[rayf888]

Will Lumia ended up being another standard W10M hardware.... I always thought the core value of the acquisition is about the imaging and mapping capability of Nokia.... But I got an impression that Microsoft doesn't really care about them.... So many questions for W10M unanswered.......

[Dietrich Cleijne]

Most of the camera apps will be implemented in the Microsoft camera app, but that will be in the final build, and not in the developer preview.

[Kram Sacul]

Only MS knows as what they've been doing makes very little sense.

[Dietrich Cleijne]

Only MS knows as what they've been doing makes very little sense.

Should you not wait for the official release of W10M before you make such an assumption.

[Kram Sacul]

Should you not wait for the official release of W10M before you make such an assumption.

No. Needlessly killing apps before any kind of replacement app is ready to go is bad business and above all dumb. They did the same thing with the MSN apps and many users who used Health & Fitness every day are left wondering if the people in charge at MS have any idea on how to run a company. Some people will blindly say yes but MS' actions say no.

[Bobvfr]

I like MS and MS stuff but the killing of the Skype app for tablets months before an acceptable replacement has been a disaster, I would guess a lot of people have looked at the opposition by now if the sudden silence on the Skype forums are anything to go by, they have a perfectly acceptable app on the phone and the Xbox One and could easily have used that as a universal app, instead they reckon using the desktop version is an upgrade (Honestly try it on any tablet let alone a 7 inch one).

The killing of the OneDrive app, one of the most useful bits of the whole MS account experience, currently dead in the water.

The killing of a couple of MSN apps is far less troublesome but of all of them the Health and Fitness was at least usable with the built in step tracking.

As mentioned I am a big user of MS products but I am having a few issues with some of their decisions and even more issues with the really bad PR that goes with them.

But we live in hope as to me the alternatives are awful.

[mariusmuntean]

don't bother trying to understand a very bad PR and an even worse leader


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Joe A]

The camera apps may not be part of the camera app that will ship with the RTM version of the software.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Captain_Eric]

I'm going to miss Storyteller. It's apparent replacement, Photo Story, isn't near it's capability. 😞

[Krystianpants]

No. Needlessly killing apps before any kind of replacement app is ready to go is bad business and above all dumb. They did the same thing with the MSN apps and many users who used Health & Fitness every day are left wondering if the people in charge at MS have any idea on how to run a company. Some people will blindly say yes but MS' actions say no.

They are working on better health apps which will help integrate into the band better among other things. Health and fitness was a horrible app, im glad it's gone.

And they know the figures on how many people use it. Do you think they care about the small amount of people that claim they don't know how to run a business. They are making way more money off ios and android to begin with. They need to establish their dominance on those 2 platforms before anyone else. This is why the app updates for these 2 platforms are better than for windows phone. Windows phone could fail. The other 2 are doing well. They don't see Windows phone gaining a huge market share out of nowhere so they are not going to put all their efforts into it. Even if it was the most perfect OS and had the best built in apps, it just would not gain ground quick enough for it to matter.

[slivy58]

What does it mean, if MS continues on a path seemingly causing uncertanty w/the platform as a whole then my journey will be ending soon, I'm having a tough time as of late envisioning a bright future compared to when I re-entered the market in 2012 w/Win 8.0 (started out in 2007 w/HTC P4000 running Windows Mobile 5.0), not seeing much in the way of advancements (since 2012), stability or any real sense of direction, pulling these apps with what appears no rhyme or reason is just another nail in their coffin... OK they may have rebuttals coming down the pipe but their PR isn't helping to solidify WP and all that goes with it, what they are doing here is causing more steps backwards that "will not" be recouped after the fact, it's counterproductive.

[Ian_Superfly]

.... They are making way more money off ios and android to begin with. They need to establish their dominance on those 2 platforms before anyone else. This is why the app updates for these 2 platforms are better than for windows phone.....

So you agree that it would be pretty stupid to buy a Windows phone today?
Or, how could there be any bright future for WP/W10M when not even MS dares to invest in the system?

[DoctorSaline]

I don't think they are necessarily removing the apps just for the sake of it. I think they are removing the redundancies and planning to consolidate their functionality into default camera app and default editor on photos app. It removes the hassle of having to use multiple apps for multiple features/use cases when they all can be and should have been consolidated into the main camera app and default photo editor.

[Krystianpants]

So you agree that it would be pretty stupid to buy a Windows phone today?
Or, how could there be any bright future for WP/W10M when not even MS dares to invest in the system?

