Bill G on biggest Microsoft management blunder... Was it Bing, Internet Explorer, Vista,...?(tr)

The Register ^ | Jun 24, 2019 | John Oates

[nicollo]

I really liked windows phone.

Just last weekend my Alcatel Idol 4S died (won't charge), and since I couldn't find any new Windows Phones on the marketplaces, I bailed and bought an iPhone 8. God I miss my WMP already!!

I think Apple is spoiled by its own success. In making up for the lack of app support, MS worked very, very hard to make its core apps as good as possible. So many little things MS thought through that Apple either ignores or is ignorant of... like ability to select SMS and global delete (two-step deletion, one message at a time on iPhone, so stupid), swipe keyboard, backspace on keyboard, etc., etc. and, above all, the stupid tiny-block menus of the iPhone that can neither be sorted alphabetically, re-sized, nor organized meaningfully (then there's the insipid bottom bar...).

MS had an amazing product but believed its own bad press on the "app gap," which was not so much as the press put out there (MS paid companies like the NYT and WSJ to develop apps -- I still use the WSJ app on Win 10 desktop).

The next iteration may well be Windows Core, which supposedly will scale to any device. If you think about it, the ONLY difference between Win 10 and mobile is the phone/sms functionality. The only thing between the two is the carriers -- who, btw, killed Windows Mobile.

Btw, a couple months ago, I bought a low-end Android bc I needed Parkmobile and a bank app that stopped working on my WMP. I broke that phone when I tossed it on the ground bc it was being stupid. (My trusty Lumia 950 took more and harder falls w/o breaking.) Android is a mess.

[CodeToad]

BG’s biggest mistake was not allowing Microsoft to get into hardware early on. They dabbled and made a few brilliant moves with hardware, then quit.

[CodeToad]

“Microsoft bought DOS (86-DOS, a.k.a. QDOS) from Seattle Computer Products for a measly $50K, re-branded it MS-DOS, and licensed it to IBM as PC-DOS. All perfectly legal business.”

That’s a completely dishonest statement of what happened since Microsoft added significantly to the code base to make it MS-DOS.

[CodeToad]

“Microsoft never created anything. Gates stole MS DOS”

Just another Internet rumor since Microsoft paid for it.

[dayglored]

> That’s a completely dishonest statement of what happened since Microsoft added significantly to the code base to make it MS-DOS.

Incomplete yes, dishonest, no. Microsoft hired Tom Paterson to port 86-DOS to the IBM-PC, and with their knowledge of how operating systems ought to be (from XENIX), certainly added a lot to it.

For example, if you were around in those days (as I was), you might recall SWITCHAR, one of many modifications to make the CP/M-like 86-DOS more palatable to the Unix-heads that populated Microsoft’s development teams.

To this day, both forward-slash and back-slash are recognized as path separators, even though COMMAND.COM, CMD.EXE, and the Windows GUI only recognize back-slash.

Microsoft developed MS-DOS considerably after they acquired 86-DOS. Saying so wasn’t in my original comment because I was only trying to counter the false accusation that they “stole” it. You are correct to point out that they also added much to it.

[Crolis]

I agree. Live Tiles was a fantastic feature on my Windows Phones (920, 1520, and 950XL). I had both a personal and corporate email account when I was on Windows Phone and I was able to pin a tile for each one along with a calendar tile for each one. It made it easy to see at a glance (another great feature) what my next upcoming personal and business appointment was.

I also had server side rules to keep track of alert messages that came in. I was able to pin those specific email folders to tiles as well.

Live Tiles is perfectly suited to a smartphone and was miles ahead of simple rows and columns of app icons. Microsoft really had a good thing with their customizable data-driven tile design.

I had to switch to the iPhone and I miss Live Tiles every day.

[Erik Latranyi]

If you get the Microsoft Edge App for Android. It makes it more bearable.

I have iOS now (forced by my company) and it is totally inferior to Android and Windows. I am very sad.

[Starcitizen]

It was massive replacement of American software engineers with cheating, copying and lying Indian H1B technicians to include the current Microsoft CEO