OS bring to the table. That 8MB footprint sound great, until you consider all the things you’re giving up in order to hit that target.
- com2kid 3y ago
  CE6 and 7 had all of those. From CE6 onwards, CE was a fully modern OS. Not only that, it was a brand new OS written from the ground up that was designed to be modular and battery efficient. Sadly it never got a chance to shine, as internal politics killed it.
  - Aleklart 3y ago
    They would push Windows 8 AOL UI, mandatory NET mobile and usual API hell along with Store on it and CE would end similarly. At least it died without shame.