back to article Memo to Microsoft: Keeping your promises is probably a good idea

Back in the day, the old IBM was famous for never breaking a promise to customers. For example, when IBM bought Lotus it was to honour a commitment to provide customers with office group productivity software that its own teams of programmers couldn't keep. IBM kept Token Ring and OS/2 customers happy long after the products …

  1. djstardust

    It amazes me ......

    How Microsoft are still in business. Todays example.

    I get an email telling me to update Skype or it will stop working.

    I go to skype, select upfdate and it fails.

    It gives me a link to the Skype web page which doesn't exist.

    I go to Google and find the Skype webpage and hit download. It loads a stub which then does nothing for 5 minutes then tells me it can't contact the Skype server to download.

    I then have to find the full installer and eventually it installs and works.

    There's a prime example of the clusterfuck that Microsoft are. And they don't realise it ..... or care.

    P.S. [disclaimer] the only reason I have Skype is so the wife can talk to her parents in Cyprus [/disclaimer]

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It amazes me ......

      I have dealt with this sort of thing from from Microsoft since the early days.

      I remember trying to install Microsoft products A and B.

      When I tried to install A, it said I needed to install B first.

      When I tried to install B, it said I needed to install A first.

      I spent three days solving this issue.

      1. yoganmahew

        Re: It amazes me ......

        @AC

        "I have dealt with this sort of thing from from Microsoft since the early days."

        Right, and it should come as no surprise to the NYPD that Microsoft are to be endured rather than embraced. For me the big failure in this is a CIO listening to marketing BS over their own technical people. It happens all the time and it goes wrong all the time. If you're doing something specialised, and law enforcement dispatch and comms are pretty specialised (it's not appropriate to get a pound off if they're more than 30 minutes late, for example), you have to have in-house people and they have to have the best idea of why you do what you do.

    2. Wade Burchette

      Re: It amazes me ......

      Sounds like my experience install Microsoft Exchange 2013 on a test server. It was a virtual machine inside of Server 2012 R2 Essentials.

      On a clean install of Server Standard I follow the instructions from Microsoft to the letter to install Exchange. It installed, but I could not get into the web interface. I always got the "something went wrong" message. And the Exchange powershell console didn't work either. Over the next week I spent a lot of time trying to repair the failed install with no success. I then tried to uninstall and re-install, which didn't work. So I clean installed Server Standard 2012 R2 again. Follow the instructions to the letter yet again. This time it worked. But 10 days later I could never get into the web interface. I didn't change anything. All I did was Outlook for the calendar and Firefox to get into the web interface to see how fast the calendar updated between Outlook, the browser, and my phone. I actually had Windows Update turned off. The Exchange powershell worked and the calendar part worked. I just couldn't log in to the web console.

      I have a Windows 8 virtual machine that I use only to restore backup files. It is turned off and updates disabled until I need to restore a backup. I have to do this because I have cataloged over 30 updates that break the Server Essentials client restore program. That is right, Windows Updates break a Microsoft program. I stop recording which ones did this when I created this blank virtual machine. (Surprisingly, I never found any updates that broke the backup for the original Windows Home Server. This was the second best OS Microsoft ever made.)

      1. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

        Re: It amazes me ......

        Makes me glad that we outsourced our Exchange - it is somebody else's problem now.

        Honestly. Server2003 and Exchange2003 is a good, basic email server for somebody to cut their teeth on. I have to assume Exchange2007 was of the same cloth, but added x64 capability.

        Exchange2010 seems to be the start of many issues, and from there it is all downhill.

    3. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: It amazes me ......

      Last week I tried the Visual Studio 2017 suite to compile C/C++ for windows in place of my ancient Visual C++ 6.0 setup.

      WTF have they done in the last 16 or so years?!

      Default installation did not work - said I needed SDK 8.2 (in a bizarre XML style error) but found it has installed SDK 10.something. So go to the installer again and manually select the 8.2 component. Still wont build as the likes of stdio.h and math.h are missing in the 8.2 installation?!. Find in project setting the option to use SDK 10.xxx and that finally works. But that is not the fscking option it chooses on EVERY fsking project you create!!!

