
Nadella talks Microsoft's mobile ambitions, Windows 10 strategy, HoloLens - cheerioz
http://www.zdnet.com/article/ceo-nadella-talks-microsofts-mobile-ambitions-windows-10-strategy-hololens-and-more/
======
shadowmint

        So to me it's very important to think of our operating system 
        more broadly than some old definition of an operating system.
    

Well, you can call it whatever you like, but basically it boils down to the
same thing: we want to own services.

From iOS. From Android. From windows devices. Everyone needs the same web
services.

I also like this quote:

    
    
        The fundamental truth for developers is they will build if there are 
        users. And in our case the truth is we have users on desktop.
    

I think Nadella is making a lot of pretty smart moves here; and much of that
seems ambivalent about the success of Windows Phone, because it's about the
success of Microsoft, not just one facet of their business.

Seems like a smart strategy to me.

~~~
pavlov
_... ambivalent about the success of Windows Phone, because it 's about the
success of Microsoft, not just one facet of their business._

Isn't that the approach that got Microsoft left out from the mobile boom, even
though they were present in the market continuously?

Between 1995 and 2007, Microsoft had a competitor in every race in mobile:

\- Clamshell + keyboard mobile devices à la Psion (Windows CE, "Handheld PC"
[1])

\- Stylus-driven PDAs à la Palm (Palm-size PC [2], Pocket PC [3])

\- Stylus-driven smartphones à la Symbian (Pocket PC 2002 [4])

These products were about the success of Microsoft and its strategy, rather
than building successful mobile devices that users want. And it didn't work:
competitors eventually came out with devices that were desirable on their own,
not just as Outlook terminals.

The success of iOS and Android forced Microsoft to reset their mobile platform
into a product-oriented design that became Windows Phone 7. For the first
time, Microsoft was offering a mobile OS that stood on its own rather than as
a piece in Microsoft's chess game of technology stacks.

That didn't work either, but at least the product was good. Now Microsoft is
throwing away the holistic approach of Windows Phone and reverting their
mobile efforts back into the earlier strategy-driven "chess piece" mode. I
don't see how that will help anything, but I guess it sounds good in Microsoft
board room PowerPoints.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handheld_PC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handheld_PC)
[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm-
size_PC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm-size_PC) [3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPAQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPAQ) [4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_PC_2002](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_PC_2002)

~~~
shadowmint
Fair point, but what would you suggest as an alternative at this point?

Double down on windows phone, despite all the metrics saying its a failure?

Create more crippled RT devices that no one wants?

Create an entirely new mobile OS which is open source for 3rd party vendors
like android's successful model?

The current approach ('If we make great phones, they will come...') has
failed.

The new 'services on everything' approach is certainly risky; if you don't own
the platform, you risk being turfed by the owner if you get too big / too
popular... but it seems plausible. I know a lot of people who use onenote and
office on their devices. Being ubiquitous is the key, not having some
technically sophisticated devices that get no consumer uptake.

It's easy to critique, but _tangibly_ what you suggest as a proactive
alternative for them?

~~~
pavlov
I'm not sure if there's any solution left that would make Windows a success on
phones, so I'm criticising Satella's ambivalence around this core issue.

Satella acknowledges that the Windows Phone model hasn't worked, but seems to
believe that reverting to Microsoft's old 2000-era model would eventually make
it a success.

I guess, if I were suddenly appointed as circus leader in Redmond, I would
just pull the plug on Windows 10 Mobile since it's been fatally wounded by the
recent announcements anyway. The phone hardware division bought from Nokia has
been entirely written down as a loss, so maybe I'd give them a year to build
something that makes sense for their customers -- maybe an Office-centric
Android device.

I'd probably try to peddle the ex-Nokia division to some large company that
still wants to make phones for strategic reasons. There's one in Microsoft's
home city actually. Maybe Amazon could reboot their Fire Phone using the Lumia
brand, distribution reach and the Finnish hardware competence that still
remains?

------
stinos
I especially like the paragraphs where he explains his view on 'the desktop is
not dead'. Which I personally find nice to hear because I'm a bit sick of
hearing the opposite 'desktop is dead' which, at least in my branch(es), is
proven wrong every single day and will continue to be proven wrong for years
and years to come.

 _And when you saw the demo of HoloLens today, to me it 's part of my mobility
strategy. When the person was using Autodesk and Maya on the desktop and just
moved to a 3D model and interacted, they weren't using their phone.

If anything, one big mistake we made in our past was to think of the PC as the
hub for everything for all time to come. And today, of course, the high volume
device is the six-inch phone. I acknowledge that. But to think that that's
what the future is for all time to come would be to make the same mistake we
made in the past without even having the share position of the past. So that
would be madness._

Interesting as well is the next paragraph which is basically 'desktop is not
dead, though desktop pcs/laptop are not always the most appropriate form
factor and this is what we are going to do about it'

 _So when I think about our Windows Phone, I want it to stand for something
like Continuum. When I say, wow, that 's an interesting approach where you can
have a phone and that same phone, because of our universal platform with
Continuum, and can, in fact, be a desktop. That is not something any other
phone operating system or device can do. And that's what I want our devices
and device innovation to stand for._

Ambitious.

