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Microsoft's Looking To Reboot Mobile with New Software and Hardware: Sources (thurrott.com)
Long time Microsoft watcher Brad Sams, reporting today: Two independent sources inside of Microsoft have told me that there is a new hardware device being tested internally and that there is also a separate branch of Windows Mobile for this device. I have been hearing about the software update for some time and the added hardware component makes sense as the company is pursuing "new experiences" with this device. Additionally, the UI is expected to be different than what we know today as Windows Mobile but the exact changes are still evolving as we are in the early days of development of this experience. There may also be another 'cut' in the support for older applications with the new mobile experience. I have heard, but am not able to fully confirm at this time, that Silverlight applications may not longer work with the updated OS.
Microsoft is copying Hollywood now.
#DeleteFacebook
So, which Company is he going to destroy from the inside next?
Rebooting is the first step of troubleshooting any Microsoft problem.
It's bricked worse than router that lost power during a firmware update.
>> separate branch of Windows Mobile for this device
Because...why not, I guess. Isn't that how every other failed "apps on Windows" effort has always begun?
"Surface Phone". Anodized aluminium. Runs something like Windows 10 S Mobile (pretty much like windows RT, runs on ARM). Has a dock for "full PC experience" (no x86). Costs more than iPhone
http://www.microchip.com/wwwpr...
(I die a little inside when I see the Microchip logo when looking at an Atmel product page)
#DeleteFacebook
This time, THIS TIME, it'll work.
Optimism is often a stand in for insanity.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Or worse, until they actually roll it out, a few million people buy, some dumbass developers actually develop time to it, only to have Microsoft abandon it again. In the meantime we'll have an endless stream of Redmond shills telling us why it's the bestest mobile OS ever, and why you're just a stupid doody-head if you want a mobile platform with apps, and how it's going to totally blow iOS and Android out of the water.
At what point do the investors finally say "Pay us higher dividens, you fucking witless wankers, and quit blowing money on pointless quests for a place in the mobile market"?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Not to defend MS .... but how is that any different from Google? They are constantly canceling projects left and right, leaving developers (who made the stupid mistake of using their APIs) in the dust.
Wasn't Windows Phone supposed to have superseded Windows Mobile? What's next, the return of the resistive touch screen??
Is anyone at the helm at Microsoft?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
so much for the windows 10 on all the things unified platform. of course it was never going to happen properly but i wanted it so much. 8.1 and 10 on the nokia 1520 was so nice until i dropped it and shattered it. they dont make nokia like they used to.
Yep. i liked my Lumia, good little phone (and cheap, $60 or so from target with no contract) only problem was the plastic contacts for the power and volume buttons got finky after a couple years of use.
Google is trying to create whole new market segments, and if those market segments don't feel like big winners, then they ditch them. Essentially the same concept as the myriad of startups that fail. That, and Google wants to out-facebook Facebook, so they also routinely discard social media projects that are only moderately successful, even if they're quite profitable.
Microsoft is trying to force its way into an already saturated market that is seeing limited growth by throwing shitloads of money at it, and they keep hoping that gimmicky features will somehow make them stand out, only to find out that those features don't work. For example, they forewent a notification shade saying that the tiles were better, and then realized that tiles sucked for that purpose so they added a notification shade years later.
to dead horses now?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Why on earth would you test websites on a lumia?
That's definitely one meaning of "the cloud" lol
It can also mean things like "remote storage" which is what most people think of. "My music is in the cloud"
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
..if it makes Microsoft concentrating their dumbing down on this new mobile platform and stop "mobilizing" Windows.
But they're already rolling out Office to their competitors' phones. In other words, they're handing the biggest gimmicks they have already. I cannot see any reason to use an MS portable device, and I actually have one (an 8" Windows 10 tablet, which I use maybe once every couple of weeks when my G4 runs out of juice).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A laptop is a "mobile computers" and yet most don't have a touchscreen, GPS, accelerometers...
What you want is a freakin' smartphone. There's already plenty of choices.
#DeleteFacebook
The absence of Microsoft from mobile device platforms is really weird.
From what I understand their current CEO is much less of a clown than Monkey Boy Ballmer was. They should be able to break into this market.
They need to stop their cycle of release > fail > abandon. Windows CE > Pocket PC > Windows Mobile > Windows Phone > Windows 10 Mobile
... just what the world needs.
Or lets just call it the Internet
I'm wondering if it will work on British Airways, as well as their reservations and booking systems do.
(end sarcasm)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
There is zero chance Microsoft can make a dent in the iOS/Android duopoly even in the markets where Windows Phone used to dominate back in the day (business etc) so why even bother trying?
The "Cloud" is someone else's computer over there ---->
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Windows 10 Mobile is better than any Android device I've ever seen, by far.
You are comparing an OS with a piece of hardware. That's a strange comparison.
More to the point, the reason so few people have purchased Windows phones is the phones lack the software people want to run. Android, and iOS, do not.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And yet the open source community churns out hundreds of linux distributions to fling at the wall and hope one sticks, every other day yet-another-android-based somethingOS is announced.
Why can't these fucking witless wankers actually work together, work to cure the deep-seeded infection of NIH syndrome that permeates the community and produce something genuinely innovative instead of piles of useless also-rans.
There's value in doing it for the wider community, I use iOS and its initial multi-tasking UI was absolute garbage. Windows Phone had a great UI for it and then Apple went and copied it for iOS which is great! I've also never had an Android phone as my primary device but they had the notification center, something iOS lacked that proved very useful for customers so when Apple copied that for iOS too it was of benefit to me and all other iOS users even if we didn't touch Android or Windows Phone.
