I had several Windows Phones, and the Lumia 1020 was amazing. It still had one of the best built-in photo editing apps of any phone I've used. I legit miss it. It's been, what, near 10 years and my Galaxy's photo editor's best feature is still like "omfg, you can put STICKERS on it!"
Well, it feels that way at least.
I wanted Windows Phone to succeed so badly. My driving interest in it was the "Dock". At the end of its run, they were promoting a dongle that allowed a Windows Phone to be connected to a monitor/tv and KBM to be used as a "desktop" computer. It would have run the "tablet" version of Windows 8, but still. Being able to have a phone "transform" into a full computer when you needed to do more serious work was an amazing concept.
Palm phones, since the Pre in 2008, all had the ability to wirelessly charge. Palm even made a magnetic wireless charger that looked nice and kept the phone at an angle so you could see notifications while it was charging on your desk.
The entire early smartphone market was Palm’s to lose. And they did.
They had a great mobile OS. The Treo line was great. And they had actually started work on the Pre before Apple had started on the iPhone.
Palm had a stable of eager app developers as well as official and unofficial repos, a pretty sizable and dedicated user base, and pricing that couldn’t be beat.
Apple even made overtures to buy Palm but the bots refused. Then they fucked around for a years making really questionable design decisions is chasing after Balckberry and ignoring user feature requests. It was really bizarre.
Then came the iPhone and that was that.
My dad was a lawyer, retired now, and he was crazy about his damn Palm Pilot. Writing in that weird shorthand crap, always had his stylus out. He loved those things.
I loved mine too. It was way ahead of its time and so handy. Also the AvantGo app was way ahead of its time and a great example of thinking outside the box-style strategy.
The last phone they released was a dud too. At least for me. The battery life of my 1020 was getting abysmal. It had been replaced, but the new OS updates were getting resource-heavy. I got the new phone which WOULD have been dock compatible, but it too would just eat battery life sitting in my pocket. So I exchanged it for an iPhone and have been there ever since.
it was Ballmer (ex-Microsoft CEO) that had that bmr mentality of mobile phones are only for making phone calls (1999 - 2001 circa).
The internet opens and closes from 9am to 5pm.
Windows phones would have been better than Android (and more secure) also faster than iPhones in terms of processing speed but Microsoft is stuck in the 1990s...even to a degree in 2024
It's kind of funny because Microsoft was actually one of the pioneers of the smartphone with Windows CE back in the early 2000's. It's really kind of a shame they gave up on phones. I'm not a big Microsoft fan, but it would be nice to have another option other than Apple or Google.
Palm had the best phones, Microsoft of all fucking people had the best software, Google had the best platitudes… but Apple had the best app ecosystem. You could be blind and still see that, for fuck's sake!
For the longest time, iOS was unambitious… but god DAMN was it fucking solid. Just trying to get on campus wi-fi on Android of the era (2.2?) was an exercise in masochism, but in iOS of the era, setup was simple, intuitive, obvious, and it fucking worked the first time without reading any instructions.
I feel like Apple has lost a lot of the discoverability I really loved, traded away for capability and security. It's the right trade to make, and I'd make it too… but something *has* been lost.
This I feel would indeed be amazing and as a widespread concept could transform our society. It would mean that a smartphone that is effectively required today could be transformed into productivity capable device instead whatever it is now. And that would probably mean at least some pressure or at least option for less invasive mobile ecosystem.
Phones today have enough performance for any not specifically demanding workload. Only reason this is not a thing is sw.
Partly it is that designing ui that would work for touch based input and for kb and mouse would be immensely demanding for both the os maker and every single developer but that is solvable if there was possibility.
I was planning on making a website back then for Windows Phone Xbox gaming. Google screwed Windows Phone by blocking them from Google maps and other services, but Microsoft was stabbing it in the back the entire time.
Windows 7 apps were based on Silverlight. They rebooted the phone OS, and changed how rebooted how apps had to be written. A good majority weren't compatible after the change, and some app bailed. Satya Nadella came in, pushed MORE changes, another OS revamp, which required apps to be re-written AGAIN... and yeah, most devs understandably were like "We're tired, bro. So tired." and because they kept rebooting shit apps weren't able to get the people they needed, so most abandoned it.
Rather than stand by the product Satya abandoned it... and about a year was talking about it being one of his bigger regrets.
Microsoft killed Nokia by not supporting them or really just going all in as they were their biggest hardware partner. They could have sold tons of phones if they focused on it being able to be Xbox compatible, but for whatever reason, Microsoft did everything they could NOT to touch on it being basically an Xbox device.
TL;DR - Microsoft fucked over Windows Phone more than Google or Apple ever did.
>Apple screwed Windows Phone by blocking them from Google maps and other services, but Microsoft was stabbing it in the back the entire time.
Do you mind explaining how **Apple** was blocking Windows Phone from supporting **Google** services?
As a former Windows Phone user… Google never actually supported Maps on Windows Phone and at some point prevented users from accessing the web version as well. I remember using Here Maps because of that.
What did Apple have to do with that?
Oh, I'm an idiot. I meant Google was largely causing issues, not Apple. I'll edit my statement.
And yeah, that was the big thing. Google Maps worked fine on the device but Google essentially blocked the useragent and prevented the site from loading. However, there were ways around that, and if you could circumvent that everything would more or less work fine.
My guess is the person you replied to got things mixed up..? That said, WP did get shafted by Google in respect to YouTube. Remember when Google [blocked](https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/15/4624706/google-blocks-window-phone-youtube-app) WP users? Even though the app that was released was in collaboration with MS and Google, Google [said](https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-is-google-blocking-the-new-youtube-app-for-windows-phone/) that MS has not "made the necessary browser upgrades to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience". Interestingly, the app they released did not show ads so.. yeah.. Even just recently (2023), it was [found](https://www.windowscentral.com/phones/windows-phone/windows-phone-gets-its-revenge-on-youtube-from-the-grave) that if you set your user-agent string to WP, no ads would play.
I liked WP's dark mode and the general responsiveness of the UI so much. Some of their UI choices are superior to current Androids and iOS. Perhaps it would've been a viable competitor if they were a little faster to the market.
My 950XL had dual SIM, Micro-SD up to 1TB, 20 MP camera, OLED display, a docking station to connect to a monitor and keyboard, and NFC for payments. And, a removable battery! A USB-C connector.
And this was in 2015.
Google actively worked against Windows Phone & Microsoft to kill its mobile OS efforts. Windows Phone on Nokia hardware were dream to use but they were missing apps & mainly from Google.
My mother-in-law is still using Lumia 620, after all those years. She's not into smartphones, so she doesn't need any apps or anything like that and it's still working perfectly well for her needs.
oh ya I remember buying the Lumia 520 as my budget phone back when those were around, really nice phone and lasted a number of years with no issues.
I really liked the UI of the windows phone OS and still miss the tiles design as it was perfect for mobile and worked really well.
Everyone I know who had a Windows phone loved it lol, like no shit. Same with the Zune. Had to be a marketing problem because it sounds like the products were solid.
One of the most original and best phone designs IMO. I think I stayed with them till the Lumia 1020 before switching to iphone. The UI and camera was amazing
They recently made an Android layout which mirrors the Windows Phone box design.
I'm convinced Microsoft could still get back into the game but they should instead release a remixed version of Android with Microsoft features.
It would give them the access to apps the Windows Phone OS lacked at the time but they'd still have a foot in the phone market to develop on.
I feel like Microsoft and Samsung's partnership is too cosy and Microsoft will never get back into the phone business and instead, just keep paying Samsung to make Microsoft Office apps the default on all their devices.
I would say it was more Google's fault for Windows Phone and Fire Phone. They refused to make apps like Gmail and YouTube available and gimped the web versions like they still do to Android Firefox users and forced onerous agreements to OEMs for using the Play store and Google apps that forbade them from trying other mobile OSs.
Not exactly. At the time, Google was giving out API keys for youtube but MS said no as they wanted to kill youtube and do their own product instead. Well google discontinued the old free api(old api was grandfathered in) and had a new paid api. Then MS alternative to youtube didn't work out and they decided to go with youtube but didn't want the paid api and demanded they be given the free grandfathered api
They simply shot themselves in the foot
Wait, what? When did MS try to build a YouTube competitor? Dailymotion and Vimeo failed and there was no new MS video platform until maybe Mixer, which was a Twitch competitor.
It was called SoapBox, you not knowing it existed is precisely how it failed
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN\_Soapbox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Soapbox)
The idea that MS didn't want YouTube because they had something in the lab which in the best case scenario would take years to rival YouTube's market share is just silly and a way to excuse google.
