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Ballmer: Microsoft Mobile Should Focus On Android Apps Not Universal Apps (theverge.com)
UnknowingFool writes: Former CEO Steve Ballmer had some strong opinions about the direction of Microsoft's mobile strategy. As reported last month, Microsoft's Project Astoria has not been received well and is not going well. The strategy is to help build Windows 10 apps by making universal apps via easy porting from Android. Ballmer questions its effectiveness. "That won't work," he said. Instead he suggested that Windows phones should "run Android apps." This is a dramatic departure from the Microsoft-only focus that Ballmer championed during his tenure as CEO.
As an ex-Windows Phone user, I said many times I would have stayed on the platform if I could (reliably and safely) run Android Apps (I'm aware of the work over at XDADevs to make this happen but I don't want to have to get my app APKs from Russia - I want them from the Play Store). I actually quite liked the OS of Windows Phone - it was quite powerful, smooth and frankly, feature rich (mainly because it had to be, because there were no damn apps for it). If I could have Android apps - and they worked well and safely (you know... for Android) I'd call that best of both worlds and come back.
I think that your words will be ignored. Sorry Pal, you had a shot at the big chair and blew it. Well, some of us never were given the chance. Enjoy your cash.
I think Microsoft should focus on restoring Nokia to its former glory , apologizing to the people for screwing it and focusing on the crappy operating systems they make.
MS should really consider keeping him on as a consultant. They could pay him hundreds of millions of dollars a year to talk about anything that crosses his mind, and they'd turn a huge profit so long as they do the exact opposite of whatever he says.
Well from a business perspective, during his tenure he tried to capitalise on MS’ dominant position on desktop and server in order to promote dominance on the emerging mobile-client platform. This he or the company he presided upon failed to do, and he retired after the “screw up”.
But that does not mean that he must continue dumbly advocating that there be strict adherence to what he tried, and failed, to do. After all, consistency is only a value if you are not a screw-up.
He continues to be MS’ largest single investor. That gives him a large vested interest in advocating that it behave rationally, even when rationality in this sub-game is at odds with the strategy he pursued previously.
Ideally MS would have succeeded in perpetuating its dominance to the new platform. It did not, so now it’s the case to do something else which is at cross-purposes with what would have formerly been ideal. This is not evidence of fallacious thinking; much the contrary.
"Place me in the company of those who seek Truth, but deliver me from those who believe to have found it."
Considering the level of spying going on in Windows 10, I don't think Redmond has that credibility.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's not quite accurate.
ActiveX wasn't the first plugin support, for starters. NPAPI beat them by a year, and Java applets were capable of most of what people wanted ActiveX for.
IE did have the first CSS support, but it didn't mean much. CSS was more or less unknown until the IE4/NS4 era. Yeah, IE3 had some support for it, but CSS wasn't taken seriously back then.
I notice you don't mention IE had the first implementation of the marquee tag. Why the omission?
And if we're talking firsts, I don't think IE is going to beat Netscape here. Netscape's influence on the early web far outweighed IE's. I'll just drop the word "Javascript" here, as a conversation starter.
Microsoft did lure businesses and customers over by being installed by default on desktops. Microsoft did break compatibility with web standards - that CSS you mention was a half-assed implementation at best. Remember how long it took them to fix their messed up box model calculations? Microsoft did target businesses with ActiveX (because only the insane would allow its use outside the intranet), a feature that no other browser wanted to support even if they could, for the horrible security problems. And I'm assuming you never had to deal with ActiveX applications that only worked on IE6, even years after IE6 was out of date, because of incompatibility problems.
Superior performance and memory usage? Have you met users? They don't care about that. They use what's on the desktop. They click that icon that says "Internet" placed oh so handily on the left side of the screen under the recycle bin, or in large print at the top of the start menu. That's what the whole antitrust lawsuit was all about.
The saving grace of it all is that Microsoft is just so very bad at all things internet-related. If they had kept working on IE instead of sitting on their laurels, Mozilla would never have been able to make a comeback, and Microsoft would be dictating the standards.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
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