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Comment by rospaya | Hacker News Reader

> Not to mention the Microsoft Zune was definitely a dud.

Can't comment on the ecosystem since back then my only option was piracy, but the second and third generation players were very good. The HD is still one of the sleekest pieces of hardware that I used. But Apple couldn't be beat at that point.

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I’ve heard the final generation of Windows phones were very good too. But it was the same problem.

By then all their partners had abandoned them and developers were annoyed by multiple total SDK changes.

But it really didn’t matter. Because Android and iOS were so entrenched I can’t imagine they would have ever succeeded.

The Nokia N9 was slick. The Windows ballcrap they shipped on the devices instead was a shit show.

Windows Mobile 10 was pretty garbage, until the last release or two, after it was already very discontinued and suddenly the UI performance got good. If it had launched like that, and if Intel hadn't dropped x86 for phones days before the Continuum demo, and maybe if Microsoft had kept their promises about WP8 devices being upgradable to 10 and relatedly if WM10 was viable on low end hardware like wp 7 and 8 were... It might have been worth it for developers to rebuild their apps as 'universal windows' apps that only worked on windows mobile 10, not the versions that actually had an install base.

I don't think Windows Phone was necessarily going to get beyond a strong third place, but WP 8.1 on a low end phone was a lot more usable than Android on similar specs, and Apple had/has no desire to touch that part of the market. Continuum on the high end, if the desktop side included win32, could have anchored the other end of the market.

Would have been nice if they hadn't told Firefox they couldn't build for WP though. Mobile IE was garbage, and Mobile Edge for WM10 managed to be worse.

> Windows Mobile 10 was pretty garbage, until the last release or two, after it was already very discontinued and suddenly the UI performance got good.

Oh I can guess what happened. Management and the talkers in general lost interest so some programmers could finally do what they wanted without anyone removing the start button or putting it in the middle of the task bar.

Windows phones hadn't had the start button since it was dropped in the WinCE to WP transition, so positioning of the start button was never an issue. ;p

I had all generations of Windows phones, and the experience was very good from the beginning.

The keyboard felt incredibly fast and the entire UX felt "slippery" in a good way. Things just seemed to move and slide under your fingers. I thought I'd get back to that feeling with an Android 120hz display, but it still doesn't feel the same.

Of course, the browser sucked, and it didn't have many apps. It also took forever for Samsung (and I think Nokia) to add a front-facing camera.

Zune HD hardware might've been solid, but the UI/software was slow and limited. I remember it taking ~5 seconds to load the calculator app. Not to mention nobody wanted a device like that without a robust App Store. I get people liked the Zune brand, but I think people overrated it.

The second and third generations came out after the iPod Touch that had a full App Store.

There's another batch of emails from those times (can't find the link, but they will definitely appear again) where Gates is fuming that Apple has iPods, and none of their partners that have privileged access to Microsoft (like Creative) can come up with anything even closely resembling it. A few years later MS came out with Zune (so they had to do this themselves), but yeah, it was already too late.

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