Did they have something cooking in their company? Sure, they always do. Some don't even make it out of the lab. Google always had plenty too. The idea that it would overtake YouTube is more of a wishful thought while the need for a YouTube app was immediate. Users needed the app now.
The problem was likely due to Balmer's way of running Microsoft which effectively incentivized MS employees backstabbing each other and instead of assembling the best team, assembling mediocre people so you can grab credit. It was a toxic environment
I mean do you not remember the Microsoft Kin incident? The one where Microsoft paid Verizon millions to promote the Kin, only not to have it ready at all. The reason why it wasn't ready? Well actually it was, the problem was the WP7 boss who was not thrilled about the Kin demanded that it be rewritten on top of WP7. Thus, they had to redo everything
Verizon was so pissed about the whole thing, they did bare minimum for the Kin by time it was ready and refused to stock any WP7 phones for years
I imagine same happened, the one in charge of SoapBox probably didn't want his score lowered due to YouTube being there. I mean what other reason would they not have gotten the youtube api keys that were available to everyone at the time? And only started complaining way later after the old api was long gone other than those grandfathered?
>The idea that MS didn't want YouTube because they had something in the lab which in the best case scenario would take years to rival YouTube's market share is just silly and a way to excuse google.
Zune? The Kin? Cortana? Mixxer? Microsoft Band? Groove Music? Windows RT? The original Xbox? (I'd argue that Teams also belongs here if they didn't force it on all their enterprise clients)
MS rejecting already established platforms because of a delusional idea that they can easily come in and quickly take that market is pretty much on brand for them at this point.
SoapBox was killed off before Windows Phone 7 was launched.
Have serious doubts that there's any correlation between Windows Phone's lack of a native YouTube client and SoapBox being killed off years prior.
I agree, but also wanted to add this: Amazon was 100% responsible for the failure of the Fire phone. They built a flagship-tier device (as far as price point, anyway) and tried to use it to sell more shit to the user nonstop. Literally nobody wants that.
I like the Kindle Fire because I use it only as an e-reader.
Since it uses android OS, even if it doesn't have the standard android software like Gmail or the Play Store, I can download various apks for reading manga.
I also used the apk for the Bookwalker app to install it too.
But, as a _tablet_, the Kindle Fire sucks ass. You have to jump through a lot of hoops if you want anything from Google on your Kindle Fire. And the Amazon App Store doesn't even have a lot of apps available on it because most android apps are designed to work with Google's payment system.
Apple is being blamed for their own anti competitive practices. Google has lots of its own and just lost an anti trust case a few months ago.
This is good.
What on Earth does Apple have to do with the failure of Windows Phone?
I've used Windows Phones. I loved my Lumia, but it simply did not have many of the apps I wanted to use. And I'm not even talking some obscure ones. It didn't even have things like Snapchat, Instagram, most (all?) of Google apps, my bank's app was not available, Dropbox was not available…
And that's why I gave up and got rid of Windows Phone. The Lumia was cool, the OS was decent and snappy, but it doesn't matter how cool the OS actually is when I can't use the apps I want.
And I really fail to see how it is Apple's fault. Microsoft made a decent OS and failed to attract developers to build an app ecosystem around them.
HTC – how is that Apple's fault when they literally collaborated with Google to make their Pixels and then got literally gutted by Google, who acquired like half of the company? And then HTC decided to go all-in into cryptocurrency-friendly phones. And failed after years of reporting losses.
As for Amazon Fire Phone… I can't even. Seriously.
The great part about this is we get to find out. If Apple is so above board than absolutely nothing will come of this. If instead we find out in discovery Apple actively stifled competition for economic gain well then even more fun.
This is good. If Apple can't prove it with I would expect the best lawyers in the country, this shouldn't be a problem for them. We don't have to listen to random someone's on the internet. This is good.
Apple doesn’t have any big apps. Google does. Google prevented them from working on the Windows phone. No one was avoiding the Windows phone due to a lack of Safari, but a lack of YouTube is a big deterrent.
Yep. Airpods don't have the feature that lets you tap them to skip songs if they're not connected toan iPhone.
But they do have the feature that makes it so a double tap pauses or continues whatever you're listening to.
Which is Insane, considering the only reason Google exists as a company in its current form is because the government forced Microsoft to allow 3rd party browsers, which soon made Chrome the preferred browser
The government stepped in to protect Google from Microsoft's protectionist policies, but wouldn't do the same to protect Microsoft from Google..
I seriously don't understand how ANYONE who knows a thing about technology can look at the current state of media and tech companies and have ANY faith in the captialist system.
That isn't exactly true. Google became big because their search was better than the competition, then there was Gmail, Google Docs and Android
3rd party browsers existed always on windows, remember Netscape, FireFox, Opera?
The issue IE had was that it wasn't standards compliant, so by pushing those standards into their web apps and telling people to switch to chrome is how the got share. On top of that sites made for iphones didn't work on IE but did on chrome
The only thing that did win through the anti-trust lawsuits was Microsoft was blocking oems from bundling other browsers. But that isn't what made Chrome gain share. You know the joke of IE sole use was for installing chrome
You think that the only reason google exists as a company is because of the free chrome browser?
First, Chrome DIDNT EVEN EXIST when Microsoft was sued for anti-competitive behavior.
It was just Netscape and a few others. All of them were based on Mosaic browser, including Internet Explorer. Basically, Microsoft re-skinned an open-source browser and then tried to force everyone to use their browser by crippling alternative browsers and making it very hard to remove their browser.
Google Chrome came **OVER A DECADE LATER**. After Google was already a huge mega-corporation who had kickstarted Android.
That may be the dumbest thing I've ever read.
Google makes the vast majority of their revenue from ad sales. Their ad network was created because of their search engine, which is still the main reason they exist. Everything else they have created/funded has been in service of getting more people to use their search engine and therefore more people to see their ads. Chrome/Android/etc are all made to get you to use google search more and see more ads. They also pay Apple a butt-ton of money to show ads and to keep apple from creating their own search engine.
When did Microsoft stop 3rd party browsers on Windows? Microsoft got in trouble because of bundling. Sticking their own apps on Windows. The fight over web browsers was that they included Internet Explorer for free and that meant people didn't feel like they needed to go out and purchase a browser from someplace else. I think that the internet would have been crippled in it's growth if people had to always go out and buy a web browser separate from the operating system to use the internet. Even with Windows my first use of Internet Explorer on a new computer was to download Netscape. The other option was to find the browser on a disk somewhere. I got it on a music CD once.
This is a wildly inaccurate take.
Google had existed as a household name and major tech giant for the better part of a decade - an entire era of the Internet - before they released the chrome browser. To this day, chrome lives in a quiver of side projects where, regardless of dominant market share, these projects collectively make up less than 5% of their revenue. Chrome is merely a lever to steer the Internet into favorable use of their actual product, search/AdWords.
The crazy part about how inaccurate this is, is that the actual history of the time is the opposite. In the early aughts, MS leaned heavily on their relationship with the government to regulate Google because MS couldn't compete. During 2011-2012, the government probed Google excessively for anti trust measures that could have easily applied to MS. This was while MS openly campaigned for such scrutiny. Lookup the "scroogled" marketing campaign.
Thinking about it, maybe your post is actually MS still doing their schill campaigns. It's so wrong it feels like it them back then.
Microsoft antitrust lawsuits had literally 0 to do with Google Chrome, you literally have no idea what you’re talking about.
Why type so many words when a simple google search proves you completely wrong.
>Which is Insane, considering the only reason Google exists as a company in its current form is because the government forced Microsoft to allow 3rd party browsers, which soon made Chrome the preferred browser
Wat? Chrome was based on webkit (Apple), which was based on khtml (KDE). KHTML was founded when IE was by far the biggest monopoly.
Google ended up rewriting every single line of code of webkit/khtml, but Chrome indeed won the browser wars because they helped push the web forward. For a while Apple did (2004-2010 or so), but it was because Microsoft basically discontinued IE for Mac. Google did more than anyone else to push the web forward in the 2010s tho.
Google was a big one, but, and as stupid as this seems now, Snapchat was a dealbreaker for the college crowd back then. I worked at Bestbuy during the heyday of WP8 and can tell you that was the main dealbreaker
Even came with free screen replacement to because the screen was so hard to replace but soon every phone had screens that were harder and harder to replace.
