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Microsoft's New Mobile Strategy: Create Windows-like App 'Experiences' For Smartphones (pcworld.com)
Microsoft is investing in Windows experiences on mobile devices, with a new app called Your Phone; a migration of Windows 10's Timeline productivity feature to phones; and an update to its launcher app for enterprises. The app, available on Android and iOS, is designed to provide a mirror of a phone straight to a desktop PC, and it will let Windows 10 users access texts, photos, and notifications from their machines. Features will vary depending on iOS and Android. From a report: While Microsoft is also expected to discuss some of the features of its next Windows 10 update (code-named "Redstone 5") at Build, the company indicated that it will be emphasizing cross-platform apps instead. Microsoft will discuss some of these in a Tuesday presentation by Joe Belfiore, who leads Windows "experiences" as the corporate vice president in the Operating Systems Group at Microsoft.
The idea, Belfiore said in a briefing in advance of the show, was that Microsoft needs to know what users are working on, across any device. "Whether you look at a Word doc on Android, iOS, or Windows, is irrelevant," Belfiore said. Belfiore was talking about Timeline, the feature that tracks your work in the Office apps or Edge, recording your activity in what Microsoft calls the Microsoft Graph. But Belfiore could have been talking about any hardware platform. Microsoft sounds like it wants to elevate Microsoft mobile applications to the level of importance of a PC -- making the actual hardware, and operating system, irrelevant.
The idea, Belfiore said in a briefing in advance of the show, was that Microsoft needs to know what users are working on, across any device. "Whether you look at a Word doc on Android, iOS, or Windows, is irrelevant," Belfiore said. Belfiore was talking about Timeline, the feature that tracks your work in the Office apps or Edge, recording your activity in what Microsoft calls the Microsoft Graph. But Belfiore could have been talking about any hardware platform. Microsoft sounds like it wants to elevate Microsoft mobile applications to the level of importance of a PC -- making the actual hardware, and operating system, irrelevant.
Microsoft doesn't "need" to know what you, I, or anyone else are working on. It's not a big deal to re-open a document on a different device without giving your life's story to Microsoft (or any other Big Cloud company).
This is just an excuse to loot your personal/corporate data under the excuse of a tiny bit more convenience.
Also, the functions of phones and "desktop" devices (not really desktops, could be laptops with a keyboard) are orthogonal. The first are for brief communications, (yes) talking, recording of data (e.g. fitness tracking), and media consumption. But they stink at content production, which "desktop" devices excel at. Try writing several pages on a phone or many tablets -- it amounts to torture.
aka "failure." you broke the user experience in Win 8 and plowed it under and used it as an artillery range in Win 10. get rid of the idea that big-screen PCs and little-screen phones are the same thing, they aren't, and stop trying to graft Presentation Manager or Quantum on top of Windows.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Actually, Microsoft's Windows 10 on mobile was an excellent OS. What MS sucked at is convincing people to pay for it. It wasn't perceived as upmarket the way people view Apple products, and it wasn't being given away for free to everyone the way Google does with Android. So MS didn't manage to become cool and couldn't beat free.
His quote about "needing" to know what users are doing strikes me as the height of condescension and paternalism. Microsoft should write the damn software. The data which people who choose to use it generate is none of their business. Incidentally, there is a private way to do all of this. Update a database of recent documents/work in progress across devices, but protect everything with keys known only to the devices themselves, not to Microsoft. Microsoft just chooses to snoop, rather than doing it that way.
For a new record for how many mentions of Microsoft you can get on the front page.