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Comment by shadowmint | Hacker News Reader

    So to me it's very important to think of our operating system 
    more broadly than some old definition of an operating system.

Well, you can call it whatever you like, but basically it boils down to the same thing: we want to own services.

From iOS. From Android. From windows devices. Everyone needs the same web services.

I also like this quote:

    The fundamental truth for developers is they will build if there are 
    users. And in our case the truth is we have users on desktop.

I think Nadella is making a lot of pretty smart moves here; and much of that seems ambivalent about the success of Windows Phone, because it's about the success of Microsoft, not just one facet of their business.

Seems like a smart strategy to me.

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... ambivalent about the success of Windows Phone, because it's about the success of Microsoft, not just one facet of their business.

Isn't that the approach that got Microsoft left out from the mobile boom, even though they were present in the market continuously?

Between 1995 and 2007, Microsoft had a competitor in every race in mobile:

- Clamshell + keyboard mobile devices à la Psion (Windows CE, "Handheld PC" [1])

- Stylus-driven PDAs à la Palm (Palm-size PC [2], Pocket PC [3])

- Stylus-driven smartphones à la Symbian (Pocket PC 2002 [4])

These products were about the success of Microsoft and its strategy, rather than building successful mobile devices that users want. And it didn't work: competitors eventually came out with devices that were desirable on their own, not just as Outlook terminals.

The success of iOS and Android forced Microsoft to reset their mobile platform into a product-oriented design that became Windows Phone 7. For the first time, Microsoft was offering a mobile OS that stood on its own rather than as a piece in Microsoft's chess game of technology stacks.

That didn't work either, but at least the product was good. Now Microsoft is throwing away the holistic approach of Windows Phone and reverting their mobile efforts back into the earlier strategy-driven "chess piece" mode. I don't see how that will help anything, but I guess it sounds good in Microsoft board room PowerPoints.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handheld_PC [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm-size_PC [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPAQ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_PC_2002

Yeah, but here in Europe you would get to see people actually using those Windows CE/Pocket PC handhelds.

I hardly saw a Palm on sale.

Fair point, but what would you suggest as an alternative at this point?

Double down on windows phone, despite all the metrics saying its a failure?

Create more crippled RT devices that no one wants?

Create an entirely new mobile OS which is open source for 3rd party vendors like android's successful model?

The current approach ('If we make great phones, they will come...') has failed.

The new 'services on everything' approach is certainly risky; if you don't own the platform, you risk being turfed by the owner if you get too big / too popular... but it seems plausible. I know a lot of people who use onenote and office on their devices. Being ubiquitous is the key, not having some technically sophisticated devices that get no consumer uptake.

It's easy to critique, but tangibly what you suggest as a proactive alternative for them?

I'm not sure if there's any solution left that would make Windows a success on phones, so I'm criticising Satella's ambivalence around this core issue.

Satella acknowledges that the Windows Phone model hasn't worked, but seems to believe that reverting to Microsoft's old 2000-era model would eventually make it a success.

I guess, if I were suddenly appointed as circus leader in Redmond, I would just pull the plug on Windows 10 Mobile since it's been fatally wounded by the recent announcements anyway. The phone hardware division bought from Nokia has been entirely written down as a loss, so maybe I'd give them a year to build something that makes sense for their customers -- maybe an Office-centric Android device.

I'd probably try to peddle the ex-Nokia division to some large company that still wants to make phones for strategic reasons. There's one in Microsoft's home city actually. Maybe Amazon could reboot their Fire Phone using the Lumia brand, distribution reach and the Finnish hardware competence that still remains?

I get the impression that he is looking to the future rather than the past, and that's convergence. Right now, we have 7-inch tablets and 7-inch phones. It's pretty easy to see that these are essentially the same thing. Windows 10 brings a unified operating system which adapts to form factors, but the centerpiece is Cortana. Many people are looking to the future of computing as cloud-based personal assistants which connect to the Internet of Things, and Microsoft is currently ahead of everyone in this area, with Google, Apple, and Amazon close behnd. The form factor of the device a person uses becomes less important as interconnected, data-driven services become the platform.

People keep misinterpreting the Nokia layoffs as giving up on phones. What actually happened was that the phone department was rolled into the Windows department. Windows Phone is dead, but Windows Mobile has replaced it as a transition into just Windows, the platform-agnostic, cloud-based, Cortana-driven operating system. The future Internet will not be phone-based. Phones will be a convenient form-factor for the near future, but they are just nodes in the cloud.

There's plenty of time for everyone to catch up to Microsoft, but I think everyone should be paying attention to what they're doing. Remember when the iPod was the most important thing that Apple had? Microsoft is betting that its future as a company is not dependent on building a better Zune. It's about thinking about where the iPhone is going, not where the iPhone is.

Agreed. I am really hyped about an Intel x86 based Windows 10 phone with their continuum tech. If I can turn a phone OS into some desktop style by plugging in a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, I"m sold! I also recently picked up a 640XL Lumia, great device.

Not if it runs Windows. That sorts of kills the idea (which companies like canonical and others are already playing with). I think though that Apple had a more practical approach in hand-off, where the system don't converge rather each do what they do best, while making it easier for the user to move between devices. Microsoft user experience sucks as is on either platforms, continuum is not going to improve on that.

I have lost count how many OS I have used since 1986, and yet I keep returning to Windows.

> Microsoft user experience sucks as is on either platforms, continuum is not going to improve on that.

I'm pretty wary of Windows 10 Mobile (is that the right nomenclature?) but Windows Phone 8.1 is fantastic and I think probably the best user experience available on mobile. It is certainly at least comparable to iOS and Android. I most recently came from Android, switching from a Galaxy S3 to a Nokia Icon, and the Windows Phone is much more of a pleasure to use, in my experience.

My only real substantive complaint is that there aren't enough official apps (e.g. no Snapchat) and the ones that do exist are often obviously the ignored stepchild for the developer. I can see how the ideal of Continuum would be nice, but on the other hand, I suspect they're going to mess up a good thing.

If you haven't used Windows on mobile since the garbage that was Windows Mobile, or the halfway-there Windows Phone 7, then it's worth looking at again. But that's also part of Microsoft's problems: they fumbled so often on mobile and people haven't forgotten.

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