Surprisingly the phone was loved. What wasnt loved was the one desktop everywhere so when they tried to push 'Metro' to the PC, tablet and phone it struggled. But the tiled phone interface was good, and a lot of people liked it.
I really think Ballmer and Cook are manifestations of the same person. Mac OS quality is the worst it's been in probably a decade+? Hardware design for the laptops have been under massive scrutiny. Cook brought the Watch to the table which is a massive success. Their services business plan is just a money grab like their approach to accessories. But Apple isn't innovating much, they have been cashing in in recent years (besides the watch imo, maybe airpods but Id personally disagree)
I'd still take WP over Android or iOS.
Sad that we are stuck with Android and iOS basically now.
The app store was definitely lacking. In my own circle of real life users I did not meet one person that did not really like the phone (software included). Granted this is just my own experience so very limited but its also a group of non-technical people just sharing with me. I never heard one complaint in fact it was usually more accolades.
Biggest flaw at the time was Google's shady nonsense involving banning Google Maps/Youtube on Windows Phone without a native app.
As far as the Macs, outside of the keyboard fiasco which has been rectified, the recent Macs are getting good reviews from people who were rightfully critical a few years ago. The ARM Macs will soon be as far ahead of equivalent PCs as the iPhones are Androids when it comes to processing power.
And I think USB-A isn't quite legacy just yet (it's OK they ditched the VGA and/or DVI ports), there are still a lot of need for one of those ports. Same with a card reader slot. I also think there is a need for a headphone jack even though bluetooth is qutie viable.
But they didn’t want to take the risk with a low margin high cost center activity like providing in person support and expanding headcount. Hence no reward.
And with their recent closing of Microsoft stores, it’s clear that they are doubling down on rent seeking from Office and Windows licenses.
On top of that, even though that was towards the end of the era of massive phone hardware subsidies from the carriers, it was still the era of massive phone hardware subsidies from the carriers if you bought directly from them.
Apple had/has "luxury brand" caché that Microsoft couldn't build into its stores if it wanted to, and first mover advantage on top of that. Many consumers didn't blink if there was a huge sticker price difference between the iPhone in the AT&T Store and the unlocked one in the Apple Store, because it was a luxury brand. Microsoft was never going to earn that. Additionally, if a lot of people showed up to an AT&T or Verizon store with an unlocked iPhone and were refused a SIM that would be a major scandal, and would get a lot of luxury good "entitlement" people out of the woodwork. People told that they couldn't buy an unlocked Microsoft phone and use it on their carrier just shrugged and moved on (to an iPhone or an Android).
> And with their recent closing of Microsoft stores, it’s clear that they are doubling down on rent seeking from Office and Windows licenses.
Windows and Office are still getting improvements, it is a bit disingenuous to consider those products "rent seeking".
Xbox and Surface are doing just fine with or without Microsoft-specific Stores.
Besides, both before and after the Microsoft Stores, Microsoft had good retail relationships with Best Buy and others. It's not like there is "zero" Microsoft retail exposure without Microsoft owning their own boutique retail stores.
I disagree. It takes time, money, and effort to earn people’s trust, but it’s possible. They obviously weren’t going to reverse a decade of shipping malware ridden computers, but they could have put out quality Microsoft products, and spent years earning back people’s trust.
And yes, maybe it wouldn’t work, and taking risks is part of business. But this is one of the most profitable companies in the history of the world, and they could have afforded it.
But if the point was to save the marketshare of Windows phone products via retail store presence, Microsoft didn't have time, they were racing a losing money clock and the shareholders were watching retail operations worried Microsoft was just "throwing good money after bad".
... in the USA.
Meanwhile the other 90% of the global market awaited.
I think it is another reason why doubling down on US retail store operations as an attempted run around the US carriers was ultimately the wrong plan.
Though I think the biggest problem there is that it didn't happen in a vacuum. It was one more event in a fairly long list of Microsoft technologies and APIs that were shipped to much fanfare, and then abandoned shortly after release. It made it hard to feel comfortable trying any Microsoft tech that wasn't at least a fewy years old. Including mobile APIs. Which, given what happened with Windows Phone 8, did not turn out to be an overabundance of caution.
The problem hurt more than Windows Phone, too. A lot of people got sick of having the rug repeatedly yanked out from under them, and started developing on non-Microsoft tech stacks. Which then removed a lot of the need to run Windows Server, and things sort of snowballed.
Despite all his infamous ranting about the importance of keeping developers happy early on, the Ballmer years turned out to be the era when Microsoft perfected the art of alienating developers.
They were also a couple years late, as for android and iphone had considerable market share.
I think the same can be said for google these days, there is no reason to risk investing time or money into one of their new technologies because it will get dropped if its not one of the big 4 (search, ads, youtube, GCP, maybe arguably android)
The big difference is, Google pulls stunts like that small things that aren't critical to the company's business. Microsoft, on the other hand, was blithely jackhammering away at the foundation of their business.
They did fine, insofar as they're still profitable and well-capitalized, but one has to wonder what things could have been like for them if they hadn't spent the aughties playing Dr Strangelove's Hand with themselves.
OTOH, one could argue that spending a decade eating humble pie was a necessary step in teaching them how to play nice with others.
For sure, I think MS was panicking tbh. They missed the mobile revolution (This was Ballmer and Gates), and then cloud was starting to take off and realized their OS and Office products were not optimized or read for that shift. I think they realized they had to change, and change fast and as a result didn't go well. But at least it started the change we see today with MS (for good or bad).
Oh, and they decided to only target the high end of the market, instead of a full range, so they lost the low end market that was selling a lot of phones in poorer nations.
/rant of a dedicated windows phone enthusiast.
At least firefox lets me put the urlbar at the bottom now! And Android picked up dark mode from WP as well.
My memory is fuzzy on the specifics but the breaks weren't done just for the fun of it. If I recall correctly, refactoring on a titanic scale on the Windows Phone OS was underway along with the same on Windows itself to both make Windows a componentized OS that would work on anything from a tiny mobile device to a huge server and to synchronize the architecture of WP to Windows. By the time of WP10, as the old joke goes, "the operation was a success but the patient died". It's kind of a pity.
iOS has not been unified with OS X, and Android has not been unified with Chrome OS. And all four OSes are quite successful despite the lack of unification. Meanwhile, the Windows RT Surface tablets never took off, and the Windows 8 unified experience was universally recognized as an unmitigated disaster on launch day, if not earlier.
It was a gamble that enough native desktop apps would remain for this strategy to pay off, but they lost to web and electron apps.
This is an odd thing to blame on Ballmer — he was CEO already during the original Xbox and Xbox 360 launches! His CEO tenure was 14 years...
Why doesn’t he get credit for making Microsoft a top vendor in gaming?
Such a shame they sold it off and yes I know the reasons but it was the best phone I've had in the modern century.
> "Windows Phone"
You can lay that at Terry Myerson's feet. The several breaks in backward compatibility was a big factor in ensuring WP had no apps.
> "Xbox One (which halved its marketshare vs the 360)"
That was crappy decision making by Don Mattrick. He also had a hand in killing Flight Simulator IIRC.