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Microsoft Killing Off Nokia's Windows Phone Apps

Posted by Soulskill on from the buyer's-remorse dept.

jfruh writes: As Nokia's smartphone division becomes more fully absorbed into Microsoft, the company is cleaning house and ending some apps and services that Nokia had developed specifically for Windows Phone. Lumia Storyteller, Lumia Beamer, Photobeamer, and Lumia Refocus are photo and video apps that integrate with online services, and those services will be shutting down on October 30. Microsoft says its to better commit resources to work on the mobile version of Windows 10, which is coming soon, but not all the features of the canceled services will appear in the new OS.

10 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Circling the drain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It is my opinion that Microsoft, as a consumer company, is circling the drain -- at least for IT people.

    - They missed the boat on mobile
    - Windows 10 telemetry makes Google look like privacy champions (This OS is invasive)
    - They are back porting Windows 10 telemetry to Windows 8 and Windows 7 to get even more info from those users
    - They are killing the Nokia apps, which are arguably better than anything Microsoft could write. Why? Microsoft suffers from NIH.

    I am taking steps to free my family of any Microsoft product. The invasiveness is just too much. Linux works just fine, as there are no IT people in my family save myself, so they need to browse and use Webmail.

    Microsoft will survive OK enough in the corporate space, but it won't be too terribly long before they are supplanted by better tech -- and it will be about time. I sill cannot believe, after all these years, that people though Active Directory was better than Novell's NDS. That still boggles the mind.

    I'm looking forward to a world where Microsoft is an also ran.

    1. Re:Circling the drain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      you do realise that you can turn OFF all that Telemetry in settings right???

      he shouldn't have to turn off shit, it shouldn't be there in the first fucking place, its an OS not some seedy online shopping mall, Microsoft (and the US tech industry in general) need some fucking dignity, prepared to make their flagship product nothing more than a cheap salesman in a flashy suit, picking pockets for kicks.

      for shame

    2. Re:Circling the drain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Are you sure the telemetry actually gets disabled? Or is the "disable flag" just window dressing?

      The problem with the EULA is that Microsoft reserves the right to add any functions to the OS it wants to - and with different "privacy policies" as it wants.

  2. Microsoft still off track by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Might have been a change in CEO at Microsoft. But Microsoft lost mobile a long time ago, and its focus now seems to be keeping PC users on Windows. Giving away Windows 10 upgrades was a good ideal. But it also reduces the value of Windows to nothing. The only reason many probably upgrade to Windows 10 is because its free. Plus, it adds some time to older hardware to bring it up to modern software requirements. This get's the upgrade path moving again, but does little to spur PC sales. Will be interesting to see how enterprise handles Win 10 in the next couple years? Will they buy new hardware? Or upgrade older hardware?
    I have to be honest, as a consumer I don't mind Win 10 privacy issues and all. But I doubt when I need a new PC I will buy Windows again. Much of what I do on a computer now does not require Windows.

    1. Re:Microsoft still off track by ledow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Microsoft can't force people to install Windows on new machines like they used to. It used to be in their favour to force people onto Windows because they could hold up the ENTIRE PC market by refusing.

      Now that power isn't anywhere near what it used to be, and people don't really care if they have 7, 8 or 10 on their machine, they can't dictate the market. It used to be that Microsoft determined when you upgraded your PC and when the market was flooded with new PC's. No longer. Surface showed that.

      And that's a lot down to the death of the old-fashioned PC... Windows tablets are a flop, really, and Windows phones are even worse - at least the tablet is running "Windows as you know it" and not "Windows CE 2".

      People have always thought that Windows was "free" with their PC. Because it was always bundled so tightly you couldn't buy Linux PC's. Now that Android, and Chromebooks and even Apple devices have snuck in via other avenues that Microsoft found themselves unable to control, they have little choice. And their "The PC comes with Windows" has come back to bite them because now the PC industry are just saying "Nobody is going to pay THAT for a PC with Windows... you have to make Windows cheaper".

      To the point that MS has had to move Office to direct-payment-to-Microsoft rather than pre-loading on your PC. Office 365 is already installed, you just have to pay Microsoft a monthly fee direct that PC manufacturers don't see a penny of (I'm sure they get SOMETHING for bundling the pre-installers though).

      Microsoft's value was always only in their two main pieces of software. One of those they have set a precedent of giving away now. The other is a monthly fee that - over a year - doesn't cover the cost of one of the old versions of Office. And you can install up to five copies of it for a single purchase, which you didn't used to be able to do, and they have to provide cloud services, integration and automatic upgrades for that cost too.

      IE is dead. Even MS don't use it now.
      Silverlight doesn't work in Chrome since the last version, they haven't bothered to update their plugins to Pepper API.

      What else do they have? The death of Microsoft is long, protracted and pretty silent. They never made it in any other market - music players, tablets (there was Windows XP for Tablet PC many, many, many years ago - it's not like they haven't had time to fix it), phones, etc.

      MS will become a software provider, and even just SaaS eventually. Which is where they should be. That's their prime strength. And if they don't start competing there with other offerings (e.g. Google Docs, etc.) then they will be shoved out of that market too.

      A lot of this is nothing to do with their management now, but their mismanagement then. They have had to radically change how they do business to compete only on their strengths rather than muscling in illegally. Yet only two of their products are strengths, and one of those they are rapidly getting a bad reputation for (8, 8.1, 10).

      I can't say they don't deserve it.

      Kinda reminds me of RM in the UK education sector.

  3. Re:Well, duh! It's all about patents by aNonnyMouseCowered · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If so they'll probably learn like Google that the most important of those patents are loose change since most of them are "essential" patents that must be licensed under FRAND terms. So it's not as if they've suddenly acquired a big war chest to bully other smartphone manufacturers. They'll probably still be earning more from the software patents they developed in-house. The Nokia purchase was a reactionary move. I won't be surprised if Google just baited them to it.

  4. I will miss the Storyteller app by Gumbercules!! · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I actually like Lumia Storyteller. Not because of the story teller feature - but because it opens the images in full resolution. On my Nokia 930, I can zoom in endlessly in storyteller - with the 20MP camera, I can read the numberplate on a car that's little more than a dot in the photo - but in the Windows Photo app, I can hardly zoom in at all.

    Considering the camera is about the only reason I am sticking with a Windows Phone... bad move, Microsoft.

  5. Re:What a waste by DogDude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Windows Phone isn't terrible. On the contrary, it's the best phone OS on the market today.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  6. Re:Amazingly bad management by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've had the unfortunate experience of using Yahoo in firefox, and I changed it almost immediately because Yahoo search is stupidly slow. It's slowness mainly comes from when you click a link in their search results, the link just points to a yahoo.com redirect page, making it so that hitting your intended target page takes another 4 seconds.

    I get why they're doing it, they just want to know what pages you're hitting so that they can improve their search results. But competing search engines have a much better way of doing this: They just use asynchronous javascript to read the click before you actually leave the page.

  7. Re:Final Move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > It affects nobody other than their own customers.

    Exactly. They dumped WinMobile 6.5 customers when WinPhone 7 was completely different. They dumped WP7 customers when WP8 was incompatible. Now they are dumping WP8 customers by dropping services and apps, we have yet to see whether Windows 10 is viable for WP8 customers.