How do you explain Balmer deriding the iPhone and completely failing to pivot into mobile?
How do you explain Intel completely missing mobile?
Without 80's and 90s Ballmer, Microsoft would be a totally different thing and it's very possible there would not be a Microsoft today. And I don't care for any of these assholes, but he was very important for Microsoft and shaped the industry, like it or not.
Saying the windows phone was half assed is being generous
IDK if I'd go that far. I used my Windows phone right up to the bitter end of it's ability to function.
The app ecosystem itself sucked, but the platform was IMO better from a sandboxing standpoint, and frankly every Windows Phone 8/10 device I had was better experience from a 'phone' standpoint. Things other than phone/email/music/navigation got bad quick. But I loved them as phones.
I enjoyed using Windows phone.
The UI isn’t even particularly pretty, but in most senses it’s pretty reasonably designed and, very importantly, extremely responsive.
I'm not sure I agree. They needed to get past a Windows-centric mindset just like Intel would have needed to get past an x86-centric one. But it's not clear to me why Microsoft couldn't have built off of a very large developer and user community--and enterprise buyers--to have at least played on a somewhat equal footing to Google and Apple.
Meego, Linux, Qt.
Insanely good developing experience, a decade ahead what iOS or Android had.
It could have been the efficient, user friendly open source rival to the Objective C and Java.
They literally missed the opportunity to make a decent and open phone and it was all by design. They killed Nokia on purpose, right when the N9 was released.
The biggest blame lies on the Nokia management board and the bonus they promised Elop, when he managed to sell the Mobiles business unit.
Fully agree with the development experience though, with C++/CX and .NET Native, with the current state better not even bother, though.
Ballmer did start Azure though, which is basically carrying Microsoft today. Their Surface product was also released under Ballmer's direction.
This is analogous to Xerox experimenting with GUI and not really believing in it. No real drive, no zeal. Satya doubled down on it. Made it priority 1 and most importantly executed it well.
Ballmer's world view was completely different which was more rooted in 90s and early 2000s. He was more of Windows guy and not really seeing the changing trends. That is why MSFT's foray into mobile looked like an after thought.