When bad management meets bad software, even great hardware is useless

  • @Ugurcan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    135
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    To be honest, Windows Phone OS was a marvel in terms of user experience and design language. It was a fresh breath on interacting and utilizing the new always online world.

    Calling it ‘Bad Software’ is not fair at all.

    Too bad MS picked every possible bad decision to cripple it, starting with not putting it’s weight behind the OS at all.

    I really, really miss the feeling of being in control of my whole digital existence with just a single glance.

    • @Zoldyck@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      557 months ago

      Exacty. The Lumia 925 was so fucking good, and streets ahead of competitors, especially for the price. The camera on that phone made pics that is still better than some phone cameras today, from models that cost double or more!

    • @selokichtli@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      437 months ago

      I was always in the Android camp because it was more FOSS then, more AOSP. Being said that, another competitor was and is desperately needed. When Windows Phones were in the wild, I had hope. But take a look at Windows 11, if Windows Phone had been a success, by now it would be utter shit.

      • @mindlight@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        357 months ago

        I’d argue that Windows 11 is a result of what Google has been getting away with Android.

        Google has shown Microsoft that the users happily pay money for giving up the control of their device. While Android was open 10 years ago, Google has worked hard to lock it down for 99% of the end users. The amount of personal data they get from each device is staggering.

        • @selokichtli@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          47 months ago

          They all find their way to shit when profit, not user satisfaction, is the ultimate goal. In the end, we are talking Microsoft here, we already know them.

      • @pycorax@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        57 months ago

        When they compromised on their UI design to make it more like Android and iOS in WP10, it was already over. It was also such a buggy mess compared to WP8.1.

        What a shame.

    • circuscritic
      link
      fedilink
      English
      377 months ago

      It was a better UI and user experience then Android by the time it launched…but by the time it launched the smartphone market had already exploded and the app developer marketplace had already matured into a profitable sector. There was no incentive to attract enough developers to build out a similar ecosystem on the late to the party Windows Phone

      • @Ugurcan@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        287 months ago

        Yeah, I agree.

        The main incentive twirled around UWP mentality, “Write one app that works on Windows, WP and Xbox automagically”.

        I think it was a fucking-a-star idea that could gather fresh developers to a big potential userbase. And surprisingly, it worked for a time as well.

        But MS again cold-feeted the platform themselves in a short span and scared everyone.

        I actually witnessed many brilliant developers wrote their very first C# code with UWP, only to spin out to other platforms later as WinPhone’s apparent neglect. PocketCasts and Flipboard are two that went very successful on other platforms.

        • mihies
          link
          fedilink
          77 months ago

          Not to mention that MS completely changed their development tools and libraries more than once if I remember properly.

    • @Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      87 months ago

      I’ve been running Launcher 10 on Android for a long while now. Replicates the tile interface and app list/drawer. I think it has ads with an IAP to disable them and another IAP for Live Tiles support.

      • @Ugurcan@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        8
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        Yeah, visually there are alternatives on Android, but there were a few features built into WP that Android doesn’t fundamentally support that made the whole difference.

        Like having your SO’s all accounts merged under a single node, and seeing everything related to her, be it from WhatsApp, Mail, SMS, Photo Shares etc inside a single tile was awesome. Can Android do that in 2024?

        • @Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          57 months ago

          HTC had Blinkfeed for a while which was kind of similar to People Hub. It probably wouldn’t even be feasible these days as so many services have put their APIs behind paywalls.

      • Bebo
        link
        fedilink
        English
        27 months ago

        I’ve been enjoying the launcher 10 launcher on my phone for more than two years now. Whenever I change my launcher, I keep going back to it. I find it to be so productive for my use. And the windows 10 live tiles ui is also great.

    • @Wahots@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      6
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      Not to mention google and apple deliberately C&Ding stuff like the awesome first party youtube apps and stuff like project islandwood. They deliberately tried to stop their apps from working because they knew what would happen if WP succeeded.

    • Dr. Moose
      link
      fedilink
      English
      47 months ago

      That’s just nostalgia speaking. It was closed source OS that objectively sucked and had zero app support.

