[Info-vax] RMS intro

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/3/2024 4:52 PM, John Dallman wrote:
> In article <umv3ll$2adef$1 at dont-email.me>, arne at vajhoej.dk (Arne Vajhøj)
> wrote:
> 
>> If MS want to continue the big presence in the consumer segment,
>> then they need to address it. Somehow they need to get into
>> the phone and tablet market. This is why the MS CEO recently
>> said that he regretted killing Windows Phone.
> 
> Then he still hasn't faced up to the reason for its failure. As far as I
> can tell, that was because it was too much like desktop/laptop Windows.
> 
> iOS and Android both have pretty gentle learning curves. You don't need
> to know much to start using them, and fairly small steps in learning open
> up more activities quite quickly.
> 
> Windows Phone's GUI was ... kind of complicated. It makes sense to
> someone who's been closely following the evolution of desktop Windows
> since about the year 2000, and always sticking to the Microsoft defaults.
> Like, say, Microsoft's UI designers and marketing people.
> 
> But it has been a pretty twisty path, and there's a lot of accumulated
> strangeness. The result is not friendly to someone who has never used
> Windows, and that's quite hard for someone who is very pro-Windows to
> understand.

I don't know hos much he was thinking about "the Windows Phone 8
code base" versus just "a MS OS for phones".

But what I heard from most WP users back then was that they
actually liked the UI.

(they hated the Windows 8 attempt to look like WP8 though)

What made many of them drop WP was the lack of apps. The WP
apps eco-system could not compete with the gazillion
iOS and Android apps.

Companies only developed apps for iOS and Android, because there were
too few WP users. And there were too few WP users because companies
only developed apps for iOS and Android.

That problem still exist for anyone trying to get into the
phone market without being hooked into Apple App Store or
Google Play.

Arne