Microsoft – Why have you abandoned us

Late 2012 I bought a Nokia Windows phone on a 2 yr contract. The OperatingSystem was version 7.1 and I thought I’d do some development with VB Express to make a few apps. Pretty quickly the severe limitations of the OS restricted further development and I moved on to Android which don’t have such ridiculous limits put on the OS for the device to pretend it has a better battery life.

I’m talking about a background running environment for 3’rd party apps.  Android has it, Microsoft’s OS for smartphones has not, Apple’s iPhone has one that is severely restricted.  Background running is the cornerstone of all fitness, tracking and logging apps. Without it you can’t get a continuous tracking, recording, logging or reporting of your position or activity. 

And what about the failures of the notification and alarm system. You can’t have a notification with an alternative sound, and an alarm won’t stop repeating without manual intervention. Where the management at MS deliberately trying to limit the availability of 3’rd party apps and the usability of the device. 

Microsoft is starting to see the folly of their ways and making some stuff available in newer versions, but it’s in 8.1 or even 10 of the OS. My Nokia smartphone is just 3 years old, of which 2yr was on a binding contract. It can’t take Windows 8 or higher, meaning it was left for dead by Microsoft even before the contract ran out. That quick abandonment, = OS upgrade stop, make it very difficult to move on to a newer hardware version. The trust is gone,. But worse than that, the market of potential users for apps utilizing the new features become severely limited. Further putting a damper on the incentive to make them in the first place. Even if the app uptake percentage might be higher because of the amount of abandoned users searching for new stuff in a limited market, the ad fill and value is shocking.

Problem is they treated smartphones like a phone instead of like a computer. OS for pc’s are kept updated for maybe 7 years..  And you can install the newest version of Windows 10 on pc’s that is even more than 5 years old. That Nokia was making the hardware is not an excuse. They took it over as a going concern, and surely for its dedicated customers.

You can follow my musings on the blog: http://vikingivestrled.blogspot.com

To have a look at our apps for Android, Apple(iPhone) or WinPhone, visit: http://www.moonc.mobi