4 ms·
>Their hardware is a cute little side hustle. It didn't have to be. The same toxic dynamics that compromised their software poisoned their hardware, but they h
by underlipton 6mo ago
>Their hardware is a cute little side hustle.
It didn't have to be. The same toxic dynamics that compromised their software poisoned their hardware, but they had too many products, or eras of a product, that Just Worked(TM) for it to have been a fluke. Someone knew what they were doing. They were screwed over by competing interests.
Zune people loved their Zunes. Windows Phone 8 people loved their Nokias. I've seen Surface Pro 2s "boot" to the same session for half a decade (that is: put it to sleep, stick it in a drawer for a year, take it out, plug it in, turn it on, all of the same files and folders and apps are open; I've NEVER seen this happen with any other device, they always lose state after enough time unplugged). And it's crazy how badly the Courier/Surface Duo was botched, given the excitement for it. Even newer Surfaces are great for the first year, before all of the compromises and poor engineering decisions make themselves known.
Imagine if it had been managed by someone who actually cared about their users, instead of people who treated them like marks and rubes.
- yojo 6mo agoI got a Zune on clearance when they were shutting down the whole mess (a nice fugly brown one for 80% off). Build quality was rock solid, UI felt premium, and it mostly just got out of my way/let me play tracks. They were great little media players, as good as or ahead of the equivalent iPod. Hardware was really good out of MSFT at the time, although when mistakes were made (e.g. the RROD Xbox 360 debacle), the broader organization seemed allergic to making thing right.
- robotresearcher 6mo agoAnd that’s without mentioning XBox, a brand they built up to be pretty good over many years, and now they don’t seem to know what to do with. They have a HW+SW+store ecosystem right there. Gently stagnating.
- nearlyepic 6mo agoI dunno about "gently". The XBone was a pretty major face-plant and so was the Series S/X split. The only really successful Xbox was the 360, and that's mostly because Sony went mad with power while designing the PS3. It also helped that PSN was a disaster compared to Xbox Live in a generation where every game had a multi-player mode side-car'd onto it.
- underlipton 6mo agoD'oh, that's the most obvious example and I completely missed it. Even then, they were somewhat hamstrung by weird decisions - RROD as mentioned, but also remember their hard drive/memory card scheme for the 360? They HAD their family room Trojan horse, at the nascence of streaming and HD broadcast - imagine if they had gone full Nintendo and pushed a TV tuner and/or integration with cable networks? Truly an Xbox, the only one you need under your TV. It's crazy how the corporate machine just chews up obvious courses for sustained profitability and customer delight and spits out expanding batteries and DRM.
- conradfr 6mo agoNot sure why you are downvoted.