Not quite. MIcrosoft is focusing more of their attention on windows 10, not the apps. The other app engineers who have always built software for the other platforms are focusing on the other platforms. My guess is once Windows 10 is unified and complete they can focus on the apps at a quicker rate. Either way, it's still a success if the market grows. You can't expect people to drop all their phones and switch to Windows phone. It's a slow process.

[Ian_Superfly]

.... Either way, it's still a success if the market grows. You can't expect people to drop all their phones and switch to Windows phone. It's a slow process...

Well, they (Microsoft) remove their "unique" WP apps (Lumia apps) OR they release them to the competition (Office, Xbox, OneNote, OneDrive etc) but old customers should mysteriously stay while new enters from the feature flooded competition? Why?

"a Slow process?" Would it not more likely be a "reversed process"?

[TechFreak1]

Not quite. MIcrosoft is focusing more of their attention on windows 10, not the apps. The other app engineers who have always built software for the other platforms are focusing on the other platforms. My guess is once Windows 10 is unified and complete they can focus on the apps at a quicker rate. Either way, it's still a success if the market grows. You can't expect people to drop all their phones and switch to Windows phone. It's a slow process.

I'm sorry, slow just doesn't cut it as even a tortoise moves faster than the rate progress we have seen with some apps. In regards to the early pull down of the apps referred to in this thread. I imagine this has everything to do with office politics, as most likely the dev teams who developed some of these apps have been let go in the mass cut in the windows phone division. Why else would just pull keys apps without any sort of replacement?

It's decisions like this that really shows to some people that Windows phone is indeed second class or third class citizen. Plus is there any wonder why overall market share has decreased?

Speaking off apps there is on app that makes me sick when I use it; that is Groove.

After Zune we have been left with a diabolical app that is not even worthy of being called a Music app. Three years it took to xbox music to basic functionality - what one would expect a media player to do - heck even WMP is even more feature rich. Why not just use their Win32 bridge and modernise it?

Sure it got better but with Groove it's a regression - you cannot manually refresh your library, deleting a song from the library removes it off the disk. You cannot even edit meta data in the app, heck even if you edit your meta data via the right click context menu in the file explorer the updated meta data doesn't even show in Groove. It gets better if you place the deleted file back into the music folder, it's still "gone" from your Groove library.
I wanted to listen to music while using Geck to create a mod and so thought I'd give groove a spin after all it's light weight. But it's not, it takes about 100 megs and is less functional than WMP Classic.

When you see that alarm bells ought to start ringing.

So you can understand why People are getting more and more frustrated, they are sick and tired of waiting.

[Joe Dubya]

Nokia kept launching new apps for photos - better to merge the best features into one good app IMHO

[Kram Sacul]

They are working on better health apps which will help integrate into the band better among other things. Health and fitness was a horrible app, im glad it's gone.

Sure they are. Right alongside flagship devices that don't look cheap and a version of W10M that doesn't look like an amateurish 3rd party Android launcher. Good luck with that.

I used the Health & Fitness diet tracker every day and it worked great on mobile and on the desktop. For a platform that is known for not having enough quality apps it was brain dead to pull it without a way of transitioning to a new app. Short sided, clueless and beyond hope would be good descriptions of MS but those would be too kind of words.

[Nightwolf88]

Yes it is plain stupid and i don't understand.
The MS-camera app doesn't even support the real abilities of the pureview-cameras that a lot of Lumia devices have.

Without a decent camera app the lumia 1020 just becomes a mediocre smartphone. I (and a LOT of people i think) bought it mainly for the camera. If they take that away from us now i'm leaving Microsoft behind. Starting with my phone and will be looking to go dual boot on my computer and in the future abandoning MS completely.

What they are doing now is killing their own platform, just when a lot of people where starting to get hyped.. idiots.

[Krystianpants]

Well, they (Microsoft) remove their "unique" WP apps (Lumia apps) OR they release them to the competition (Office, Xbox, OneNote, OneDrive etc) but old customers should mysteriously stay while new enters from the feature flooded competition? Why?

"a Slow process?" Would it not more likely be a "reversed process"?

