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Surface Phone Speculation Spurred By New Phone APIs In Windows (arstechnica.com)
Microsoft has been rumored to be working on a "Surface Phone" for years now, with little concrete evidence that such a device actually exists. "But the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview has given new fuel for the speculative fire, it has a set of new APIs for cellular phones," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Windows has had integrated support for cell modems since Windows 8, but this has been restricted to supporting data connections. Telephony -- dialing numbers, placing calls -- has always required either Windows Phone or Windows 10 Mobile. This has made the full Windows 10 unsuitable for a phone. That may be changing. Windows 10 build 17650 -- a preview of Redstone 5, the next Windows update after the delayed April update -- includes some telephony APIs. The new APIs cover support for a range of typical phone features: dialing numbers and contacts, blocking withheld numbers, support for Bluetooth headsets and spearphone mode, and so on and so forth. There also looks to be some kind of video-calling support, suggesting support for 3G or LTE video calling.
For decades we could not get developers to look at ANY platform other than DOS/Windows and then Windows 95/98/2k/XP
Now people have enough sense to write portable code and treat "platform" as a commodity.
If your a developer and your writing Win32/64 apps you are a relic of a bygone era, similar to the mainframe dudes when they were king of the hill.
If you're a developer and you're writing smartphone apps chances are pretty high you are just another tool wasting your time on worthless consumer noise. SNR in the App market is embarrassing.
You can say the writing is on the wall, the PC will die on the desktop while computing moves on.
I've been hearing this load of crap for decades. Surprise everyone developing software are still using real computers not tiny touch screen displays.
The only thing that has changed is more people have more choice on what is the best fit for them. Nothing has been supplanted.
The only reason they even made it as far as they did was because Nokia.
Nokia already had a strong following, so Microsoft bribed them to adopt their piece of shit for $1 billion. Microsoft rode on the popularity of that brand, which consequently gave it better sales in Europe. Then their shit platform dragged Nokia's name in the mud, so people stopped buying them. Even when they did buy them, the return rate was so high that even Amazon suspended its sales a few times.
Even Bill Gates was quick to switch to Android at the end.