Why I'm Close to Giving Up on Windows Phone 7, as a User and a Developer | Hacker News Reader

Why I'm Close to Giving Up on Windows Phone 7, as a User and a Developer

blog.dantup.com

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Microsoft's an interesting beast. Things that "should" matter to them, like Windows, somehow reach the point of almost falling apart (see Windows Me or Vista). Then, groups that are practically losing money build great things like the Xbox 360 and Kinect. Some products that stumble end up dead, like the Zune, while others are dragged back up to par (see IE9 and Windows 7). This current mess could mean anything from "WP7 is doomed, sell your stock" to "the Eye of Sauron just hasn't shone on that product group yet". We'll see. Personally, I'm thinking WP7 will pull a Vista or two and then become a cool phone OS, but the competition isn't standing still either.

When Apple was launching the iPhone, they pulled engineers from their flagship Mac OS X to work on new phone software. They seemed to think it was pretty important to launch with a strong product and have all the details right; to them, even delaying a product from another part of their business was an acceptable risk. When was the last time Microsoft did anything like that? Instead of slapping together product groups to shove their way into every has-been market, they could stand to divert some developers, developers, developers to products that need a polished launch, such as WP7.

That's the thing I never understood about Microsoft. When they really focus, and spend more time on producing a product versus marketing a product, the seem to do some great things (SEE: Windows 2000/NT).

It seems like MS could really use from some user centric project managers or something to really get them on the course to consistent delivery, because that's what's lacking.

Vista was a bust, 7 was a phenom by MS standards. The 360 did OK, the Kinect was brilliant. By the logic that is the Windows development cycle, Windows 8 is going to be an abysmal failure. I'm an OS X user now, but I'll still say how great Win7 is, and the only thing I wish to see come from the company is some form in consistency with their products and marketing. These "To the cloud" commercials NEED to stop.

Without making a judgment one way or the other in regards to the people at Microsoft I'd make one point about what you said. The problem with looking at Microsoft through the lens of Windows NT to Windows 7 is that Microsoft consists of completely different people in those two eras. The people who spearheaded windows in the time of Windows NT and Windows 2000 were worth tens of millions of dollars by the time Vista went out to door. So most had long moved on to personal ventures.

You have a very valid point, however I'm not per se making the argument of a dichotomy between Windows NT and Windows 7. I am however saying that Microsoft CAN, when they narrow down build some great products. And it seems like every time, as soon as they do, they trip up on their own two feet and fall face first on the very next one.

Windows ME was a result of MS moving their top talent to the NT group. ME should have never been released, but Win2K wasn't ready to be the consumer OS.

When you don't have the company riding on you, you can take bigger risks. It will be interesting to see what Windows 8 ends up becoming. Vista was largely a failure because they were overly ambitious, despite common belief. I fear that this failure will prevent Windows from being ambitious again. I hope they learned that they failed for very specific reasons -- not just ambition in of itself.

For the record that's not really true. By the time Windows ME came out windows development had been split into two pieces. There was the Shell group that was consolidated under Brad Silverberg. And then there was the core operating system group that was under Jim Allchin. So Windows ME actually was the work of the shell group being grafted onto what was still Windows 98. So the reason it sucks so much was because it really wasn't designed by anyone. Microsoft realized they needed a consumer OS so they put together the pieces they had as quickly as possible. Boxed them up and shoved them out the door.

I think what we're saying maybe consistent with each other. Let me point to one of the records at the time:

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/reviews/the-road-to-gold...

A couple of key quotes:

"Previously, the Consumer Windows team had been lumped under Jim Allchin's Windows team, which was furiously working to complete Windows 2000, the company's enterprise OS product. But when it became obvious that a consumer version of Windows 2000 was out of the question, the stagnating Consumer Windows team finally got its wish: To create a final release in the Windows 9x product line"

and

"Just a year earlier, at the 1998 version of WinHEC, Bill Gates had announced that Windows 98 would be the end of the line."

There wasn't supposed to be a Win ME, and there shouldn't have been. Win 2000 was supposed to be the merge point of consumer and enterprise, but wasn't ready.

Maybe it was Silverberg that led the consumer team to create WinME, I don't know. What I do know is that most of the talent was working on the NT side by that point (not to say that the ME folks were hacks, but they weren't the strongest OS team MS had).

This pretty much jibes with the conventional wisdom that Microsoft is a company with deep political entanglements. If something is important, it stands to reason there would be a lot of paralyzing infighting, whereas teams on the periphery could actually do some good work.

Whenever anyone talks about the problems that beset Microsoft it seems almost a universal consensus that it's political infighting/poor management.

