Comment on [deleted]
protist@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
I had a Windows Phone and I loved it. Fight me.
IMO Microsoft made a decent mobile OS. I will give them that.
You know what else kicked ass and died too soon? Zune.
I really think both these were only bad because not enough people got them. Trying to enter a saturated market that already has two really big, established players is not easy.
Microsoft just really can’t go against Apple or Google.
I had a Zune. It was a phenomenal product. It was just priced too high and trying to compete in a market flooded with cheap MP3 players.
I think the video player functionality wasn’t as big a selling point as they thought it would be to the average user since you either had to purchase films from the store …or acquire them in other ways and convert them to a supported file format.
I still have my (working) Zune
Fucking loved the Zune.
I’ve still got my HD…best MP3 player made
The hardware was way ahead of its time. My 950 had USB C, wireless charging, a OLED WQHD display and a removable battery. You could even run the desktop edition of Windows 10. And that was in 2015!
You could even run the desktop edition of Windows 10. And that was in 2015!
If I recall correctly that was called “Continuum” and was a big goal for MS at the time. It’s why they kept the Windows 8 tiling style for the phone and kept the option to use the tiling style in Windows 10 early on because they wanted every version on every device to functionally work the same. That way, whether you were using a tablet, a phone, a laptop, a desktop, or some other as-of-yet-not-defined form factor, you’d have a “continuum” of experience that was unchanging. The goal was to have a phone you could plug into a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and use just like a PC.
I never had a Windows Phone, but I messed around with a friends, and I have to say, I never understood why they dropped their plans, it was ahead of it’s time and would have been a literal game-changer in the PC-use-space. I actually had really high hopes for the whole program at the time and was quite disappointed that they bailed on their plans and stopped developing the Windows Phone entirely, and by extension, their plans for Continuum. To this day that’s still my dream phone, one that’s essentially also a desktop computer in disguise.
Samsung toyed with this idea with DexDock and there is support directly on some modern phones with most USB-C docks.
I just tried this out on my Pixel 8 Pro…“Enable Desktop experience features” in Developer Options, reboot, plugged in Dell dock…got an android “desktop” on two monitors. They were mirrors of each other, but they were separate from the display of the phone, and they were in the monitors native res. Keyboard and mouse worked. Ethernet off the dock worked, too. It didn’t use the USB webcam I had plugged into the dock.
The UI could use some polish. Android doesn’t really have great mouse support or really any keyboard shortcuts, and the apps themselves are built for a handheld, touchscreen experience.
For example…Firefox for android…pages would default to mobile view, text scaling would be way high (can’t pinch-zoom to make it smaller) and well-known shortcuts like Ctrl+MouseWheel, Ctrl+L, Ctrl±, etc wouldn’t work.
It could be great.
I would personally love for my “desktop experience” to be a low-power, silent, cool-running system (especially nowadays, with Moonlight and Steam streaming and various “cloud gaming” services getting to be pretty damn decent if your network can handle it…and being docked means not needing wifi).
I would love to have my laptop experience be nothing more than a dock with integrated keyboard/touchpad/screen.
I would love for these to be the same system.
But it’s not there yet.
Oh yeah, it’s unfortunate how far behind Android is on this when Microsoft basically had it ready to go nearly 10 years ago and then dropped it because they were losing money on their phone department and not capturing any market share.
I honestly think Android isn’t cut out for it to begin with, because it was always a mobile-first OS.
They had a pretty okay thing going with ChromeOS and now they’re killing it in favor of moving Android to their PC line… which I personally think is the wrong move, but hey, I’m not that smart so what the fuck do I know.
I literally haven’t had wireless charging or an OLED screen since my windows phone. Man, I miss it
Okay but an OLED wasn’t exactly ahead of it’s time. Every smartphone had an OLED since like 2011 barring iPhone and crappier androids.
I had this Lumia 1020 and loved it.
No fighting here.
I get it. I owned a Zune and two models of windows phones. They were actually pretty great at the time.
Fight you? I feel sorry for you.
Worst or better, I had an ASUS Zenfone 2, with an intel x86 processor, was able to install Windows on the phone, natively.
Zune HD was amazing too
Same
It was a good phone
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
No, you already have some strange inner demons you apparently need to fight.
protist@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Counterpoint: Windows back then wasn’t as reviled as it is now. I also wonder how many of the people upvoting you ever even put their hands on one
magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
Counter counterpoint: Windows back then was Windows 8.
AnarchoSnowPlow@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
The problem with windows 8 is that with the initial release they wanted everything to be a mobile OS, even your desktop.
“Metro Design” lol
But it seemed decent for tablets and phones.
TachyonTele@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Oof
protist@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Counter counter counterpoint: Nothing stopped anyone from continuing to use Windows 7
Fedizen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think windows 8 got more hate than it deserved. Having cross platform metro apps was a genuinely good idea. Smaller OS size was a genuinely good idea.
Windows store and a bunch of changes to settings menus fucked it up along with questionable aesthetic changes.
Asetru@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Actually, the first iteration of that interface was Windows Phone 7 and it was pretty terrific.
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I sold phones in that era and had a coworker that loved them. I’ve been a tech guy the whole time, so I thought they were ok, but I didn’t trust Microsoft to not fuck it up. Stalman is always right and all that jazz…
genau@europe.pub 3 weeks ago
Are you aware that every windows update pushes a fraction of its user base to Linux/osx? Windows was Def always reviled. I personally quit after XP SP3 and first glimpses of Vista.
ekky@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Nice. The first computer I had all to myself had Vista, it thought me how to fix my own stuff after random crashes. I ditched Windows shortly after the end of support for windows 7, after having entirely skipped 8, and then witnessing Microsoft themselves skipping 9 for the shitshow that was 10.
protist@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
That fraction back then was much smaller than it is today
Banana@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I truly believe everything after Windows XP has been bad.