Despite being a devoted Microsoft and Windows fan since age five, my first four smartphones were the first four iPhones (1, 3G, 3GS, 4). I don’t think I need to explain how amazing the first iPhone was compared with the competition at the time. However, after four generations of it I was bored. What was exciting me was what I was seeing coming out of Redmond in the form of Windows Phone 7.
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Here I am almost four years and three handsets down the road and today I made the decision to leave the platform and return to iPhone. It’s basically been death by 1,000 cuts…
I went along with Windows Phone 7.x – heck, I imported an HTC HD7 from the US to The Netherlands on release day (it eventually took Microsoft like 18 months to launch in The Netherlands). I also went along with Windows Phone 8.
And I, too, am done. Bitten too many times by Windows Phone’s “just wait for the next version”. No more.
So a guy wants to be in Apple’s ecosystem, and it is somehow Microsoft’s fault that he is not with his Lumia. Also, apparently, Verizon’s treatment of Windows Phone is a property of latter, not the former. Of course author raises several valid points: lack of third-party support, lack of Microsoft’s dedication to its own platform, etc. But all of those issues were already there at the time of Windows Phone release. So basically author is bitching about something he willingly accepted before.
P.S.: And I am tired of people speaking about iStuff as if it was [far] better then competition, for all sorts of users… Every so often I even think about getting some for myself. Fortunately, soon after I get my hands on some iStuff, which normally suffice for driving me off for another half a year or so.
Not completely true. When I had a WP7 (besides an iPhone), WP7 already had some lightweight version of Office, the iPhone had no Microsoft Office. Nowadays, the latest Windows Phone 8 has pretty much the same Office functionality as WP7 (virtually no evolution), while Android and iOS have Word, Excel, and Powerpoint apps that blow Office on WP7 out of the water.
It was and is always hoped that things like third party app support improves with the platform’s success. But that didn’t happen for windows. He’s complaining about the lack of change to these items he accepted at the beginning with a faith that they would improve.
Well, to be fair, an original PalmPilot OS phone is better than Windows Phone! (and has more apps)
Ok… so Mark Osborn was a windows *fan* since age 5! I’ve been using Microsoft-based OSes since the late-80s and I have never been a fan. He also loved the Metro UI… I should have stopped reading after this. To me… serious Windows users have never been fans. They have always been vocal, angry, sophisticated users who change what they don’t like about the system and/or demand changes from Microsoft directly.
The reasons he’s turning his back on WinPhones – lack of apps, weak ecosystem, hardware options not on par with competitors (namely Apple). All of this was true since the beginning. Another reason is resale value??!! Seriously… Resale Value?!! These are all Apple-fanboy talking points. Nothing original here.
I’m surprised he didn’t specifically say I’m sticking with (the malware, spyware-infected) Windows *10* OS on my laptops. /rant
Really hate modern fanboys. Too many serious problems with most of today’s OSes (Desktop, Mobile) to be walking around with a sis*y-grin on your face about how great any of them are.
If Osborn wants innovation… start talking about what it is that you want and don’t let the market-leaders decide for you.
This is pretty much spot on. As a friend of mine likes to say, ‘I don’t like Windows… I like what I can run on Windows’. I just installed Windows 10 last weekend, and I’m already getting spam in the notification tray from Microsoft, trying to push Office 365, as well as random OneDrive prompts. I’m seriously thinking about upgrading back to Windows 8.1, because the price of free just ain’t worth this bullshit
As for Windows phone, I think this might be a bad time to jump ship since, AFAIK, Microsoft is going to be announcing Windows 10 mobile at an event on Oct 1st.
Which version of Windows 10 are you seeing this on? The Windows 10 Pro version I’m using doesn’t show me any spam or bug me about OneDrive.
Of course the first thing I did was the remove *all* the tiles and then replace them with the few programs I don’t pin to my taskbar.
Aside my rants on how much I loathe all Metro/ModernUI/Universal stuff there’s very little in daily use of Windows 10 that annoys me. Well, maybe except the privacy issues. And that its a state secret what is in the updates it applies.
It’s always sad to see kids so young ruined.
The Windows fan was something I discovered only about five or six years ago. Prior to that, I’d always assumed there were only people who tolerated Windows, and people who couldn’t tolerate Windows. Finding out that there were people who genuinely liked it was quite shocking.
You gotta step out of your bubble occationaly
How young are you? Its like people don’t remember the 90’s. With the exception of a small number of people, if you weren’t an apple fan, you were a fan of Microsoft/PCs. If for no other reason than a reaction to the annoying as heck apple guys.