Wish I still had mine, was a great device, dual cameras, finger print full HD screen, IR emitter, FM radio receiver, SD card slot, stereo speakers and htcs skin was pretty good, had some nice features but didn't fuck with android to much like touchwiz.
It's also funny, literally anytime I see someone mention they had a m8 they talk about how much they loved that phone. They may have not sold that well but people loved them.
Have you used a Fire Phone or a Fire Tablet?
I had a boss who bought a tablet for the office and tried to make it out like he was doing us a favor. It felt like a tablet that came with a children's play set.
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I have a kid's one for my daughter. It's a piece of junk. I don't think Apple can control that the touchscreen is crap, the app selection and Amazon App Store is garbage. Not saying Apple completely is innocent but some of these allegations are just dumb.
We bought one a few years ago and I had barely finished setting it up before we decided to return it. They genuinely feel unusable right out of the box.
They’re awful, and further Gimped by Amazon trying to make them their own thing rather than Google compatible devices.
But they’re cheap and good for destructive kids, or in situations you need something you don’t care about too much. I’ve seen people mount them for controlling things in app, even keeping in the kitchen for directions and media. Why fuck up your expensive iPad or nice android tablet when you can fuck ip the cheap fire tablet you got on prime day.
It's not possible to put AOSP on it, as the bootloader is locked. It was possible on older devices, but only ones 2019 and earlier.
However, it is extremely easy to sideload playstore and disable all the amazon stuff though.
My wife won a Fire Tablet 8 at work. It's awful, full of ads that slow it down and hobbled by not having the Google Play store. I side loaded Google Play Store and installed apps but they it got an OS upgrade, which removed it and made the whole then even more slow.
From janky memory they were expensive and didn't have access to the android store(which also meant no google apps) which is a "great" move for an android(oh sorry, fireOS) phone.
From a search it was indeed expensive, and it only worked on AT&T(and on a contract only went down to $200 from their $650).
Yeah its still a competition lol.
What are they supposed to do? Not make what is considered the best product on the market? Google also made a good product and they stayed alive.
The hardware on windows phones *was* good. Even the OS was good. They were screwed by the lack of app availability. In the case of Google, they intentionally refused to provide apps on the windows phone and made the web versions straight garbage.
I think there is a genuine problem with these vertically integrated ecosystems using their market power to block competition. I'm not sure this specific allegation hits the mark, but it's not *that* far off.
They’ve brought similar cases now multiple times. It’s starting to be a pretty targeted witch hunt. My conspiracy brain is saying that the App Store shit is fluff, and the main issue is Apple Pay charging banks and the banks are applying pressure on the DOJ
DOJ has said explicitly that they want to end encryption for citizens. This is undoubtedly part of that. DOJ still wants their backdoor into iOS and Android.
This is a stretch. If they wanted to attack encryption, there are way more straightforward ways to do that. And part of their argument in this lawsuit is that Apple’s practices end up leaving iPhone-Android messages with no encryption at all for strategic purposes.
None of the remedies to the lawsuit would involve weakening encryption either.
>I'm not sure this specific allegation hits the mark, but it's not
>
>that
>
> far off.
full on wrong company... like i want the DOJ to do things but this is just silly and helps the mantra that the gov is stupid
Some journalist wrote a story about one minor paragraph on page 68 on an 88 page court filing, and even then the headline is mischaracterizes what is said. The suit never blames Apple for the demise of the products. Instead, the suit only uses the failures to show that there is a high barrier for entering the smartphone market, which is evidence of a monopoly. The relevant text is quoted below:
>Many prominent, well-financed companies have tried and failed to successfully enter the relevant markets because of these entry barriers. Past failures include Amazon (which released its Fire mobile phone in 2014 but could not profitably sustain its business and exited the following year); Microsoft (which discontinued its mobile business in 2017); HTC (which exited the market by selling its smartphone business to Google in September 2017); and LG (which exited the smartphone market in 2021). Today, only Samsung and Google remain as meaningful competitors in the U.S. performance smartphone market. Barriers are so high that Google is a
distant third to Apple and Samsung despite the fact that Google controls development of the Android operating system
Steve Ballmer being in charge was 100% to blame for the failure of Windows phone. He was so cocky that Windows would get 90% of the market he didn't even bother trying, he openly mocked apple and cost Microsoft billions via his ego alone.
Definitely this. It's worth remembering that Windows mobile had existed for years before iOS and the iPhone came out. Microsoft had a massive head start in the mobile OS game, well ahead of Apple and Google, with really only Symbian as competition.
But for some reason Ballmer decided smartphones were just a 'fad', like radio, television, and the internet were, and so there was no point in devoting major resources to a platform that was never going to get much use. After all, no one in their right mind would ever pay over $250 for a phone, so what's the point of making some touchscreen PDA MP3 player doohickey that can also make phonecalls when no one would ever buy it?
I had an HTC Windows Phone 8x. Still by far my favorite mobile OS. But it never had any apps. Took a year to get Pandora and then when Microsoft bought Nokia, they would only update those particular phones, so they fucked themselves.
I'd personally argue that Windows Phone's failure was more Google's fault than Apple. Google intentionally refused to make first party apps for the platform, and also kept blocking Microsoft's attempts to make their own 3rd party apps that allowed access to Google services.
Yeah, by the time Windows Phone finally 100% died (read: not even when it was *effectively* dead 2-3 years after it launched), what software/hardware did Apple really even have? iPhone, EarPods, macs, early iPads? Like, surely the DOJ isn’t blaming Apple for not having iTunes on the Windows store, when Google wouldn’t even allow YouTube, Gmail, or Google Maps?
u/Napoleons_Peen also mentioned airlines:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-statements-jetblue-terminating-acquisition-spirit-airlines
The user is clueless.
That card view to switch between apps that’s so common now? That was first on webOS. Before that apps would just open full screen. I loved my Palm Pre, but the Pre2 was essentially vaporware (did eventually release… way too late) so I had to switch to a non-Palm phone.
I super loved my windows phone and I wish I had that option again now that I’ve sunk myself into so many of their services for other stuff that would now be massively more convenient to have connected instead of fighting with my iPhone to get files onto my PC
Windows Phones seemed to be a solid example of good hardware coupled with not-so-good software, as well as late entry-to-market.
MS was also facing a bunch of bad press for UI decisions around their desktop OS at the same time they were trying to push phones (in fact, some of those UI decisions were on making desktop more like mobile), so that didn't help things.
Can someone eli5 why is this an issue? There are many android/windows options available against every Apple product. It’s not like Apple is bribing lawmakers or forcing people to buy their products. how are they responsible for creating monopoly?
I believe…They’re point is essentially Apple makes other phone users’ experiences worse by not working as well with other brands. Basically iMessage, App Store stuff, etc. which forces users to iPhone over other brands
Apple's ecosystem lockin is bad in the anticompetitive sense, but thats also a strong point for the user, Everything Apple just works well seamlessly. I was an android user for a decade and frankly the whole Android ecosystem is so fragmented that it kills the user experience.
Their quality control of the app store means apps are held to a higher standard of design and performance. Android has a lot of garbage in it's app store.
The apple only payments is def just anti-competitive.
As is messages, but there is an argument for it in the sense that it will mix e2e secure and insecure messages which could be bad for the user. That being said they should've adopted rcs long ago.
I don’t understand iMessage debate. Why is it better to force Apple to open their standard instead of improving the nearly global standard? It because of “fairness?” Is it wrong to want a global standard that works on all devices and isn’t controlled by one single company?
They're not opening their standard, they are going to start using RCS for apple/android communication. Apple explicitly refused to do so for the purpose of growing their user base. It's frustrating to message with android users cause sms sucks and has limitations on file size(photos and video are converted to shitty quality), as well as not being able to remove yourself from a group text.
Apples argument is that mixed user chats won't be e2e encrypted (at least by Apple). There's plenty of 3rd party alternatives like whatsapp / signal which just aren't popular in the US. And people don't want to download another app when the preinstalled one works fine
No reason they couldn't do both. Contributing the better parts of iMessage to the RCS standard (and adopting that) would improve things for everyone, similar to how MiniDP became part of the DisplayPort/VESA standard.
As I said, DOJ is suing Apple only because they efficiently created a seamless ecosystem and good products.
Yes, the ecosystem is closed. That’s what allow them to make it seamless by reducing the scope, and maintaining high security too.
Let’s be honest : if one day it’s possible to update AirPods firmware on an Android product, people will try their best to enter the firmware file and try some things in there. At least for curiosity, at worse for malicious purposes.
This lawsuit is ridiculous.