The slow process is designing these apps so they can take advantage of the windows unified system in a better way. People like these apps and start using them daily, the next phone they buy may be one that has these apps built in plus any enhancement Microsoft may add. If features like continuum take off due to proper marketing on Microsoft's side and universal apps in general will pull more users into the windows 10 space. It's about exposure to what Microsoft does best, and that's software. You can't force people to move over they need a reason and by making these apps amazing on the other platforms first, people start getting used to them and using them. In the meantime they are working on the actual platform. Windows 10 is not finished, even the desktop component isn't. They haven't even released it to the whole world as I know people who still haven't been prompted to download windows 10. They have a vision and you don't see that final vision. But you're using unfinished software. And you're using builds that are targeted to insiders, not the actual builds they are working on. While I have my issues with Windows 10. Thus far it has enhanced my experience from wp 8.1 on my lumia 830. There are apps and design inconsistencies, and they are annoying but I'll leave the complaining for when they are finished. I'll also leave the complaining about the phones till I see them. At first I was shocked at how bad they looked, but I saw renders of iphone that looked bad too and I think the 6 looks damn good. So I'm going to once again let Microsoft do their thing. No one is forcing you to stay invested in the system. In the end this is a multi-billion dollar company that you're not running, you don't see what is happening in the background, you don't know anything other than what is provided to you. I'm sure they want some surprises for their big event as well. I mean come on if the whole world knows about everything then their event will be lackluster.

[Krystianpants]

I'm sorry, slow just doesn't cut it as even a tortoise moves faster than the rate progress we have seen with some apps. In regards to the early pull down of the apps referred to in this thread. I imagine this has everything to do with office politics, as most likely the dev teams who developed some of these apps have been let go in the mass cut in the windows phone division. Why else would just pull keys apps without any sort of replacement?

It's decisions like this that really shows to some people that Windows phone is indeed second class or third class citizen. Plus is there any wonder why overall market share has decreased?

Speaking off apps there is on app that makes me sick when I use it; that is Groove.

After Zune we have been left with a diabolical app that is not even worthy of being called a Music app. Three years it took to xbox music to basic functionality - what one would expect a media player to do - heck even WMP is even more feature rich. Why not just use their Win32 bridge and modernise it?

Sure it got better but with Groove it's a regression - you cannot manually refresh your library, deleting a song from the library removes it off the disk. You cannot even edit meta data in the app, heck even if you edit your meta data via the right click context menu in the file explorer the updated meta data doesn't even show in Groove. It gets better if you place the deleted file back into the music folder, it's still "gone" from your Groove library.
I wanted to listen to music while using Geck to create a mod and so thought I'd give groove a spin after all it's light weight. But it's not, it takes about 100 megs and is less functional than WMP Classic.

When you see that alarm bells ought to start ringing.

So you can understand why People are getting more and more frustrated, they are sick and tired of waiting.

In the end the CEO oversees everything. And any decisions being made are going to be for the benefit of Microsoft. Lumia apps are a horrible idea. Lumia firmware is a horrible idea. See Microsoft wants to control the update process with windows 10. Having everything unified across oems will allow them to do this. I'm sure it will also provide ways for OEMs to add some of their own stuff as well(likely in the form of updates through store), but in the end your version of windows should always be the latest that is out as it is a service.

And once again you are complaining about uncompleted software. Even Desktop has many uncompleted apps, it is well known that windows 10 is not complete. The launch of desktop early on was to gain high adoption rates as quickly as possible. It's the "good enough" approach. I mean look at the people app it's terrible. There is massive inconsistencies and just overall is not a highly refined OS. But you know what 75 million users are already on it. So launching it early wasn't a bad idea on their part. Now these 75 million users can expect updates where the OS will become nicer and more polished over time. Apps are already coming out at a higher rate than ever for windows. Updates from major app suppliers such as twitter. The app developers are seeing the adoption rate and are now deciding that maybe it's worth investing. So would you prefer it was finished, released way later and now you have a much longer wait for apps to start getting developed, etc.. Microsoft has a vision and your complaining won't change it. This is a huge undertaking for them. The amount of work involved in building the OS for all these systems, all the apps, plus maintaining a great presence on IOS/Android in order to get people to experience MS. It's huge. And on top of that they are doing insider builds which are also a lot of work and take time away from other things they could be doing.

If you're not satisfied leave Windows. It's that simple. Microsoft is obviously taking their chances that people may be unsatisfied with the progress, but in the end it won't stop their final vision. And once things are finished and smooth, you may come back, or you may not like it. Fact is you have no clue what the end result will be. None of us do.

[tgp]

They are making way more money off ios and android to begin with. They need to establish their dominance on those 2 platforms before anyone else. This is why the app updates for these 2 platforms are better than for windows phone.