    • @Wooki@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      17 months ago

      t was over simplified and limited creating massive wasted realestate.

      If it wasn’t for the mole they could have gone droid a whole lot earlier and i suspect, flourished as a result.

      Such a waste.

  • Fake4000
    link
    fedilink
    English
    677 months ago

    Honestly it was a bad call on Nokia to switch to windows. They would have been in a different place of they capitalised on their market share and switched to android.

    • @Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      42
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      Nokia should have continued developing the Linux Qt system maemo/meego. I was working with it as subcontractor in Nokia, and it was awesome. The Qt/C++ was really fast to code, and you could basically port KDE apps into it with small effort.

      If they would have continued with it, we could have had three major OS in phones.

      I was leading architect in internal UI design tools, and the tools had features that android/apple toolsets not even now have. Mainly because you could run the Qt app with PC hardware without any emulation.

      • @wjrii@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        97 months ago

        Sounds like it wasn’t really your area, but good lord the N810/N900 were some of the most beautiful pieces of industrial design I’ve ever used. Maemo was delightful to use too, don’t get me wrong, and I loved tethering it to my featurephone and getting a decent mobile experience, as well as doing my first practical in-car navigation with the GPS and the mapping software that was available, but those things were an overlooked gem of hardware, like something straight out of Star Trek.

        • @Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          17
          edit-2
          7 months ago

          Nokia was lead by engineers, which was it’s strength, but eventually also caused it’s downfall. This is why these things were so good.

          Engineers told that the fullscreen displays without keyboard is never as good as physical keyboard.

          Engineers told that 1 day battery life is not enough, the system need to be designed so that it can last a week.

          They were right.

          BUT apple’s marketing and slick design convinced the American market that you can give up on those features. Nokia could easily made the same design, but didn’t because engineers thought that users need those features. When they turned ship and accepted it, apple had its foot between the door already.

          • @rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            English
            37 months ago

            I mean, it got a hit, but what ended it was the Elopian suicide.

            Also about slick design … That’s subjective, but even Windows Mobile looked better than Apple stuff.

            And Nokia UI design was just perfect.

    • @lanigerous@feddit.ukOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      337 months ago

      I always find it amazing when you hear these insights into the downfall of once huge companies. It’s incredible how terrible some people’s judgement can be and a lot of these successful people are riding on luck rather than intelligence it seems

      • Snot Flickerman
        link
        fedilink
        English
        49
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        a lot of these successful people are riding on luck rather than intelligence it seems

        All of them, you mean. The people who build quality products are always kicked to the curb by money men who could give a shit.

        See: GE, Boeing, Cisco, etc.

        • @rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          17 months ago

          This actually happens to a degree defined by a working court system. And to make that smaller takes not a very complex set of laws, but they should be enforced. While IRL people make new laws when the bad thing is covered by existing ones which it’s hard to enforce. As if it will be different with a new more specific law.

          So I’m hopeful that anti-monopoly institutions get their shit together. This doesn’t have to be this way. It isn’t this way always . ATnT has been split at some point. Standard Oil and so on.

          Wheels of justice grind slowly etc. If they still do grind faster than more injustice emerges - then they work and eventually those who fuck around find out. Otherwise - well, otherwise it’ll be some new civilization after the new middle ages, ha-ha.

      • Q*Bert Reynolds
        link
        fedilink
        English
        37 months ago

        Nokia only sold off their consumer mobile phone arm. It was the least profitable part of their business. They’re still a massive company and doing quite well.

    • @CarlosCheddar@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      287 months ago

      It ended up being a bad call but at the time Android only had 2 years in the market and trusting the leading OS company to manufacture a proper mobile product wasn’t a crazy idea. Microsoft just completely mismanaged the whole phone thing and took down Nokia with it.

      If I remember correctly the approach was so anti-google that you couldn’t even watch youtube on Windows Phones.

