RIP Windows Phone: Microsoft officially pulls plug - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Homer J Simpson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 01:09:45 am
content: "0.1% market share"https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/10/09/rip-windows-phone-microsoft-makes-officially-pulls-plug/747686001/

author: sony mavica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 03:28:57 am
content: i had a windows ce mobile phone back in the day i used to love it for playing the port of the pc game age of empires it way way better then Symbian OS

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 06:22:12 am
content: This is the best news all year for me.This pile of crap has been the bane of my life. We are maintaining one of the few apps that remains for it. The platform is a mishmash of problems and general unreliability and schitzophrenia from Microsoft. Nothing works on it properly and most of our software is workarounds. We’re actually holding a wake in the pub on Friday. Sorry not wake, a party!Also I bet you didn’t know that Microsoft held a funeral for the iPhone and blackberry when windows phone came out?http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-iphone-funeral-2010-9

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 08:08:01 am
content: My Lumia phones rock, one is Win 8x and the other Win 10Once you sort out the tiles to do what you need, effing around with an Android or iPhone is a PITAI got both of mine in mint condition, unlocked and too cheap to mentionthe suckers sold them for peanuts to the pawn dude to buy the latest Android or iPhoneHey, it's just a mobile telePHONE to make calls with some nifty on the go apps, not life supportI'm sticking with these beauties till the SIM card or network no longer works

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 09:10:38 am
content: Quote from: Electro Detective on October 10, 2017, 08:08:01 amYou makecalls?with your smartphone? That's the least used app on my iPhoneI'm afraid.Camera, Messages/Whatsapp, Inbox, Music, GMaps, Aftership... well, maybe they just named it wrong.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 09:34:11 am
content: The Germans call it a Handy. Phone is the least useful bit!

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 10:02:22 am
content: After the disastrous HW6515 pocket PC phone, Microsoft should have known they were a bunch of losers with the phone market. That phnoe gave them a bad name, even though it was the sluggish Windows CE running on it. HP/Compaq lost most of whatever credibility they had with a phone "designed" by clowns masquerading as engineers, under the watchful eye of a female named Carly Fiorina. The phone sported Microsoft's Excel and Word, which were useless on a such a phone. Fiorina had the phone bundled in TomTom and the result was so sluggish, the speaker would tell you to turn AFTER driving through the intersection where you were supposed to turn, if in fact the phone had not rebooted whilst you were driving.No, Microsoft should stay out of things they know nothing about like mobile telephones. Their days are done. And HP should also stay out of things they know nothing about - and that is everything they touch.I have a Samsung S8 and I am very happy with it. It is brilliant. Microsoft and HP could never dream of designing something so fine as that phone.

author: dr.diesel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 10:07:34 am
content: They've also lost a surprising number of users according to Satya Nadella:https://mspoweruser.com/satya-nadella-says-there-are-only-1-billion-windows-users-worldwide/

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 10:09:45 am
content: Quote from: Jeroen3 on October 10, 2017, 09:10:38 amOther way round for me. I use my smart phone for calls and text, most of the time. The phone camera gets used occasionally but I don't listen to music on the phone because I hate headphones and the speaker is crap. I can't justify the additional expense of a plan with data, because using the phone for the Internet cumbersome and frustrating, so anything Internet related on the phone is only used when I can get Wi-Fi. At home and at work I use a desktop for Internet.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 12:15:42 pm
content: IDK what was wrong with the system. You buy a phone for some 200 EUR (unlike iPhone, up to 1300 EUR, are you kidding me), and it works forever, without fiddling with the OS every second week, without waiting for hours for the updates to finish, without all the bullshit which android is. It must be a user error.Anyway, I'll just keep using my Nokia, until it dies, which is probably next century.Yes, it has replaceable batteries. Because magic.

author: lundmar
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 01:37:44 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on October 10, 2017, 09:34:11 amIt's true, a mobile phone comes very "handy" when you want to throw something!

author: lundmar
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 01:53:59 pm
content: Quote from: dr.diesel on October 10, 2017, 10:07:34 amI got news for you Windows folks - Windows is dying!It is no surprise - these days more people can make do with their mobile phone or tablet which in most cases don't run Windows.5 more years and we might see the number of Windows users drop to half a billion.The Linux desktop will grow strong in the coming years now that Vulkan renders Linux a solid performance alternative for the big consumer group of gamers. We are also getting rid of X and replacing it with a modern and much leaner Wayland alternative. Yes, my friends Linux is quickly stepping up to become a solid alternative that will capture some of those silly Windows users

