“Named General Distribution Release 2 (GDR2), the latest update enables Data Sense, a way to track how data is being used, alongside FM radio, and the ability to set other applications as the default camera. […] GDR2 also includes support for Gmail’s CalrdDAV and CalDAV implementation, allowing Windows Phone users to continue syncing calendar and contacts after Google announced its intention to pull its Exchange ActiveSync service earlier this year.” There’s something wrong with your operating system’s update/improvement rate when such a minute, insignificant release is news.
This is the best name for an OS update since Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 etc.
Provided they don’t copy (but it’s a known fact they never copy) the Ubuntu Release naming after animals, or something like that, it’s still a good naming conventing, indeed.
I’d like to add a word on Windows Phone, especially after reading this ‘sad’ news there : http://www.osnews.com/story/27197/Nokia_Q2_report_below_expectation…
Through the years, I gained some kind of reverence towards Microsoft’s products, especially its falgship OS, Windows. As an ex-atariST, I hated Microsoft’s DOS along with the x86 architecture.
Then Windows 3.11 came out and did a tremendous task at making a better job than a full flagged Atari Mega ST computer with hard disk and laser printer. Even using the crappy x86 architecture we were all joking about.
Then MCGA (320×200 in 256 colors) allowed Loom and Fate of Atlantis, Adlib, SoundBlaster, CD rom drives, the 7th Guest, Windows 95, Myst, … Windows 2000. That’s where Microsoft hooked me up. I really started to work on Windows in 2000, and Windows 2000 was a real leap forward, running on strong Pentium configurations. It was unexpectedly stable and fast, and feature full.
At the same time, I bought a Dreamcast. A -SEGA- Dreamcast, may I precise. That’s exactly where my words are leading. The main problem behind Windows Phone’s public disavowal. I might dare to compare Windows Phone to the Dreamcast’s fate. Let me explain.
After the Sega Genesis (MegaDrive in France) and the Saturn’s misfortune, face the upcoming Sony’s competition incarnated by the PlayStation, Sega as to make a lower profile, because Sega was a synonym of old fashioned, clunky, expensive and… well, just outdated. Selling the Dreamcast under a big shiny SEGA logo would have raised eyebrows. Well, their fate was (almost) already closed with their Saturn’s loss and some other affairs against 3dfx and Electronic Arts.
So, to return to the Windows Phone stuff. When I first saw the Nokia Lumia 920 it was a shock for me, really. Not only the device in itself was (is) a pure jewel, a malicious mix of fruitful color (that -yellow-) with a round cornered black frame, an incredibly elegant yet aesthetic user interface that just moves like hell, my first thought was : what an achievement, they’ve made it !
The hardware staff as well as the software staff made such a beautiful job at integrating both together, Apple’s iPhone was just send to graves. But… here’s the BUT that kicks the butts. If only Microsoft dared to leave the Windows brand, for instance use the proposed “dash logo” as new brand, just like Sega used the swirling logo as the new Dreamcast brand and get deserved recognition.
I think the biggest problem when a company is getting so “old” but also so “present” by its arrogant behavioral (don’t get me wrong, many people still gets pissed at Microsoft for past, but also yet present misconduct) that it’s like people are now subconsciously challenging Microsoft by not going to buy their products anymore, no matter what. Even if the Nokia Lumia 920 is one hell of a nice phone.
People don’t forget that easily, rebranding will only fool them for some seconds, you have to have the gutts, the balls and the right products to capture their attention again (not just $12000). Sega prooved it with the incredible Dreamcast (if only it had a DVD player) and seriously fun yet mature games. The alchemy between the machine and the software was there. The same alchemy is also there with the Nokia Lumia brand.
But people gets suspicious at Microsoft, as a whole, even if the team behind the Lumia in particular and the Windows Phone in general is nowhere responsible for general Microsoft’s misleading. When you gets the Xbox One fiasco even before it was launched (24h connection, ads spread across the UI, no game share, …) and the Windows 8 (not to speak the RT and Surface) fiasco as well, how should they view the Windows Phone line of products ? Doomed.
The whole Windows Phone team should have been “sold” to Nokia under licensing, and NOT the other way around, then Nokia selling ‘Windows Phone’ under its own brand (say the new Dash logo) and license it to third parties for the count of Microsoft. With its Ovi experience of media and application store, that would have optimized established (yet immature) infrastructures instead to kill one to create another beside. And cross develop softwares for Android as well as iOS, period.
People are also getting super frustrated at software fragmentation, not just OS. Bada ? WebOS ? Tizen ? Sailfish ? What should I do of my already paid applications, rebuy them ? And the file format incompatibilities (made purposely or not) see the CardDAV or CalDAV format fiasco recently, and you get the picture. We’re in fucking 2013, 14 years after we were introduced to the 3rd millennium, and that’s all what we get ? Haven’t they learned their past lessons about “competition” and market fragmentation ?