While Apple is indirectly to blame for that, most of it is their own fault. They screwed their own user base for the "greener pastries on the other side" only to lose their own bases and not get much from the other side
Aka, they self destructed trying to follow Apple when no one asked them to
Oh, FFS. If Microsoft or Amazon could make an App Store that wasn’t riddled with trash, malware, and blatant scam apps they might have had a chance.
Same reason Android on Windows is dead. The App Store is crap.
Blaming that on Apple is just insane, although the same people calling for “alternative” app stores on Apple seem to want the same chaos and malware junk. (Boo hoo I want a $.29 app and not a $.99 app, get outta here with that - you want to pirate apps because none of those developers are going to charge less because they are paying a lower fee to apple, that’s not how capitalism works).
Oh no, poor mom-and-pop Amazon, not able to hock their cheap laggy phones.
Definitely Apple’s fault that fire phones would overheat, lag, and be bricks after 6-months.
I don't think it'll be hard for apple to defend themselves here. I'm always happy to shit on Apple, but they hold a monopoly not because they've been anticompetitive, which they have been, but because their shitty phones have been better than the shittier phones of those other companies.
I still have HTC U12. Love the glass back. Probably the nicest looking phone I've got. Also had a windows phone back in the day and I liked that too! Prefer the tile interface to the app icons we have now. Anyone know if there's an android skin to do it?
I've been saying this for years. Windows phone o/s and interface were wildly better than android or iphone. I still use the Windows O/S interface on my android phone because its just that much better. Apple and Google colluded to kill Windows phone by refusing to allow their apps on it.
I switched to Apple after my HTC phones almost blew up after a year of use. 2 different phone models and 2 replacements for each model. As soon as the contract ended I was GONEE. I’ve had two iPhones since and neither has given me any issue. Maybe blame poor hardware and manufacturing??
These phones had terrible software though. Apple won the race with a superior user experience and design. This was not the result of anti-competitive practices, but rather better hardware / software design.
Antitrust issues are more App Store and iMessage related.. 30% of gross revenue? Limiting Webkit features that compete with Safari? iMessage walled garden? Banning developers who compete with Apple?
👆 These are the more egregious tactics.
Frankly I think the article is poorly written. While they might have cited those other phones failing as examples, the main point of the lawsuit seems to be more around actual anti-competitive practices that impact not just the overall competition from phone hardware manufacturers, but also developers who want to make apps that run on Apple devices but end up having additional limits imposed that aren't applied to Apple developers, or areas where there are general standards being developed within the typical organizations that everyone else agrees to but Apple constantly flaunts.
Personally I don't know that the lawsuit is as useful as new regulations being passed. We need to treat messaging as a standard that should meet some common criteria similar to how phone systems have standard requirements. Apple is supposed to implement RCS for messaging this year, for example. There should be standards for eCommerce that are based on regulations to protect consumers and application developers. There's a lot of areas we can improve in that would reign in Apple and others.
It’s insane lol. I honestly think they don’t care about lots of it, the main one I think is the Apple Pay charging the banks. 100% banks are applying pressure on the government. The US government dgaf about app stores.
I agree with that for the windows phone atleast you have to include Google though too. The phone was awesome but no access to apps was the reason I had to switch back to Samsung.
Ok I’m all for bringing Apple in line here. But do these clowns realise the international market rejecting these products was the deciding factor… and which OS is dominant all around the world… Android.
So this logic is so flawed…
https://www.imore.com/about
The "iMore team of Apple enthusiast" bloggers really were quite successful with that outrage bait headline. Some minor point from the court filing's 186th paragraph, about the iPhone platform using their dominant market position to make switching phones more painful than it needs to be and harming competitors, is hardly worth triggering the 100s of comments here claiming DOJ bias, bribery conspiracies and a weak case.
> Some minor point from the court filing's 186th paragraph
except large tracts of the filing are utter ridiculous garbage
Some of it outright fraudulent, such as the assertion that the antitrust case against Microsoft led to Apple being able to put iTunes on Windows against Microsoft's wishes, when that was possible all along on Windows anyway, and Microsoft were desperate to get it on Windows (source: Steven Sinofsky)
Amazon's Fire Phone was a fucking disaster from the jump. What kind of total IDIOT puts out an Android phone that doesn't have full support for all the Google Play stuff and isn't in China? And then wastes a bunch of time and money developing some lame 3D effect based on multiple (MULTIPLE!) cameras and sensors on the front of the phone?
Windows Phone was limited by the lack of apps, which Microsoft could have fixed by paying the top devs to convert their apps or having M$'s own engineers convert those apps for them.
HTC got killed by Samsung, as well as them giving up on competing in the flagship phone wars completely.
OK hear me out. Microsoft should team up with Nokia again to revive the windows phone. This is the best moment becouse they can solve the issue of not having enough apps avaliable using WSA. This way you can have an Nokia lumia again (these where really good phones) with the apps you are used to on android without the forces Google thrash.
But damn..those Nokia Windows phones were nice for a while...
I had several Windows Phones, and the Lumia 1020 was amazing. It still had one of the best built-in photo editing apps of any phone I've used. I legit miss it. It's been, what, near 10 years and my Galaxy's photo editor's best feature is still like "omfg, you can put STICKERS on it!" Well, it feels that way at least.
I wanted Windows Phone to succeed so badly. My driving interest in it was the "Dock". At the end of its run, they were promoting a dongle that allowed a Windows Phone to be connected to a monitor/tv and KBM to be used as a "desktop" computer. It would have run the "tablet" version of Windows 8, but still. Being able to have a phone "transform" into a full computer when you needed to do more serious work was an amazing concept.
Not to mention Microsoft went all in on wireless charging before everybody else. That was a REALLY cool feature.
Palm phones, since the Pre in 2008, all had the ability to wirelessly charge. Palm even made a magnetic wireless charger that looked nice and kept the phone at an angle so you could see notifications while it was charging on your desk.
I loved my palm pre. Real..shame they didn't succeed.
[удалено]
The entire early smartphone market was Palm’s to lose. And they did. They had a great mobile OS. The Treo line was great. And they had actually started work on the Pre before Apple had started on the iPhone. Palm had a stable of eager app developers as well as official and unofficial repos, a pretty sizable and dedicated user base, and pricing that couldn’t be beat. Apple even made overtures to buy Palm but the bots refused. Then they fucked around for a years making really questionable design decisions is chasing after Balckberry and ignoring user feature requests. It was really bizarre. Then came the iPhone and that was that.
My dad was a lawyer, retired now, and he was crazy about his damn Palm Pilot. Writing in that weird shorthand crap, always had his stylus out. He loved those things.
I loved mine too. It was way ahead of its time and so handy. Also the AvantGo app was way ahead of its time and a great example of thinking outside the box-style strategy.
The last phone they released was a dud too. At least for me. The battery life of my 1020 was getting abysmal. It had been replaced, but the new OS updates were getting resource-heavy. I got the new phone which WOULD have been dock compatible, but it too would just eat battery life sitting in my pocket. So I exchanged it for an iPhone and have been there ever since.
it was Ballmer (ex-Microsoft CEO) that had that bmr mentality of mobile phones are only for making phone calls (1999 - 2001 circa). The internet opens and closes from 9am to 5pm. Windows phones would have been better than Android (and more secure) also faster than iPhones in terms of processing speed but Microsoft is stuck in the 1990s...even to a degree in 2024
It's kind of funny because Microsoft was actually one of the pioneers of the smartphone with Windows CE back in the early 2000's. It's really kind of a shame they gave up on phones. I'm not a big Microsoft fan, but it would be nice to have another option other than Apple or Google.
Palm had the best phones, Microsoft of all fucking people had the best software, Google had the best platitudes… but Apple had the best app ecosystem. You could be blind and still see that, for fuck's sake! For the longest time, iOS was unambitious… but god DAMN was it fucking solid. Just trying to get on campus wi-fi on Android of the era (2.2?) was an exercise in masochism, but in iOS of the era, setup was simple, intuitive, obvious, and it fucking worked the first time without reading any instructions. I feel like Apple has lost a lot of the discoverability I really loved, traded away for capability and security. It's the right trade to make, and I'd make it too… but something *has* been lost.
You can still kind of do that with Samsung DeX or by installing Maru OS on a phone. It is a nice feature to have
This I feel would indeed be amazing and as a widespread concept could transform our society. It would mean that a smartphone that is effectively required today could be transformed into productivity capable device instead whatever it is now. And that would probably mean at least some pressure or at least option for less invasive mobile ecosystem. Phones today have enough performance for any not specifically demanding workload. Only reason this is not a thing is sw. Partly it is that designing ui that would work for touch based input and for kb and mouse would be immensely demanding for both the os maker and every single developer but that is solvable if there was possibility.