An honest question, though: is some of it the tools and/or engineers?

I've never worked in a big software company so for all I know management can have these kind of devastating effects (for this long a period of time). I suppose I just have a hard time believing that everything that goes wrong is the fault of management (Vista, Zune, WP7 at this point) while everything that goes right is brilliant engineering (2000/NT, 360, Kinect).

> When was the last time Microsoft did anything like that?

As recently as last year. They claimed to have 30,000 engineers working on cloud services, which is not what I would consider a has-been market.

I think this attitude has been the downfall of a lot of developers over the years. You fall in love with the development environment and then you transfer that love to the platform itself. The problem is sometimes great platforms aren't paired with great products.

Microsoft is at least two generations behind Google and Apple at this point. Some would argue three generations. I'm a .net developer who loves C# too so I'm sympathetic. But putting a lot of resources into Windows phone 7 at this point is just folly

But putting a lot of resources into Windows phone 7 at this point is just folly

It feels like MS isn't putting enough skin in the game. They shipped the OS in September. Great. That gets you a toe in the door. They should have rev'ed that OS at least as many times as Apple has theirs. Apple has shipped 5 updates to iOS since September. MS -- one (the update to prepare for future updates, so really not even a real update). That's embarrassing that the market leader, with 300k apps in the appstore and 100M devices on the market is more agile. And as a developer, you have to ask yourself, "Is this a platform I want to get in bed with?" At this point, I wouldn't.

And to complete this, even if you compare W7P with the early iPhone OS (arguing that both are version ones, not that they're both living in 2011), the first 6 months Apple shipped 1 major updates, 3 bugfix updates and 1 compatibility update (for the 1st gen iPod Touch).

And a second major update in month 7.

2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 were all followed by 2 major and 2 bugfix updates in the first 6 months.

Comparing WP7 to iOS doesn't really make sense in this case. WP7 is, like Android, an OS used by several manufacturers and delivered on several networks. Each manufacturer and carrier has their own acceptance testing scheme. Failure at any step means tweaking and retesting.

It took Android from 2008-09-23 to 2009-04-30 to get to it's first MAJOR update (cupcake, v1.5). MS is pretty much on the same pace. (Note: Android 1.1 was exclusively for the T-Mobile G-1; I don't consider that comparable to the WP7 Nodo update.)

iOS runs on iPhone and iPad, and on a comparably limited number of networks. Yet it took from 2007-06-29 until 2009-06-17 (days shy of 2 years) just to get copy and paste functionality.

The market leader only looks more agile today, after they worked out a ton of bugs. Considering just how well WP7 worked from day one, I think it actually has a very bright future.

You fall in love with the development environment and then you transfer that love to the platform itself. The problem is sometimes great platforms aren't paired with great products.

I hit into this with the Amiga in the 80's and 90's. Boom, Commodore goes down. Lots of anger ensued, got over it. Then did the same with BeOS in the late 90's. Boom, Be Inc goes down. Lots of frustration ensued, got over it.

At this point I seriously considered buying my first (and last) Windows operating system box, just to get "Boom, Microsoft goes down", too.

Yeah. OS/2 and Smalltalk for me. Thankfully the MVC pattern really picked up steam so it wasn't a complete waste

I don't think there are generational differences between any of the smartphone competitors right now. We're looking at missing functionality, unpolished app stores and so on.

WP7 should be able to compete with Android and iOS if they fix the bugs and add missing items such as copy-paste and multitasking.

And replace their HTML rendering engine with webkit.

Why? They're already close to having IE9 on the phone.

I must say, I've been using WP7 for a little while now, and the browser is the only place I really have no serious complaints. While I'd love to be able to use canvas and the like, the browser is really smooth as it stands. I hope the IE9 update only makes it better.

This IE9?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326048

edit: I predict severe downvoting once people start arriving at their offices in Redmond...

The standard is constantly in flux and IE has long dev, testing, beta and release candidate cycles because they need to be backward compatible for the sake of companies.

If IE9 implements it, there's a danger of people developing sites that implement workarounds and fixes and will break when the issues are fixed.(i.e back to ie6 days).

For the new features here is the labs version:

http://html5labs.interoperabilitybridges.com/

>edit: I predict severe downvoting once people start arriving at their offices in Redmond..

Is this some kind of joke? Usually if you bash MS and praise Apple/Google you get modded up real high. Say thing that can be construed as mildly positive to MS or midly negative to Apple and you'll not get upvotes or get downvoted. There are HN users who have quit HN for good because of this.

