WinPhone community descends into CANNIBALISM and WOE Windows Phone fanbois are turning on each other in an online orgy of recrimination. So says Daniel Rubino of unabashed fan site Windows Central – formerly Windows Phone Central. Rubino made the observation in a candid post entitled: “The Windows Phone community is imploding”. “The tone today from many is dire,” he laments. “ …
I think Amazon have the nose on that with their co-incidentally named 'Firephone'. Fits nicely with your comments and probably sets the agnda for anything non-IOS and Droid for the long term.
MSFT had the world in their hand on this with CE. They could be exactly in Apple's position on Mobs today had they 'imagineered'. But then they just step onto the next rake and get a smack in the chops instead.
in the end it's not about users interests, it's about shareholder's interests. It's as simple as that.
No, it's never as simple as that. If the users' interests aren't served there will be no users, and that can hardly be good for the shareholders' interests.
Yes, the ultimate goal is to pay dividends to shareholders, but to do that you have to sell something that users want ... or, at least, are prepared to pay for.
"the only valid purpose of a firm is to create a customer"
(Peter Drucker)
Something that in the modern economy if often little understood. The stock market made some people think value can be created out of nothing - just it's "virtual" value that can disappear as fast as it been created (unless you're so clever to sell it to someone not so clever, in exchange for true money) - while "true" value last for much longer.
Yes, but that is only adding detail to my basic point. The ultimate interest is the money, i.e. the shareholder's interest's. Everything else bows down to that; the 'customer's interest's' are merely a function of the 'shareholder's interest's.
A charity or not-for-profit can put other interest's front and centre, but a capitalist venture faces enormous challenges and economic cultural pressures to conform to the imperative to serve the interests of those whose capital is at stake. That, after all, is the essence of the game.
Agreed. It's a matter of separating aims and objectives.
- the true aim of any business is to make money. That is the sole reason for it's existence.
- the objectives of any business are the means to achieve that aim.
Making profit is an aim.
Offering products or services people want to buy is an objective.
Keeping the customer happy is an objective.
Despite what they may claim, no business *ever* puts the customer first. That would mean pleasing the customer becomes the aim rather than an objective.
That's probably why MS hates you, because you're not a rabid fanboi willing to sacrifice your firstborn to buy the latest phone.
MS doesn't want buyers it wants worshippers just like Apple.
But it ain't going to get them, A winphone like a windows desktop is a tool and people generally don't worship tools.
It's shame. I really like my Nokia 920, I liked winpho 8.1 even thought I hated Windows 8.1
If they cock it up I don't know what I'll get next.
In a world where Kanye West wants to run for President, I feel I must disagree with your hypothesis.
He said worship, not vote for. Unfortunately no matter where you are, it seems to be universal that the choice on the ballot paper will all be tools of one sort or another (West, Trump, McAfee to say the least).
It absolutely is a storm in a forum. Almost every negative post on Windows Central is met with 5 saying submit feedback if you have an issue, rather than moaning about it here, and don't complain if Technical Previews aren't flawless or feature complete.
Most of the negativity seems to be coming from the gap between preview builds to be honest. 10536 is supposed to released to the Fast Ring today, so guess what I'm doing tonight. :-)
> Is this another one of those storm-in-a-forum things?
Yes. Windows Central is weird. It's about the only place (either virtual or real) where MS actually has fanboys. And just as every other type of fanboy, they're fucking idiots. Honestly, MS is better off being treated like a mildly annoying utility company like Scottish Water or nPower. Or like Tefal or Panasonic. You might use their stuff but you don't get all excited about it.
It's also not the first time AO has "reported" on stupidity in one MS-based forum as if it were an epidemic sweeping the entire tech world. In this case it's just some stupid kids whining about not being able to buy a new "flagship" phone as if they can't read Facebook or Twitter or watch porn on any of the existing phones. Or, god forbid, make a bloody phone call.
Have you tried WinPhone 10?
WP8 is the first mobile OS I have actually liked using. WP10 currently looks like a cheap Android imitation, most if not all of the UI features of WP8 that I like are gone or on the way out. I sincerely hope they make some drastic changes before release, but I think that is unlikely at this point.
I'm not liking the way this is going...
plenty of angst here... but some of it has died down from the loss of social integration with winphone 8.
sadly the writing has been on the wall since 7.5, microsoft created an amazing phone OS that was faster at getting things done than any other... and has since hobbled it in an effort to play "me too".
while i'm very angry at what they've done to winphone... i'm not about to go after other users(?).
time to prepare for another two years with my 1020 and order a replacement battery.
oh... I've not tried 10 yet but had good hopes with it being able to do android apps.
I think MS have just bought into the Nokia ethos... even since Simbian days, the next iteration of phone and/or OS took away good or innovative features like WP8 to 8.1 took away the cloud photo integration and unified messaging.
But eg. I remember going N85 to N8 took away funky features like "Say Caller's Name" and a host of other stuff which had seemed to make them stand out from competitors at the time.