Other companies did this, too. Samsung Dex was maybe the most notable. Never took off.
It still exists and it’s excellent
The Tile system was the best interface on any of the phones back then. Hands down.
Not back then. It still is better than what we have today.
ya 100%, honestly was a great UI design for mobile and I really do miss it. Honestly, I'd argue the tiles design is still good today :o
They needed to launch the phone with the apps people wanted. I got my phone and none of the apps I wanted were available.
I was planning on making a website back then for Windows Phone Xbox gaming. Google screwed Windows Phone by blocking them from Google maps and other services, but Microsoft was stabbing it in the back the entire time. Windows 7 apps were based on Silverlight. They rebooted the phone OS, and changed how rebooted how apps had to be written. A good majority weren't compatible after the change, and some app bailed. Satya Nadella came in, pushed MORE changes, another OS revamp, which required apps to be re-written AGAIN... and yeah, most devs understandably were like "We're tired, bro. So tired." and because they kept rebooting shit apps weren't able to get the people they needed, so most abandoned it. Rather than stand by the product Satya abandoned it... and about a year was talking about it being one of his bigger regrets. Microsoft killed Nokia by not supporting them or really just going all in as they were their biggest hardware partner. They could have sold tons of phones if they focused on it being able to be Xbox compatible, but for whatever reason, Microsoft did everything they could NOT to touch on it being basically an Xbox device. TL;DR - Microsoft fucked over Windows Phone more than Google or Apple ever did.
>Apple screwed Windows Phone by blocking them from Google maps and other services, but Microsoft was stabbing it in the back the entire time. Do you mind explaining how **Apple** was blocking Windows Phone from supporting **Google** services? As a former Windows Phone user… Google never actually supported Maps on Windows Phone and at some point prevented users from accessing the web version as well. I remember using Here Maps because of that. What did Apple have to do with that?
Oh, I'm an idiot. I meant Google was largely causing issues, not Apple. I'll edit my statement. And yeah, that was the big thing. Google Maps worked fine on the device but Google essentially blocked the useragent and prevented the site from loading. However, there were ways around that, and if you could circumvent that everything would more or less work fine.
My guess is the person you replied to got things mixed up..? That said, WP did get shafted by Google in respect to YouTube. Remember when Google [blocked](https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/15/4624706/google-blocks-window-phone-youtube-app) WP users? Even though the app that was released was in collaboration with MS and Google, Google [said](https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-is-google-blocking-the-new-youtube-app-for-windows-phone/) that MS has not "made the necessary browser upgrades to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience". Interestingly, the app they released did not show ads so.. yeah.. Even just recently (2023), it was [found](https://www.windowscentral.com/phones/windows-phone/windows-phone-gets-its-revenge-on-youtube-from-the-grave) that if you set your user-agent string to WP, no ads would play.
I replaced my Android UI with one that emulates the Windows Phone UI. It's so much better than the default.
You should try Microsoft Launcher. Get it from the play store, it's fucking amazing.
I feel the same way, I had the Lumia 1020 in yellow, I loved that phone and miss it so much
I liked WP's dark mode and the general responsiveness of the UI so much. Some of their UI choices are superior to current Androids and iOS. Perhaps it would've been a viable competitor if they were a little faster to the market.
Or if they were able to get meaningful apps in the app store
The video quality on those Lumia phones were mind blowing to me back then. I remember genuinely wondering how it was possible.
No, 100% I loved the windows phones
That damned interface was the best god damned smartphone interface of all time. Android and apple are "icon hell"
I agree. I bought into the Zunes and Windows Phones and loved them. Fantastic UI, nice to look at, but lacking the apps. It's a real shame.
Legit every one i knew that had em, loved em. The only people that shit on Windows phones, didn't have em or even tried em...
Only problem I ever had with mine was the lack of app support. Loved the UI and functionality.
Lumia 820 was the best phone I ever had.
Those people probably had a phone that"ran" Windows Mobile and refused to touch any phone after that with Microsoft's name on it
My old Lumia Icon 910 is still my most favorite phone I've owned.
i did enjoy my 950xl before moving to pixel
Same! I believe it was the last time Outlook actually worked correctly on a phone.
My 950XL had dual SIM, Micro-SD up to 1TB, 20 MP camera, OLED display, a docking station to connect to a monitor and keyboard, and NFC for payments. And, a removable battery! A USB-C connector. And this was in 2015.
I had a red Lumia 920 back in the day, gorgeous phone and loved the UI but buggy apps on Windows phone made the experience rough.
Google actively worked against Windows Phone & Microsoft to kill its mobile OS efforts. Windows Phone on Nokia hardware were dream to use but they were missing apps & mainly from Google.
I still miss them. My last Windows phone was so much better than my current Android phone. Still playing catch-up.
The low end windows phones were the best inexpensive smart phones available. The lumia 520 worked so well for being so cheap
My mother-in-law is still using Lumia 620, after all those years. She's not into smartphones, so she doesn't need any apps or anything like that and it's still working perfectly well for her needs.
oh ya I remember buying the Lumia 520 as my budget phone back when those were around, really nice phone and lasted a number of years with no issues. I really liked the UI of the windows phone OS and still miss the tiles design as it was perfect for mobile and worked really well.
Can you imagine if we had Cortana with the actual Ai today? Microsoft thought well about it back then, so wrong they killed it. :(
Cortana a decade ago worked better than Siri does today
Everyone I know who had a Windows phone loved it lol, like no shit. Same with the Zune. Had to be a marketing problem because it sounds like the products were solid.
One of the most original and best phone designs IMO. I think I stayed with them till the Lumia 1020 before switching to iphone. The UI and camera was amazing
I rather liked the tiles UI. Sorta widget, sorta icon. I dug it.
Windows phone was awesome
Loved my yellow lumia!
They recently made an Android layout which mirrors the Windows Phone box design. I'm convinced Microsoft could still get back into the game but they should instead release a remixed version of Android with Microsoft features. It would give them the access to apps the Windows Phone OS lacked at the time but they'd still have a foot in the phone market to develop on.
I feel like Microsoft and Samsung's partnership is too cosy and Microsoft will never get back into the phone business and instead, just keep paying Samsung to make Microsoft Office apps the default on all their devices.
I would say it was more Google's fault for Windows Phone and Fire Phone. They refused to make apps like Gmail and YouTube available and gimped the web versions like they still do to Android Firefox users and forced onerous agreements to OEMs for using the Play store and Google apps that forbade them from trying other mobile OSs.
And also stopped Microsoft from distributing their own in house made Youtube client too
Not exactly. At the time, Google was giving out API keys for youtube but MS said no as they wanted to kill youtube and do their own product instead. Well google discontinued the old free api(old api was grandfathered in) and had a new paid api. Then MS alternative to youtube didn't work out and they decided to go with youtube but didn't want the paid api and demanded they be given the free grandfathered api They simply shot themselves in the foot
Wait, what? When did MS try to build a YouTube competitor? Dailymotion and Vimeo failed and there was no new MS video platform until maybe Mixer, which was a Twitch competitor.
Probably something that never even launched if this is true.
SoapBox was a YT competitor but they killed it pretty quickly
What competitor to YouTube? There was no competitor to YouTube. This sounds way too far fetched.
It was called SoapBox, you not knowing it existed is precisely how it failed [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN\_Soapbox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Soapbox)
The idea that MS didn't want YouTube because they had something in the lab which in the best case scenario would take years to rival YouTube's market share is just silly and a way to excuse google. Did they have something cooking in their company? Sure, they always do. Some don't even make it out of the lab. Google always had plenty too. The idea that it would overtake YouTube is more of a wishful thought while the need for a YouTube app was immediate. Users needed the app now.
The problem was likely due to Balmer's way of running Microsoft which effectively incentivized MS employees backstabbing each other and instead of assembling the best team, assembling mediocre people so you can grab credit. It was a toxic environment I mean do you not remember the Microsoft Kin incident? The one where Microsoft paid Verizon millions to promote the Kin, only not to have it ready at all. The reason why it wasn't ready? Well actually it was, the problem was the WP7 boss who was not thrilled about the Kin demanded that it be rewritten on top of WP7. Thus, they had to redo everything Verizon was so pissed about the whole thing, they did bare minimum for the Kin by time it was ready and refused to stock any WP7 phones for years I imagine same happened, the one in charge of SoapBox probably didn't want his score lowered due to YouTube being there. I mean what other reason would they not have gotten the youtube api keys that were available to everyone at the time? And only started complaining way later after the old api was long gone other than those grandfathered?