There are HN users who have quit HN in disgust because of this.

If you're getting downvoted for bashing MS, then you must be doing something wrong, like being way off base with your hate or something.

> If you're getting downvoted for bashing MS, then you must be doing something wrong, like being way off base with your hate or something.

No joke, sadly.

While I get carried away sometimes (Windows has improved a lot since my windows 2003 days, WP7 is neither "Vista Phone 7" nor "WinMo 7") I see very frequent downmods when I paint Microsoft technologies in unfavorable light, most of them occurring early in the morning PST (I live in GMT-3, so I post a lot before US west coast wakes up). Since I have been very active these days, most posts where this happened are buried deep in the threads pages and may take some time to unearth.

To be fair, I also notice some backlash when I paint Apple in unfavorable colors too.

Well, I've seen most posts/stories critical of MS going up highly.

Not so for Apple comments/stories.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800253

http://mattmaroon.com/2010/11/23/i-quit-hacker-news/

It really depends. When I criticize Windows, its innards, .Net or C#, I get consistent downvotes. Less consistent when I criticize Sharepoint (which makes sense - nobody likes that monstrosity). Internet Explorer, OTOH, gets little love from everyone and seems even less popular than Sharepoint.

They still have not managed to roll out their first update, containing critical bug fixes.

This does not exactly bode well for IE9 rolling out at all. And then the mobile webkits not only have pretty damn good support for actually displaying pages but have made quite monstrous performance improvements recently.

Which critical bug fixes are these? I've owned and used a WP7 since a few days after launch, all of the bugs are in the "annoyance" category, I don't know of any absolute show-stoppers.

Well I have to think that the SMS cache corruption bug mentioned in the article would be considered critical.

That's hardly a widely experienced problem. Google "windows phone 7 text messages corrupt"; first result is a MS answers submission by DanTup - the same guy who's blog is referenced in the HN post.

First of all, IE9 is still years behind Webkit, Firefox and Opera in HTML5 and CSS support. Second, we'll see how quickly they can actually trim it into something usable on a mobile ARM platform; closeness is relative.

Is it any better with Android? Here's a list of issues:

-- Android resets your phone to factory settings without asking you or even giving a warning if you port a number to it. This deserves a class-action lawsuit. See here: http://androidforums.com/droid-x-support-troubleshooting/131...

-- Using the built in email application, sent emails often stuck in the outbox. See here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=6d4...

-- Wifi on the phone does not work if SSID is hidden. See here: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1041

-- Bluetooth on the device is unable to connect to a desktop to transfer files or sync. See here: http://www.bing.com/search?q=android+bluetooth+paired+but+no...

-- Once you sign in into Google Account using any Google app (like Gmail), you cannot sign out, ever! Only way to "sign out" is to reset the phone to factory defaults, which means loosing all your data and needing phone activation again. See here: http://www.sizzledcore.com/2009/12/27/how-to-remove-change-g...

-- They have artificially blocked use of Google Calendar app on the phone from functioning unless using a Google Account. Of course Google isn't interested in Outlook Sync, but even third-party developers suffer. Many have started providing their own calendar apps. See here: http://www.syncdroid.net/

If you follow the links, you may notice that many of the issues have been open for a few years, some since Android version 1.6, etc. Google just does not care.

To fix the issue with sent emails stuck in the outbox, people have started from the source code of the built-in email app and created K-9 mail, which is 10X more powerful, and works.

Actually you are wrong on a few of those points, for one, I use bluetooth to transfer files to my phone(2.1 device) all the time, but I have seen some android phones where that does work, it seems to be dependent on whether or not the manufacturer has lock that feature down or not.

Also you can remove or unlink you google account in the "Accounts & Sync" area of the settings menu.

You could be right about Bluetooth issue being linked to manufacturers.

My Android (v2.2) does not allow removing Google account.

My HTC Desire does allow that, which phone do you use?

Motorola Droid 2 Global

Bluetooth profile support can be locked down by manufacturers, my HTC Desire lacks lots of Bluetooth profiles that could/should be supported. Too bad, but that's what happens with Google's Android strategy I guess.

I can add and remove Google accounts whenever I want, in Accounts & Sync. I have two accounts linked, one private and one business, and that works really well in all apps.

AFAIK, the only bug I've been bitten by is that I had to remove a file on the SD Card named "smdl2tmp1.asec" because updates of apps stored on the SD Card stopped working after an update, which of course is unforgivable. And still not fixed. Seems to be on phones from several manufacturers, but only on a few percent if that.