And the truth was, that they were all annoying, crash prone systems where you were best off saving your work and making backups frequently. But at least windows systems were less expensive and easier to develop on.
Just because you tolerate things doesn’t make you a fan. And by the mid-90s, I was running Linux and Solaris 8 on PCs, where were *you* in the 90s?
I stand by that statement, evidenced by the Windows 95 parties. They didn’t just tolerate windows, they really did love it. The plus packs and themes of haunted houses and animated cursors. It was something that people really loved, despite the crashes.
There were a large number of people that didn’t know of anything else other than Windows/ Mac. The OS/2 commercials about nuns surfing the web were just confusing to them.
As for me, I was definitely in love with windows NT for a while, as well as OS/2, amiga, beos, and linux ( starting in 96) . They’re all interesting in their own ways. Mac was definitely my least favorite, as it was pricey and snobby.
Marketing played an important part in shaping your verion of (historical) reality, perhaps?
I have to admit I’m kind of shocked at this revisionist history that has people not believing the love people really had for windows. I think you’re all in denial.
With Microsoft’s entrenched situation in entreprise gear, with sharepoint, outlook…
I don’t understand how they could not manage to push that for expanding their reach.
They should have bought Blackberry instead of Nokia.
(Note that I don’t want Microsoft to succeed in keeping its monopolistic situation.)
Microsoft’s strategy was to deliberately ignore the “enterprise” and duplicate what they perceived as Apples consumer approach strategy.
What they did not realise was that Apple was not anti-enterprise, its more that Apple was avoiding direct dependency on Windows or it ecosystem
iOS user hoolahooping to edit a document: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4044866?tstart=0
For being a douche bag and posting the similar crap and personal opinion every few days. We get it, you don’t like how things are with Windows Phone, well get over it. I don’t come here to hear your personal rant, you moron!
Android was perfectly good at that time, and usb support was lacking on windows. The only thing I needed was rdp, and it sucked on the 920. All the other app things didnt bother me.
I used the browser. I dont even use facebook on android, almost a gig of crap for facebook! Windows phone had such a good browser, I logged into apple find my phone website on my 920 and it worked like a charm. It didnt work on chrome, firefox, safari or maxthon. Not my iphone, some lady had just lost it at an event. Yes i had all 4 phones available, my first instinct was to use an iphone(app is account specific, stupid apple, and website doest work on iphone), second chrome and maxthon on android, and finally internet explorer on my phone. It was fully functional, thats why i didnt need apps, flash was very badly needed, but android had dropped support for it too. Ultimately i lost the phone.. Could not find a windows flagship to replace it from the provider. They only had 820’s. I went back to android flagship. Also it didnt help that windows phones cost like $40 to unlock at wholesale prices and took weeks. The 1020 was not unlockable at the time.
I dunno, Windows Phone works great for me – not even looking forward for WP10, if it comes and is pushed to my device – great. But I have no reason to be dissatisfied with WP experience. Phone works the same as on the day I purchased it. Well, but then again, I am not your regular smartphone user as well. Using couple of apps and am OK with them.
If you are an app junkie, then yes you need to go to place with more choice. For me, the phone is for calling and SMSing. Don’t even remember when was the last time I launched the browser.
So the OS doesn’t matter in any way to you so why even comment? On Osnews?
No no, it matters a lot. WP is very nice, clean and elegant OS. Android is a mess and iOS is a massive pile of icons. WP matches perfectly to my sense of aesthetics and I deliberately choose WP. And then again, I am the guy who thinks that CDE is a beautiful working environment.
Edited 2015-09-15 09:52 UTC
I’m willing to read your argumentations to back up your assertions.
His arguments about his own personal preference, while admitting he is not a ‘normal’ smartphone user?
I think that’s all the argument you need. He likes it for himself. He’s admitting that. He even admits he’s not a normal user, so he does not expect to generalize his experience.
Sometimes a personal opinion is just that.
I have loved windows phone 8 and 8.1, but now MS has pushed Win Phone 10 to my phone, and it sucks. Wish I could go back to the 8’s
Three articles in about a weeks time where Thom is telling us how fed up he is about “just wait for the next version”.
This is the base of all hardware and software companies. They produce what they can to keep up with competition and then they improve over and over.
OS’s keep promising that they will be secure.
Browsers keep promising that they will be supporting the latest standards.
Programs keep promising that they will be more powerful, more userfriendly and more productive.
…and all of them continuously do that. Only very rarely do I look at a new version and think “nope, I am sticking with the old one because it was better”. Was the old version horrible? No, I got stuff done with it.