      Also how do you create a new library project? If you create from existing source files its an option in the drop-down choice, but nowhere to be seen if creating a blank project. I could go on, but really it has tarnished by fond memories of how good the old Windows tool setup was and made me realise the Eclipse/Linux lack-of-ease-of use is in fact the new norm.

      1. Adrian 4

        Re: It amazes me ......

        Someone once described second marriage as 'a triumph of hope over experience'.

        I think of that every time another version of Windows or a new infrastructure platform comes out and businesses are pushed to change to it.

        It didn't work last time. Or the time before. And the support vanished. Why is it going to work this time ?

      2. cantankerous swineherd

        Re: It amazes me ......

        vis studio 2010 community edition works for me, no idea if it's available.

        1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

          Re: @cantankerous swineherd

          Yes, I was a fool for assuming the current download would work, and not realising that we are all beta-testers now :(

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Your SKype Update

      Ever consider that the email was a scam?

      I got one about my Skype for Windows.

      1) The email addy was never associated with a Skype account or a MS Account

      2) I last used Skype on Windows about a year ago.

      1. rmason

        Re: Your SKype Update

        I was wondering this too.

        You don't get emails about MS updates/skype updates.

        You get a little notification box informing you there's updates to install and that office needs to close programs to apply them (assuming you're downloaded the latest updates that is).

        You've fallen for a scam email, the tried to head out and find a legit update to manually install.

        If you tried to follow a link on the email, be thankful the install failed.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It amazes me ......

      True. Consumers are done with them, millennials don't even know what MSFT does. In a word, enterprises. Enterprises are keeping MSFT afloat.

      MSFT would claim that it is because they are uniquely well suited to enterprise needs. That is absurd though. IBM, Oracle, Cisco, SAP etc were successful because MSFT was so poorly suited to the enteprise in the era of MSFT dominance. Their products were not secure, didn't scale at all or very unreliably, lacked the sort of granular functionality that enterprises require. They got into the enterprise because, in the 90s, they were popular with consumers and IT depts relunctantly started working with them. Now all of MSFT's consumer popularity is gone. They do well in the Enterprise because enteprise IT orgs are slow, bureaucratic and hate to move away from the status quo that is in place. That will probably change over time though, move to iOS, Mac, Chrome OS, Android, G Suite, etc. The only reason there is not more pressure on IT departments to move is that end users can just go work with their corporate data on Google Apps, Dropbox personal accounts.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It amazes me ......

      You actually tried to update Skype based on a scam email? Why?

  2. Herby

    We don't care...

    ...We're Microsoft, we don't have to.

    Seems this is the slogan they're working with these days.

    At least the phone company and IBM did care to some degree. Maybe someone WILL get fired for buying Microsoft products. We can only hope.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: We don't care...

      Watch out for the Ratner effect!!

    2. Gerhard Mack

      Re: We don't care...

      "Maybe someone WILL get fired for buying Microsoft products. We can only hope."

      Wasn't the migration to Microsoft the reason Clara Furse resigned from the LSE? They replaced it with a Linux based system not long after her departure.

  3. Terry 6 Silver badge
    Devil

    Losing the Winphone

    I'm jumping ship at last. I've clung to my 640, because I actually liked it. A lot. But it's getting increasingly left behind. I've never been bothered by the limited number of "apps". But the ones I do want to use are either disappearing from Winphone or the version is much poorer than the iOS/Android version. And even the ones I use haven't been updated or improved for a long time. Yet at the same time the one advantage of not using Google-Android, the spying, has been lost.

    Even when I got the 640 it was slightly reluctant. I wanted to spend a bit more on a bit better Windows phone. But the choice was low-end and not being quite as good as I wanted, or high-end that I couldn't justify buying. And there was nothing available in the mid-range that I really wanted.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Losing the Winphone

      "Yet at the same time the one advantage of not using Google-Android, the spying, has been lost."

      Yeah, this was always going to be momentary. MSFT acted like they had some moral high ground... but really they just didn't have an advertising business, which they were desperate to get. MSFT will be much more aggressive with data collection than Google or Apple. MSFT has never embraced any ecosystem approach. Users/customers are there to make MSFT money, as much money as possible. Google and Apple understand that you need to tread lightly, make sure that the users are also winning in the bargain.

