6 ms·

The software biz in general has a major "out with the old, in with the new" attitude, which paired with the attitude of, "We're going to build what we know, ins

by RajT88 10mo ago

The software biz in general has a major "out with the old, in with the new" attitude, which paired with the attitude of, "We're going to build what we know, instead of learning the old stuff which is new to us". I've seen time and again, things like apps rewritten from scratch because nobody knew C++, and they only had C# devs. Or a massive runaround because the last guy on the team who knew C++ wrote a bunch of stuff and left a couple years back, and now nobody really knew how any of that stuff worked. > React has had tremendous success in the web world, so why not try and get those developers more comfortable producing apps for your platform? IMO - this is worth talking about. Zune, Windows Phone, and some others died when they did not, in fact, suck, and were pretty good products which while late to the game, could have competed if there had just been a decent app ecosystem.

Greed 10mo ago
I maintain to this day that the Zune was one of the best designed hardware and software platforms I've ever used. Probably the only truly design forward product that MS ever produced.
- midnightclubbed 10mo ago
  The Zune hardware was slick, particularly the solid state players. The music store worked great and their music licensing was so much better than Apple - $10 a month for unlimited streaming, unlimited downloads (rentals) to Zune devices and 10 free mo3 downloads to own. Their only misstep was making one of their colorways poop brown! That and being too late to market with a phone that used the same design language
  - SllX 10mo ago
    There was also the fact that Microsoft introduced it 3 months before Apple announced the product that would kill the iPod, leading with the HDD model (a direct competitor to what would become known as the iPod Classic line) when Apple’s real flagship was the iPod nano. There was also the crap that was Windows Media Player 11 which I tried to like for about a month. There was also the incompatibility with Microsoft’s own DRM ecosystem in PlaysForSure which was full of these subscription music services, some of which were quite popular with the kind of people that were inclined to buy a Zune: folks in Microsoft’s ecosystem that had passed up on using an iPod and used something from SanDisk, Creative, Toshiba or iRiver instead. This is because they wanted to replicate the entire iPod+iTunes model entirely. The 2006 lineup of iPods was also particularly strong, and included the first aluminum iPod nano’s. When Microsoft announced and released the Zune, they were counter-programming against that, right into the Holiday season with a new brand that had no name ID, with a product that was just like the iPod, couldn’t play any of your music from iTunes or Rhapsody, but with… HD radio. More than a few missteps were made.
  - andrekandre 10mo ago
    > Their only misstep was making one of their colorways poop brown i think the other big issue was calling it a 'zune' but thats just me...
    - nightski 10mo ago
      Name or color had nothing to do with it imho (I like the brown personally). It was all timing. They were entering a market with a well estaablished leader (iPod) that was nearly as good, as good, or better depending on who you ask. On top of it phones themselves were taking over the music player market at the same time, which is where Microsoft really dropped the ball. I mean, iPhone is a really ridiculous name as well if you stop to think about it.
      - RajT88 10mo ago
        You think having a dumb name would be a negative, but one of the biggest bands in the world is called Metallica.
    - DANmode 10mo ago
      “…you’re absurd, what’s a Zune?!” https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jkrn6ecxthM https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jkrn6ecxthM
    - wiredpancake 10mo ago
      [dead]
- sylens 10mo ago
  The Zune software 2.0 remains the pinnacle of Microsoft design
mcv 10mo ago
Out with the old, in with the new, doesn't have to be bad, but it depends on what your old and new are. I'd be a lot less skeptical about migrating OS-level sttuff from C to Rust than from C to React.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  If the motivation is "Because I refuse to learn C", then both approaches will be bad. You can't avoid understanding what you're migrating, but seemingly Microsoft thinks they're above that. Fits with the average mindset of developers within the Windows ecosystem, at least from my experience.
  - jeltz 10mo ago
    Totally agreed, I have learned a lot of technologies to understand legacy systems. Either you run them or to migrate away from them. If you do not learn and respect the legacy system your migration is bound to fail.
lenkite 10mo ago
Windows Phone was actually doing well and adoption was taking off when Nadella came in and killed it. It didn't help that they changed the app framework and then blamed lack of apps. Such a brain-dead decision.
- sylens 10mo ago
  Windows Phone 7 was doing well; for some reason they did a breaking change with Windows Phone 8 and broke app compatibility. I will never understand that, they kneecapped themselves despite being multiple laps behind Apple and Google already…
  - close04 10mo ago
    The reason was moving from the CE kernel to the NT kernel between WP7 and WP8. This was supposed to make developers’ lives much easier when porting Windows 8 apps. The minimum hardware requirement had to be bumped and old WP7 devices could never meet them.
    - hasperdi 10mo ago
      At the very least they could've created some kind of translation / compatibility layer, to ease the transition
- jorvi 10mo ago
  Windows Phone was dead in the water because many services did not have first party support, and the third party clients kept getting killed / people banned from said services. Google was extremely aggressive in muscling Microsoft out. They refused to release a Gmail, YouTube or Maps client for Windows Phone but made sure those services did not work (properly). And indeed on top of that, Microsoft switched UI frameworks 3 or 4 times. And they left phones behind on the old OS releases repeatedly, that then couldn't run the new frameworks. Still, Windows Phone its UI concept was really great, and I sorely miss the durability of polycarbonate bodies versus the glass, metal and standard plastic bodies of today.