Was the new version better? Yes, I get more stuff done with it.
Will the next version promise to be even better? Sure.
Someday we will be able to replace default apps on iOS. And I will not have to cross my fingers when I submit something to the store.
Someday Android users will get updates. And be more resource efficient.
Someday Windows Phone apps will be on par with iOS and Android. And there will be new flagships.
In the mean time we can enjoy iPhones that are amazin all round phones.
We can enjoy the enormous diversity and choice of Android.
And we can enjoy the most useful homescreen on the best value for money Windows Phones
(and we can dream about all those other smartphone OS’s that could have been but didn’t make it for some reason)
Well, WP 8.1 works very fast and does all I need done, but while WP10 works, it is much slower and not as user friendly as the older system. Granted I have a very low line phone,(Nokia 521) but still if MS is forcing me to WP10 then it should at least be as “good” as WP8.x. If I want newer,”better” aps, then I can upgrade to a better phone, but it should be a choice, not a forced situation. I can revert to Window 8 or 7 on my computers, but no such feature on my phone.
You should learn the difference between a preview of a future OS and an RTM-ed OS. And if you are really running the previews you should have noticed a new build just out that apparently improved performance up to the level of 8.1.
…and you can revert to 8.1 (not 7) via Nokia tools (I guess now Microsoft tools)
> Someday Android users will get updates
This is already true if you have a Nexus device. Google needs to mandate timely updates guaranteed for two years minimum as part of certifying a device for Google Play.
Edited 2015-09-16 22:06 UTC
I’m amazed by the total lack of productivity arguments in that rant. Which I respect but I find that interesting.
Basically the guy is not telling that he’s not able to do something with Windows Phone or that it is slow or unreliable. He’s just saying that he is willing to pay the Apple tax (as he acknowledges and huge tax) to feel part of the tribe, to be able to say that YES! he has the latest update or the newest fart app.
I find that interesting, really. It explains very well the aura that Apple was able to create on some customers. I would feel “ingenuous” if I was thinking like that, treating a smartphone like a perfume (it is not useful at all but makes you feel cool) but this is interesting nonetheless.
It is also totally inaccurate, especially on apps where most of people pretend not see (or really can’t understand) that Microsoft locked app makers in by unifying the stores, basically stating that if they can’t update on Windows 10 mobile, they can’t update on Windows desktop, but still this is an interesting reading to explain what Apple tried to do.
Given the volumes of Apple sales, I guess the guy is a bit late in joining the tribe but hey… do what makes you feel good !
Edited 2015-09-15 13:04 UTC
If Microsoft is willing and bold enough they could launch a Surface Pro Phone targeting buisiness users and power users the like.Who cares who has the most apps in store? It’s all about the right ones.
Disclaimer – I have never used Siri.
Cortana, connected to a bluetooth in car system, is about 1,000,000 more useful than Google Now. It works how I always hoped Android would.
To be clear (for the down voter):
When I receive an SMS, Cortana will offer to read it… Google Now, does that feature even exist? (never seen it happen.) When it reads the text, Cortana asks me if I want to reply, delete etc… and actually understands my response.. Google Now, after I’ve read the text message whilst trying to drive (no, I don’t do this – but I would have to..) I have to activate the reply using clunky voice request. When I speak my reply, Cortana keeps prompting me for the next stage in the process (add more, start over, discard), Google Now sometimes prompts me, but often expects me to tell it to do more instructions prefixed by “Ok Google”. Cortana isn’t perfect at recognising my speech (but does a damn good job in general) but Google Now has gotten worse recently. Also, my girlfriend has a non-English accent and Google really doesn’t understand a word she is saying; Cortana has a pretty good track record with transcribing her accurately.
I don’t know – maybe something wasn’t correctly enabled on my Android phone, but it’s stock Nexus 4 with latest updates to Lolipop….
And they should have said it by Windows Phone 8. It was ages behind Meego, with no plans to catch up, and its one highlighted feature compared to Android was ‘smooth scrolling’ (which never amounted to anything but a huge exaggeration).
Too bad SP7 for NT 4.0 never made mainstream. Win2K really wasn’t exciting to me. And XP I adopted early so our hiccups in the enterprise could be figured out. XP’s crappy lockdown of the registry was such a pain early on, with it denying the user rights to his own settings. And then that dang invisible character feature in the registry and folder names really was a bitch as malware quickly hid behind it. NT was so straight forward in comparison.
Win2K Pro was a much more solid release for me. I used it far longer than NT4. Win2K unified the UI more with the 9x branch and removed the last of the NT3.1-isms. The Control Panel was a good example of this.