  4. Timo

    IBM was hardware, Microsoft not so much

    IBM tried to keep their hardware customers happy. That was back in the days when you sold hardware at gigantic margins and the software was incidental.

    Current times are different. Hardware is commodity and all the value is in the software. You don't need to buy any hardware if you get software that is in the cloud. Or you're the new IBM where the hardware is commodity, software is open source, and you make money on consulting.

    Now Microsoft comes along but they're a software business. Two keystrokes and a few mouse clicks give you new software, just go download a fresh copy. Hardware doesn't work that way, it is persistent.

    1. Len Goddard

      Re: IBM was hardware, Microsoft not so much

      As the article pointed out, IBM maintained support for OS/2 well past the time when that was in any way a profitable option in order to support users. Lotus was acquired to fulfil a promise and many other software products were maintained for many years to support customers. I believe it also kept a production line open for many years providing ferrite core memory and other horribly obsolete components for the space shuttle before NASA finally dumped the original tech in favour of thinkpads.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      'Hardware is commodity'

      Yes, Apple in fact made billions selling iPhones, and getting rid of hardware didn't change IBM destiny, and it doesn't make more money on consulting, nor HP did... and how do you get to the 'software in the cloud' without hardware?

      Landfill hardware is maybe a commodity, but for the consumer web/chat people only.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: IBM was hardware, Microsoft not so much

      IBM, back in the day, was always a software company. Mainframe was hardware, but most of the cash and value came via the software stack. They were a systems business, hardware and software in one engineered system. Very similar to the Apple model, but for the enterprise.

      I don't think there is anything wrong with discontinuing a product, bound to happen over time. You just need to give your customers more than fair warning. If something is going to be EOL, tell your customers five years ahead of time. That way everyone can complete their depreciation cycles. Everyone has ample time to come up with some other solution.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Microsoft a fake cloud company

    I work as a consultant and deal with several enterprise companies. The managers buy into the Microsoft as cloud hype machine like rabid dogs. O365 is a total mess if you are a large company. ADFS and Azure AD Connect are on-premises solutions that require constant care and feeding. MSFT stock, like the rest of the Dow Jones, is completely overpriced at this point. If the Fed had managed interest rates properly this asset bubble would have popped two years ago. SatNad is smart. Throw the word "cloud" around and watch your stock price double for no reason.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Dow Jones?

      Big acquisitions -> stock down because of less cash for shareholders

      Big layoffs -> stock up because of more cash for shareholders

      Fashionable buzzwords are OK to lull investors. How the business is actually run doesn't really matter.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Microsoft a fake cloud company

      "O365 is a total mess if you are a large company."

      How is word of this not getting out? O365 is a mess. I know of two Fortune 500 implementations where simple things like getting email are hit and miss. The service just drops for four hours... then all of a sudden you get 40 emails from throughout the day at once. Probably because Exchange was never meant to be a hyper scale product and they are trying to tape it together. Skype has massive latency issues to the point of being unusable with video. No one uses Office online.... If you go to any large shop with O365 and ask around, ask people who are not in IT as they have to pretend the emperor has clothes, and you are likely to hear similar reports.... Yet people keep moving to O365 and it doesn't seem like anyone hears these stories. Does MSFT just have that much control over communications?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Does MSFT just have that much control over communications?

        Don't forget that there is, and has been for years, a whole Windows-dependent ecosystem as well as just MSFT. There's Intel (the x86 company) and the Wintel-dependent x86-based system builders, there's the whole Certified Micrsoft Dependent world of trainers, developers, admins, engineers, exam-setters, etc, the coin-op corporate consultants who advertise themselves as MS Preferred Partners, and so on.

        When people talk about Microsoft's customers not being happy, it needs to be remembered that Joe Public, the end user, isn't a typical Microsoft customer. Joe Public now realises there's a world outside Windows and that they have a choice. Joe Public has been choosing something other than MSFT for a while now.

        A change is gonna come.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    Large enterprise procurement (sigh)

    Hindsight being 20/20, it's easy to claim superior wisdom. And god knows, some people really screw it up. But technology procurement decisions for large orgs is hard. Really hard. Buying 50,000 of X is not the same as buying X 50,000 times. For example, the size of the purchase gives you the purchaser leverage, but equally, buying a lot of something pretty much chains your wagon to the suppliers for a long time, so it's not so much a lever as a see-saw.