They need the old Nokia ethos where they would make something good and people would like it rather than chasing what they think people like or even worse asking them (wasn't it a Nokia guy who said people would always say they want the same just bigger/faster so pointless asking)
You must have had problems finding it, because my Belle N8 had Say Caller's Name, it was great when you set up a car profile, enabled it for just this profile, and let it automatically connect to the car's handsfree via a Bluetooth connection.
I don't believe any of the current big three mobile OSes can even do this.
I believe my Lumia 640 (WP 8.1 Update 2) is doing just that with my Ford's MS Sync (base level, not the "nightmare Touch"), although I have not had enough calls to be sure that I am remembering correctly. It definitely does speak source and content with text messages over the car's speaker (but usually not clearly enough for my impaired hearing, so I usually kill the vocalization before it gets far along...).
Same here. I have iPhones and Androids, and I tend to use the WinPhone where possible, which is anything not work related.
If WP 10 is rubbish, that will be a shame. But you can 1. not upgrade or 2. get a new phone. WinPhones cost 100 of your local currency, so it's not like there's a big sunk cost to justify.
The prospect of going back to Android is certainly no worse than going down the motorway services and putting your dick through a hole in the wall. How bad could it be?
iOS is okay if you're not paying for it yourself, or bought enough Apple shares to get the 40% rip-off back in capital gains, and are never further than 60 feet from AC power.
To get back to the subject, MS has a good record of not breaking stuff that works... except in mobile. Oh shit.
Maybe it's a marmite OS. But I'd say it is very good. Particularly for the low marketshare. I set my Mum up with hers, and she's barely asked a question on how to use it. There's no way that would be true of Android, which can be very confusing at times.
Win Phone is still "unfinished". There are a few rough edges they bloody well ought to have ironed out by now. But it's much better at handling contacts and emails than the iPhone. Or stock Android. I'm aware that with 'Droid you can always find another app out there, although that can be frustrating as there are so many to choose from. I remembe porting my sister-in-law's stuff between Android phones, and I think I had to download 6 different apps, just to move her text messages across. 4 didn't work properly (all had 4 star reviews), and of the 2 that did, one only did MMS and the other only did SMS. That was 2.3 though, I hope that Android has improved in that area by now.
I set my Mum up with hers, and she's barely asked a question on how to use it.
As did I. I did a little customisation, but a large bright screen, dirt cheap, OK battery life and very easy to use for an 80 year old who just need to make calls (originally - large screen makes it easy for clumsy fingers). She is even using it for small amounts of web browsing - which has amazed the family, children and grandchildren alike.
After a telephone failure I left her my iPhone (5) (and reverted to the trusty Nokia 6310i (see other legends for the week). ). While I'm hanging on to my iPhone, she needs little that it offers and the Nokia/MSFT offering gives her all for much much less than a 6s whose only advantage for her would have been the lightning connector (symmetry has a lot going for it - but a bright pink spot on the USB cable and some practice has mainly solved that problem) and the larger screen.
Not brave at all.
Microsoft haters will snipe and perhaps genuinely refuse to believe, but the current Winphone is really nice to use. And looks good too.
It lacks the vast range of crappy "apps", true.
But it is a good range of devices.
Microsoft's ability to throw out the baby and keep the bathwater is getting close to legendary.
( LIke the pig's dinner that is the Win 10 version of a start menu).
Oh, I'm sure there are some fans who genuinely believe it.
It's completely possible for better tech to fail by being prohibitively costly or have low availability - but neither apply here. This time there just aren't enough people that think it's an 'astonishingly good' anything to succeed. Shouting a lot from positions of supposed influence (like say, news site editors) is no substitute for willing customers.
I'm not sure Andrew is ready yet to accept Microsofts Win8/10/WP strategy has nothing to do with what we need, it's a cynical strategy to impose what's good for Microsoft and only Microsoft. They couldn't push a phonified OS on desktop users so now they'll try it the other way. Eventually they'll either die or do the right thing and use the right OS on each class of device instead of the jack-of-all-trades cockup we're seeing now.
The "Marmite OS" sums it up quite nicely.
For those who want a phone to actually be a phone (a communications device for calls, plus SMS and email) then WinPhone is great. Nicely focussed (the rose-tinted positive spin of restricted app availability) but more to the point rock solid and reliable, it just gets on with what it should be doing.
But of course for those who want it as a tablet/laptop replacement then it of course fails, due to the self-same lack of apps etc. In that arena it's never going to replace and iOS or Android device.
So yet again MS are suffering from producing a product and then trying to market it as something else (or it being seen as such by the market) in the same way they did with Surface being a laptop-replacement vs being an iPad or other tablet replacement/competitor. And now with WinPh10 they seem to be trying to change their target and be a jack-of-all-trades across both, and like Surface end up mastering none.
Speaking as a WinPh8.1 user (on my company HTC 8X) I can say I'm quite happy with it as a phone, which I will miss if WinPh10 screws things up like it looks like it will. And for tablet stuff, there's my Nexus7 also fairly happily filling that role (albeit with some signs of showing its age now).