~~~
threeseed
I actually would like to see Microsoft go against popular wisdom and build
their own PC desktops/laptops. The quality of the Apple experience e.g.
keyboard, trackpad, build quality, poorly coded bloatware, stickers etc blows
away anything in the PC space. Let the OEMs own the cheap and nasty space but
actually build something that enterprises would want to roll out and workers
would love to use.

The Surface is nice and all but for those of us that use a PC on a desktop for
95% of the day it isn't an optimal choice.

~~~
pjmlp
Sorry but Apple keyboards just suck for programming.

Apple once the steward of ergonomic keyboards now has nothing that could match
either Microsoft or Logitech offerings.

~~~
ectoplasm
Those are still nothing next to a Kinesis Advantage (LF).

------
jorgecastillo
>Then on top of that, to me, one of the great structural pieces is we don't
have with Windows is this problem of Mac OS/iOS. I'm not in some quest to say
let me try and replicate Mac OS and iOS or iOS and Mac OS. We don't have the
Chrome versus Android.

I love the direction Microsoft is going. I almost feel like this is a new
company totally different from the Microsoft of the past. But I seriously
disagree with this we are Windows mantra. Having two different operating
systems one for desktop another for mobile is a no brainier. To date my
favorite Windows is still 7. Frankly I don't see the point of WinRT in the
desktop.

I think Windows Phone will never be able to compete with Android/iOS. But a
good restart would be to make Windows Phone less restrictive (side loading)
and to make the SDK compatible with Windows 7.

~~~
AdeptusAquinas
Having a core set of shared services and more importantly a code framework
that works without specialised versions on every windows device is much, much
appreciated from a developer perspective - but whether thats what he is
talking about or actually a single version of windows that adapts to each
device I am not sure. The latter seems like it would be very hard or even
impossible to do, or at least do well.

That being said, yes please make the windows phone less restrictive :) I've
developed for Android, iOS and WinPhone and the WinPhone with C# and VS is by
far the friendliest, but absolutely hobbled for practical use by their
insistence on going via the store. My clients are businesses, not joe public!
Businesses want a single, easy to control deployment to all their devices via
powershell or similar. They want to be able to test an app in a UAT deployment
to test devices, not effectively require it to be in production before they
can see something outside of the developers machine.

------
tsunamifury
Microsoft, despite what is going on, is functionally dead on its feet in the
consumer space.

They have no plays in the key future markets of identity/social, app
data/behavior, web content consumption or advertising, online retail or media
distribution.

They sell windows licenses and enterprise services

And with that they have a lot of great stuff, but strategically they have
nothing at all in the consumer space other than Xbox. Hololens, the Surface,
some car-plane-phone thing or more MSR vision videos are not going to swoop in
and change the game. They have no foundation to build on in the consumer
market, and seem to act like they don't even notice.

~~~
tacos
We live in a culture where "take your work home" is accepted however "bring
your toys to work" is not. Bigger picture Microsoft has far more consumer than
Apple has enterprise.

The takeaway from Satya is "Look, we don't have to win everywhere, broadly.
It's okay to focus on a few great scenarios sometimes."

This is a smart way to set expectations with investors while encouraging more
nimble thinking inside the company.

~~~
bentcorner
_> "bring your toys to work" is not_

Isn't "BYOD" a growing phenomenon in the workplace? I think Microsoft chasing
mobile is them trying to defend enterprise from Apple/Android handsets.

~~~
tacos
Yes, and that's exactly one of the things Satya talks about. If people are
using Outlook as a Gmail client on iOS and it's enforcing corporate data
retention policies via Azure Active Directory then who cares how many iPhones
sold to consumers that quarter. The more the better.

Microsoft thought they had to defend the enterprise from iPads, too. Nope,
they just needed to make PowerPoint run great on the damn things.

The broader point is that people are bringing their work home and to the
extent that Microsoft makes the best productivity tools, they'll never lose
"consumer." They get that for free.

When consumer trends change, maybe they'll catch one. Maybe Sony will. Maybe
Samsung. But that's really not the front line battle anymore.

------
Zigurd
While Nadella is doing the right thing for today, at some point Microsoft will
have to divide the past - Windows - from the future. Courier could have done
that for mobile devices. Something like that will need to happen because PCs
are on track to become a < 200M unit/year business, which would be less than
15% of mobile unit volume.