Android sells ... a lot. That's what's better. One would assume that if it sells well, then it must be good enough to compete with other modern mobile platforms.

Way to bring an OS not mentioned in the article into the discussion. But to be fair, I think your point about K-9 makes a great point about the power of open source. And now Google has the ability to merge those changes back in, but even if not, the choice is there for users. I, for one, have not had the problems listed that are revelant on my Droid 2 with Android 2.2 either on Motoblur or my current Liberty. The one time I needed to transfer 800MB (for quite a while, mind you!) of data from a Macbook Pro of a colleague to my phone there were no issues. I have connected to several hidden SSIDs as well. The other issues all relate to the use of the Google Accounts... and it is well known going in to the platform that it is current very Google-account dependent.

> Is it any better with Android?

Undeniably. Google may not be fixing these bugs and their communication is definitely less than stellar, but at least they are getting releases and bug fixes out of the door, as well as improvements to the platform. Likewise with iOS, there are bugs & features & long-needed fixes (I'm looking at you, notifications) which still have not been released, but the company is moving forward, fixing bugs (again not necessarily my or your own pet bugs) and adding features.

TL;DR: A very long cover letter for the guy's job application to the Microsoft Windows Phone team.

And power to him - if only everyone on the WP7 team cared this much. IMO these certainly aren't the words of someone just trolling for a job.

Job application? Does anyone willingly sign up for a death march or to preside over the funeral of a dead-end project if they can avoid it?

I am not in any position to give advice to Microsoft, but it seems to me that they are trying to apply the winning strategies they used in one game to all the others.

Example: WP7.

What is expected: They ship fast and they update fast and agile, they don't have giant compatibility legacy to maintain.

What actually happens: WP7 took forever to ship and never got updated.

My speculation why it happened: they've got some lengthy and fairly bureaucratic process of approving new features, new versions, etc. They apply the same methodic they used with windows to their WP7, like, always maintain backward compatibility, be very reliable (well, you all know what happened) and predictable. They're, like, four years late and they keep wasting time.

Not to mention that WinMo wasn't too great either. I had an iPaq, which was sort of okay, but it didn't rock. It wasn't "cool" in any sense. And they probably vastly underestimate the coolness factor.

My $0.02.

I don't think that's their strategy generally.

Their current development strategy for things like MVC and Silverlight is to pre-release new functionality as an unsupported project, full source and iterate fast. They're quite agile in areas.

WP7 feels like some one has suddenly put the breaks on it.

It's one thing to ship MVC & Silverlight as unsupported projects and iterate fast, but quite another to iterate phone software quickly where you could potentially brick millions of phones with one small software update.

As noted in this blog post, an update applied to the phone broke it and the user had to get a brand new phone. This added a customer service burden to the mobile provider / network - which in turn means they will moan to Microsoft when they do this and give them less enthuiasm for WP7 devices in future if it keeps happening.

This is just another example of Microsoft not having their act together. I mean, forget Windows Phone 7, but Vista was just a disaster. The company nearly sacrificed it's main revenue source. Apple isn't exactly known for being transparent on matters either, but you can imagine if something goes wrong there what the internal pressure must be to get it fixed ASAP. Because soon enough they do fix it. As Steve Jobs himself said, "great artists ship"

I still really feel Microsoft can get back on track if they had new executive level management. Someone younger, bolder, a little audacious but with the ability to execute - like for example bringing back Gundotra at the CEO level. It's just that they need to do it sooner rather than later.

The marketing for Windows Phone 7 was pretty extensive in the US. I don't watch much TV, but I definitely saw plenty of the "We need a phone to save us from our phones" ads. Was it really that much smaller in the UK?

And have there really been NO bugfixes or patches (other than the notorious one he mentioned)? That's insane. Microsoft has got to know how far behind the ball they are... why aren't they pulling out all the stops on this?

For Microsoft: This isn't Windows. You can't wait 3 years (or more) for every release.

I've seen lots of those "We need a phone to save us from our phones" ads and I've never in my life seen an Android or an iPhone ad. So saying that Microsoft didn't advertise seems weird.

All I ever see is ads for "Cloud vs. Claude" and none of them make any sense. Microsoft cloud computing for editing photos? Huh?

I don't know about the UK, but there has been zero windows Phone 7 advertising in Sweden. No TV, no billboards, no in store promotion, hell I haven't even a working WP7 demo phone in any electronics store. If you don't follow tech blogs there would be no way to know that WP7 was even out. Compare this to Android where there is plenty of promotion on all fronts and it looks like Microsoft doesn't really want to sell phones here.