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 02:19:10 pm
content: Good, now give me my gnome 2 back

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 02:47:02 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on October 10, 2017, 02:19:10 pmIt's called MATE.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 02:50:50 pm
content: I know that; was being facetious

author: lundmar
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 03:03:05 pm
content: Quote from: BradC on October 10, 2017, 02:47:02 pmHe he guys, its time to move onActually - the soon to be released Ubuntu 17.10 with Gnome3/Wayland is looking to be quite a big change and it's looking good.

author: Deridex
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 05:37:53 pm
content: I have a Lumia 640 and i gotta say: I thought a few times in the last months about throwing my Lumia 640 against a wall.Don't get me wrong: i was a long time a happy windows-phone user. i think i only had to restart the phone every few months.But the last months were no fun at all. I did not count how often i had problems with the phone in that time.So even without the news i would have switched back to android soon.Quote from: lundmar on October 10, 2017, 01:53:59 pmWhile i like open source, i don't think that on the desktop Linux is a real alternative to Windows yet. But i hope Linux will be successfull in the future.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 06:19:23 pm
content: Quote from: Deridex on October 10, 2017, 05:37:53 pmYeah, so, according to you, the only two really professional EDA packages (Cadence and Zuken) provide Linux versions becauseLinux isn't ready for the desktop yet??Not to speak about Microchip MPLABX, Xilinx, Altera providing Linux versions of their programming/compiler suits.But keep on dreaming that Linux isn't there yet...

author: Deridex
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 06:33:10 pm
content: I do not want another endless Linux vs. Windows discussion.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 06:59:33 pm
content: That’s a good point. How the hell did this get from Windows to Linux?

author: lundmar
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 07:13:28 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on October 10, 2017, 06:59:33 pmActually, It goes back to the original post. One of the main reasons Microsoft is failing is because of Linux. Windows phone got beaten to death by iPhone and Android. Android uses Linux because it is a fantastic hardware enabler.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 07:28:44 pm
content: Only on the server.

author: lundmar
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 07:33:41 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on October 10, 2017, 06:19:23 pmTake it easy Karel. That is not what he said. He said Linux is not yet ready for desktop and that is very true in the general sense. However, with the introduction of Wayland and Vulkan, the desktop performance and quality will leap forward. Soon we might find ourselves in the situation where the majority of games get released for Linux. That will attract gamers to switch to Linux. Thats when things will really change and Windows will get in trouble on the desktop.

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 07:54:29 pm
content: Quote from: Deridex on October 10, 2017, 06:33:10 pmThere is a better one!

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 08:05:12 pm
content: Quote from: Deridex on October 10, 2017, 06:33:10 pmWell Unix won in the end. After all both IOS and Android have their roots in Unix.

author: marshallh
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 08:07:23 pm
content: Windows Phone 8.1 was a home run for me, used it for years on a Nokia Lumia. Great camera, responsive, snappy software. Unfortunately very few apps.Microsoft really had a winner on their hands, and they still managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Same thing as the Zune HD, develop a killer multimedia device, but since it didn't take over the market overnight they decided it was a failure and completely canned it just a few months later. No follow-through.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 08:14:12 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on October 10, 2017, 08:05:12 pmDeep underneath everything. Really the JVM (Android) and NeXT (iOS) won. Unix could have been anything else.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 08:43:21 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on October 10, 2017, 08:14:12 pmLike what? Symbian failed, Windows CE (or whatever it is called today) failed, Palm OS failed, Blackberry OS failed, Maemo failed and the list goes on and on.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2017, 11:36:25 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on October 10, 2017, 08:14:12 pmActually, iOS (and macOS and NeXTSTEP/OpenStep before it) uses the Mach microkernel, so it’s really related to FreeBSD, which is BSD 4.4 compatible, which is pretty damn Unixy!