    I feel pretty confident that it went down like this.

    - NYPD's procurement arm signaled to MSFT and the other bidders that they were price sensitive.

    - MSFT needed a banner win for WinPho and decided that they would essentially buy the business by giving them away for free. (They probably threw in some software and consulting to get a token amount of money back)

    - NYPD looked at the alternatives: Apple - pricey and politically awkward, being a bit like buying BMWs for squad cars. Android - no single throat to choke (and prolly lots of FUD being spread too, eg govt agencies buying handsets from Chinese vendors, omg omg), and probably, to them, the combo of MSFT sw on Nokia hardware looked good. I don't say that they were right, but it wasn't unreasonable given the constraints at the time.

    - contract language around termination was not very clear. Normally there are promises extracted and penalties for compliance, eg you have to support me for X years, I have a jailbreak card at zero cost halfway through the contract, etc etc.

    It sounds to me like MSFT announced EOL on the phones, NYPD din't have a strong termination/EOL clause, and it was cheaper to dump the phones and switch than support the platform themselves. Doesn't really make anyone the villain.

  7. JMiles

    MS-as-usual

    Anyone remember Silverlight? Windows 8.1, the 'essential' OS for 'Enterprise'? Or the promise of a unified .NET development experience across Phone/Tablet/Desktop?

    Microsoft rally its army of developers and customers around its new shiny with promises of enterprise support and commitment and then ditch it as soon as they think they're onto the next New Shiny.

    I always laughed when I saw the MS fanboys in the office salivate over Silverlight and try to redo all the corporate apps in it. Then they salivated at the unified .NET vision and discovered it to be a marketing puff. Then they salivated over the 'come back' of Windows Phone. Those guys never learn - with MS you HAVE to ignore their hollow commitments and look at the bigger picture. Always.

    1. Adam 52 Silver badge

      Re: MS-as-usual

      Silverlight was a good idea, just implemented horribly. A decent cross-platform implementation and a watertight promise not to litigate could have killed Flash years earlier and put a fatal dent in the mess that is JavaScript. And we wouldn't need things like Coffeescript, Dart and Typescript.

      I still maintain that .Net 2 is one of the best and most consistent APIs ever created. Especially when you consider it side-by-side with Swing.

      1. JMiles

        Re: MS-as-usual

        To me and many others it was obvious it was implemented horribly. That didn't stop the Microsoft loyalists rally round it and proclaim it was gonna take over in the enterprise app space when to any sane observer it had no chance of success.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: MS-as-usual

          "Microsoft loyalists"

          That is the real problem. Anyone with any sense will stay away from these products as they are poorly implemented, poorly supported, poor values, all three... but there always seems to be this group of people in every company that are just going to do whatever MSFT wants them to do. They built their careers on MSFT tech, usually only understand MSFT tech and will insist on it even when it is completely obvious that is will be a mess.

      2. oldcoder

        Re: MS-as-usual

        and only use Microsoft products...

        Might be the "most consistent APIs ever created" by Microsoft...

        1. Adam 52 Silver badge

          Re: MS-as-usual

          'Might be the "most consistent APIs ever created" by Microsoft...'

          Go on then, name a better one!

      3. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: MS-as-usual

        Silverlight was a good idea, just implemented horribly.

        That's not the point. The point is that you were told by Microsoft that it was the future of Microsoft, you trusted that and invested $$$ in training and implementations on Silverlight.

        Then one day they turn round and say ..... and it's gone .....

  8. John Savard

    Victim

    If the NYPD got the phones for free, that just means they're not the victim of Microsoft failing to meet its promises. Presumably, there are other organizations and people that bought such phones.

    At least this lets the billionaire who decided to go with the free phones off the hook.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm finally ready to jump ship to Apple...

    I've waited....and waited....and waited for Microsoft to get it's act together and give me a laptop/tablet/phone solution that is truly integrated.

    Meanwhile, I have fought with a damned Samsung Note 5 (main issue being the scattered contacts across Google, Note 5 and Exchange) for far too long. Trying to keep Google, Samsung and Microsoft Exchange in sync is an exercise in futility. An exercise that I am tired (so damned tired) of trying to make work.

