Microsoft's New Mobile Strategy: Create Windows-like App 'Experiences' For Smartphones (pcworld.com) 74
Microsoft is investing in Windows experiences on mobile devices, with a new app called Your Phone; a migration of Windows 10's Timeline productivity feature to phones; and an update to its launcher app for enterprises. The app, available on Android and iOS, is designed to provide a mirror of a phone straight to a desktop PC, and it will let Windows 10 users access texts, photos, and notifications from their machines. Features will vary depending on iOS and Android. From a report: While Microsoft is also expected to discuss some of the features of its next Windows 10 update (code-named "Redstone 5") at Build, the company indicated that it will be emphasizing cross-platform apps instead. Microsoft will discuss some of these in a Tuesday presentation by Joe Belfiore, who leads Windows "experiences" as the corporate vice president in the Operating Systems Group at Microsoft.
The idea, Belfiore said in a briefing in advance of the show, was that Microsoft needs to know what users are working on, across any device. "Whether you look at a Word doc on Android, iOS, or Windows, is irrelevant," Belfiore said. Belfiore was talking about Timeline, the feature that tracks your work in the Office apps or Edge, recording your activity in what Microsoft calls the Microsoft Graph. But Belfiore could have been talking about any hardware platform. Microsoft sounds like it wants to elevate Microsoft mobile applications to the level of importance of a PC -- making the actual hardware, and operating system, irrelevant.
The idea, Belfiore said in a briefing in advance of the show, was that Microsoft needs to know what users are working on, across any device. "Whether you look at a Word doc on Android, iOS, or Windows, is irrelevant," Belfiore said. Belfiore was talking about Timeline, the feature that tracks your work in the Office apps or Edge, recording your activity in what Microsoft calls the Microsoft Graph. But Belfiore could have been talking about any hardware platform. Microsoft sounds like it wants to elevate Microsoft mobile applications to the level of importance of a PC -- making the actual hardware, and operating system, irrelevant.
BSOD (Score:2)
Just my 2 cents
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Dude you need to get out of your little bubble more often and take a real good look at reality. You, and everyone else is free to do whatever you want when it comes to your technology choices. MS started life by doing exactly what they did in the past. They are creating products and services that are hardware and OS independent. At the beginning MS's only real competitor, Apple, went the other way and tied all their products and services to their proprietary hardware and software. Had it not been for the s
Re: Good luck with that ... (Score:1)
Paragraphs are your friend.
Ain't nobody got time for walls of text.
"Needs to know..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft doesn't "need" to know what you, I, or anyone else are working on. It's not a big deal to re-open a document on a different device without giving your life's story to Microsoft (or any other Big Cloud company).
This is just an excuse to loot your personal/corporate data under the excuse of a tiny bit more convenience.
Also, the functions of phones and "desktop" devices (not really desktops, could be laptops with a keyboard) are orthogonal. The first are for brief communications, (yes) talking, recording of data (e.g. fitness tracking), and media consumption. But they stink at content production, which "desktop" devices excel at. Try writing several pages on a phone or many tablets -- it amounts to torture.
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Microsoft doesn't "need" to know what you, I, or anyone else are working on. It's not a big deal to re-open a document on a different device without giving your life's story to Microsoft (or any other Big Cloud company).
This is just an excuse to loot your personal/corporate data under the excuse of a tiny bit more convenience.
Also, the functions of phones and "desktop" devices (not really desktops, could be laptops with a keyboard) are orthogonal. The first are for brief communications, (yes) talking, recording of data (e.g. fitness tracking), and media consumption. But they stink at content production, which "desktop" devices excel at. Try writing several pages on a phone or many tablets -- it amounts to torture.
Yep, I would never write that much on a keyboardless device. However being able to review a document I'm working with while on the run is great for me.
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Sure, but Microsoft doesn't need to know what I'm working on for this to work. I can open a copy of the document read-only from the cloud-storage (or private server) of my choice.
Fully agreed on this point, I prefer cloud storage servers with encryption keys I hold on to.
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Yep, I would never write that much on a keyboardless device. However being able to review a document I'm working with while on the run is great for me.
So you review documents while on the run? You review documents when you are technically multitasking?
Geez!!
I hope you are not not another one of those useless professionals (doctors, lawyers, erected officials, etc.) that charge sky-high rates for little to no obvious value.