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2017, 02:51:13 am
content: Most of what the average computer user does these days is internet based, and Linux does internet pretty good. If mainstream gaming finds its way onto Linux in a big way, then it may be game over for Windows.

author: med6753
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2017, 03:21:40 am
content: I have a Lumia 925 with WIN8 and it works fine for me. I'm not a big app user so the lack of app support doesn't really bother me. What apps I do use/need work fine. I did try to upgrade it to WIN10 but Microsoft said it was not compatible.As long as my carrier (AT&T) supports the phone I'll keep using it.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2017, 06:36:07 am
content: Quote from: lundmar on October 10, 2017, 07:33:41 pmI hope (and I believe) that day will never come. Linux and windows are designed for different purposes.Linux is designed by engineers for engineers. It's the best choice for development, either hard- or software.Windows is designed for the masses (often called "click monkeys"), to generate as much money as possible for microsoft.The day the masses arrive at Linux, I'll stop computing and start gardening...

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2017, 07:41:56 pm
content: It's amazing how quickly a tech company can go from top of the world to irrelevant. Back in the late 80's or perhaps 1990 I worked for IBM and we went through the OS/2 <-> Windows deal where M$ took large sums of cash from Big Blue to develop OS/2 but OS/2 never went anywhere and Windows wound up incorporating many of the features that were developed for OS/2. Billy Boy had IBM's number and played them like a fiddle and by the late 80's, when a reporter asked Bill Gates about IBM he famously stated "IBM is irrelevant". Now as an IBMer that really hurt -- not because Gates was wrong but because he was right. So M$ had there run as the dominant tech company and Gates made tens of billions in personal wealth but by the mid 2000's it became apparent the M$ was losing its mojo. IBM reigned as the leader for about 40 years but M$ was more like 20 years. Now, to be honest both IBM and M$ still exist and it would be foolish to say they are nobodies, but neither of them lead anything these days. I do not think, however, that the PC is dead so M$ will continue to be a profitable company for decades to come, but there time as the leader of the tech world is over.Intel is another company that is in decline both as a result of the reduced emphasis on PC's but also there inability to make inroads into the small systems market like ARM. In Intel's case this is less a result of bad products, though they've not really shone like the Sun either, but more because Intel will never be able to achieve the margins they managed in the PC space. Many companies insist on a minimum profit margin and when a sector drops below that they sell that sector off -- GE is well known for this. For Intel to compete against the various ARM producers they would need to substantially lower there profit expectations and that goes against there entire culture.How long will Apple reign as the #1 tech company?Brian

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2017, 08:49:17 pm
content: Quote from: raptor1956 on October 11, 2017, 07:41:56 pm15-20 years. It was IBM, then Microsoft, now Apple/Google, who's next?Google is debatable at the moment. Android and ChromeOS don't fill all the gaps. They're a parasitic organisation.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2017, 09:41:17 pm
content: I heard that the Microsoft Surface computers were also in doubt for long-term longevity. They may be gone by 2020.http://www.computerweekly.com/microscope/news/450427571/Surface-future-comes-under-question

author: julianhigginson
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2017, 09:45:02 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on October 10, 2017, 10:02:22 amEwww. Creepy woman hater language...

author: Vtile
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2017, 09:55:09 pm
content: Can I take this with a grain of salt as I have heard a such comments since around 1995. Windows have been suprisingly slow to fade away. While modern linux distros are actually easy to install and not like it were as you always had one of those "non supported" piece of hardware i n your PC, I still find myself at times hitting my head to the wall with some odd 'compatibility issue'Quote from: lundmlink=topic=96568.msg1320746#msg1320746 date=1507643639

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2017, 10:04:57 pm
content: The 90 iPads we ordered to replace the growing pile of dead Surface products about three feet high now is looking at your comment and enjoying the schadenfreude.The company I work at were a Microsoft Gold Partner. They now have more Linux infrastructure than Windows and the latter is being phased out. Most of the development team use Macs (iMacs) and/or Linux machines (ThinkPad X1 is going down pretty well) and when they have to touch windows it's in a VM. The office staff are using recycled dev team PCs mainly for now and our operation is moving entirely to the web so even they are being handed out iPads and POS devices.The only thing that is still hanging on is Office which is just as well they put O365 on the web, macOS and iOS or they'd be SOL and replaced with G Suite by now.The only place Windows will stay is where there is some specialist software that's written in win32 that no one wants to feck with. EE is like that. For example my recent GW Instek DMM purchase comes with a Windows USB driver and Excel COM add-in and that's it. I'll solve that problem when I need to one day