    I don't like Google's Office app replacements, and Google doesn't offer a "real laptop" or "real apps" that are anything close to those on Windows or Apple machines.

    With more and more going to apps and the cloud, which OS you use (MacOS or Windows) is becoming less and less of an issue. This is, of course, unless you simply MUST HAVE a particular app for work - then you are pretty much locked into an OS.

    But I am free to choose. And it looks like I am going to be choosing Apple.

    They have the most integrated solution available that integrates desktop, laptop, tablet and phone.

    Do their tablets and phones do all that Android does? No. But Android doesn't have a laptop, or desktop, or apps that can take the place of (or work with files from) some of the most used apps in my industry.

    Why the hell doesn't Microsoft at least write their own Android apps so keeping contacts and calendars synced properly with Exchange is as easy as installing and using the "Microsoft Business Suite for Android"? Just write a launcher with a phone app that links to Exchange for contacts, and toss in the other MS apps that they have already ported to Android.

    At least then we could have something to work with that might work with Exchange contact lists and is still available for other apps on Android.

    And, if you're feeling like doing something really great - make Outlook on Android more like Blackberry's Hub app. Show all communications (phone calls, text messages, emails, etc.) in a single UI. I'd even toss scheduled meetings and events right into the same timeline - something Blackberry does not integrate into the communications results feed directly.

    But it doesn't really matter for me, I guess. I'm tired of waiting on that Windows phone and my Note 5 is getting a bit long in the tooth.

    I almost bought that nifty looking HP Elite x3, but it would only work on AT&T's network and I need Verizon to get a decent signal where I live and work. (Even though the phone had the radio hardware to work on Verizon, HP never went through the FCC steps to get it approved for use on those bands.)

    IMHO, Microsoft will continue to lose businesses and government agencies precisely because of the two things it is pushing the most - the cloud and its separation from a decent Windows phone.

    Since more and more services and apps are moving to the cloud, the OS (even the OS serving up the apps and services) are less and less important. And since things are moving to the cloud (with Microsoft's own pushing) the need to be connected while mobile, and to have that same information synchronized with tablet, laptop and desktop is a must.

    Microsoft is no longer needed to port apps to the cloud, they have abandoned a sensible tablet (4 hours use is hardly a useful device), abandoned Windows phone almost completely (it would have been better had they made it a clean break) and they are not making any effort to make using other products (like Android) seamlessly integrate with Exchange and the contacts therein.

    Microsoft is doing well for itself right now, but I fear it has sold it's future for short term financial success.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm finally ready to jump ship to Apple...

      But I am free to choose. And it looks like I am going to be choosing Apple.

      Welcome my Friend, you are a free person, not a number.

      (oops shields up, incoming MS down voters!!)

      1. wallaby

        Re: I'm finally ready to jump ship to Apple...

        "But I am free to choose. And it looks like I am going to be choosing Apple."

        Free and Apple in the same sentence

        that has to be one of the biggest Oxymoron's I've seen

        You never truly own an apple product, it owns you.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: You never truly own [xyz], it owns you.

          "You never truly own an apple product, it owns you."

          And so it's completely different from Windows, Office, etc.

          Riiiiight.

          Oh, btw, did readers know that one reason why major IT advertisers often say "[pqr] recommends Windows 10" (or whatever MS product is in fashion at the time) is because those words get MS to pay for a big chunk of the advertising. Does the same apply to Apple? Who owns who in that picture?

          1. wallaby

            Re: You never truly own [xyz], it owns you.

            "And so it's completely different from Windows, Office, etc."

            Ermmm.......... where did I mention Windows in that post ???????????

            And no, you are right

            because Apple own the whole supply chain and with regards to apps for the mobile products they control what, and where you can get them from - unless you jailbreak it and invalidate the warranty

            1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. deadlockvictim

          Re: I'm finally ready to jump ship to Apple...

          wallaby» You never truly own an apple product, it owns you.

          This may be true. My IIfx is still going (albeit after new caps) and still plays the old games well.

          I certainly don't want to part with it.

          1. wallaby

            Re: I'm finally ready to jump ship to Apple...

            "wallaby» You never truly own an apple product, it owns you.

            This may be true. My IIfx is still going (albeit after new caps) and still plays the old games well."

