Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

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> Yesterday I bought my second Windows Phone (Lumia 820). This also just works.

I call shenanigans.

> Email is the same everywhere,

...as with all mobile OSes.

> all the apps just works,

In contrast with iOS? I'm not buying it. "Apps just work" is Apple's selling point for their iDevices and that reputation wasn't just bought by their marketing department.

> plays any mp3 without complaining (my sodding iPhone never did!),

Pix or it didn't happen. What MP3s was your iPhone - with it's iPod internals - unable to play?

> Nokia Drive just works,

iCloud, Dropbox, and SkyDrive are available on iOS. Nokia Drive is better than all of those?

> maps actually work (again something my iPhone shot down),

iOS has Apple and Google native maps apps. What specifically is better about Windows maps than either of those?

> talks to exchange without problems,

...just like iOS, which licenses ActiveSync from Microsoft.

> is exactly the same as my old Windows Phone 7.8 device (no who moved my cheese),

Can't argue that.

> opens all my documents nicely, reads any pdf fine.

...just like iOS. I'll be honest: I'm having a hard time buying most of those examples as they run contrary to my own (and anecdotally, most others') experiences.

No - email on iOS is a piece of shit. It regularly drops connections to exchange, mail bombs people when sending a message and IMAP is unreliable as hell as well. Not only that, it starts to lag unbearably after a few days (up to iOS 6). I send and receive a LOT of email - it just can't handle it well.

Yes in contrast of iOS. That reputation is bullshit. Regular crashes of Mail, Safari as in multiple times daily. I've had the device freeze at least 2-3 times a week as well. In the year I've been using Windows Phone, IE mobile has crashed twice and the device hasn't failed once (Lumia 710).

Won't play mp3s - this is rife. The ID3 parser on iOS devices is a piece of shit: http://www.google.com/#q=iphone+wont+play+mp3s This has been known for literally YEARS and plagues all apple devices from iPod, to touch to iPhone to Mac.

Nokia Drive - do you even know what this is? It's not a Skydrive/DropBox clone. It's a fully blown 100% FREE offline turn by turn satellite navigation and mapping platform akin to your average satnav. It's pretty amazing and is a deal breaker for iOS:

http://vr-zone.com/articles/nokia-lumia-smartphones-get-maps...

Regarding Apple and Google native maps, see above again.

iOS's ActiveSync is a piece of shit. It doesn't work properly, duplicates my emails, mailbombs people etc. Now whoever's fault this is I don't know (it may be Microsoft?) but I'm not concerned about this - it just doesn't work properly.

> No - email on iOS is a piece of shit. It regularly drops connections to exchange, mail bombs people when sending a message and IMAP is unreliable as hell as well. Not only that, it starts to lag unbearably after a few days (up to iOS 6). I send and receive a LOT of email - it just can't handle it well.

Fire your email and/or network admins. I'm serious. I only receive a couple hundred emails and send a few dozen, so maybe I'm not a heavy user like you are, but I literally can't remember the last time Mail.app crashed. It's always worked, day in, day out, and without failure.

> Won't play mp3s - this is rife.

All the recent "iphone won't play mp3s" query hits were problems with iTunes Match. I absolutely agree that it's had its issues, but it's been running smoothly for quite a while.

> Nokia Drive - do you even know what this is?

I guess I didn't. So it's like one of the apps listed at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Apple_iOS#Navigating_feat... then.

> iOS's ActiveSync is a piece of shit. It doesn't work properly, duplicates my emails, mailbombs people etc. Now whoever's fault this is I don't know (it may be Microsoft?) but I'm not concerned about this - it just doesn't work properly.

"My mailserver is obviously misconfigured because I'm having symptoms that almost no one else is describing. I shall blame my phone vendor."

You know, I'm not even really that much of an iOS fan. I've been eyeing my coworker's Galaxy with increasing envy. As a Linux developer, it's looking more attractive to me by the day. It's just that some of your claims ring hollow and a bit outrageous, like if I were to criticize a Lumia 920 by saying that it crashes hourly. That just doesn't jibe with anything I've seen online or heard from friends.

> Fire your email and/or network admins. I'm serious. I only receive a couple hundred emails and send a few dozen, so maybe I'm not a heavy user like you are, but I literally can't remember the last time Mail.app crashed. It's always worked, day in, day out, and without failure.

I don't think so. We're a large Microsoft consultancy. We have 2 certified exchange admins who know their shit. it's not misconfiguration. One is an Exchange MVP as wlel. This is a regular problem with all iOS devices connected to Exchange. We've had a large insurance company who is a client ban all iOS devices as well due to this issue. They've switched to Android.

> All the recent "iphone won't play mp3s" query hits were problems with iTunes Match. I absolutely agree that it's had its issues, but it's been running smoothly for quite a while.

Look harder.

> I guess I didn't. So it's like one of the apps listed at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Apple_iOS#Navigating_feat.... then.

Absolutely nothing like any of them. I've spent about £200 on iOS navigation apps and nothing comes close. Only a real piece of dedicated hardware is anything like it for accuracy and reliability.

> "My mailserver is obviously misconfigured because I'm having symptoms that almost no one else is describing. I shall blame my phone vendor."

This is not a mail server issue. By elimination, Android devices, Windows Phone devices, Blackberries, Outlook on desktop all work fine. The only odd one out is iOS.

This is surprisingly common. Most people just don't talk about it as they don't give a shit or don't get annoyed by app crashes etc. They assume that's the status quo, then shout at their ops team who sort it out.

> I don't think so. We're a large Microsoft consultancy.

Color me surprised ...

We're also an oracle java certified and redhat certified and VMware certified and more of our kit is on Linux, so it's not biased :)

My point is that we're citably competent all the way through.

In my experience, there are two kinds of people:

1) People who don't use the Microsoft technology stack.

2) People who use Microsoft's proprietary technology stack, and then get annoyed at products that fail to interoperate with it seamlessly, despite the fact that it's undocumented, proprietary, and notoriously difficult to interoperate with successfully.

There are very few people who use MS stack and don't get annoyed at interoperability concerns, because those people realize that the fault lies with Microsoft, and stop using Microsoft's stack.

oh come on...

Don't feed the troll.

iOS latest version fixed a problem with Exchange, so I would not be surprised.

Nokia Drive is not like the apps you listed. It's free, high quality, world wide navigation. On my iPhone I use Apple Maps right now. It has potential but besides the already discussed issues my number one annoyance is that it's absolutely not offline! I got bit by this twice, the app is completely useless without a sufficiently fast connection.

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