by RajT88 10mo ago

Greed 10mo ago

I maintain to this day that the Zune was one of the best designed hardware and software platforms I've ever used. Probably the only truly design forward product that MS ever produced.

midnightclubbed 10mo ago
The Zune hardware was slick, particularly the solid state players. The music store worked great and their music licensing was so much better than Apple - $10 a month for unlimited streaming, unlimited downloads (rentals) to Zune devices and 10 free mo3 downloads to own. Their only misstep was making one of their colorways poop brown! That and being too late to market with a phone that used the same design language
- SllX 10mo ago
  There was also the fact that Microsoft introduced it 3 months before Apple announced the product that would kill the iPod, leading with the HDD model (a direct competitor to what would become known as the iPod Classic line) when Apple’s real flagship was the iPod nano. There was also the crap that was Windows Media Player 11 which I tried to like for about a month. There was also the incompatibility with Microsoft’s own DRM ecosystem in PlaysForSure which was full of these subscription music services, some of which were quite popular with the kind of people that were inclined to buy a Zune: folks in Microsoft’s ecosystem that had passed up on using an iPod and used something from SanDisk, Creative, Toshiba or iRiver instead. This is because they wanted to replicate the entire iPod+iTunes model entirely. The 2006 lineup of iPods was also particularly strong, and included the first aluminum iPod nano’s. When Microsoft announced and released the Zune, they were counter-programming against that, right into the Holiday season with a new brand that had no name ID, with a product that was just like the iPod, couldn’t play any of your music from iTunes or Rhapsody, but with… HD radio. More than a few missteps were made.
- andrekandre 10mo ago
  > Their only misstep was making one of their colorways poop brown i think the other big issue was calling it a 'zune' but thats just me...
  - nightski 10mo ago
    Name or color had nothing to do with it imho (I like the brown personally). It was all timing. They were entering a market with a well estaablished leader (iPod) that was nearly as good, as good, or better depending on who you ask. On top of it phones themselves were taking over the music player market at the same time, which is where Microsoft really dropped the ball. I mean, iPhone is a really ridiculous name as well if you stop to think about it.
    - RajT88 10mo ago
      You think having a dumb name would be a negative, but one of the biggest bands in the world is called Metallica.
  - DANmode 10mo ago
    “…you’re absurd, what’s a Zune?!” https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jkrn6ecxthM https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jkrn6ecxthM
  - wiredpancake 10mo ago
    [dead]
sylens 10mo ago
The Zune software 2.0 remains the pinnacle of Microsoft design

mcv 10mo ago

Out with the old, in with the new, doesn't have to be bad, but it depends on what your old and new are. I'd be a lot less skeptical about migrating OS-level sttuff from C to Rust than from C to React.

embedding-shape 10mo ago
If the motivation is "Because I refuse to learn C", then both approaches will be bad. You can't avoid understanding what you're migrating, but seemingly Microsoft thinks they're above that. Fits with the average mindset of developers within the Windows ecosystem, at least from my experience.
- jeltz 10mo ago
  Totally agreed, I have learned a lot of technologies to understand legacy systems. Either you run them or to migrate away from them. If you do not learn and respect the legacy system your migration is bound to fail.

lenkite 10mo ago

Windows Phone was actually doing well and adoption was taking off when Nadella came in and killed it. It didn't help that they changed the app framework and then blamed lack of apps. Such a brain-dead decision.

sylens 10mo ago
Windows Phone 7 was doing well; for some reason they did a breaking change with Windows Phone 8 and broke app compatibility. I will never understand that, they kneecapped themselves despite being multiple laps behind Apple and Google already…
- close04 10mo ago
  The reason was moving from the CE kernel to the NT kernel between WP7 and WP8. This was supposed to make developers’ lives much easier when porting Windows 8 apps. The minimum hardware requirement had to be bumped and old WP7 devices could never meet them.
  - hasperdi 10mo ago
    At the very least they could've created some kind of translation / compatibility layer, to ease the transition
jorvi 10mo ago
Windows Phone was dead in the water because many services did not have first party support, and the third party clients kept getting killed / people banned from said services. Google was extremely aggressive in muscling Microsoft out. They refused to release a Gmail, YouTube or Maps client for Windows Phone but made sure those services did not work (properly). And indeed on top of that, Microsoft switched UI frameworks 3 or 4 times. And they left phones behind on the old OS releases repeatedly, that then couldn't run the new frameworks. Still, Windows Phone its UI concept was really great, and I sorely miss the durability of polycarbonate bodies versus the glass, metal and standard plastic bodies of today.