Microsoft Surface Duo shows Linux is the future -- not Windows

[sman]

Microsoft Surface Duo shows Linux is the future -- not Windows

"https://betanews.com/2019/10/02/microsoft-surface-duo-linux/"

Windows is a massive failure -- in the mobile world, at least. Microsoft should have been a dominant force in smartphones and tablets, but no, it let Apple and Google eat its lunch with iPhone and Android. While Windows 10 is still a decent enough desktop operating system that keeps chugging along, Windows Phone died a bloody death -- consumers barely paid attention to it. Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile were utter embarrassments for Microsoft.

What can Microsoft do to save its mobile dreams? Turn to Linux, of course. Yes, with the upcoming Surface Duo smartphone (you can read about the dual-screen device here), Microsoft will be using the Linux-based Android operating system. This is a smart business move, but it must be absolute hell for the Microsoft faithful -- if Bill Gates was dead, he would be spinning in his grave.

[exile360]

The sad irony?  Had Microsoft never screwed up their perfectly usable desktop UI and forsaken it for a lame, dated looking tile based/touch friendly UI and modeled their mobile interface after their superior desktop experience in Windows Vista/7 (including a taskbar, multitasking to some extent, integrated shortcuts in a mobile version of the START menu including items like scrollable contact lists for quick calling/texting/email etc.) they could have outshined their competition long ago, but instead they made the same exact mistakes they made with Zune, Windows 8, and especially Windows 10: they sacrificed a superior user experience and everything they had already proven they were very good at (their core competencies) and through it all out to replace the experience with what they thought people wanted/needed in such devices.  The entire reason Apple keeps beating them so badly is because their devices are simple to use, often so intuitive that a normal, non-technical person can use it within minutes or even seconds of picking it up, and with the near universal familiarity the world has/had with Microsoft Windows and its START menu, taskbar, desktop and other common UI/UX elements and features they could have easily delivered an experience that was just as intuitive and familiar feeling as past versions of Windows, but instead they dropped the ball and sacrificed the usability of their core product Windows for those of us who appreciated what Windows was and how it worked for decades, being forced to interact with a user interface that was clearly NOT designed for a keyboard and mouse even though the vast majority of Windows devices to this day still have no touch screens (another of their 'predictions' that has failed to be realized; they thought the PC was dead and that it would be all smart phones, tablets and consoles by now, yet the population of PC gamers is actually growing, not shrinking, largely due to the fact that games on consoles have pretty much stagnated technologically and graphically because they are incapable of keeping up with modern PC hardware, largely due to their CPU and GPU cores which are based on very dated and frankly lackluster AMD hardware that wasn't cutting edge when it was new; though this will change with the next/upcoming console generation thankfully).

[sman]

Yes..it's a sad picture, why MS got it's WP act wrong and PC too getting hit..

On these lines, a Nokia engineer explains what went wrong with WP - 

Here are the real reasons Windows Phone failed, reveals ex-Nokia engineer

"https://www.zdnet.com/article/here-are-the-real-reasons-windows-phone-failed-reveals-ex-nokia-engineer/"

"There are many well known factors that caused WP's demise, none of them alone took it down, but here are the ones that stood out most to me," the engineer wrote in the Reddit post.

While Microsoft's failure to create Android would become Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' biggest regret, the engineer believes Microsoft underestimated Google and the value of services like Gmail, search, and Maps on mobile. Google in 2012 stopped funding efforts to make its apps for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.  

"Obviously Apple was red hot and Microsoft knew that, but Google was new to the OS business and they really weren't taken seriously enough. Android was pretty rough then, but the real value was Google's services; when Google cut Microsoft off of YouTube, Maps, Gmail, etc, it really made WP look cheap."

The second mistake was a "botched Windows 8" and the stigma over Microsoft's Metro interface, which arguably worked well on mobile with Windows Phone 7 touchscreen devices but wasn't well received when Microsoft put it on the desktop in Windows 8. 

"Before Windows 8, WP had a lot of people's curiosity. After Windows 8, people associated the two together as bad products even though the teams then were pretty independent, and things done poorly on Windows 8 were not reflective of how the experience was on WP. Even with Windows 10, the stigma against Metro never recovered," the former Nokia engineer wrote.