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Stifling innovation? Microsoft was developing software for mobile devices more than 10 years before Google did and for a long time it was the main driver behind
by mslot 13y ago
Stifling innovation? Microsoft was developing software for mobile devices more than 10 years before Google did and for a long time it was the main driver behind the market for PDA/smart phone components (e.g., colour/touch screens, ARM CPUs).
- guard-of-terra 13y agoThey sort of parked their mobile devices progress in the same sense they tried to park IE forever at version 6 and Windows at version XP. I guess they figured out they no longer have to innovate now when all the market was theirs following the fall of (Netscape, Mac & other OSes, Palm). And when iPhone came the whole Windows Mobile thing imploded like a house of cards.
- lttlrck 13y agoYou cannot compare the failure of Windows Mobile to IE6. The situation created by IE6 popularity was in all likelyhood a fluke, I am not sure Microsoft had a grand nefarious plan that they successfully executed at all. Besides without IE6 we would have most likely had to wait longer for Firefox and Chrome.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoI don't think it's a grand nefarous plan. They just thought that they made it. That all the revolutions of desktop browsing (or PDA OSes) are over, and what they have to do until the end of eternity is introducing small evolutionary changes while preserving reverse compatibility. And that they did. But they were wrong, browsing revolution happened which left IE6, 7 and partially 8 in the dust. Mobile happened, which made them throw away all the Windows Mobile and make it from scratch. They were not ready to innovate by writing heroic projects fast and tried to persuade market that glacial is okay from now.