This is true. Microsoft needs iOS and Android users to have a worthwhile presence on mobile.

The advantage, and possibly the only advantage, to having a Windows Phone (looking at it strictly from Microsoft's point of view) is that Microsoft's services are default. Default is what most users tend to go with. Sure, Microsoft's services might be best utilized on iOS and Android. In fact, an iOS or Android user who fully immerses himself/herself in Microsoft's services might be more valuable to Microsoft than a WP user.

The issue remains: how does Microsoft get smartphone users to use their services? The most sure-fire way is to sell Windows Phones where Microsoft's services are default. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this is why they're still pushing WP. If it were possible to somehow make their services default on iOS and Android, I bet Microsoft would drop WP in a heartbeat, especially considering the royalties the collect from Android OEMs.

[Krystianpants]

Sure they are. Right alongside flagship devices that don't look cheap and a version of W10M that doesn't look like an amateurish 3rd party Android launcher. Good luck with that.

I used the Health & Fitness diet tracker every day and it worked great on mobile and on the desktop. For a platform that is known for not having enough quality apps it was brain dead to pull it without a way of transitioning to a new app. Short sided, clueless and beyond hope would be good descriptions of MS but those would be too kind of words.

There's no doubt that Microsoft wants to be a part of the health craze. The band is just one of the signs that this is the case. They are working on using hololens in hospitals and many other things. And they are also developing a new OS. Do you think they want to maintain an app designed for their older os or do they want to build something new and better that will be a universal windows 10 app? There will definitely be some universal health app coming out. MS needs to pull all the old apps and create Windows 10 versions. But it would be stupid of them to focus on health without a great health app.

And for Windows 8.1 there are better apps. Livescape is probably one of the best trackers. This is the one that I use. It works on Windows 10 with no issues as well. Honestly I tried their diet tracker and there's a reason I bought livescape.

[Krystianpants]

This is true. Microsoft needs iOS and Android users to have a worthwhile presence on mobile.

The advantage, and possibly the only advantage, to having a Windows Phone (looking at it strictly from Microsoft's point of view) is that Microsoft's services are default. Default is what most users tend to go with. Sure, Microsoft's services might be best utilized on iOS and Android. In fact, an iOS or Android user who fully immerses himself/herself in Microsoft's services might be more valuable to Microsoft than a WP user.

The issue remains: how does Microsoft get smartphone users to use their services? The most sure-fire way is to sell Windows Phones where Microsoft's services are default. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this is why they're still pushing WP. If it were possible to somehow make their services default on iOS and Android, I bet Microsoft would drop WP in a heartbeat, especially considering the royalties the collect from Android OEMs.

Well MS did make some deal with Samsung to drop the royalties case they had with them. And Samsung is not a fan of android and has been wanting to pull away with Tizen. Maybe Samsung and MS are doing something in the background. Samsung owns most of the android market. However, their sales have been slipping so maybe they will start pushing more windows 10 phones. Maybe, it's just a deal to produce the screens on Microsoft's phones. No one really knows. We should wait for Microsoft's big conference.

And you know MS has always been bad with marketing but their Windows 10 desktop campaign was actually pretty good. I loved the simple commercials showcasing the OS. If they do a good job with mobile it may also help them a lot. I still think for continuum they need to seriously partner up with every airport, coffee shop, restaurant, or any place someone brings their laptop to work to include miracast monitors with bluetooth keyboards/mice. Pay for the whole thing if you have to. But give people reason to have a phone with continuum.

[tgp]

Well MS did make some deal with Samsung to drop the royalties case they had with them.

As far as I know, we don't know if the royalties have been dropped or just reduced.

And Samsung is not a fan of android and has been wanting to pull away with Tizen. Maybe Samsung and MS are doing something in the background. Samsung owns most of the android market.

Yes I know Samsung has tried to move away from Android, but at this point they cannot. Samsung needs Android, and Android needs Samsung. I could see Samsung dabbling in W10M phones though. Samsung is big enough that they can afford to experiment with another OS without going all in. They are already doing a bit of that with Tizen.

However, their sales have been slipping so maybe they will start pushing more windows 10 phones. Maybe, it's just a deal to produce the screens on Microsoft's phones. No one really knows.

Samsung sales are not slipping because of Android. Android sales are as strong as ever. Samsung is feeling more competition from other Android OEMs. If Samsung went all in with Tizen or W10M, they could very well end up in a situation not unlike Nokia's.

We should wait for Microsoft's big conference.

Yup! Can't wait!