Microsoft will find that making a universal desktop-to-phone OS is in
practical terms not doable. It is a car-boat-plane.

~~~
WorldWideWayne
Not doable because you don't like the idea or something else? What's your
thought on this?

I like the idea of running mobile apps on my desktop and my Windows tablet.

~~~
Zigurd
The attempt to have "Windows everywhere" is what sank Windows Mobile and
Windows Phone, and what made Windows 8 a flop.

~~~
crandycodes
Win8 didn't really deliver on the Universal OS concept. There is a difference
between "'Windows' everywhere" and " __Windows __everywhere "; though it will
be interesting to see if that's enough to convince customers to use the
extended platform.

------
andrewmcwatters
I like that Nadella is trying, but he's so disconnected that it's essentially
all worthless. He considers Windows 10 to be the all-encompassing platform
across all devices. Except this isn't even remotely true.

He wants Microsoft to focus on a mobile-first world, but the world isn't
mobile first, and a cloud service approach for Microsoft is equally as
worthless unless you're talking about enterprise environments. I mean who does
he intend MS market to otherwise? And when you're talking enterprise, you're
talking about not just an ecosystem, but a culture, of people who do not want
their data handled by third-parties, even if that third-party _is the platform
owner itself._ Amazon and Google dominate cloud space. Microsoft doesn't
compete in any meaningful way here. And Azure? Please.

So what is Microsoft's goal with mobile? To compete? With who? Google? Apple?
What a joke. Microsoft is essentially not even in the market.

What the hell is Nadella trying to do? I mean great job trying to unify
Microsoft's brands, but that's all marketing that doesn't add up to anything
other than product consistency. They've got nothing new to show other than a
culture shift attempt.

------
shmerl
_> So we want to be in every device, not only have our application endpoints
on every device._

That sounds scary (coming from MS).

 _> I want that to translate into success for our developers. That's what's
going to get them to write to the phone._

You know what can translate into success for developers? Supporting Vulkan,
instead of pushing unportable DX12.

 _> Because all of this comes down to how are you going to get developers to
come to Windows. If you come to Windows, you are going to be on the phone,
too. Even if you want to come to Windows because of HoloLens, you want to come
to it because of Xbox, you want to come to the desktop, all those get you to
the phone. It's not about let's do head-on competition. That will never work.
You have to have a differentiated point of view._

Reduce lock-in, support better cross platform development, and more developers
will come to Windows. Lock-in isn't going to fly as something that developers
will appreciate these days.

~~~
Impossible
_You know what can translate into success for developers? Supporting Vulkan,
instead of pushing unportable DX12._

The days of the average developer writing directly to a low level 3D graphics
API are long over, so this is mostly irrelevant. Even so, the funny thing is
it's likely that once Vulkan ships, writing a Vulkan only Windows game will be
viable as long as AMD, Nvidia and Intel have decent Vulkan drivers even
without Microsoft support. Using Vulkan on Mac might be impossible, as Apple
is pushing their own proprietary API, Metal, on Mac OS X.

~~~
shmerl
_> writing directly to a low level 3D graphics API are long over, so this is
mostly irrelevant._

Not really, and it depends on studios and developers. Firstly, engine
developers can't avoid dealing with those APIs. And dealing with multiple
increases their burden and is simply a pointless multiplication of effort
which could be avoided. Secondly, some studios can afford developing their own
engines, so it's not irrelevant even if we aren't talking about commonly
licensed engines like Unreal, Cry or Unity.

 _> the funny thing is it's likely that once Vulkan ships, writing a Vulkan
only Windows game will be viable as long as AMD, Nvidia and Intel have decent
Vulkan drivers even without Microsoft support._

In the context of the interview, I doubt Vulkan will be available on Xbox and
MS mobile devices, unless MS will suddenly rethink their lock-in attitude. In
the best case scenario someone will create a Vulkan → DX12 translation layer
(similar to ANGLE), since actual APIs aren't that different functionally.

~~~
pjmlp
In the context of the interview, I doubt Vulkan will be available on PS4 and
Android mobile devices, unless Sony will suddenly rethink their lock-in
attitude.

In the context of the interview, I doubt Vulkan will be available on WiiU and
3DS mobile devices , unless Nintendo will suddenly rethink their lock-in
attitude.

It just doesn't matter when game engines are available and writing a plugin
render APIs is just like CS 101 graphics programming, being done since Atari
brought games into homes.

~~~
shmerl
_> It just doesn't matter when game engines are available_

They don't grow magically out of nowhere. To make them available, someone has
to develop them for each target platform. And multiplying APIs in the process
doesn't come for free.

~~~
pjmlp
That how the lucrative industry of porting games came out to the in the
mid-80's and it won't go away.

Succeeding in the games industry means thinking like the Demoscene culture,
not FOSS culture. I got to learn that too late.

