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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.

24 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Well, duh! It's all about patents by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Microsoft bought Nokia for their patents. Any other money is just chump change.

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  2. 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 drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Informative

      In Windows 7 and 8 you can actually prevent the functionality from being installed by blocking the "updates". In Windows 10 you cannot do that, and you can't turn it all the way off.

      If it weren't for that, I would have upgraded to Win10 already

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Circling the drain by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 3, Informative

      Even if you turn off all of the phone home settings in Windows 10, it still sends information to Microsoft. It's not fully known what kind of information this is, but it's suspected that it's three things (based on Microsoft's EULA)

      - How you configure your UI elements (taskbar and start menu pinning) and when and how often you click on them.
      - If you use IE or Edge to search with a non-Microsoft owned search engine, your search terms are sent to Bing; that includes private search engines such as duckduckgo. (This alone is huge; it's meant to improve bing, but it basically exposes your every intent online to Microsoft.)
      - Information about what wifi access points you use (turning the setting for this off only disables password sharing.)

      You can't filter this at the network level within the machine either, as the kernel sends this information and ignores proxy, hosts file, and firewall settings to get the information out if it fails while using the user settings. If you want to block this information from being sent, then you need to do something like configure a firewall setting in your router.

  3. 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.

    2. Re:Microsoft still off track by 0123456 · · Score: 2

      Same ole' bullshit from you, ledow. Microsoft Windows is still the leader in desktop operating systems for PCs.

      And Microsmack, Inc, is still the leader in buggy whips.

      Last story I remember reading here said the free, nagware upgrade to Windows 10 had only managed to snag as many users as Vista. They can't even manage to give away their new operating system!

    3. Re:Microsoft still off track by ledow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The percentages on the Register for 10 last week were 5%. 8.0 has that. 8.1 has twice that. XP had about the same as 8.1. The rest was basically 7.

      And given that it's a free upgrade from 7 or 8, that's pretty telling even at this early stage.

      To be honest, why would you upgrade from 7? It's still in support and still runs EXACTLY the same set of programs on EXACTLY the same hardware. There is no real selling point to 8 or 10.

      P.S. Hate me all you like, I've deployed Microsoft networks as a living for the last 15 years. Some things they do are good. Others are absolutely shite. Disagree with my opinion, that's what the friends/foes functionality is for. But you can also discuss it, that's what the forum is for.

  4. 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.

  5. Re:Final Move by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The last part of the exection in MS long history of Embrace, Extend, Extuinguish

    Well, it is a good thing that their strategy was not Embrace, Extend and Spell-check.

    But seriously, this has absolutely nothing to do with the E-E-E adage. Embrace does not mean buy; there was nothing here that they Extended; and shutting down non-profitable or under-used services of an acquisition is not Extinguishing them in the manner of that saying. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish is all about corrupting something that is a standard (or like one) so that it loses its usefulness as a cross-platform system. This case is just about pulling the plug on their own servers. It affects nobody other than their own customers.

    Just because this is Microsoft that we are talking about doesn't mean that you have to trot out that old meme, "Developers, Developers, Developers" or even "Monkey-boy".

  6. Re:Well, duh! It's all about patents by teg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Microsoft bought Nokia for their patents. Any other money is just chump change.

    The patents were not included in the deal. Microsoft didn't actually buy Nokia, they bought Nokia's handset business. The patents remained with Nokia.

  7. Amazingly bad management by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 3, Informative

    " those services will be shutting down on October 30... not all the features of the canceled services will appear in the new OS."

    Another of the many, many times when Microsoft believes it can do anything, and customers don't matter.

    This Slashdot comment explains Microsoft's control over Firefox and Mozilla Foundation. That control may explain why the user interfaces of Thunderbird and SeaMonkey have been damaged in recent versions.

    Yahoo is badly managed. From that story "Marissa Mayer's second-in-command 'leaves with $109m' on being fired from Yahoo after just 15 months". An incompetent executive got $109,000,000 for leaving a short job.

    Microsoft has a history of being amazingly badly managed. Quotes: Steve Ballmer is "Monkey Boy" and, from a May 12, 2012 story"Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."

    1. Re:Amazingly bad management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In general, this is what I hate about the mobile ecosystem. Everything is so tenuous and could be gone tomorrow. For some things it makes sense (e.g. a chat service), and for some things it would become useless over time (a mapping/navigation application would devolve as roads change and would be less compelling wthout traffic data) and then there are things that make zero sense to be bound by the ongoing presence of servers (a lot of single player games will keel over when one of a set of companies hangs it up). We have moved so far into not having control of our favorite software it's depressing.

    2. 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.

    3. Re:Amazingly bad management by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You DO know that linking to your other posts (which links to your other posts and so on) like you are some sort of "authority" to be cited makes you look like a total nutter, yes?

      And MSFT didn't have shit to do with the Yahoo/Moz deal, that was CEO...#3? May have been #4, in either case they announced the second the MSFT deal ended the Yahoo Search was coming back and AFAIK they have not changed those plans. Oh and neither MSFT nor Yahoo has had diddly squat to do with the clusterfuck that is the Moz UI changes, any time spent on their forums would tell you they devs think that shit is hip and they really have no fucks to give as to what you the user think!

      It is THIS that is killing Moz, the constant UI changes, ignoring the users, and the final nail in the coffin I predict will be them tossing the extension framework which honestly was the only thing keeping what few users were left on Moz products and nobody chose that shit but the elitist ego monster devs at Moz. Not a conspiracy, not any kind of "master plan", its the same disease that made all these companies pour billions into fugly as fuck flat shaded UI messes...hipster developers.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  8. 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.

  9. What a waste by Ulric · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nokia had the best hardware in the world but a terrible outdated OS. Then Microsoft came and killed the best hardware and replaced the OS with an even worse one.

    1. Re:What a waste by m4rtink · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nokia had the best hardware in the world but a terrible outdated OS. Then Microsoft came and killed the best hardware and replaced the OS with an even worse one.

      Depends on what OS you mean - if Symbian then you are right, but Maemo/MeeGo/Harmattan were far ahead of their time.

    2. Re:What a waste by Ulric · · Score: 2

      Nokia had the best hardware in the world but a terrible outdated OS. Then Microsoft came and killed the best hardware and replaced the OS with an even worse one.

      Depends on what OS you mean - if Symbian then you are right, but Maemo/MeeGo/Harmattan were far ahead of their time.

      Yes. I had a N900 and it was brilliant. Then when that OS was killed I got a Jolla.

    3. 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.
    4. Re:What a waste by yuhong · · Score: 2

      Well, how does Android actually compare?

  10. Which is why I can't commit to services.... by BlueCoder · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have a problem even with steam. Ebook stores.. you kidding me. What happens when they go bankrupt or get their division bought out. Services end. Otherwise I'd be spending 80 percent of my money on such content. I buy something... I want access to it forever. I want to be able to resell it although it all likelihood I never would being the digital hoarder that I am. I still have the boxes and some of the better manuals from games I bought back in the 90's.

  11. 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.

  12. Re:Well, duh! It's all about patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Microsoft is killing off these apps because they don't contain enough spyware and ads to pass their rigorous QA standards.