> On the other hand, it's possible that because we have a smartphones duopoly, Apple only needs to maintain a position where people will say "well at least it's not as bad as Google". I'm upset about this personally, but I'm not ditching my iPhone. Of course, this does cement my decision to never pay for iCloud, for what that's worth (much less, but not nothing).
Agreed, and I am likely going away from Android and into iOS for my next phone. It's still a setting you can change so it's not forced into their cloud thankfully.
I wish Microsoft hadn't backed out. A Surface Phone would be kind of cool. I guess too much stigma about Microsoft has held them back from being competitive. I think they shoulda waited for their Microsoft Store to grow much more organically, then release the Windows Mobile phones.
They botched the original Windows Phone through a failure of management. They botched subsequent pushes on it because the bootstrapping problem around apps had grown too deep. At this point, if they tried to give it another go, there would be trust issues: "Am I investing in a phone ecosystem that's going to be dead in a few years?" Not to mention how much they've gone all-in on Android development.
A Surface-branded Android phone wouldn't be out of the question, but my gut tells me it would die a quiet death from thin margins and differentiators that aren't big enough for people to get excited.
They botched the original Windows Phone through a failure of management
This. I had some Windows Phones besides my iPhones, because I liked very much what they were doing. Windows Phone 7, despite being technically weak (it was based on Windows CE), had an awesome UI. Nokia had some really affordable phones that were really well-built for the price and Windows Phone was getting traction. Quite a few friends/colleagues bought a Windows Phone, because it was the hip thing after the iPhone. The development story was also great, they used .NET and XAML (IIRC), which also made it possible to demo applications on web pages through Silverlight.
Then they screwed over all the early adopters by completely deprecating Windows Phone 7, doing one final release (7.8). None of the Windows Phone 7 devices were upgraded to Windows Phone 8. Most of the traction they had up till that point was lost and they were basically starting over with Windows Phone 8. Windows Phone 7 was already late to the market, the hard WP8 cut set them back even more years. And then it was simply too late.
There were technical reasons for WP7 -> WP8 (such as moving to the NT kernel, adding multi-processing support). But the hard cut was a catastrophical mistake. Either they should have started with the NT kernel in the first release or they should have had a gradual migration route from WP7 to WP8.
And underpinning all of that was the unfortunate fact that this truly innovative and lively new area of development at Microsoft found itself happening at the tail end of Ballmer's tenure.
There was this spark of energy around Zune, and then Kin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin), and then Windows Phone that was just completely orthogonal to the stagnant money-printing strategy that Microsoft followed before Nadella. It was this little glimpse of an Apple-like spirit somewhere deep in the behemoth. It was exciting. But it was always treated as a side thing instead of being placed front-and-center. It's now been diffused into Microsoft's various consumer products, most obviously the Surface, but Windows Phone was already dead by the time things started to change.
Aside: despite all the jokes about it, the Zune (2nd gen and forward) was awesome. It was a little late to the game - it really nailed the traditional mp3/video player right when the iPod touch had just come out - but I think it may've been the peak of that category. Everything from the UX to the hardware buttons was so meticulously considered, the screen was much bigger than an iPod Video, it had momentum scrolling that worked really well despite lacking a touch screen, etc. It did not at all feel like a Microsoft product of the time. It was even one of the first services to offer all-you-can-download, subscription-based music. And you could download songs over WiFi.
I completely agree. In an environment where everyone was just copying the iPhone UI, some of the design ideas that were coming out of Microsoft were really refreshing and exciting. There was really nothing else like it (and nothing like it ever since).
I would love to see how Windows Phone would’ve matured.
They botched subsequent pushes on it because the bootstrapping problem around apps had grown too deep.
I don't really think that is necessarily accurate. Lots of smaller developers would be more than happy to have a green field for app development if another player were willing to put the effort into assuring the device isn't a POS, and is priced reasonably. Some of the larger apps (netflix for example) already have a dozen diffrent versions because they support not only ios/android but a pile of similar devices (TV's/etc) and likely don't have a problem with another platform if it has a future and has the prereqs (widevine or similar DRM for example).
It's that chicken-and-egg problem where people don't want to use it because it doesn't have the apps they need, and developers don't want to make apps for it because it doesn't have enough users. Microsoft tried to throw money at the problem to middling success. But I think it was too little too late.
I'm not sure why paying developers is a problem to bootstrap the ecosystem. Although, if they were paying for temple run (as the image might suggest) that seems odd. Mostly because presumably they should be targeting the apps everyone uses that don't have good replacements (aka netflix/prime streaming/etc).
I would guess that they aren't the only ones. Do you think LG/Sony/Samsung/roku/apple tv/firestic/etc all got the netflix app ported for free? Maybe. Plex probably isn't getting paid, and they do it too..
But MS was a special case, it seems to me that every time I looked at CE/Mobile/etc they were tossing existing app compatibility aside for the latest and greatest toolkit that went with some not particularly good set of phones.
> But MS was a special case, it seems to me that every time I looked at CE/Mobile/etc they were tossing existing app compatibility aside for the latest and greatest toolkit that went with some not particularly good set of phones.
Their (forward) app compatibility was actually very good. I wrote a WP7 Silverlight app in 2011 that still works on the last release of Windows Mobile 10.
But that was basically quite late in the game, microsoft had been making a phone OS's for ~ a decade at that point. In 2011 it seemed like MS was already putting it on life support.
It was not just any anonymous developers, it was Google specifically making Gmail and Youtube not working on the Windows Phone. They refused to port their apps, and when Microsoft created clones (i.e. Microsoft built Youtube apps) Google made them not work on the back-end and threatened to sue MS.
It was just monopoly abusing its walled garden and being anticompetitive, nothing else. Not that Microsoft would behave any differently, if the positions were switched.
> A Surface-branded Android phone wouldn't be out of the question, but my gut tells me it would die a quiet death from thin margins and differentiators that aren't big enough for people to get excited.
There's definitely a differentiator, at least. Apparently they've forgotten what happened to the many previous attempts at dual-screen phones and tablets.
Yeah, I forgot about that one, although it's not really primarily "the Surface of Android phones"; it's an experimental form factor that happens to be lumped under the Surface brand because why not.
I'd argue that Android, without the Google stuff, is still the best option if you care about privacy and security.
This is not accessible for average Joe, but I'm pretty certain the majority of readers here can use the tools to load an alternative ROM. That you can enable and use F-droid just fine. And are knowledgeable enough to know what apps to avoid.
Ironically, the best phones to do that are Google's own Pixels - to give credit where it's due, at least the phones have unlockable bootloaders (unless you buy the Verizon variants).
eg GrapheneOS currently only supports Pixel 2, 3 and 3a:
Agreed, and I am likely going away from Android and into iOS for my next phone. It's still a setting you can change so it's not forced into their cloud thankfully.
I wish Microsoft hadn't backed out. A Surface Phone would be kind of cool. I guess too much stigma about Microsoft has held them back from being competitive. I think they shoulda waited for their Microsoft Store to grow much more organically, then release the Windows Mobile phones.
The other issue is Google's agreements.