Software engineer, making a little less than average for my experience according to glass door. Most of my document reviews are the papers I'm working on for graduate school, which I mostly pay for since I'm working full time too. Two jobs at once, and only getting paid for one, keeps one busy.
All your base^H^H^H^Hdata are belong to us (Score:1)
Title summarizes parent post.
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Also, the functions of phones and "desktop" devices (not really desktops, could be laptops with a keyboard) are orthogonal. The first are for brief communications, (yes) talking, recording of data (e.g. fitness tracking), and media consumption. But they stink at content production, which "desktop" devices excel at. Try writing several pages on a phone or many tablets -- it amounts to torture.
While I generally agrre with that statement, I often find that I write several pages of a document (think 12 in the last one I wrote) in my desktop-bound laptop (with true keyboard, true mouse, and external monitor in portrait mode). Then I let the documet simmer, and re-read it a few times, making a few edits here and there each time. And for re-reading and small editing, a Smartphone or tablet is a very convenient device, because it allows me to re-read and edit when there is time, or when inspiration str
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I can't believe I'm actually going to play devil's advocate on a post I actually agree with...
Microsoft doesn't "need" to know what you, I, or anyone else are working on.
This is true. However, browser-based productivity suites are very popular for lots of people. In addition, as much as you and I would be happier with some sort of a self-hosted compromise, like a partnership between OnlyOffice and Synology to make a browser based productivity appliance that's accessible from anywhere and stores data locally, the reality is that far too many people see Google Docs as $0 and no techn
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Does anyone assign children to write documents on a tablet? Chromebooks seem to be gaining popularity in lower education, while what I see in higher education is about a 30:30:30:10 mix. Macbooks:Chromebooks:Windows:Linux. Any of those things is closer in form factor to a laptop, not to a tablet or phone.
It would take much LONGER to write a paper on a tablet -- if I had a kid with that assignment, I'd show them how to type it on a real laptop, then copy the thing to whatever tablet their school was tryin
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Does anyone assign children to write documents on a tablet? Chromebooks seem to be gaining popularity in lower education, while what I see in higher education is about a 30:30:30:10 mix. Macbooks:Chromebooks:Windows:Linux. Any of those things is closer in form factor to a laptop, not to a tablet or phone.
It would take much LONGER to write a paper on a tablet -- if I had a kid with that assignment, I'd show them how to type it on a real laptop, then copy the thing to whatever tablet their school was trying to force down people's gullets.
I completely concur. However, "technology in education" is like Communism - one of those great ideas whose real-world implementation never, ever looks anything like the brochure. If a school was sold on a one-iPad-per-pupil solution, you'd better believe that the point of the assignment is to justify the purchase of the iPad, rather than for an educative activity to have been performed. It obviously varies from school to school, and I begrudgingly share your preference for Chromebooks to tablets in this con
I still don't know why we can't dock our phones... (Score:2)
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>> I'd love to dock my phone and use it like a desktop.
Have you tried this on your existing kit? A Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse works on my Android phone, as does a USB-C to HDMI adapter.
The trick is finding a bluetooth keyboard that doesn't suck.
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I would imagine this is why MS is looking to provide their apps everywhere and deprecate the device/OS. Your data is in OneDrive, and whatever you are working on is available immediately in their experience app.
leave that to Windows Phone (Score:3)
aka "failure." you broke the user experience in Win 8 and plowed it under and used it as an artillery range in Win 10. get rid of the idea that big-screen PCs and little-screen phones are the same thing, they aren't, and stop trying to graft Presentation Manager or Quantum on top of Windows.
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The worst thing about Windows Phone is not that it was crap, but that far superior Nokia MeeGo was cancelled to make way for it.
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aka "failure." you broke the user experience in Win 8 and plowed it under and used it as an artillery range in Win 10. get rid of the idea that big-screen PCs and little-screen phones are the same thing, they aren't, and stop trying to graft Presentation Manager or Quantum on top of Windows.
But if they do not do this, then how will they leverage their desktop monopoly onto smart phones?
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This could be really good. (Score:1)
If you're looking at Microsoft's offerings for business products, they're making a big push to provide a unified experience across platforms. With 365 you can have your office docs and email on smartphone apps, tablet apps, browser, and what I'm going to to call "Office Classic" - That is the old office suite that is both ancient yet ubiquitous and still commands a lot of revenue.