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2017, 03:17:24 am
content: I don't think Windows is quite dead yet though it is clearly in decline. If you do one of a number of things that use proprietary software running on Windows it isn't so easy to switch to another platform. Additionally, while many people love Macs and everything Apple a lot more would prefer not to have to pay the Apple Tax just so the Cupertino company can reach valuations in the trillions. Linux is gaining ground but when are we going to see Adobe Suite on Linux as a fully supported product?But, M$ is doing just fine -- they now have a good part of there work being done in India so they're not paying US wages like they used to and that trend is only likely to increase. Hey, BG's worth about $80B so things can't be that bad. They have ended the Windows upgrade cycle so they can offshore the bug fixes and modest feature improvements and maintain a low cost and high profit picture, particularly with there cloud business and the value of there data mining (telemetry) is nothing to sneeze at either.They are not blazing new trails but profiting from trends (cloud/telemetry) developed elsewhere. I wonder how much the NSA/CIA/FBI provides M$, and Google and Apple for that matter, to have access to all that data. Who needs Stingrays etc. when you can have the pipe piped to you.Brian

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2017, 06:39:42 am
content: I never understood the “apple tax” statements. TCO is lower per unit than anything else over the lifetime of the device be that iOS or macOS. Purchase price isn’t much higher either. In fact our iMac units are a lot cheaper than the HP Z620’s we had before and the iPhones last 3x as long in the field.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2017, 09:23:30 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on October 12, 2017, 06:39:42 amYou got to be kidding me ... where in hell do you get the iPhones last 3X as long -- where's the data behind that statement? I suppose one could point to (cherry pick) the Samsung Note7 and its battery problem and doing that would permit you to make such a statement, but doing that would indeed be cherry picking. I have a Note4 that's 3 years old and I've had no issues and I know of no trend in the non-Apple phone market that would justify the claim Apple last 3X as long. Perhaps if you'd been a bit less glowing and said Apple lasts 50% longer it would be less obvious, but clearly you're pulling numbers out of a mid-body orifice!Mac's are not as over priced as they used to be, but they still cost more. They use pretty much the same components including Intel CPU's so saying they're actually cheaper in the long run would also require some data. You can certainly point to crappy competitive products that, because of reliability issues, cost more over the life of the product and you may well be right on the HP Z620's, but on average Apple cost more to buy and they use pretty much the same components that higher end WinTel PC's use. Hey, I'm a US citizen and might be expected to rave about a product designed in the good ol' USA, but my wallet argues otherwise!Brian

author: Naguissa
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2017, 10:10:07 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on October 10, 2017, 08:43:21 pmOne note about Maemo / Meego:It's still alive as Tizen (legal) and Sailfish (original Nokia developers).The second one is moving towards government people (government certificates) but still lacks interesting apps.Enviado desde mi Jolla mediante Tapatalk

