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Comment by nicolapede | Hacker News Reader

With respect to windows phone, I really miss the tiles, the consistency of the metro style gui and other little details, like automatic do not disturb mode while driving or face recognition well before it became mainstream.

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I completely agree and I used to work at Microsoft.

Microsoft lost because they didn't have the users or the apps. It's an instructive story of how an inferior product can win. I'm not saying that happens all the time or that it's inevitable, but I think it's safe to say that's sort of what happened here.

> Microsoft lost because they didn't have the users or the apps

I wonder how much of it was because they had a sorry arse mobile browser? Not supporting ontouchstart etc events must have been a killer. MSPointerEvent was awfully buggy in the initial release, and what dev wants to rewrite their web app/page to use PointerEvent?

Why wouldn't you make sure Hybrid apps (Cordova etc) work well? Why not just copy WKWebView (20/20 hindsight now!).

Their equivalent of WKWebView is some sort of zombie IE11 version (not edge, with different features and flaws than IE11 desktop). Hideous.

Disclosure: we developed a Hybrid app for Windows Phone (based on Xamarin).

Not just the browser, the whole platform was crap to develop for. My company ported a bunch of apps by a major app publisher to various versions of Windows Phone and the documentation was shitty, the APIs were shitty, everything shifted with each new version and everything was buggy. We kept asking our local Microsoft branch for help (backed by the publisher we were porting for) and more often than not they were powerless to help.

A far cry from developers, developers, developers.

Even Microsoft themselves dropped the ball, when it took over a year for them to release Skype - which they owned - for their own mobile platform (if I'm remembering correctly, i had a Windows Phone and rather liked it).

A platform without users or apps and years late is not one I'd call superior. Good ideas are not nearly enough, as they often say around HN.

I thought it was pretty clear from the poster's message he was talking about product sans network effects.

An inferior product can win because this inferior product you talked about had already won by the time this superior product came along. Microsoft just didn't want to admit it.

Dark mode was nice as well. To toggle from light/dark and have alnost every app follow suit was luxurious. On Android it's such a hodgepodge of light and dark, an affront to the eyes at times.

Also being able to select text from most anywhere was useful.

Typing on Windows Phone was a delight, for a touchscreen-based keyboard. They had their typing game on point. Now with an Android device, I find myself switching keyboard software often.

I'm cursed with thumbs that are not compatible with touch screens. Not because of my thumbs themselves, and obviously touch screen keyboards work for most people so it can't be the keyboards. I don't have abnormally fat thumbs, or any physical deformities.. touch screen keyboards just hate me, to the point where it's a running joke among family and friends. Every post I've ever made is a relentless struggle against typos that even the best autocorrect can't seem to help with. I've tried every major keyboard on Android, and have owned iPhones and every other device imaginable.

Windows Phone though? Absolute pleasure to type on. I've never used any device that was easier to type on than my old Lumia 920.

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