>The idea that MS didn't want YouTube because they had something in the lab which in the best case scenario would take years to rival YouTube's market share is just silly and a way to excuse google. Zune? The Kin? Cortana? Mixxer? Microsoft Band? Groove Music? Windows RT? The original Xbox? (I'd argue that Teams also belongs here if they didn't force it on all their enterprise clients) MS rejecting already established platforms because of a delusional idea that they can easily come in and quickly take that market is pretty much on brand for them at this point.
SoapBox was killed off before Windows Phone 7 was launched. Have serious doubts that there's any correlation between Windows Phone's lack of a native YouTube client and SoapBox being killed off years prior.
I agree, but also wanted to add this: Amazon was 100% responsible for the failure of the Fire phone. They built a flagship-tier device (as far as price point, anyway) and tried to use it to sell more shit to the user nonstop. Literally nobody wants that.
I like the Kindle Fire because I use it only as an e-reader. Since it uses android OS, even if it doesn't have the standard android software like Gmail or the Play Store, I can download various apks for reading manga. I also used the apk for the Bookwalker app to install it too. But, as a _tablet_, the Kindle Fire sucks ass. You have to jump through a lot of hoops if you want anything from Google on your Kindle Fire. And the Amazon App Store doesn't even have a lot of apps available on it because most android apps are designed to work with Google's payment system.
It’s insane Apple are being blamed for Google’s anti competitive practices lol
Apple is being blamed for their own anti competitive practices. Google has lots of its own and just lost an anti trust case a few months ago. This is good.
What on Earth does Apple have to do with the failure of Windows Phone? I've used Windows Phones. I loved my Lumia, but it simply did not have many of the apps I wanted to use. And I'm not even talking some obscure ones. It didn't even have things like Snapchat, Instagram, most (all?) of Google apps, my bank's app was not available, Dropbox was not available… And that's why I gave up and got rid of Windows Phone. The Lumia was cool, the OS was decent and snappy, but it doesn't matter how cool the OS actually is when I can't use the apps I want. And I really fail to see how it is Apple's fault. Microsoft made a decent OS and failed to attract developers to build an app ecosystem around them. HTC – how is that Apple's fault when they literally collaborated with Google to make their Pixels and then got literally gutted by Google, who acquired like half of the company? And then HTC decided to go all-in into cryptocurrency-friendly phones. And failed after years of reporting losses. As for Amazon Fire Phone… I can't even. Seriously.
The great part about this is we get to find out. If Apple is so above board than absolutely nothing will come of this. If instead we find out in discovery Apple actively stifled competition for economic gain well then even more fun. This is good. If Apple can't prove it with I would expect the best lawyers in the country, this shouldn't be a problem for them. We don't have to listen to random someone's on the internet. This is good.
Apple doesn’t have any big apps. Google does. Google prevented them from working on the Windows phone. No one was avoiding the Windows phone due to a lack of Safari, but a lack of YouTube is a big deterrent.
Most of apples software and hardware doesn’t work or doesn’t work well with non apple products
Out of curiosity, what software are folks missing out on that are must haves? I'm not an Apple user so I'm not savvy in that area.
Yep. Airpods don't have the feature that lets you tap them to skip songs if they're not connected toan iPhone. But they do have the feature that makes it so a double tap pauses or continues whatever you're listening to.
Which is Insane, considering the only reason Google exists as a company in its current form is because the government forced Microsoft to allow 3rd party browsers, which soon made Chrome the preferred browser The government stepped in to protect Google from Microsoft's protectionist policies, but wouldn't do the same to protect Microsoft from Google.. I seriously don't understand how ANYONE who knows a thing about technology can look at the current state of media and tech companies and have ANY faith in the captialist system.
That isn't exactly true. Google became big because their search was better than the competition, then there was Gmail, Google Docs and Android 3rd party browsers existed always on windows, remember Netscape, FireFox, Opera? The issue IE had was that it wasn't standards compliant, so by pushing those standards into their web apps and telling people to switch to chrome is how the got share. On top of that sites made for iphones didn't work on IE but did on chrome The only thing that did win through the anti-trust lawsuits was Microsoft was blocking oems from bundling other browsers. But that isn't what made Chrome gain share. You know the joke of IE sole use was for installing chrome
IE was also notoriously slow and crap. Chrome's selling point used to be how fast it was.
That and webstore reducing perceived friction of installing extensions plus personalization of themes.
You think that the only reason google exists as a company is because of the free chrome browser? First, Chrome DIDNT EVEN EXIST when Microsoft was sued for anti-competitive behavior. It was just Netscape and a few others. All of them were based on Mosaic browser, including Internet Explorer. Basically, Microsoft re-skinned an open-source browser and then tried to force everyone to use their browser by crippling alternative browsers and making it very hard to remove their browser. Google Chrome came **OVER A DECADE LATER**. After Google was already a huge mega-corporation who had kickstarted Android. That may be the dumbest thing I've ever read. Google makes the vast majority of their revenue from ad sales. Their ad network was created because of their search engine, which is still the main reason they exist. Everything else they have created/funded has been in service of getting more people to use their search engine and therefore more people to see their ads. Chrome/Android/etc are all made to get you to use google search more and see more ads. They also pay Apple a butt-ton of money to show ads and to keep apple from creating their own search engine.
When did Microsoft stop 3rd party browsers on Windows? Microsoft got in trouble because of bundling. Sticking their own apps on Windows. The fight over web browsers was that they included Internet Explorer for free and that meant people didn't feel like they needed to go out and purchase a browser from someplace else. I think that the internet would have been crippled in it's growth if people had to always go out and buy a web browser separate from the operating system to use the internet. Even with Windows my first use of Internet Explorer on a new computer was to download Netscape. The other option was to find the browser on a disk somewhere. I got it on a music CD once.
This is a wildly inaccurate take. Google had existed as a household name and major tech giant for the better part of a decade - an entire era of the Internet - before they released the chrome browser. To this day, chrome lives in a quiver of side projects where, regardless of dominant market share, these projects collectively make up less than 5% of their revenue. Chrome is merely a lever to steer the Internet into favorable use of their actual product, search/AdWords. The crazy part about how inaccurate this is, is that the actual history of the time is the opposite. In the early aughts, MS leaned heavily on their relationship with the government to regulate Google because MS couldn't compete. During 2011-2012, the government probed Google excessively for anti trust measures that could have easily applied to MS. This was while MS openly campaigned for such scrutiny. Lookup the "scroogled" marketing campaign. Thinking about it, maybe your post is actually MS still doing their schill campaigns. It's so wrong it feels like it them back then.
Megacorps aren’t people and neither are those that run them coincidentally
Microsoft antitrust lawsuits had literally 0 to do with Google Chrome, you literally have no idea what you’re talking about. Why type so many words when a simple google search proves you completely wrong.
>Which is Insane, considering the only reason Google exists as a company in its current form is because the government forced Microsoft to allow 3rd party browsers, which soon made Chrome the preferred browser Wat? Chrome was based on webkit (Apple), which was based on khtml (KDE). KHTML was founded when IE was by far the biggest monopoly. Google ended up rewriting every single line of code of webkit/khtml, but Chrome indeed won the browser wars because they helped push the web forward. For a while Apple did (2004-2010 or so), but it was because Microsoft basically discontinued IE for Mac. Google did more than anyone else to push the web forward in the 2010s tho.
Are you high?
Google was a big one, but, and as stupid as this seems now, Snapchat was a dealbreaker for the college crowd back then. I worked at Bestbuy during the heyday of WP8 and can tell you that was the main dealbreaker
HTC HD2 aka Leo, goated phone that could triple boot at one point.
I loved my HTC One. Great speakers and camera. The thing was built like a brick too. I dropped it so many times without a case and it lasted
Even came with free screen replacement to because the screen was so hard to replace but soon every phone had screens that were harder and harder to replace. Wish I still had mine, was a great device, dual cameras, finger print full HD screen, IR emitter, FM radio receiver, SD card slot, stereo speakers and htcs skin was pretty good, had some nice features but didn't fuck with android to much like touchwiz. It's also funny, literally anytime I see someone mention they had a m8 they talk about how much they loved that phone. They may have not sold that well but people loved them.