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2017, 11:21:01 pm
content: Quote from: raptor1956 on October 11, 2017, 07:41:56 pmIMHO Gates was just lucky. First because the PC platform was cheaper (and only that!) than anything else. Secondly because their word processor 'Word' became a defacto standard. I use Windows for only a few things: CAD, Word and Hyperterminal.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2017, 05:46:48 am
content: This is a sample size of 376. I’m not sure you have that much data. Average longevity is 2.25 years for 5s/6/6s/7versus 0.79 of the Lumias we deployed before. People get new handsets if they drop into the office after 2 years. No one wants new ones.Turns out most failure are due to port damage on the Lumias or water damage or just bricked. The 6s and 7 usually get smashed. The button gives up on the 5s. Oh one guy managed to break a mini USB connector off in the lightning hole but I digress, you can’t fix idiots.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2017, 08:52:38 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on October 12, 2017, 11:37:41 pmActually, it’s not! I’ve still got some friends in the corporate IT world, and the average service life for an iPhone is two to three times longer than than a comparable Android phone or tablet. Two companies and nearly 800 devices between them, each company said the iDevices last about about 2.5 years on average, compared to 9 months for Android devices. For one company, leading cause of replacement was a worn battery, for the other it was broken screens. (The first company issued protective cases to all job site employees, which nearly eliminated broken screens.)Leading cause of replacement for Android phones was almost exclusively software issues for one company (slow performance and lack of OS updates from the phone vendor). The other company had issues with hardware quality (phones literally falling apart).One company had 300 iDevices and 60 Android devices in the field; nearly 90% of support tickets were for help with theAndroid devices (!).I don’t have any data to back it up, but I’ve had similar experiences with friends and family. (Admittedly, not a large sample size.)People want to attribute Apple’s success to their products being trendy or fashionable, but it’s not true. They’re successful because they make a high quality, easy to use product.I mean, they literally make their laptop bodies by machining a cavity into a solid block of aluminum. Yes, that block contains commodity Intel hardware, but it’s rugged, good looking, thin and light. Running on that hardware is an amazing, secure, stable OS, with full Unix compatibility, a 3D accelerate GUI (done years before Aero, by the way) that looks amazing and is easy to use. (By the way, that same OS (along with the Apple File System) is at the heart of their entire product line, from Smartwatches to set top boxes to phones, tablets and computers.)I’m also sick of hearing people bitch about Apple stealing this or that. The entire PC industry is built on theft! Microsoft has stolen more products than Apple ever has. Then there’s Compaq, who started the whole PC compatible industry by ripping off IBM’s BIOS. The only difference between Apple and Microsoft in this regard is that Apple generally make whatever feature they’ve “borrowed” better, or somehow perfect it. Microsoft almost universally figures out how to make it worse.Apple products generally “just work”, and that’s what you’re paying the premium for. It’s well worth it to me, and many other people.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2017, 09:05:08 am
content: Sounds like the company using android phones was using them because they could buy cheap crap.For a time (before they were given good quality tablets) I knew of many ticket collectors that prefered to use their own phones and tablets instead of the shit they were given to check people's tickets

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2017, 09:19:38 am
content: The expensive Android phones are crap too. We tried them! A Windows laptop given to a dumbass has a lower support cost than a high end Android device.

author: Naguissa
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2017, 09:19:46 am
content: Quote from: JPortici on October 13, 2017, 09:05:08 amThis is very common, use the cheapest Android, change to Apple and compare quality. It's comparing $50+ device and $1000+ other...Enviado desde mi Jolla mediante Tapatalk

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2017, 09:22:13 am
content: Quote from: JPortici on October 13, 2017, 09:05:08 amThat is theonlyreason a company buys android, because they're cheaper. Then they have skyrocketing support costs, and next iteration they decide to get iPhones.Ifthey have a capable IT manager.The sample applies to businesses thinking "We can do IT ourselves! We don't need an IT guy, Jeff here knows computers" .-2 months later-"Please help us, all our files have been encrypted, we can't get into our Windows Server 2003 and the backups are empty!"

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2017, 09:42:49 am
content: Quote from: julianhigginson on October 11, 2017, 09:45:02 pmOK, if I said is was a man named Carl Fiorina you would not have batted an eyelid. Political correctness gone mad. I don't drink cafe lattes, never had a cup of coffee in my life, prefer concrete to trees, still refuse to call programs "apps". How's that for being creepy.Having a Windows phone would be pretty creepy, but not having a phone at all is really creepy...https://www.thedailybeast.com/dont-hate-me-because-i-dont-have-a-cellphone

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2017, 04:48:38 pm
content: Quote from: Naguissa on October 13, 2017, 09:19:46 amActually, one company was buying name brand mid-level Android devices, along with previous generation Apple devices (buying the 5S’ when the 6 was out, for example). So the devices were equal in cost. Nice try, through. (See, you forget that Apple provides software support for much, much longer than any Android device, so it’s feasible to purchase a slightly older model and still stay within the performance and compatibility curve. I have an iPhone 5S that’s 3 years old and still getting updates to the latest OS.)

author: julianhigginson
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2017, 11:47:42 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on October 13, 2017, 09:42:49 amBut you *don't* feel the need to specify a man's gender when you're talking about a man, do you? only a woman. And when categorising words are used in that context it's normally a put-down or an attempt at "othering" a person...Also, you use the word "man" for man, but you used the word "female" for woman, which again directs some kind of detachment of that person from personhood....it's just disappointing to see it here rather than just on reddit/4chan and wherever else the sad men who hate women for their own failures in life hang out... but hey, maybe you really love women and have no problems with women at all, and I'm being bigoted/sexist towards you over a bad word choice. In which case, I apologise in advance.At least you don't claim to put pineapple on pizza.