If they don't come out with some kind of disruptive innovation then it will fail just like pretty much every other smartphone platform that isn't iOS or Android but if they do it will be a net win for users: Whether we go from a duopoly to a 3-way competitive market or this disruptive innovation is just consumed by the incumbents.
More to the point, the reason so few people have purchased Windows phones is the phones lack the software people want to run. Android, and iOS, do not.
That's the problem in any established market. Windows Phone was actually not a bad operating system but it wasn't disruptive or innovative either. If you want to be successful in an established market you need seamless compatibility (which seems unlikely) or disruptive innovation. No new OS (Windows Phone, Maemo, Meego, webOS, FirefoxOS, etc) has had either of those things in the current iOS/Android smartphone market.
I dub it the Microsoft Surface Zune!
I own a Lumia 525 for the last 3 years. It came with Windows 8 & then it got a 8.1 upgrade. Over the last year, MS has dropped all support for it. Outlook is available on Android (even the older ones) but not available on Windows 8.1
My workplace integrated some kind of external 2FA with Office365 & it works on Android, iOS & Windows 10 but doesn't work on my Lumia - because it requires Outlook. The default mail app which comes with Windows 8.1 doesn't support this.
So though I love the phone & the OS, never again will I buy a MS OS Phone. My next phone is most likely a Nokia or a Moto.
Team it with their dock and replace a bunch of business class computers with it.
A better name wouldn't hurt though...
The Windows 8 kernel was as close to microkernel as could be imagined. I hardly see a compelling reason why a kernel has to be a POSIX compliant kernel
Fully agree w/ both your points. Latter one first: they could have called it Metro or something, and left the desktop Windows 8 w/ the same old Windows 7 interface. And introduced Continuum in Windows 10 for touchscreen laptops.
The lack of apps is painful, and not just that, apps that previously existed are slowly disappearing e.g. Fandango. Until recently, there were no VOIP apps, nor any video calling apps (until WhatsApp added that functionality). If one is a Uber or Lyft driver, this platform is of no use. At this point, I don't see the purpose of them introducing a new phone. The Lumias were fine - I have a Lumia 550, which is just great (aside from the apps that're not there) - Windows 10 Mobile is a significant improvement on Windows Phone 8. Microsoft needs to make the OS something that devs can fully program, and not have to go thru the Windows Store.
iOS is clean - since Apple certifies any app that gets into the store
Microsoft should stop trying to be on the mobile scene,
just like
Google should stop trying to be on the social network scene.
Microsoft still hasn't solved the really annoying nagging problem... apps. I have a really nice blackberry Z10. Well okay, relatively nice, who are we kidding it's a piece of shit. The hardware's okayish... but you know what makes the phone a real piece of shit? I can't fucking run [Insert App I might want]. Granted compared to my wife or daughters that list of apps is small... but I only have to look at the shitton of apps my daughters have on their phones to see why this phone will fail. Does it run the cartwheel app, which seems to be a favorite of theirs. How about the latest chat apps? Yeah, didn't think so. Does it run Candy [King / Crush / Castle / *]? Yeah, didn't think so.
The problem is these companies i.e. app companies know most people have either an Apple or some flavor of Android. Microsoft is either going to make an SDK that mimics to the syscall everything one of those two platforms does or they're fucked.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
The Internet is a network. The cloud is a server farm on the other side of the network.
A "cloud" is a large set of identical servers that can be leased programmatically for short durations
It can also mean things like "remote storage" which is what most people think of. "My music is in the cloud"
That meets my definition as well, with the servers being network attached storage (NAS) servers.
One of the things they're doing that they tout as innovation, which just makes no sense to me at all, is continuum. Sure, it sounds nice to essentially have a desktop computer in a phone, but honestly, how often would you actually use that? In order to do so, you'd have to carry around a bunch of dock accessories in your pocket on the very, very off chance that you'll actually find a monitor to connect to that doesn't already have a bunch of stuff connected to it that you have to remove before you can use it.
It just by far makes more sense to carry around a laptop, which has the added benefit of much more powerful hardware, and the ability to run pretty much any application you want instead of just crappy UWP apps.
Besides, it's been done before by different Android OEMs, and it never proved to be popular.
Yeah, but in NT 6, which was Windows 8, they moved in the direction of making it as microkernel-ish as possible, like moving device drivers to user space. Windows 8 would have been terrific, had they retained the Windows 7 Aero interface, just changed the start button from a flag to a window, and simply replaced the underlying kernel
Why is that a problem? I don't want to have a different eco system appear every other year because it offers a small feature that the current one does not. Switching platforms is expensive. I want to do it when the benefit is great, not small. The problem is that the Microsoft and Apple ecosystems are tightly controlled, not that they are established markets. The platform should be an open one where anyone can interact.
I think Continuum will make sense for casual computer users within a few years - definitely within ten years. My teenage son has a $500 gaming PC, no smart phone is going to match it for performance. But my wife uses her phone and tablet for everything, her desktop is usually idle or off. The next time we buy a monitor for her, if getting one with mobile docking is cheap we'll do it.
And in fact, I think Continuum is exactly why Microsoft is desperate to get into mobile computing. They are going to lose hundreds of millions of non-power-users to Android and iOS in the next decade if they don't.
Why is that a problem?
Well I dont see how a company is going to break into an established market without overcoming it.
I don't want to have a different eco system appear every other year because it offers a small feature that the current one does not.
Right, that's what has been constantly happening and is why these new platforms fail, a small feature isn't going to entice anybody to change.
The platform should be an open one where anyone can interact.
We should also have world peace, among many other things.