5 ms·

Except Steven Sinofsky, longtime head of the Windows division and one of the internal forces preventing Microsoft from going in alternate directions, was pushed

Except Steven Sinofsky, longtime head of the Windows division and one of the internal forces preventing Microsoft from going in alternate directions, was pushed out under Ballmer's tenure, not Nadella's. Granted, Ballmer made the mistake of putting Terry Myerson, who headed up the failed Windows Phone effort, in charge of Windows but that's another story.

iforgotpassword 2y ago
Not just that everything was going through windows as GP said, whatever market they entered, they acted like their product will be like windows in that sector too from day one. Zune was like that, but the best example is windows phone, version 8 more precisely which is the first proper modern smartphone version. Google realized that if they want to stand a chance in catching up to the iPhone, they need to shove android in people's faces, and lure in devs. Microsoft entered the game (WP8) when android already had a foothold, making it even harder. They started with a mostly empty app store, and while they were clever enough to make sure the most widely used apps would be available by effectively bribing those big companies to develop windows phone apps, they pretty much gave the middle finger to all the small indie devs. I remember when android 2 was around I just downloaded android studio and played around a bit, making a simple scrobbler app for my Samsung device. Sideloadong was king back then, but even up to this point I had to pay zero bucks and jump through no hoops to try this out. I don't remember what putting this on the Google play store would've cost me back then, but not much. The windows phone experience was: sign up for a dev account to download visual studio with WP support. Start up VS, asked for your account again. I think in the beginning this was actually a paid account, probably because apple did it that way and again, you're Microsoft so act like you already own the place. But later in they reversed course here at least and you could log in with a free account. So you start building a small test app and then you want to run it in the shipped emulator but surprise! Your laptop only shipped with windows 8 home which doesn't include virtualization features, so tough. So the only way to test the app was to push it to your phone, which was another overly complicated mess where your phone had to be in developer mode and you could only "sideload" one app at a time, iirc. The result was an app store with mostly tumbleweed. Whatever small utility or gimmick you wanted, when on android a search would give you dozens of results, on WP, there was maybe 4, and 3 of them almost unusable and abandoned. I'm not blaming ballmer for having decided this specifically, but holy hell how did this pass any meetings with the higher-ups? You're uo against two tech giants who have a head-start of a few years, you try to get people to switch to your platform by being pricey, having no apps, and being hostile to smaller devs? The same played out with all the phone makers, who had to pay license fees for WP when android was free to use. Guess which phones were cheaper in the end. And when Microsoft bought Nokia, Nokia had the unfair advantage of getting WP for free, making it even less attractive for others to compete in that sector. And let's not get into the botched Nokia acquisition because I also don't think this can be blamed on ballmer that easily, or primarily.
- creesch 2y ago
  > The windows phone experience was: sign up for a dev account to download visual studio with WP support. Start up VS, asked for your account again. This is something that Microsoft still struggles with. Some things have improved, but a lot of the dev experiences on the Microsoft side are still cumbersome and not aimed at small time devs. My experience here is with browser extensions and publishing these for both old Edge (pre chromium) and the newer Edge. The entire publishing dashboard is/was overly complex and assumes you are either a single person or a big organization with (azure) AD set up. With Mozilla AMO you can just add individual developers to your extension by mail, and with Google it is as easy as setting up a group. With browser extensions specifically (and Edge as well) you can also clearly see where it is still a dedicated motivated internal team setting things up and where things were handed over to more general teams and support was also outsourced to somewhere else. Anyway, my main point is that even now, many years later, Microsoft still struggles in this area making me think this is more fundamental to the company culture and way of operating.
kaon_ 2y ago
I really wanted windows phone to be a success and am still sad it wasn't. I loved the interface. The native integration between my desktop/laptop and phone would have been great. Nowadays with so many apps being PWAs and built with nativescript or ionic, maybe windowsphone has a chance again? I have no idea tbh.
- baxtr 2y ago
  I didn’t like the UI at all. A lot of unnecessary animations. It felt like a forced departure from the iPhone standard, just so that it’s different.
- wombat-man 2y ago
  Feels a bit late at this point. Surface Pros run snapdragon but it still feels like too much of a lift to spin up an entire new mobile OS. I'd be pretty intrigued but they're still struggling to nail the tablet market imo.
lenkite 2y ago
Windows phone was damn good and was growing in popularity when Nadella came in and killed it. When you are #3 in a market, you need persistence to win. One cannot expect immediate, massive profits in a saturated market. Yet, Windows phone by itself was a growth multiplier for Windows which Nadella annihilated in order to turn Microsoft into a cloud & ad services company.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > you need persistence to win. You also need a plan. How would Windows Phone displace either Apple or Android?
  - raxxorraxor 2y ago
    It wouldn't and it wouldn't need to. The decision was still very likely wrong, especially transparent after Apple proved with silicon that ARM platforms can be that competitive. Windows wasn't ready here and platform interop wasn't at all it strength. If Windows phones would have had an emulated x86 mode, many people would have bought it instantly due to the momentum that now steadily decreases. There can be solid business revenue if you are "just" #3 and the experience with development is very valuable. Although it is true that Microsoft and hardware has always been turbulent, with partners or without. Sometimes they simply created the best products in their class with a lot of margin, sometimes they basically sold scrap.
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      The entire mobile market was immature back then, people didn't expect much interoperability and Windows Mobile 7 Nokias were slick and faster than iPhone or Android. They could have become the "contrarians luxury" if you didn't want to just get an iPhone. A bunch of hardcore Microsoft fan developers were gearing up to develop for Windows Mobilet dotnet when Microsoft changed the APIs with Mobile 8 (IIRC) and this dedicated bunch of developers just dropped the platform and just embraced Android or iOS instead.
  - mysterydip 2y ago