One should not pay attention to anything MS does outside the monopoly.
MS sseems to be unable to compete in equal terms and seem to throw shit at walls to see what sticks.
Im mobile in particular there is something that most people miss or give enough importance.
People do not run Android or iOS, people run applications in Android and iOS, one has the back of most of the industry and it is endlessly flexible, the other a restrictive premium product.
Microsoft has no flexibility and no premium, only restrictions.
What is happening to Windows mobile is what happened to Windows RT.
"Microsoft created an astonishingly good platform"
That's a brave statement, if I ever saw one.
I was certainly astonished at how good a platform they'd created -- especially with their record -- it was actually not bad.
Not as good as an iPhone, or Android, or Blackberry, or the Palm Pre (back when there was such a thing) ... but it was actually usable.
Was a good product. Companies loved it and brought it in droves.
It had manufacturers like symbol behind hardware solutions for logistics. It could be developed with Visual Studio .Net CE.
Easy to integrate within your IT infrastructure, and with plenty to power your corporate solution needs.
However, there where some issues with the software that where never sorted, and then, when things should have been stabilized and improved with new and better models, the whole platform was just fazed out.
They had the opportunity to grab the market that Blackberry captured, and lost it.
When the iPhone arrived, it was a storm and they just counldn't handle the market evolution. Compound to tha the woes of Compaq / HP (their major manufacturer), and you have a a recepie for a perfect storm.
And like they said, the rest is hysteria (pun intended).
Actually, it was pretty useful in the Handheld PC (HPC) form factor of the NEC MobilePro 780/900 and smaller HP Jornada 72x models. Instant-on, real keyboards (although the Jornada's were definitely cramped, where the MobilePro's were my dream for class note-taking with Pocket Word). I would love to see their form factor revived with the rumored Surface Phone as a 6-inch phablet with Touch style of keyboard cover (and bootable to Linux, and a Trackpoint to make my dream complete...).
"...but the preoccupations and desires of loyal users don’t seem to matter."
Why is anyone either surprised or hurt? It's not as if this was the first time MS have gone its own way and damn the users.
Just look at Win 8, everyone told MS that it was taking the UX in the wrong direction but MS went ahead anyway. Or that bloody ribbon, hated by many but forced on people just because MS knew best. I could go on but for anyone to be upset by MS ignoring the wishes of its users is either being willfully blind or inattentive.
Just like Microsoft we see clever things being innovated and then delivered by other companies, wonder for a couple of years what this might mean, and then fail with a lacklustre me-too offer. We ignore the message of the market, and revamp the product in the direction our directors think it should be taken, and unsurprisingly still nobody will buy it. Our core business remains profitable, but under attack, and we've not invested anything that we could avoid in it. Our bean counters and directors have no stomach for commercial risk, or for backing internal visionaries, having achieved their positions during the gravy years when we could make money just by being us.
It's sooooo dispiriting. HR have a star hand in these sorts of corporate demise, by valuing, recruiting and promoting group-thinkers whose talents are defined by the dominant but declining core business. The mavericks, the inspirers, the doers, they're all unwanted in these wholly avoidable slow motion car crashes. And Finance seem to believe the pointy haired boss maxim of "theoretically, if I cut costs far enough we'll be profitable without selling anything". All new business ideas are harshly judged against the scale of the core business - at my workplace, directors won't consider anything that won't almost immediately generate £10m a year profits. There's a rash focus on acquisitions - the "buy something, buy anything!" model that both Microsoft and HP have followed, leading to overpayment, performance and integration problems and huge writedowns.
Obviously not going to name my own employers, but outside of the tech sector we're busily following this Standardised Model of Corporate Doom (SMoCD).
you work for HP don't you
No, but we use them for our IT, and our god-awful customer service, and sense of entitlement are perfectly matched by theirs. It's a match forged in the very fires of hell, and the only thing that keeps our customer facing systems up to date (1) is the fact that we have kept CRM development in house.
Note 1: Not "up to date with customer needs", just "up to date with legal compliance in a heavily regulated sector".
Interesting. In the light of the stick that Microsoft get, and the trouble they are in, that HP even survive.
I've yet to have a single HP device, even a sodding mouse, that hasn't hit some kind of software, mostly a driver, problem. Usually stupid things like a software update that overwrites all the existing files but one that it can't overwrite for some reason., then refuses to install because that one hasn't updated, and won't work anymore because the file versions are now wrong.
Weird problems and incompatibilites with "HP" branded gear is nothing new (even though the actual company carrying that brand has mutated more than a Chernobyl chicken), our HP-UX PA-RISC boxen sometimes demanded a specialist be flown in at top dollar pricing to magically sneeze in the server room.
Gave me the impression there was a flaw in winphone hardware, and users were buying up devices for spare parts...
Some fan forums can get a little heated, with the ill-informed decrying 'doom' and more knowledgeable correcting, or vice-versa...
The former has been occurring on some linux forums over the arrival of another convergent platform for some time. Don't think anyone has tried to crack open any heads and consume their brains like a mueller yoghurt yet.
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