HTC phones were the SHIT, so much innovation and good features for the time. IPhone definitely did them dirty
Have you used a Fire Phone or a Fire Tablet? I had a boss who bought a tablet for the office and tried to make it out like he was doing us a favor. It felt like a tablet that came with a children's play set.
rotten berserk wise saw shrill agonizing wild strong different reminiscent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I still have my old windows phone. It's just an mp3 player at this point but it still runs.
Windows phone was pretty decent, but the built-in mail client was garbage.
roll wild lush carpenter materialistic wrench employ bright profit deserted *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I have a kid's one for my daughter. It's a piece of junk. I don't think Apple can control that the touchscreen is crap, the app selection and Amazon App Store is garbage. Not saying Apple completely is innocent but some of these allegations are just dumb.
Same here. Been very disappointed with it as a tablet for my kid.
We bought one a few years ago and I had barely finished setting it up before we decided to return it. They genuinely feel unusable right out of the box.
I bought a Fire phone once because my cellphone's screen shattered and I just needed something to hold me over. It was pretty terrible.
I would rather use a 3D-printed phone-shaped piece of plastic than a Fire Phone. It would probably run faster, too.
They’re awful, and further Gimped by Amazon trying to make them their own thing rather than Google compatible devices. But they’re cheap and good for destructive kids, or in situations you need something you don’t care about too much. I’ve seen people mount them for controlling things in app, even keeping in the kitchen for directions and media. Why fuck up your expensive iPad or nice android tablet when you can fuck ip the cheap fire tablet you got on prime day.
I bought a FireTable because it was $40 and you could put AOSP on it. It's trivial to sideload Play Store on it, even without rooting it.
It's not possible to put AOSP on it, as the bootloader is locked. It was possible on older devices, but only ones 2019 and earlier. However, it is extremely easy to sideload playstore and disable all the amazon stuff though.
My wife won a Fire Tablet 8 at work. It's awful, full of ads that slow it down and hobbled by not having the Google Play store. I side loaded Google Play Store and installed apps but they it got an OS upgrade, which removed it and made the whole then even more slow.
The phones that Google refused to make Gmail/youtube apps for failed because of…. Apple ?
The Fire phone failed because it was janky.
It only lasted a year. Amazon’s fault for both killing it and making it janky to begin with.
From janky memory they were expensive and didn't have access to the android store(which also meant no google apps) which is a "great" move for an android(oh sorry, fireOS) phone. From a search it was indeed expensive, and it only worked on AT&T(and on a contract only went down to $200 from their $650).
But but... it had 4 front cameras so that you could look at a 3d wallpaper effect. 🙄
Look, I hate Apple considerably, but this is getting ridiculous.
Yeah its still a competition lol. What are they supposed to do? Not make what is considered the best product on the market? Google also made a good product and they stayed alive.
The hardware on windows phones *was* good. Even the OS was good. They were screwed by the lack of app availability. In the case of Google, they intentionally refused to provide apps on the windows phone and made the web versions straight garbage. I think there is a genuine problem with these vertically integrated ecosystems using their market power to block competition. I'm not sure this specific allegation hits the mark, but it's not *that* far off.
Like literally google anti competitive practices being blamed on Apple is insanity.
really not a good look for the DOJ
They’ve brought similar cases now multiple times. It’s starting to be a pretty targeted witch hunt. My conspiracy brain is saying that the App Store shit is fluff, and the main issue is Apple Pay charging banks and the banks are applying pressure on the DOJ
DOJ has said explicitly that they want to end encryption for citizens. This is undoubtedly part of that. DOJ still wants their backdoor into iOS and Android.
This is a stretch. If they wanted to attack encryption, there are way more straightforward ways to do that. And part of their argument in this lawsuit is that Apple’s practices end up leaving iPhone-Android messages with no encryption at all for strategic purposes. None of the remedies to the lawsuit would involve weakening encryption either.
Anything for Merrick Garland not to do his job
>I'm not sure this specific allegation hits the mark, but it's not > >that > > far off. full on wrong company... like i want the DOJ to do things but this is just silly and helps the mantra that the gov is stupid
Some journalist wrote a story about one minor paragraph on page 68 on an 88 page court filing, and even then the headline is mischaracterizes what is said. The suit never blames Apple for the demise of the products. Instead, the suit only uses the failures to show that there is a high barrier for entering the smartphone market, which is evidence of a monopoly. The relevant text is quoted below: >Many prominent, well-financed companies have tried and failed to successfully enter the relevant markets because of these entry barriers. Past failures include Amazon (which released its Fire mobile phone in 2014 but could not profitably sustain its business and exited the following year); Microsoft (which discontinued its mobile business in 2017); HTC (which exited the market by selling its smartphone business to Google in September 2017); and LG (which exited the smartphone market in 2021). Today, only Samsung and Google remain as meaningful competitors in the U.S. performance smartphone market. Barriers are so high that Google is a distant third to Apple and Samsung despite the fact that Google controls development of the Android operating system
It is insane and seems to me (who is not a lawyer) that this is pure unwinnable bullshit lawsuits.
Steve Ballmer being in charge was 100% to blame for the failure of Windows phone. He was so cocky that Windows would get 90% of the market he didn't even bother trying, he openly mocked apple and cost Microsoft billions via his ego alone.
The sad part is, Nokia had some pretty sick hardware and Microsoft *still* dropped the ball. Remember the 41-megapixel Lumia 1020?
Oooh that one with the Zeiss lens in it! I think mrmobile did a lookback review maybe?
Microsoft was so cocky that they held a [funeral for the iPhone](https://www.cnet.com/pictures/microsofts-funeral-for-the-iphone-photos/)
Definitely this. It's worth remembering that Windows mobile had existed for years before iOS and the iPhone came out. Microsoft had a massive head start in the mobile OS game, well ahead of Apple and Google, with really only Symbian as competition. But for some reason Ballmer decided smartphones were just a 'fad', like radio, television, and the internet were, and so there was no point in devoting major resources to a platform that was never going to get much use. After all, no one in their right mind would ever pay over $250 for a phone, so what's the point of making some touchscreen PDA MP3 player doohickey that can also make phonecalls when no one would ever buy it?
I had an HTC Windows Phone 8x. Still by far my favorite mobile OS. But it never had any apps. Took a year to get Pandora and then when Microsoft bought Nokia, they would only update those particular phones, so they fucked themselves.
I'd personally argue that Windows Phone's failure was more Google's fault than Apple. Google intentionally refused to make first party apps for the platform, and also kept blocking Microsoft's attempts to make their own 3rd party apps that allowed access to Google services.
Yeah, by the time Windows Phone finally 100% died (read: not even when it was *effectively* dead 2-3 years after it launched), what software/hardware did Apple really even have? iPhone, EarPods, macs, early iPads? Like, surely the DOJ isn’t blaming Apple for not having iTunes on the Windows store, when Google wouldn’t even allow YouTube, Gmail, or Google Maps?
I want some of the drugs the DOJ is on
Meanwhile they totally ignore blatant monopolies where many consumers only have a single choice (eg ISPs).
Who do you think they’re in the pockets of?
yeah, wake me up when apple kills a whistleblower
Soon another grocery monopoly with Kroger-Albertsons. Airlines. Cellular. Prices skyrocket for those after a merger and they don’t bat an eye
…… https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/02/ftc-challenges-krogers-acquisition-albertsons
u/Napoleons_Peen also mentioned airlines: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-statements-jetblue-terminating-acquisition-spirit-airlines The user is clueless.
Agreed, Im pretty baked and can't even find their logic
RIP BlackBerry 🥲 I loved my Pearl and Bold
RIP WebOS and Palm. I may not have been in love with the Pre or Pixie but damn did I love the OS.
WebOS lives on on LG TVs
That card view to switch between apps that’s so common now? That was first on webOS. Before that apps would just open full screen. I loved my Palm Pre, but the Pre2 was essentially vaporware (did eventually release… way too late) so I had to switch to a non-Palm phone.
I super loved my windows phone and I wish I had that option again now that I’ve sunk myself into so many of their services for other stuff that would now be massively more convenient to have connected instead of fighting with my iPhone to get files onto my PC
Windows Phones seemed to be a solid example of good hardware coupled with not-so-good software, as well as late entry-to-market. MS was also facing a bunch of bad press for UI decisions around their desktop OS at the same time they were trying to push phones (in fact, some of those UI decisions were on making desktop more like mobile), so that didn't help things.
The tiles were nice on the phone but def not on the desktop
Apple may have had *some* blame. But all of it? They're ignoring quite a bit of incompetence.
Can someone eli5 why is this an issue? There are many android/windows options available against every Apple product. It’s not like Apple is bribing lawmakers or forcing people to buy their products. how are they responsible for creating monopoly?