His Microsoft-centricity is pretty annoying.

tl;dr: Guy keeps buying shitty MS mobile products, MS dutifully keeps making shitty mobile products.

Very reminiscent of Apple fans in the '90s, buying crap products because they've defined themselves to be on Team Apple.

That's possibly the worst most inaccurate tldr I've seen. Did you read the article or just project what you'd like it to say. You do no one any favors by posting an inaccurate tldr.

tl;dr: Legion's tl;dr sucked.

You forgot to mention the final part: after 10 years of getting screwed by Microsoft, the guy is still hopeful that they are going to get it right.

To be fair: in the 90's, at least Mac fans had the excuse of not wanting to give up existing hardware/software peripherals. That's not really applicable to MS mobiles.

Not to mention the fact that Apple actually needed the rabid fanbase. Every single person could instantly hate Microsoft and they wouldn't be going anywhere for a long long long time.

The worst thing about Microsoft is that they launch technologies / platforms without much success and then just close them up. I read that "Windows Live Spaces" is closing down, now Zune is closing shop... Imagine you invest time and energy in the Spaces network or a Zune setup, you're out of luck.

Worse, there is no upgrade path.

Nowadays, I suspect Microsoft's strategy is "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks"

I'm always under the impression Microsoft is counting on luck when it comes to bringing out software. The kinect (or what's the name) is a big success, but is this because of the hardware or the software? I'm wondering too if Microsoft takes itself serious at times.

It's an interesting point. I think MS's courting of kinect hackers signifies that they haven't quite figured out what it's for yet. They know they're sitting on an awesome piece of hardware, and damned if they know what to make of it. Right now it's Wii++ and they know it could be so much more, but they don't know what. They're looking for inspiration from those who really do see its potential.

Really, this is a microcosm of MS in the Ballmer era. They still have incredible engineering talent, but they have no vision.

I'm happy to see a thoughtful, objective post on WP7 by a generally pro-MS developer.

Well done.

It's got the same flavor of sadness that an Amiga ST fan has when describing their favorite computer.

I hate to say it but by the time Windows Phone 8 comes out, if it ever does, the iPhone, Android and quite possibly RIM will be way ahead. Seems like 2013 at the absolute earliest for Microsoft.

Why are you only close to giving up? Is this windows phone thing a significant platform?

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/12/07/microsoft-doesnt-expe...

Mossberg asked: “So.. how long before you’re back into the market… back up to a good marketshare, up there with Android and Apple?”

“I don’t know..”

“Couple months?”

“Longer than that.”

“Couple years?”

“Maybe.”

Isn't it time to stop developing for OS/2?

That sounds realistic for a nascent platform. Even a super awesome OS will take time to displace the incumbents. You're disappointed that you didn't get BS marketing speak that it would defeat Apple and Google in 2 weeks or what?

> You're disappointed that you didn't get BS marketing speak that it would defeat Apple and Google in 2 weeks

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/10/microsoft-celebrates-wind...

I'll just leave that there ;)

Where's the marketing speak there?

That seems to be an internal joke for the team after their hard work over 2 years for meeting the deadline of the 2010 holiday season and to "rally the troops".

Hasn't this been the same story for every windows mobile OS though? I gotta say I would be in the "gotta see it to believe it" phase if I were a mobile developer.

I wonder what this experience is like compared to early Android adopters? Was there similar issues, with bugs and then updates not coming for them?

Android has some pretty wacky longstanding bugs, even now. My friend and I both have HTC Incredibles, and whenever I text him I come up as his friend Frank, with Frank's picture.

I got a bunch of very confused texts from him before we figured that one out. Now whenever I text him, I have to append (This is Erik).

If you were dating a couple of girls, that could end up with some really embarrassing situations.

From the development side, the Android emulator is really wonky, which is annoying at times.

Was the first release of iPhone or Android really that flawless compared to WM7?

WM7 is entering the game a lot later than those two OS's, so presumably they should have learned from their mistakes by now.

I bought an original iPhone because a colleague said "there's an awful lot it doesn't do but what it does do is so good you won't miss the rest".

I may be miremembering but I don't recall any real issues with it, and it still is the best phone I've owned.

WP7 was also the seventh version of WinMo, keep in mind.

I even started working on iPhone apps. I really hate Mac OSX, Objective-C, and XCode. But I had to go with the market.

Stopped reading here.

Why?

I don't understand why a web developer would have to go and develop applications for mobile platform when (s)he doesn't enjoy it. If I had to work with in an OS that I hate, with developer tools that I hate in a programing language that I hate I would rather change jobs.

But it's not a job for him; it's his business.

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