It’s probably more complicated than that: Microsoft’s customers have traditionally been very different from Apple’s, and they valued perpetual backwards compatibility over Apple’s approach.
Off topic ramble: unfortunately, Microsoft to have a bit of an acquired blindness regarding what users actually want (LTS Windows, innovate in Office or other installable software if you like) because paid software updates has so long been their culmination of visible success. Had they somehow switched to subscriptions by the time they moved to 32 bit Windows would be an entirely different beast today.
It all just keeps going on with no real improvements. This disconnect between people and products has many forms, be it an IT project that is over budget and doesn't deliver the right stuff (often comes down to business people making impossible promises and requirements that were never properly gathered and keep changing).
Getting something that is good for the user instead of getting something that is short-term good for the business would be a good start.
Everyone I knew who had a windows phone seemed to love it. If MS were taking a run at it today it would likely succeed. The nail in the coffin was Google refusing to write a Youtube app for Windows Phone and THEN blocking the app that MS wrote themselves.
I'm still shocked the EU didn't tear them apart on that move. It's about as anti-competitive as it gets. Honestly I'm still sad they gave up, we could've used a third player, even if they were going to always be a minority player.
How the hell were they not sued for that?? That is anti-competitive as hell.
Google is still doing shit like that e.g. by actively hindering Picture-in-Picture on iOS for years.
> The nail in the coffin was Google refusing to write a Youtube app for Windows Phone and THEN blocking the app that MS wrote themselves. There were at least 2 great third party youtube apps and youtube worked well in the browser as well. Including background play support which seems not to work on other platforms easily.
It's just that it wasn't loved by the masses, just like Zune wasn't loved by the masses, Windows S-mode isn't loved by the masses, and pretty much any Windows-on-ARM effort isn't loved by the masses.
Regarding YouTube: odd that they wouldn't make an app, you'd think that even with trident support they could at least put a web view in an app or something. You can't force a company to maken an app for another company, and with the current media/rights laws you can't make one yourself either, so not much of a lawsuit there.
I had no idea Google played this dirty trick, if that’s how it went they’d indeed deserve a thorough spanking for it.
I suspect Microsoft being Microsoft they must’ve made other blunders to murder the platform so badly though
tl;dr - Snapchat and a lot of other 'killer apps' never were written for the platform, and at least some of that was because the apps on Android/iOS did things Microsoft wouldn't let you (I think tracking when the user took a screenshot was one)
All the more advanced knobs made available via Powershell, also like Gnome or Apple. Indeed any professionally managed configuration isn’t maintained with point’n’click panels anyway...
Also power users tweak a lot of little advanced settings via these point'n'click panels anyway. Even tuning a desktop PC needs a lot of tinkering down the road.
Windows is a very powerful platform as is but, it's not well suited to everything due to its architecture and design choices. This situation is equally valid for all operating systems out there.
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[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/l...
I definitely remember running windows 2008r2 on my home desktop because at the the time that was all that was available in the "your educational institution neither gives .edu emails or has arranged anything with microsoft" tier of dreamspark.
Microsoft Windows Enterprise - focus on long term compatibility etc (essentially what windows is now)
Microsoft Windows X (seeing as they like using that letter) - which is way friendlier to breaking changes and advancing the OS.
I can't see any way for Windows to actually improve long term without doing this.
What I think could work, and would eventually lead to the same situation as "Enterprise/X" would be the reverse: a "regular" Windows aiming to eventually build a Microsoft equivalent of the Apple walled garden and a "continuity subscription" that's more conservative than what Windows is now (trivial example: opt into Cortana instead of opt out, barely)
PS: I understand that you are talking about low level technological differences and I seem to be hung up with UX, but I believe that separating groups on the high level would be the only viable way to eventually follow different paths on the low level.
This is why they should have 'Enterprise' and 'X' to me - they dont even have to look at different, but it frees one windows kernel team to do whatever they want and not have to worry about supporting loads of legacy systems. They'll naturally deviate.
It's actually kind of ironic to me that the best feature they've released in years (WSL) is essentially jamming another operating system into the mix. Like there's not enough going on there already!
I'm reading so much about how good Proton is that I'm considering dropping windows even for my gaming machine.
Windows everywhere
They doomed Windows phone with the name WINDOWS.
Their windows on ARM, Win RT push was also handicapped and doomed the moment they named it Windows...
Explanation.
Windows means:
1. BSOD, instability, viruses,
2. Expectations of ability to run billions of existing windows software
The first thing that popped in anyone's mind about Windows Phone was 1 above.
For ARM, many frustrated customers returned their store-bought Windows ARM devices after they got home and could not run normal vlc, chrome, existing games...
Microsoft having realized this, has spent the last 4 years+ working on the ability to run classic windows apps on windows for ARM. They placed their bet on faster chips - Apple got there first.
If Microsoft names their ARM operating system something else, initial marketing dollars would be initially higher. But it would be worth it.
To developers, nothing will change, it's the same UWP, same APIs.
Imagine xbox was called "Windows Gaming". It too would be dead.
isn't Windows gaming the richest market for games since a proper market for games exists?
Edit: Haack heavily cites Raymond Chen from 2003: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031015-00/?p=42...
Still, as developer on the JVM I find the concept of a "Game of throwns" exceptional.
And optionally rethrow.
https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/apples-relentless-stra...
The view from the outside on every Windows platform initiative in the past year is dismal failure, even if the platform has incrementally benefitted a bit from each.
Most software is effectively still written on the same platform it would've been for Windows 7. That's a bad look for everyone building everything there since.
Even internally: Microsoft's own platforms largely failed to embrace UWP. If your own internal developers aren't buying in, why would anyone else?