
Microsoft recommends switching to iPhone, Android as it kills off Windows phones - Varcht
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/18/microsoft-ending-windows-10-mobile-says-switch-to-iphone-or-android.html
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ThrowawayR2
Unfortunate news; though most won't miss it, I will. It was the last
smartphone option that avoided both the Scylla of Google's data vacuuming and
the Charybdis of Apple's pricey walled garden and their "my way or the
highway" design philosophy. Plus, the live tiles are actually useful in a
smartphone context.

Microsoft (and by that I mean both Arbogast and Myerson) was just plain stupid
to break app compatibility multiple times between Windows Mobile 6.x and
Windows Phone 10. What exactly did they think was going to happen to their app
count after pissing off their developer base?

~~~
scarface74
It’s _good_ to not keep app compatibility forever. When you don’t you get the
hodgepodge mess of Windows.

Apple has broken compatibility plenty of times and has been able to move its
customer base to the new platform.

~~~
mikestew
_Apple has broken compatibility plenty of times_

When Apple breaks compatibility, I have to tweak the Objective-C code I've
been toting around for ten years. When Microsoft broke WinMo compatibility,
you burned it to the ground and started over.

~~~
scarface74
Were you around for either the 68K to PPC transition, the PPC to x86
transition or have you had to move from Carbon to Cocoa?

~~~
mikestew
I was not writing Objective-C code for any of those on mobile platforms, which
is the topic at hand.

EDIT: though in rereading your original comment, it's a fair question. Yes, I
was around. No, I still don't think it applies. Even considering desktop, IMO
Apple made great efforts to make such transitions at least somewhat seamless.
In more than one instance, Microsoft's mobile message was: "that app won't run
on the new OS without a _lot_ of work."

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godzillabrennus
This didn't age well: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-celebrates-
windows-p...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-celebrates-windows-
phone-7-with-mock-iphone-funeral/)

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rchaud
Curious: Would there be any benefit to open sourcing parts of the OS, at least
enough so that it could run on mobile hardware of some kind?

I believe HP/Palm open-sourced WebOS after they abandoned the device market,
but nobody tried to build a Hackintosh type phone out of it.

Back then, that made sense as WebOS suffered from a lack of apps, but in 2019,
mobile web apps aren't the afterthought they used to be. I can call an Uber
and track the entire journey using their web app manifest ("Add to home
screen"). I'm using Uber as an example of a complex app that you wouldn't
think would work well as a 'website'.

With everything we know about Google's data collection/tracking policies, I'd
think there'd be some itnerest in having the option of hardware that ran a
non-intrusive mobile OS.

~~~
squarefoot
I would be far more interested if they open sourced the hardware of their
phones, or at least publish enough information that allowed developers port
other operating systems on hardware otherwise doomed to end in some third
world landfill.

~~~
petecox
Yes, it's generally a Qualcomm SoC underneath. Already several Lumias were
reverse engineered to run Android. [0]

A month ago, MS announced Project Mu - opening up their UEFI implementation on
github. [1] Extending that project to their legacy ARM phones would be the way
forward, perhaps.

[0] [https://www.xda-developers.com/microsoft-lumia-525-hacked-
to...](https://www.xda-developers.com/microsoft-lumia-525-hacked-to-run-
android-6-0-1-with-cyanogenmod-13/) [1]
[https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/12/19/%e2%80%afi...](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/12/19/%e2%80%afintroducing-
project-mu/)

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MiddleEndian
Windows Phone has been dead for awhile, really. I will miss it, WP8.1/8.2 was
truly the least bad mobile experience.

~~~
tluyben2
I haard more people saying that: I like the hardware but thought the OS was
awful.

~~~
MiddleEndian
I loved the OS compared to Android. It was very performant which made cheap
hardware seem fast. The OS was incredibly consistent, and it never badgered me
with useless notifications.

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lostgame
R.I.P. I loved my Lumia.