            And at a quick count I've still got 4 windows 95 machines, a couple of windows 98 machines and half a dozen NT3.51 and 4 machines running that have been going 24/7 for up to the last 16 years - I did have to replace a HD on one of the 98 machines 2 years back thanks to an unplanned power outage at the site.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm finally ready to jump ship to Apple...

      "Google doesn't offer a "real laptop"

      I use a Chromebook. It is pretty awesome. Not the right fit if you are developing software, but for most anything else I think it is slick. Fast boots, no bloatware, it just works.

      1. rmason

        Re: I'm finally ready to jump ship to Apple...

        We use chromebooks at home too.

        when my old laptop died we replaced it with a pair of chromebooks,

        the windows PC in the house now only gets fired up if wifey is using one of her gizmos like the vinyl cutter/sticker maker or i'm downloading something to the NAS.

        I suspect the overwhelming majority of households would never need any windows device (apart from work stuff) if they tried a chromebook.

        I mean you can get on facebook, the internet, print stuff,edit most thing etc etc.

        It's only when you go outside of the "average" punters use that chromebooks become an additional device and not the only device you need.

        1. Terry 6 Silver badge

          Re: I'm finally ready to jump ship to Apple...

          This relates more to the whole "PC sales are down" business. Most home or SOHO users have little or no need for a proper computer. To visit web pages/FB/etc, do a few letters and keep a simple spreadsheet any old tablet or "phablet" will do the job. For Gaming - there's the consoles. There are groups who need something more meaty - a proper keyboard and screen if you are doing lots of office desk work, reasonable amount of power and storage if you are handling lots of graphics or data managing. But for Joe the Grocer, or the average home user a cheapo machine is plenty. Most adults over the age of 21 (i.e. once they've finished studying) can get by quite well without a PC.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm finally ready to jump ship to Apple...

      "it looks like I am going to be choosing Apple.

      They have the most integrated solution available that integrates desktop, laptop, tablet and phone."

      You seem to have abolished the need for the IT department and its back office applications (including the so-called help desk) and the need for "line of business" applications, all the usual modern 'enterprise' yuckiness. Well done.

      I'd be interested to hear what line of business you are in, who is doing these things for you at the moment (formally or informally), and who will be doing them for you when you are no longer Windows-dependent? I'm going to guess that you're not (e.g.) in a company doing engineering product design, or commercial finance or real time systems/automation, for example, but might be in something a bit more individual and media-centric. ICBW, clarification welcome.

      [NB I'm not trying to defend MS or to defend the stereotypical modern MS-dependent IT department and friends]

  10. Mikel

    Bluetooth?

    MS still haven't figured out Bluetooth?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If I recall

    there was a story about all this lets get the latest.

    Hum, aha yes

    The Emperors New Clothes.

    Suits == Lemmings

  12. cambsukguy

    Hardcore enthusiast I guess

    But, the phone I have works better than when I got it, because WP10 was unstable at first release for sure.

    I don't recognise the broken BT and maps fail jibes in the article.

    I use maps. nav and BT, all at the same time while driving, the hands-free BT and the A2DP music stuff at the same time sometimes. No big deal of course, I have even heard that other phones can do this,

    Although Maps without data, all over, anywhere, elegantly, not-so-much, I have seen the Google download map thing and it is rubbish by comparison, reminds me of downloading squares of the Lake District with NaviComputer or OS maps for walking, except that it is required just for regular map use.

    I get that most people with Android/iOS simply have a data connection, pay for the extra GB and have a decent connection enough not to care.

    But I have been in enough places without coverage where it matters and still prefer digital over paper, thanks to location mainly, that I am thankful for installed maps.

    And the Office stuff works really, really well.

    It definitely could all be better. It definitely deserves more love from MS, but it still works and is still updated often.

    I still prefer the UI, even though it lacks the elegance of WP8, the extra UWP power, e.g. in Mail are worth the 'more-PC-like' UI.

    It still has the 'distorting' screen buttons that attracted me in the first place, the Start screen short-cut system that make iOS look ancient and Android look tacky.

    I just hope that a new phone comes along before mine actually becomes out of date.

    With luck that will be two years - after all, they are not gonna write an app I 'must' have and it maintains the same speed as the day I got it.

