Bill Gates Has An Android Phone. Has Microsoft Changed? (neowin.net)

Bill Gates uses an Android phone now. "It may not be the most surprising revelation, given profits are sinking faster than a boat without a hull and big-name partners are jumping ship left and right, but the founder of Microsoft has presumably left Windows Mobile," reports Neonwin. Long-time Slashdot reader Billly Gates (no relation) writes: I would assume this is the final nail in the coffin for Windows Phone and the rumored Surface Phone which may never see the light of day. Over the past few months we have seen a change in Microsoft with them being friendly to Linux with stories of porting .NET core over to Linux, helping write a custom Linux kernel, as well as introducing the not-so-popular-on-slashdot WSL Ubuntu for WIndows 10.
Noting the Android emulators in Visual Studio, he's wondering if the company's ambitions go beyond developers, and if they're planning a Microsoft version of Android, "as the tools are in place with Ubuntu, Node.js, Python, Microsoft Code editor, and the Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition."

His original submission points out that 10 years ago these stories would have been unimaginable, but he also asks a second question: has Microsoft really changed? "Could we be seeing a new Microsoft now that the world is moving to mobile and they have no operating system in it?"

Comments

Re:Not this tripe again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, today. Next year and probably the year after that. But it won't be much longer until a business person may be able to use a phone to do basic tasks by connecting it to a keyboard, mouse and monitor.

How much longer until you can do CAD on a device the size of a phone. 2 years, 5 years, 10?

Or another possibility Android and iOS become the dominant desktop OS. I wouldn't give Windows that much of an edge anymore. Plenty of business software can be ported and plenty will.

All I do know is that in 2007, NOBODY thought smartphones would be this big, and NOBODY thought Apple or Google would corner the mobile market and destroy Blackberry, Palm, etc.

'Unimaginable' 10 years ago?

[Kaenneth]

https://slashdot.org/comments....

from 2006

"even if Windows dies, nothing (from a legal standpoint) could stop 'Microsoft Linux' (Optimized for Office, with IE, etc.)"

Re:Gates has his people with phones

[Kristoph]

Forgive me for saying so but your definition of a 'normal computer' is rather limited - maximizing windows, and having in-window menu's do not a computer make.

I have a couple of Windows machines, both for development and for gaming. However, OS X, as a *nix platform, can do far more - through the sheer availability of both commercial and open source software - then a Win PC, with the sole exception of gaming. It's also way more robust and much easier to maintain and requires minimal effort to keep running efficiently.

PS. hotkeys and a trackpad on full acceleration are far more efficient then a mouse, on any platform

Re: Of course it would be Android

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Mobile, or Windows Mobile?

You have to include the full name, not just some vague platform grouping. Windows Mobile up to version 6.5 was Windows Compact Edition. At that point, WinMo ceased to exist for a while. Consumer smartphones used Windows Phone 7, which had a rewritten kernel that fully met the WinNT spec. Industrial devices used Windows Embedded Handheld, which was just another rebranded version of WinCE. Then Windows Phone 8 broke compatibility with Windows Phone 7, and Windows Embedded Handheld 2013 broke compatibility with Windows Mobile/Embedded Handheld 6.5. Then Windows Phone 8.1 broke compatibility with WinPhone 8, while WinEH 8.1 broke compatibility with WinEH 2013. Then Windows Mobile 10 superceded both Windows Phone 8.1 AND WinEH 8.1 (technically, EH was replaced with the Win10Mo "IoT" SKU, but it's interchangeably compatible with the regular Win10Mo SKU), without breaking compatibility with either one of them.

I had an HTC Touch Pro 2 with WinMo 6.5.3. It replaced an iPhone (original, 2G). I also have (and continue to use) a Lumia 950XL with Win10Mo. It replaced a Galaxy S3 with Android 4.3 (maxed out, T-Mo wouldn't issue 4.4 OTA). I also do a LOT of development with WinMo 6.5.3 on Intermec CN50 and CN51 devices. I also have an iPad Mini 4 (freebie that I won as a prize at work). And we're getting ready to replace those Intermecs with something that runs Android 5.0 or later (and at this point, I hope 6.0 or later, really).

I know plenty about all of these platforms, and at a level most people can't even imagine. So take my following opinion as a very informed one: I dread the day when my Lumia 950XL dies and I have to endure a shitty, unsecurable, dead-end, barely-supported Android device again, but not as much as I dread the idea of iOS becoming the dominant mobile OS. If the world were perfect, both iOS and Android would vanish in a puff, forgotten and abandoned, and Windows Mobile would make everything Just Work.

Again, my opinion, but based on real, actual, honest-to-god reasons, good ones, from my time as a user and developer on all of the currently available platforms.

And if I could call out Bill Gates as a hypocrite to his face, I would. Nadella doubly so.

Re:Gates has his people with phones

[drinkypoo]

I have a couple of Windows machines, both for development and for gaming. However, OS X, as a *nix platform, can do far more - through the sheer availability of both commercial and open source software - then a Win PC, with the sole exception of gaming.

Gaming is far from the sole exception. There's masses of application software which doesn't exist on the Mac. If you want to do video or photo editing, sure it's a great choice. Major Open Source packages which haven't been ported to Windows are few and far between, and you can always just run them in a virtual machine anyway, so who cares?

I, for one, prefer the Windows 7 interface to any Macintosh interface in my history, and I've used Systems 5 through X. Windows 10 would be fine too, if they hadn't moved all kinds of stuff around again for no reason. That kind of thing is, admittedly, quite irritating. But so is the lack of configuration options in the Apple GUI. Honestly, the best thing I've ever used was Pre-systemd Ubuntu with GNOME2+Compiz+Emerald. I even used AWN for a mac-like dock because shiny shiny. Way more functionality than the complete intersection of OSX and Windows put together, you can run OSX or Windows in a VM for compatibility, and it had complete configurability.

Apple doesn't want you to be able to change things because that makes support more complicated. I'm sympathetic to that idea, but it's annoying to me personally. For the average user, I'm sure it is fine.