RIP Windows Phone: Microsoft officially pulls plug

[marshallh]

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.

[bd139]

I do not want another endless Linux vs. Windows discussion.

Well Unix won in the end. After all both IOS and Android have their roots in Unix.

Deep underneath everything. Really the JVM (Android) and NeXT (iOS) won. Unix could have been anything else.

[nctnico]

I do not want another endless Linux vs. Windows discussion.

Well Unix won in the end. After all both IOS and Android have their roots in Unix.

Deep underneath everything. Really the JVM (Android) and NeXT (iOS) won. Unix could have been anything else.

Like 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.

[timb]

I do not want another endless Linux vs. Windows discussion.

Well Unix won in the end. After all both IOS and Android have their roots in Unix.

Deep underneath everything. Really the JVM (Android) and NeXT (iOS) won. Unix could have been anything else.

Actually, 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!

[rdl]

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.

[med6753]

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.

[Karel]

That will attract gamers to switch to Linux. Thats when things will really change and Windows will get in trouble on the desktop.

I 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...

[raptor1956]

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

[bd139]

How long will Apple reign as the #1 tech company?

15-20 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.

[Richard Crowley]

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

[julianhigginson]

a phone "designed" by clowns masquerading as engineers, under the watchful eye of a female

Ewww. Creepy woman hater language...

[Vtile]

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'

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/

I 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

[bd139]

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

[raptor1956]

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

[bd139]

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.

[raptor1956]

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.

You 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

[Naguissa]

I do not want another endless Linux vs. Windows discussion.

Well Unix won in the end. After all both IOS and Android have their roots in Unix.

Deep underneath everything. Really the JVM (Android) and NeXT (iOS) won. Unix could have been anything else.

Like 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.

One 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

[nctnico]

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. 

IMHO 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.

[bd139]

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.

[timb]

<snipped> and the iPhones last 3x as long in the field.

Even I know a few Apple iPhone users who would laugh at such specious nonsense. In fact not specious at all. Just nonsense, because it isn't even superficially plausible.

Actually, 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 the
Android 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.

[JPortici]

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

[bd139]

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.

[Naguissa]

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

This 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

[Jeroen3]

Sounds like the company using android phones was using them because they could buy cheap crap.

That is the only reason a company buys android, because they're cheaper. Then they have skyrocketing support costs, and next iteration they decide to get iPhones. If they 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!"

[VK3DRB]

a phone "designed" by clowns masquerading as engineers, under the watchful eye of a female

Ewww. Creepy woman hater language...

OK, 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