    It would not be terrible if updates stopped in, say, a year from now, as long as the final version was stable. Almost all the apps I use are MS apps anyway, OneDrive, Skype, Office, Maps, People, Mail.

    And I don't worry about getting the next best thing, which I reckon saves me a bundle.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "New" IBM?

    But when pundits declared that Microsoft was "the new IBM" in the mid-Nineties, it appears that keeping promises was one characteristic it decided not to emulate.

    The IBM MS is emulating is the 2008 IBM, *not* the 1978 one.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Microsoft the new IBM?

    "when pundits declared that Microsoft was "the new IBM" in the mid-Nineties"

    This must have happened in some kind of parallel universe, because I remember it differently. Especially considering that Microsoft skated in on the IBM PC and IBM PC DOS. Microsoft hired on to produce IBM PC DOS for the IBM PC. PC DOS being a clone of SCP by Seattle Computer Products. Later on they were tasked with producing OS/2 and instead spend the money on Windows NT. IBM the company that allowed their intellectual property to be stolen - twice.

  15. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Had to use Skype on Friday last week.

    Toddled off to the Google Play store, downloaded and installed it, and was "ick, WTF???"

    It is no longer the Skype we used to know, and it is dreddful. Judge should take a summary execution on the design and development team. Drokk.

    Wonder how many vulnerabilities got introduced with the new skype UI and assorted junk, should not be long before a couple of biz and people get pwned with a nasty cryptomalware variant.

    I uninstalled it as soon as I finished what I needed to do. Never again, thanks.

    1. deadlockvictim

      Skype is dreddful

      A.S.A.C.» it is dreddful

      There is no justice, just me?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      It's not as good as it was in 2000 A.D.

  16. M-AD

    Sounds Familiar...

    I am in exactly the same position - I work for a recently acquired UK IT business, and about 3 years ago I was tasked at reviewing our mobile fleet and replacing our ageing iPhone 4 / 4S fleet. I had over 150 phones to replace, but I was encouraged to save money at the same time. At the time, Android was a mess with its fragmentation and Stagefright-style vulnerabilities, and iPhone was was just too expensive. I recommended Windows Phones - simply because they were cheap, and looked the part, and they made calls and received email - you could get four Lumia 640/650 phones for the cost of one iPhone. They were cheap enough that you could replace the whole fleet every year or two and it would still cost less than replacing iPhones every 3. WP wasn't great even back then, but with the power of MS, Nokia, and Windows 10 to look forward to, there was hope. It was a tough sell, and to be honest most people preferred to keep their iPhone 4S with knackered batteries and cracked screens. Promises from MS never materialised, and I am left with about 30 Lumia 650 phones still boxed and unused.

    There was some good news though - I kept things under budget, the company has been acquired by a US firm and once again we are looking at the even older mobile fleet. For the cost of rolling out WP, our planned replacement cycle was due anyway. After all the complaints the Bosses had with skimping on Windows Phones, they've decided to allow people to bring their own devices and pay toward their own mobile contracts. Works for me - trying to explain to someone why a £100 Windows Phone is better for the business than a £600 iPhone was getting tiring. Now, its if you don't like it, buy your own f***ing phone.

    And most do. Less work for me on mobile means more time to support the other steaming pile of code that is Microsoft products. Plenty of other things to fix to keep me in a job.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What's the core business

    Microsoft's enthusiasm to exploit Windows as a doorway into the mobile market has been matched only by their incompetence.

    They're certainly no the first big corp to screw up the move to new technology...just look at Kodak. But unlike Kodak and many other examples I could give, Microsoft's core business is still there....abandoned.

    Microsoft built their empire on a pragmaticsphere of desktop systems so simple that end users could build, deploy and program their own caboodle. An extraordinary number of companies actually rely on these systems. They would love to be able to use multiple logins over VPN from their devices to their WfW server where they would run (and develop) the apps that do their business logic using VB6.

    But thesedays Microsoft won't even sell the licences. There's no time to deal with the legacy stuff when your going full steam head with the vaporsphere that changes direction faster than a Quiditch Snitch.

    Even it all this vapoursphere suddenly achieved it's goals, it's not what their core users want.

    Mind you, Bill didn't lie on one promise; Business at the speed of light...If you don't have optical Internet conections your business will crawl to halt on updates.

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