One account controls all of the above (Apps are free to download, and you log in to use them) and provides cloud storage so your
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Outlook Web Access and Teams on the web are pretty damn good except they're just too slow. We have a bunch of Surfaces without enough SSD space to install Office 2016, so we made those users use the web interface. The problem is the users are starting to rebel against it. We're considering going back to an older version of Exchange and back to Skype.
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If you're looking for speed I'm not sure that trying to wedge the-thing-that-will-not-die that is outlook2016 on to a tablet is going to give you much love.
It takes forever to load even with a very fast computer with a spinning rust drive. Yes, we buy $3k desktops that don't have SSDs since my boss won't less us buy laptops or desktops with one since we had a bunch of them fail suddenly without warning about six years ago. It takes about twenty seconds for the window to open after clicking on "New Email," but that's not a blocker.
One account controls all of the above (Score:2)
One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Does this scream too little to late? (Score:2)
This type of stuff reminds me of Terminal Emulator Apps who added GUI Buttons, and form like input boxes, to Make your old Console Terminal Based application look more like a PC App. The features are just to make sure people don't migrate off the old legacy system, and stop buying licenses for the Terminal Emulator. This is just screaming, Mobile makers don't make Windows irrelevant, we will give you this fancy tool so you don't go off Windows.
"experience" (Score:2)
That word shows they're a bit out of touch with what users want. They want programs and web sites to be reliable, fast, and have interfaces that make sense with features that are needed and without ones that don't make sense like "social" features.
Ever dealt with a user "experience" consultant? They talk a lot about how users feel or why they do things. It's never about getting actual work done. The five we've churned through wouldn't even look at web analytics. The last one refused since they claimed
Why is this so hard? (Score:2)
you already have models in Adroid and IOS, if it's the fact that you want a Windows kernel underneath for app developers then don't hold your breath Microsoft. Nobody wants to deliver for a platform that you constantly change or drop focus on from a business perspective. Of course Microsoft can port their own bloatware onto a phone with their own O/S but unless they pay third party developers to port popular applications, the app store will be a bit barren. Oh wait, that's like it is in Windows 10 now wit
still trying to get into the mobile space (Score:2)
OK, Microsoft finally realizes that they kinda suck at creating a mobile-specific OS, (WinCE, Windows Mobile, etc) and that full blast Windows isn't a good fit on a mobile device. This is good. But Microsoft still needs to be a player in this space, hence a mirror application rather than an OS. I can see where this would make sense to Microsoft strategists.
Thing is, with apps like Good (as much as I personally dislike it) that already give encapsulated access to Outlook, and are more well known and a lot
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It also occurred to me just now that Microsoft seems to be abandoning the "one OS to rule them all" approach and starting to concentrate on apps, which I think is a much better fit for the company moving forward.
If nothing else, this helps to "future proof" Microsoft technologies, as apps are easier to make work in radically different spaces than an OS is. (And with PC sales stagnant, having a presence in other spaces is doubly important.) Let Google and Apple continue to create the framework, and Microso
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The problem is they're prone to crippling apps that could be useful in the mobile space by chaining them to their own cloud services.
I find OneNote to be useful on the PC and it even manages to work with the documents synced with Dropbox, but it's chained to OneDrive, which I don't use. It would even be kind of useful if I had to manually import the data files.
You mean that experience nobody wants? (Score:1)
It is really fascinating. MS consistently delivers bad quality, ignores their customers, messes around, and _still_ they rake in cash like crazy...
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You've never wanted your text messages on your desktop or laptop without having to type on a phone screen?
So BlackBerry Blend? (Score:2)
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So.... (Score:1)
Zeitgeist, Gnome Activity Journal and Unity... (Score:1)
Isn't this just like Zeitgeist, Gnome Activity Journal or Unity Dash? I've been using Ubuntu on the desktop for a number of years now and using Zeitgeist, Zeitgeist Explorer, Gnome Activity Journal and more recently Unity Dash to look at my document and application history and context. These aren't my only "go to" methods for finding historical activity on my Linux system but they are nicely integrated and useful at times. I'm pretty sure that Zeitgeist has been around since before 2008 and Gnome Activit
Seventeen mentions of MICROS~1 on the frontpage (Score:3)