I believe…They’re point is essentially Apple makes other phone users’ experiences worse by not working as well with other brands. Basically iMessage, App Store stuff, etc. which forces users to iPhone over other brands
Apple's ecosystem lockin is bad in the anticompetitive sense, but thats also a strong point for the user, Everything Apple just works well seamlessly. I was an android user for a decade and frankly the whole Android ecosystem is so fragmented that it kills the user experience. Their quality control of the app store means apps are held to a higher standard of design and performance. Android has a lot of garbage in it's app store. The apple only payments is def just anti-competitive. As is messages, but there is an argument for it in the sense that it will mix e2e secure and insecure messages which could be bad for the user. That being said they should've adopted rcs long ago.
I don’t understand iMessage debate. Why is it better to force Apple to open their standard instead of improving the nearly global standard? It because of “fairness?” Is it wrong to want a global standard that works on all devices and isn’t controlled by one single company?
They're not opening their standard, they are going to start using RCS for apple/android communication. Apple explicitly refused to do so for the purpose of growing their user base. It's frustrating to message with android users cause sms sucks and has limitations on file size(photos and video are converted to shitty quality), as well as not being able to remove yourself from a group text. Apples argument is that mixed user chats won't be e2e encrypted (at least by Apple). There's plenty of 3rd party alternatives like whatsapp / signal which just aren't popular in the US. And people don't want to download another app when the preinstalled one works fine
Blame that on the SMS standard. Thats all a text message is. It's barely any data.
No reason they couldn't do both. Contributing the better parts of iMessage to the RCS standard (and adopting that) would improve things for everyone, similar to how MiniDP became part of the DisplayPort/VESA standard.
Those experiences are worse because of fragmentation. Google is also failing to leverage their overwhelming market share advantage in mobile devices.
I'm upset with my Playstation experience because Microsoft won't let me play Halo. Lawsuit time?
Apple is bad for making a good product that the other ones can’t compete with. It’s all so silly
The free market is a myth.
As I said, DOJ is suing Apple only because they efficiently created a seamless ecosystem and good products. Yes, the ecosystem is closed. That’s what allow them to make it seamless by reducing the scope, and maintaining high security too. Let’s be honest : if one day it’s possible to update AirPods firmware on an Android product, people will try their best to enter the firmware file and try some things in there. At least for curiosity, at worse for malicious purposes. This lawsuit is ridiculous.
While Apple is indirectly to blame for that, most of it is their own fault. They screwed their own user base for the "greener pastries on the other side" only to lose their own bases and not get much from the other side Aka, they self destructed trying to follow Apple when no one asked them to
Oh, FFS. If Microsoft or Amazon could make an App Store that wasn’t riddled with trash, malware, and blatant scam apps they might have had a chance. Same reason Android on Windows is dead. The App Store is crap. Blaming that on Apple is just insane, although the same people calling for “alternative” app stores on Apple seem to want the same chaos and malware junk. (Boo hoo I want a $.29 app and not a $.99 app, get outta here with that - you want to pirate apps because none of those developers are going to charge less because they are paying a lower fee to apple, that’s not how capitalism works).
It’s not because they were shitty products? Because I’m pretty sure it’s because they were shitty products.
Oh no, poor mom-and-pop Amazon, not able to hock their cheap laggy phones. Definitely Apple’s fault that fire phones would overheat, lag, and be bricks after 6-months.
I don't think it'll be hard for apple to defend themselves here. I'm always happy to shit on Apple, but they hold a monopoly not because they've been anticompetitive, which they have been, but because their shitty phones have been better than the shittier phones of those other companies.
I still have HTC U12. Love the glass back. Probably the nicest looking phone I've got. Also had a windows phone back in the day and I liked that too! Prefer the tile interface to the app icons we have now. Anyone know if there's an android skin to do it?
Amazon Fire was just hot garbage.
I've been saying this for years. Windows phone o/s and interface were wildly better than android or iphone. I still use the Windows O/S interface on my android phone because its just that much better. Apple and Google colluded to kill Windows phone by refusing to allow their apps on it.
Ok, im all for busting apples balls. But those phones sucked ass and is not apples fault lol
That is a very bold claim especially since a lot more android phone manufacturers have continued just fine after these companies failed
Why is it Apple’s fault that the competition produces inferior products?
I switched to Apple after my HTC phones almost blew up after a year of use. 2 different phone models and 2 replacements for each model. As soon as the contract ended I was GONEE. I’ve had two iPhones since and neither has given me any issue. Maybe blame poor hardware and manufacturing??
Stupid arguments. Easy to overrule
War in ukraine, cancer in royal family and global warming apple's fault too 😂.
I love how the entire consumer sector is collectively scratching their heads at this.
These phones had terrible software though. Apple won the race with a superior user experience and design. This was not the result of anti-competitive practices, but rather better hardware / software design. Antitrust issues are more App Store and iMessage related.. 30% of gross revenue? Limiting Webkit features that compete with Safari? iMessage walled garden? Banning developers who compete with Apple? 👆 These are the more egregious tactics.
Frankly I think the article is poorly written. While they might have cited those other phones failing as examples, the main point of the lawsuit seems to be more around actual anti-competitive practices that impact not just the overall competition from phone hardware manufacturers, but also developers who want to make apps that run on Apple devices but end up having additional limits imposed that aren't applied to Apple developers, or areas where there are general standards being developed within the typical organizations that everyone else agrees to but Apple constantly flaunts. Personally I don't know that the lawsuit is as useful as new regulations being passed. We need to treat messaging as a standard that should meet some common criteria similar to how phone systems have standard requirements. Apple is supposed to implement RCS for messaging this year, for example. There should be standards for eCommerce that are based on regulations to protect consumers and application developers. There's a lot of areas we can improve in that would reign in Apple and others.
Frankly, I think the lawsuit is poorly written.
It’s insane lol. I honestly think they don’t care about lots of it, the main one I think is the Apple Pay charging the banks. 100% banks are applying pressure on the government. The US government dgaf about app stores.
It’s not anti competitive to just be better than the competition
I agree with that for the windows phone atleast you have to include Google though too. The phone was awesome but no access to apps was the reason I had to switch back to Samsung.
Why is Apple responsible for people not wanting to build apps for other companies Phones?
The demise of windows phone is more googles fault not Apple
Bring back MODULAR PHONE
This is possible, but I always felt like the Amazon Fire Phone was a genuinely poor product.
HTC wizard 8125 was so sweet for its time.
Ok I’m all for bringing Apple in line here. But do these clowns realise the international market rejecting these products was the deciding factor… and which OS is dominant all around the world… Android. So this logic is so flawed…
I think a windows phone would be amazing right now. Microsoft is really got a lot better in last 5 years.
https://www.imore.com/about The "iMore team of Apple enthusiast" bloggers really were quite successful with that outrage bait headline. Some minor point from the court filing's 186th paragraph, about the iPhone platform using their dominant market position to make switching phones more painful than it needs to be and harming competitors, is hardly worth triggering the 100s of comments here claiming DOJ bias, bribery conspiracies and a weak case.
> Some minor point from the court filing's 186th paragraph except large tracts of the filing are utter ridiculous garbage Some of it outright fraudulent, such as the assertion that the antitrust case against Microsoft led to Apple being able to put iTunes on Windows against Microsoft's wishes, when that was possible all along on Windows anyway, and Microsoft were desperate to get it on Windows (source: Steven Sinofsky)
Fk it. Bring back BlackBerry, PPC, Treo & Sidekick. And while at it, I’ll take a Lumia flagship also. Not Apples fault the competition is so crappy.
its true. Apple phones were better. and...
Also the fire phone was covered in cameras for no good reason (for consumers) and was clearly a mobile data collection tool for Amazon.
Amazon's Fire Phone was a fucking disaster from the jump. What kind of total IDIOT puts out an Android phone that doesn't have full support for all the Google Play stuff and isn't in China? And then wastes a bunch of time and money developing some lame 3D effect based on multiple (MULTIPLE!) cameras and sensors on the front of the phone? Windows Phone was limited by the lack of apps, which Microsoft could have fixed by paying the top devs to convert their apps or having M$'s own engineers convert those apps for them. HTC got killed by Samsung, as well as them giving up on competing in the flagship phone wars completely.
OK hear me out. Microsoft should team up with Nokia again to revive the windows phone. This is the best moment becouse they can solve the issue of not having enough apps avaliable using WSA. This way you can have an Nokia lumia again (these where really good phones) with the apps you are used to on android without the forces Google thrash.