      • @EvilBit@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        467 months ago

        Google sabotaged Windows Phone to protect Android. They refused to serve even standard Google web apps to the WP browser, instead relegating users to years-old mobile versions that looked and worked terribly. You could literally edit the user string on the Windows browser and get the modern, perfectly functional version. Then there was the constant YouTube fuckery where Google wouldn’t make a YouTube app for them, then wouldn’t let them make their own app either. The entire point was to starve the system to kill it in the cradle and on some level, it probably worked.

        Looking at the fact that Google is under intense anticompetitive scrutiny now and has been egregiously destroying evidence every chance they get shows that this isn’t out of character for them.

          • @EvilBit@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            77 months ago

            100%. They went from understanding the perils of success to exemplifying the worst of it. Don’t be (caught being) evil.

      • @FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        67 months ago

        Microsoft also had a decent credibility with mobile device OS’s. They made OS’s for PDA’s like Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC… those were all on some very capable devices.

        God, I miss my Compaq Ipaq Pocket PC. That thing was a fucking beast.

      • @Akinzekeel@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        57 months ago

        Sort of. Google and Microsoft really weren’t on good terms back then (relatively speaking). Both were competing for the mobile OS market, and Microsoft ran this whole „Don’t get Scroogled“ campaign to demote Android.

        Naturally, Google did not offer any of their apps for Windows phone - i.e. no Google maps or YouTube. Microsoft then made their own YouTube client for windows phone which was an okay app. However Google wasn’t happy with this and had them take down the app and replace it with their own version instead.

        The problem is that Google’s YouTube app for windows phone was so embarrassingly bad that after countless 1-star reviews they decided to pull the app from the windows phone store, effectively leaving the platform with no YouTube app at all. There was at least one third party client which was decent, but there was never another official one after that IIRC.

    • BarqsHasBite
      link
      fedilink
      English
      97 months ago

      Analysts are all about “product differentiation”. Everyone was Android, so the way to differentiate themselves was to go with windows.

      • @catloaf@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        07 months ago

        And sometimes that’s a bad idea, as seen here. Sometimes you do the same thing but do it better, like Apple and the iPod/iPhone.

    • 100
      link
      fedilink
      77 months ago

      yea it wasnt all done by microsoft, plenty of idiots high up at the company itself were doing dumb decisions from ngage to microsoft phone

    • @018118055@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      27 months ago

      Nokia sealed their fate when they spent $8bn on NavTeq. Switching to Android would have made the purchase valueless, and the people responsible for the acquisition were still in charge.

    • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      27 months ago

      Or they could’ve opened up their hardware so enthusiasts could make other stuff work. If Windows doesn’t work for them, someone will get Android running, or maybe something like Sailfish.

      I’m going to buy a Google Pixel, not because of the software features, but because I can easily flash something else onto it. I’m definitely part of a niche, but people have been modding consoles and whatnot in the mainstream for decades, so I think the community could help a company survive bad software if they open up the hardware enough.

  • Bigpete
    link
    fedilink
    347 months ago

    My Lumia 928 is still to this day the best phone i’ve ever owned.

    I absolutely loved everything about it from the OS to the Hardware. The only reason I moved on from it is because I had to for work.

    • @morbidcactus@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      27 months ago

      My 1020 was my favourite, had it in lemon yellow. Was the first phone I had with a camera bump, took really nice photos for a phone at the time and even shot in raw. I would love another phone with a polycarbonate body.

  • Dr. Moose
    link
    fedilink
    English
    317 months ago

    It almost feels like if it wasn’t for Microsoft Europe could have actually been a tech super power 🙄

      • @rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        127 months ago

        Of course it was, Symbian is pretty alive and well, Nokia is still one of the main names, then that guy comes, says it’s all burning, closes projects left and right, tanks the company, leaves to work in Microsoft. Oh, and I think he worked in Microsoft before coming to Nokia.

        At this point I’ve seen that your comment answered another one, and not about Elop, but I’ve already typed that… Yes, it absolutely could. Nokia has done so many cool things.

