4 ms·

I don't think irrelevant is appropriate. Microsoft has very talented people on board and it keeps introducing novel products (Kinect, WP8,etc) You might like th

I don't think irrelevant is appropriate. Microsoft has very talented people on board and it keeps introducing novel products (Kinect, WP8,etc) You might like them or not but one has to give credit to try new approaches. They are not the unstoppable force that they were before but I think that calling them irrelevant is a bit too much.

sp332 13y ago
I have a WP8 phone and love it, but even I can admit that with ~1% marketshare, WP8 is irrelevant. Most people don't own a console, so having a slice of that market doesn't really help either. Having talented people doesn't automatically make people care about your products.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  I don't think it's the 1% market share that's their biggest problem. The problem is that Microsoft isn't competitive as an ecosystem. Bing search, Hotmail, whatever Microsoft has for music or maps etc. are not what people are using. Yahoo is doing more to attract and retain ecosystem users. Or look at it this way: It's not about selling a phone OS. It's about the ecosystem behind the devices.
  - assemble 13y ago
    There are a lot more who use their ecosystem than you think. All of their services work very well together, the Music and Video services have anything I could ever want (seriously, more current TV shows than anywhere else I've seen), the email calendar and other things work together, Skydrive is incredibly useful. If you don't think Microsoft's ecosystem is competitive, it tells me you haven't tried it.
    - sp332 13y ago
      I didn't even know MS had a video service. A little Googling and I got to "Xbox Video". I thought that was only available via the Windows 8 app (or Xbox) but it looks like any Silverlight-capable browser will work. e.g. http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/TVShow/The-Guild/Season/0/c1e74f93-c25c-4a24-b2c9-8b83201ae4f9 http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/TVShow/The-Guild/Season/0/...
  - sp332 13y ago
    The integration with specific sevices is impressive. On one screen, I can see all my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn connections' updates. On another I can see all notifications across all connected services. The lock screen can show how many emails I have waiting in each account, Twitter messages, Facebook messages, texts, missed calls, and voicemails at the same time. The rest of the "ecosystem" would be a lot more liveable if they only had a decent web browser! The browser on this thing is terrible. It doesn't even have a basic password manager, which is really painful on a touchscreen keyboard.
- GFischer 13y ago
  Windows Phone is great... until you run afoul of stupid restrictions. You probably will never come across them, but one of my cousins got a Lumia, and made the mistake of not lying when registering the phone. She ran afoul of two things: 1) Marketplace simply does not work if you're a minor 2) Almost nothing works if you set your place of residence to Uruguay. So I had to create a false account for her, and reset her phone twice, before she had a passable user experience. It might "work" if you live in the U.S., but I absolutely do not recommend it for small third world countries, and will only recommend Android here. Btw, I'd add a third caveat: 3) Most software doesn't have "free" alternatives like on Android (absolutely deal-breaking if you don't have access to a credit card, which most Uruguayans don't) It's sad, because the hardware beats the crap out of Samsung phones, the UX is better, and I love the Camera button. Too bad Nokia chose Windows, I loved my Nokia phones (still use one, an N86).

sp332 13y ago

I have a WP8 phone and love it, but even I can admit that with ~1% marketshare, WP8 is irrelevant. Most people don't own a console, so having a slice of that market doesn't really help either. Having talented people doesn't automatically make people care about your products.

Zigurd 13y ago
I don't think it's the 1% market share that's their biggest problem. The problem is that Microsoft isn't competitive as an ecosystem. Bing search, Hotmail, whatever Microsoft has for music or maps etc. are not what people are using. Yahoo is doing more to attract and retain ecosystem users. Or look at it this way: It's not about selling a phone OS. It's about the ecosystem behind the devices.
- assemble 13y ago
  There are a lot more who use their ecosystem than you think. All of their services work very well together, the Music and Video services have anything I could ever want (seriously, more current TV shows than anywhere else I've seen), the email calendar and other things work together, Skydrive is incredibly useful. If you don't think Microsoft's ecosystem is competitive, it tells me you haven't tried it.
  - sp332 13y ago
    I didn't even know MS had a video service. A little Googling and I got to "Xbox Video". I thought that was only available via the Windows 8 app (or Xbox) but it looks like any Silverlight-capable browser will work. e.g. http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/TVShow/The-Guild/Season/0/c1e74f93-c25c-4a24-b2c9-8b83201ae4f9 http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/TVShow/The-Guild/Season/0/...
- sp332 13y ago
  The integration with specific sevices is impressive. On one screen, I can see all my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn connections' updates. On another I can see all notifications across all connected services. The lock screen can show how many emails I have waiting in each account, Twitter messages, Facebook messages, texts, missed calls, and voicemails at the same time. The rest of the "ecosystem" would be a lot more liveable if they only had a decent web browser! The browser on this thing is terrible. It doesn't even have a basic password manager, which is really painful on a touchscreen keyboard.
GFischer 13y ago
Windows Phone is great... until you run afoul of stupid restrictions. You probably will never come across them, but one of my cousins got a Lumia, and made the mistake of not lying when registering the phone. She ran afoul of two things: 1) Marketplace simply does not work if you're a minor 2) Almost nothing works if you set your place of residence to Uruguay. So I had to create a false account for her, and reset her phone twice, before she had a passable user experience. It might "work" if you live in the U.S., but I absolutely do not recommend it for small third world countries, and will only recommend Android here. Btw, I'd add a third caveat: 3) Most software doesn't have "free" alternatives like on Android (absolutely deal-breaking if you don't have access to a credit card, which most Uruguayans don't) It's sad, because the hardware beats the crap out of Samsung phones, the UX is better, and I love the Camera button. Too bad Nokia chose Windows, I loved my Nokia phones (still use one, an N86).