Is MS giving up?

[a5cent]

Good ergonomics is essential to good design, I'm all for that. Mess up because you didn't read the instructions, well, here's your sign.

I think pretty much anyone that has ever given a course on ergonomic software design would tell us that instruction manuals aren't ergonomic. Instruction manuals are typically a last resort, which developers turn to when all previous attempts at ergonomic software design fail, or when developers feel that a feature is potentially dangerous enough that they must cover their *** (so that we developers can point to something and say "I told you so").

For some things, like the ToS people agree to when using the insider preview, there probably aren't any decent alternatives to the typical walls of text. WCentral provides daily proof that few read that stuff. For these kinds of things I'm sympathetic to your position because I can't think of a better alternative. I'm not sure one exists.

However, the issue at hand is unrelated to ToS. It's about how OSes can best support users in making decisions related to cellular data usage and ensure users don't unintentionally (out of ignorance or mistakenly) inflate their cellular data costs. This sort of thing is directly related to everyday use of the device, and for these sorts of problems there are usually hundreds of potential solutions that can all work fine without requiring that users have an in-depth understanding of technology or read instruction manuals. Any solution to that sort of problem, which depends on users willingness to read instruction manuals, just isn't as ergonomic as it could/should be.

 

[Theri0n]

I am getting to think, that choosing Nadella over Elop was dramatic mistake of MSFT board. Nadella was excellent at his previous position and could continue the success of cloud computing. MSFT was desperate to get at least 10% of the mobile market, but now it's share in sales even lower, than of Nokia. Adding recent layoff in sales department of the mobile division, MSFT suffers significant risks not only at mobile but soon at desktop and nowadays successful cloud market. MSFT is not Nokia, not even Google. MSFT is backbone for global IT industry and it is critical to have presence everywhere. Mobile is especially critical while desktop sales are falling.

 

[SlickShoesRUCrazy]

I am getting to think, that choosing Nadella over Elop was dramatic mistake of MSFT board. Nadella was excellent at his previous position and could continue the success of cloud computing. MSFT was desperate to get at least 10% of the mobile market, but now it's share in sales even lower, than of Nokia. Adding recent layoff in sales department of the mobile division, MSFT suffers significant risks not only at mobile but soon at desktop and nowadays successful cloud market. MSFT is not Nokia, not even Google. MSFT is backbone for global IT industry and it is critical to have presence everywhere. Mobile is especially critical while desktop sales are falling.

Sorry dude or dudette, but following Balmers plans was just going to be a continuous money sink hole. There was no future where Microsoft would gain market share to make money and please investors following Balmers plan if Elop was chosen over Nadella. People don't seem to understand that a publically traded corporation's duties are to shareholders first, not consumers.

microsoft was late to the party with Windows phone. Balmer wrote off the iPhone and took them 3 years to respond. By the time WP 7 released it was too late. Then they started over again 2 years later with WP 8 which again was them shooting themselves in their foot alienating part of their market.

Microsoft accepted the failure of Windows Phone and the Nokia acquisition when Nadella wrote it off.

But hey, there is a bright side. Microsoft isn't going to stop releasing Windows phones. They can't. They need to have a device in the market in order to achieve their philosophy of one unified ecosystem across all device types. Further on the bright side, they are not going to make cheap Lumia phones anymore or they will be strictly for emerging markets. The rumored surface phone is going to be the premium device WP fans have always wanted. Microsoft wants premium devices to showcase their software.

Microsoft's entire business philosophy has changed and it is time for people to accept this. You are mistaken about Microsoft suffering from significant risks in the global IT industry because that exactly the market they are focusing on. That is why they have pumped billions of dollars in to their cloud infrustructure, Azure. I believe they are as big or bigger than even Amazon AWS now. Further, Microsoft has completely recognized the declining declining desktop sales and mobility being more important. Again why do you think their services are on iOS and Android? Why do you think the investment in premium hardware like surface and surface book and eventually the surface phone most likely? They very much understand the market and where it is going under Nadella. More so than under Balmer and most likely Elop in my opinion.

 

[Josh Harman]

Wasn't WP gaining market share under Ballmer?

 

[a5cent]

Wasn't WP gaining market share under Ballmer?

Yes, but correlation does not imply causation.

 

[Josh Harman]

Yes, but correlation does not imply causation.

But it does for Nadella?

 

[a5cent]

But it does for Nadella?

No.

I know that it's tempting to blame Nadella for everything, because WP/WM lost market share since Nadella took over. That little factoid is something we can all easily point to, which anyone can grasp without having to understand anything about software technology or WPs strategic market position (during the last two years). In short, it's a nicely wrapped up piece of information that is simple, seems intuitive, and is therefore easily spread. It's also wrong, but that's typically not very important.

There is no single event or person we could point to that deserves all the blame. WP arrived where it is today through a very long list of poor decisions, bad timing, ineffective strategies and engineering teams having to focus on architectural and development related issues rather then user scenarios. Most of those things occurred long before Nadella became CEO.

 

[giustopio]

Ballmer made the legendary wp 8 phones, the phones which made me love the lumia world. I'll always thank him.

 

[conurus]

Maybe Nadella's logic was, what good does it do to catch up to be a distant third in a mature market? He is putting all the hopes on Office.

I bought a 1020 because I had been a Symbian user, I needed offline maps and a great camera. Behold, even HERE Maps moved to iOS/Android only. I was frustrated but I could see this is a losing battle.

Nadella said take a couple of years off and re-enter gestation. It was the same as saying a free-falling market share was fine but we needed time to brew something better this time. What worse way to drive apps away than this? Next year, even if something earth-shattering emerges, does it still matter to the mature smartphone market? I am holding a very dim view on the outlook, and I think it is a great loss to the smartphone world. WP had a great new approach to UI, a clean, readable design language with concise, large text, making it very usable. It had a great Continuum story.

By 2017 or 2018, the only strategy remaining viable is to simply put Intel processors into WP and had them run the full Windows x64. Then consumers will take notice. I don't know if from a business standpoint you'll get even richer by selling Office to Andrioid/iOS which seems to be Nadella's so called strategy, but I had no idea why after more than 30 years MS would start thinking losing grip of the platform was fine. This line of thought was so un-Microsoft. Every time it was unforeseen that something else became the "platform" instead of the OS (of a PC). First we had Google Chrome, then we had iOS and Android. There was not much "platform" left still ruled by MS, but it was obviously non-zero (actually, 14% per their own estimation, which is not bad) and it was strategically wrong to not put what little that remains into some good use.