Appreciate your efforts but not so sure this thread was begging for technical assistance. Last I looked it was about WM, the fact MSFT was adding features/apps to Android and iOS while disregarding their own platform. I was responding to that then stating facts from my perspective and experience... WM does fall short in many respects (for me), apps are now becoming a big issue, and products once supported no longer are.
I've been ridding the Windows phone/Phone wave(s) since 2012 and as you said, yes it was an opportunity to vent. Is it going to make a difference, highly unlikely. Did it make me feel better, somewhat. In the end we were just throwing in our 2-cents worth onto the pile.
And then we get into the facts that some of what I mentioned, DID work back in the 8.0/8.1 days and partially into the retrenchment w/the advent of W10M. Now they don't which tells me the platform is moving backwards and is steadily heading downwards.
As an FYI... I use all three platforms and have been for years, hard to substantiate claims if we haven't... Of course these are just my opinions/experiences as many others will differ.
Windows mobile has been in decline long before windows 10, it's decline of marketshare began the literal moment the iPhone came out.
Look at the numbers, its pretty clear that MS lost phones the instant the iPhone was released. It never had a chance as a "me too" proposition.
Nobody disputes that marketshare is in decline, or that UWP apps are being written primarily for tablet, ultrabook, hybrid and desktop markets now, rather than the now less than 1% global marketshare windows phone users. Those things are all true, just like when its cloudy and rainy, its cloudy and rainy - but some folk want to talk about that more than others (and yeah, spose everyone needs a vent!).
Microsofts vision from the get go with windows 10, was an OS that was _the same_ on every platform. Software that ran the same on every platform.
Mobile 10 never was 'the same', you can't run the same software. It was never actually part of microsofts openly pronounced vision.
Onecore and cshell is the plan, always has been.
Mobile 10, is more like a holding ground for UI features, like an open beta, while MS performs the herculean tasks of doing what nobody has
ever done before - making a single OS that runs your phone, your console, whatever.
Because they have very ambitious plans, and some real tangible results of that plan come out this year and next - their ambitious plans just involve taking back OS global marketshare, the current smartphone Windows OS is a very background minor concern.
A market to return to focusing on later. A quite charitable level of maintenaince considering the dropped rock of bb10.
I btw am a blackberry user. I had the curve, and q5. That gets no updates, no love, and the store is 1/3 of the size of the windows store. There is zero future for a QNX based phone OS. They completely changed the OS, and then went to android lol. There's still hope for MS though. That's a company that has cashflow, and a vision. A good one if you ask me.
If their plans go really well, maybe android, ios, maybe even osx, will be relics along with windows 10 mobile one day. It's actually quite possible, cards played right.
Myself, I strongly believe developers will come in their droves to a single unified system across devices. That's obvious to me, because that's what developers have always wanted - to write one set of code for a massive diverse audience pool, rather than one for each OS and platform, with reduced audiences and increased coding hours. A singular system with complete easy connectivity. One OS to rule them all. Write an app for console, have it work on phone, pc, smartwatch, hololens and tablet.
I feel, in my heart, MS has a real shot at the machine learning wars. I think just like when apple dumped most of its product line, and focused on the future (which turned into the ipod, the iPhone and the ipad) that sometimes in tech, the means are justified by the ends, sometimes the payoff, isn't immediate. That good things in tech can take time.
But you know I could be wrong.
But I am on the side of thinking I'd personally much rather MS was doing what it is doing, building a future, having a big picture mentality. I would definitely rather MS was working on onecore as a vision than flagging a dead horse. Making a better horse yes, flagging a dead one, no.
I guess, like you have to accept that windows 10 mobile, is what it is, I just have to accept that a lot of people have things to complain about MS's vision and direction, particularly mobile and don't see the upsides.
Its definitely a downer vibe, and not a place I come from at all. My excitement about Microsoft comes directly from Nadella's steve jobs like vision for the company, one about values and direction. And yet the mobile disappointment brigade, they don't particularly like that at all. While people outside this forum are saying "is Microsoft the new apple? The new innovator?", people inside here are chanting "windows phone is dead" (which it is, but only eventually, and only to be replaced by something better).
Somethings are quite particular to smartphone enthusiast communities, all this brand rivalry, pride, competition and focus on the right now, like quarterly marketshare, or whether a device is made our of glass or aluminium. These proclamations of permenancy remind me of those within fashion. How many times have beards been in and out, but every time, they'll say they are dead. I remember one of the chants of the ninetines was "Rock is dead", and then the naughties "dance music is dead". Both are doing quite fine of course.
Oh, did you know someone killed someone in Europe over a NVidia versus AMD argument? Sometimes I think people are very strange. But look at my beautiful ramblings, I am certainly no exception.