        Imagine if Maemo phones were a thing. Even if Symbian were still a thing. All that Android vs Apple crap would be happening somewhere far away in the tech third world, like shootouts in westerns.

        And since Maemo is Linux, MS would also eat shit.

        • @Yprum@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          97 months ago

          Yeah he worked in Microsoft before that and when he ended in Nokia the path was quite clear what it would be. But I’ve had the chance to talk with many engineers that were working at Nokia back in the day and the problems didn’t start because of Microsoft.

          Basically Nokia had the whole management divided between symbian, maemo, and windows mobile, and as they couldn’t agree on a future path all the efforts were divided. Symbian was quite a disaster at the end and it wouldn’t have gone far most likely, those that wanted to continue with it didn’t have a clear view of the changes coming in the mobile world.

          Maemo was great, really advanced, based on Linux, and working really well, maybe too advanced even, specially for your common users back then. The whole system was constantly put down and delayed and the first devices sold wouldn’t even work as a phone, only the 4th ended up with mobile connection, which didn’t help at all to make it useful (wifi was not as big as it is now) and sold.

          Finally there was Windows Mobile which was still starting basically then and had far less strength, but with the support of Microsoft behind it it was easier to push it out. I don’t understand why it still has such support when it comes to the UI, I personally never liked it and it felt too simplistic and boring, but the more options the better I guess. Of course once Microsoft managed to plant his own guy inside Nokia they managed to favor the balance towards Win mobile and the other two were left behind more and more.

          So Microsoft was a key part in what ended happening but they were not the ones that put Nokia in trouble. That was a lack of direction in the management level.

    • @vanderbilt@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      127 months ago

      Japan too. The U.S. Congress threatened Japan with a trade war if they didn’t shutter their TRON project to create a domestic Unix. Nowadays it’s almost entirely Windows, and Japan has stagnated in terms of technology. They might have another chance at it with the world searching for an alternative to Taiwan for semiconductors and the potential legal status of AI training in Japan.

      • @kureta@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        107 months ago

        N900 and Maemo were already awesome. There was absolutely no need to rewrite the entire operating system. Damn I am still angry.

        • @Yprum@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          47 months ago

          Maemo was so much better than any os coming after it… Meego was in my opinion the wrong path to take. I still miss the N900, what an amazing device it was…

      • @WildPalmTree@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        3
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        I was just waiting for the n900 whining so that I could join in. Damn, I miss my n900. It had flaws but for its time, it was amazing. With a good CPU, I’d buy it today in a heartbeat.

    • @umbraroze@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      77 months ago

      It wasn’t really Microsoft that killed Nokia’s cell phone division, but gave it the final blow that made the house of cards fall.

      Nokia was basically getting super arrogant. “Oh, trust us, we’re the #1 phone manufacturer on the planet. We know what’s best for the market”. They got caught completely pants down when iPhone came out. Despite the fact that they had already made successful smartphones (Nokia Communicator line). Despite the fact that there was this one small Finnish company that had made a touchscreen based phone and Nokia just laughed them off when they offered to help.

      Every move Nokia made after iPhone was basically playing catch-up with some really strange decisions.

      I believe that Nokia could have salvaged themselves if, instead of going with Windows Phone, they had just announced they’ll be Yet Another Android Manufacturer. But Nokia had to be special about it. They had invested in Ovi (app store) and Here (map service) and they just had to be special. (And even more ironic is that HMD Global is doing just fine as a maker of Nokia-branded Android phones these days.)

    • @Miimikko@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      77 months ago

      To be fair I think Nokia was already one foot in the grave before the M$ deal. Largely thanks to Mr. Ollila.

    • @You999@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      47 months ago

      To be fair, Microsoft only bought and killed off the phone division. The rest of Nokia is still around including their R&D department bell labs. You know the same bell labs that’s developed some little know inventions like C and C++, solar panels, the transistor, and UNIX…

      • @sus@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        5
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        Nokia bought the parent company of bell labs in 2016. By that point bell labs had already been completely restructured to the point that it has basically nothing to do with the historical bell labs.