iforgotpassword 2y ago

Not just that everything was going through windows as GP said, whatever market they entered, they acted like their product will be like windows in that sector too from day one. Zune was like that, but the best example is windows phone, version 8 more precisely which is the first proper modern smartphone version. Google realized that if they want to stand a chance in catching up to the iPhone, they need to shove android in people's faces, and lure in devs. Microsoft entered the game (WP8) when android already had a foothold, making it even harder. They started with a mostly empty app store, and while they were clever enough to make sure the most widely used apps would be available by effectively bribing those big companies to develop windows phone apps, they pretty much gave the middle finger to all the small indie devs. I remember when android 2 was around I just downloaded android studio and played around a bit, making a simple scrobbler app for my Samsung device. Sideloadong was king back then, but even up to this point I had to pay zero bucks and jump through no hoops to try this out. I don't remember what putting this on the Google play store would've cost me back then, but not much. The windows phone experience was: sign up for a dev account to download visual studio with WP support. Start up VS, asked for your account again. I think in the beginning this was actually a paid account, probably because apple did it that way and again, you're Microsoft so act like you already own the place. But later in they reversed course here at least and you could log in with a free account. So you start building a small test app and then you want to run it in the shipped emulator but surprise! Your laptop only shipped with windows 8 home which doesn't include virtualization features, so tough. So the only way to test the app was to push it to your phone, which was another overly complicated mess where your phone had to be in developer mode and you could only "sideload" one app at a time, iirc. The result was an app store with mostly tumbleweed. Whatever small utility or gimmick you wanted, when on android a search would give you dozens of results, on WP, there was maybe 4, and 3 of them almost unusable and abandoned. I'm not blaming ballmer for having decided this specifically, but holy hell how did this pass any meetings with the higher-ups? You're uo against two tech giants who have a head-start of a few years, you try to get people to switch to your platform by being pricey, having no apps, and being hostile to smaller devs? The same played out with all the phone makers, who had to pay license fees for WP when android was free to use. Guess which phones were cheaper in the end. And when Microsoft bought Nokia, Nokia had the unfair advantage of getting WP for free, making it even less attractive for others to compete in that sector. And let's not get into the botched Nokia acquisition because I also don't think this can be blamed on ballmer that easily, or primarily.

creesch 2y ago
> The windows phone experience was: sign up for a dev account to download visual studio with WP support. Start up VS, asked for your account again. This is something that Microsoft still struggles with. Some things have improved, but a lot of the dev experiences on the Microsoft side are still cumbersome and not aimed at small time devs. My experience here is with browser extensions and publishing these for both old Edge (pre chromium) and the newer Edge. The entire publishing dashboard is/was overly complex and assumes you are either a single person or a big organization with (azure) AD set up. With Mozilla AMO you can just add individual developers to your extension by mail, and with Google it is as easy as setting up a group. With browser extensions specifically (and Edge as well) you can also clearly see where it is still a dedicated motivated internal team setting things up and where things were handed over to more general teams and support was also outsourced to somewhere else. Anyway, my main point is that even now, many years later, Microsoft still struggles in this area making me think this is more fundamental to the company culture and way of operating.

kaon_ 2y ago

I really wanted windows phone to be a success and am still sad it wasn't. I loved the interface. The native integration between my desktop/laptop and phone would have been great. Nowadays with so many apps being PWAs and built with nativescript or ionic, maybe windowsphone has a chance again? I have no idea tbh.

baxtr 2y ago
I didn’t like the UI at all. A lot of unnecessary animations. It felt like a forced departure from the iPhone standard, just so that it’s different.
wombat-man 2y ago
Feels a bit late at this point. Surface Pros run snapdragon but it still feels like too much of a lift to spin up an entire new mobile OS. I'd be pretty intrigued but they're still struggling to nail the tablet market imo.

lenkite 2y ago

Windows phone was damn good and was growing in popularity when Nadella came in and killed it. When you are #3 in a market, you need persistence to win. One cannot expect immediate, massive profits in a saturated market. Yet, Windows phone by itself was a growth multiplier for Windows which Nadella annihilated in order to turn Microsoft into a cloud & ad services company.

rbanffy 2y ago
> you need persistence to win. You also need a plan. How would Windows Phone displace either Apple or Android?
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  It wouldn't and it wouldn't need to. The decision was still very likely wrong, especially transparent after Apple proved with silicon that ARM platforms can be that competitive. Windows wasn't ready here and platform interop wasn't at all it strength. If Windows phones would have had an emulated x86 mode, many people would have bought it instantly due to the momentum that now steadily decreases. There can be solid business revenue if you are "just" #3 and the experience with development is very valuable. Although it is true that Microsoft and hardware has always been turbulent, with partners or without. Sometimes they simply created the best products in their class with a lot of margin, sometimes they basically sold scrap.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    The entire mobile market was immature back then, people didn't expect much interoperability and Windows Mobile 7 Nokias were slick and faster than iPhone or Android. They could have become the "contrarians luxury" if you didn't want to just get an iPhone. A bunch of hardcore Microsoft fan developers were gearing up to develop for Windows Mobilet dotnet when Microsoft changed the APIs with Mobile 8 (IIRC) and this dedicated bunch of developers just dropped the platform and just embraced Android or iOS instead.
- mysterydip 2y ago