    • @lanigerous@feddit.ukOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      117 months ago

      I had a Lumia with Win Phone (I forget the exact model & sw version) and thought it was great - it was super fast, lightweight and the battery life was decent but there weren’t many apps out there, at least not in comparison to Android

  • @Altomes@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    157 months ago

    I had such high hopes for Meego. I feel like even if Nokia moved to Android I’d have been thrilled, I like where they’re headed in the dumb phone market

      • @Altomes@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        37 months ago

        Oh no I’m aware, I had the n9, n900, and I regret not getting the n950 more than many things in my life. I like sailfish quite a bit but since I don’t live in EU I can’t exactly take full advantage of the android app layer

        • Rikudou_Sage
          link
          fedilink
          English
          17 months ago

          Can’t you use VPN? The Android layer works very well, though the lack of fingerprint sensor support gets tiring.

  • @TheFriar@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    117 months ago

    In that photo, does everyone else see the birth control phone in the upper right hand side of the pile? I remember the razr phone and the Nokia brick and the sidekick and all the weird little cell phones we used to have but…I’ve never seen that birth control phone.

  • Avid Amoeba
    link
    fedilink
    English
    87 months ago

    It was incredible watching it unfold, even more so from the offices of a smartphone competitor.

      • Avid Amoeba
        link
        fedilink
        English
        77 months ago

        Yeah and I do not recall knowing people who thought it would end well. It was universally viewed as a bad move as opposed to developing MeeGo or going Android.

        • @reddig33@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          5
          edit-2
          7 months ago

          It should’ve ended well. Someone at the top made a huge bungle of it all. Windows phone 7 and 8 were some of the best phones I’ve owned.

  • @mumblerfish@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    87 months ago

    I waited through meamo, meego, and tizen hoping for it to take off. Went with Firefox OS and Ubuntu touch instead, which had very little to offer. Not too long ago I felt I had to give up and go with android, and dream of a world where nokia would have taken the meamo/meego/tizen path instead.

    • Rikudou_Sage
      link
      fedilink
      English
      17 months ago

      Try SailfishOS, it’s the spiritual successor to MeeGo! And it’s usable as a daily driver.

  • @spookex@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    77 months ago

    Eh, doubt that much would change, they would be just another boring post-iphone glass slab seller with a slightly better camera

  • @Cossty@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    57 months ago

    I read some articles in the past that before was Nokia bought they worked on some new os. Idk if it was based on android, but I think it might have been Linux. I don’t remember. Microsoft, after the purchase, of course flushed it.

    • @targetx@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      227 months ago

      Maemo and later Meego yes… I had a Nokia N900 and it was an awesome phone. Basically Debian in your pocket, easily accessible terminal with root etc.

    • @nicolauz@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      47 months ago

      Meltemi. It was supposed to be OS for <100 Euro Linux devices.

      The second elop, or how he is known by his friends flop, saw it and saw it was good he killed it. Can’t have something cheaper and better then what daddy Microsoft has.

    • @Persi@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      37 months ago

      It would depend on whether you think elop was a Microsoft mole al along 😉.

      By the time of the Microsoft acquisition, focus had already shifted to Windows phones.

  • @Buffalox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    4
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    The Microsoft Windows Phone probably failed because we forgot to give it a real keyboard.
    -Balmer

    No he didn’t really say that, it’s a joke on how he laughed about the iPhone not having a real keyboard.

    • @fuzzzerd@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      27 months ago

      Windows phone keyboard was leaps and bounds ahead of iOS and Android. I still miss that keyboard. Swiftkey on android just isn’t the same.

      • @Buffalox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        17 months ago

        I was just about to post that there were Android phones with keyboards too, but I looked it up to be sure, and by god they are clumsy and ugly in comparison.
        Personally I love the screen keyboard solution, I find it very elegant and handy. But I admit I need a big screen for it, but I also like the bigger screen in general better anyway.

  • @cordlesslamp@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    37 months ago

    Nokia executive’s stubbornness to changes is responsible for its downfall. Can’t blame Microsoft entirely on this one.