We’re asked as humans to walk toward the same direction, be all friendly with our peers, collaborative, see the pictures of the various ads where various colored people from different cultures smiles and works together for the same goal to maximize efficiency and humanity, yet this “ideal world” is raped by big corporations practices that just do the opposite (see the Apple vs. Samsung litigation over a fucking rounded corner box, come on guys, be adults, I’d gladly round the corners of a brick and throw it at your face, you bastards, you broke my dream of an ideal world).
TL;DR : Microsoft should adopt a low profile for its Windows Phone line, like Sega did with the Dreamcast, stop pushing the “recognized” Windows brand (that obviously everyone now despise), transfer the Window Phone team to Nokia (their core business after all) and let Nokia do the job with the current elements in their hand. Of course, fire the irresponsible managers that costs more than provides solutions, and leave the hardcore techies and fans restore Nokia’s legitimation as a phone maker.
Kochise
PS : and the long post potato http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoOn0LDHafo
Actually I was being sarcastic. 4.0.2 etc would have been a more logical name for something that wasn’t really consumer-aware like Win 95 OSR2.
I’m not sure why this isn’t Windows Phone 8.0.2 or whatever.
Too much numbers for a broad audience. Windows Phone 8.0.2 build 35268 patch level 134 doesn’t makes sense either…
Kochise
Edited 2013-07-20 06:50 UTC
old thread, but…
Works for iOS.
[edit: typo]
Edited 2013-07-23 17:30 UTC
Chrome and Firefox also…
Kochise
Perhaps that would risk “contaminating” it with stale Nokia corporate culture which brought us such wonders like Symbian or the older-than-iPhone-still-no-results Meego project…
Every woman under 50 is using Instagram. That’s going to be a serious problem unless they don’t care about half the population.
As I said before the Windows Phone division is managed by idiots. There is no excuse for it taking this long to get FM radio. They’re not a garage startup, they have slush funds and should be meeting customer demand for specific features.
Windows Phone at this point should just be avoided by everyone. Many of us gave it a chance but the people in charge are clueless and arrogant. My WP is in a drawer, I should probably get around to craiglisting it.
Edited 2013-07-19 15:51 UTC
Even I, user since day one, left it behind this week. It’s a mismanaged did, leaving a trail of withered potential.
It did have potential and the whole thing is a shame especially because Nokia has held up their end of the deal by making some nice looking hardware. Nokia should be allowed to sell Android as an option on at least their upper end phones. They can’t compete with the Galaxy using Windows Phone in the US. That’s just the way it is. The US market has voted iPhone/Android and the external development gap is an ongoing problem.
I would really hate to see Nokia buried by Microsoft buying them out. I’d really like to see them have the chance to compete openly against Samsung.
No Instagram was news 6 months ago. Did you copy and paste a previous comment from the past?
Plenty of people are using Instagram just fine on WP these days.
Where have I heard that before? Oh right
Plenty of people use $non_itunes_program just fine on Linux.
You have to consider the sales floor. When some lady asks “does it have instagram? and the sales guy says “well not exactly the official client but there is this….” all the lady hears is “no blah blah blah no blah blah blah no” and gets an iPhone.
Oh.. you’re one of those guys.
Well you didn’t say “Official” client anyways. And any consumer worth their salt should know that sales guys (say at AT&T) know nothing and are pretty powerless to help you. Every issue you bring to them they virtually call the 800 for everything.
As far as Instagram goes. I think it’s even more preposterous that Instagram *still* doesn’t have a native iPad app. This has been going on for how many years now? So don’t rag on Windows Phone in relation to this level of incompetence. All these “under 50” women you speak of that use Instagram on their iPad are using an ugly, stretched version of an iPhone app.
Yes I have a basic understanding of sales. So does the little girl that sells lemonade near my old house.
That reminds me of when Linux fans would tell us that any consumer worth their salt will research their hardware purchases first to make sure drivers are available.
And then there is reality.
Reality is that perception matters and consumers don’t want to fuss with electronics. Sales staff have the job of selling phones and not taking the time to explain how the off-brand client provides 90% of the functionality and blah blah blah. That’s all consumers hear, blah blah blah get an iPhone. If your job is to *sell phones* then why waste your time? They don’t work for Microsoft.
It’s not incompetence on the part of Instagram, it’s apathy. They own the toy and can do whatever the f they want.
Microsoft however could have bribed them early on for a port. That would have been a better use of capital than paying Jessica Alba to feign interest in WP or paying for a new API that developers did not want. At the end of the day Microsoft is responsible for screwing up this platform by ignoring customer and developer feedback.
Edited 2013-07-19 17:46 UTC
I see. So in light of the facts I presented about what you said wasn’t there you went on an ideology trip. *Yawn*
Doesn’t change the fact that I have the things you say aren’t there for Windows Phone 8 sans FM radio. But IF I need FM radio I just pop my sim back into my 808 that I use regularly.
The issues is that if you’re a corporation trying to sell your product in a crowded marketplace by not giving customers what they actually want, you’re going to have a bad time…
That’s ze_jerkface for you.
The reality is that sales staff are invariably directed by management to sell certain models. They are not at all interested in what the customer wants.
Retailers and phone companies absolutely hate Apple who are considered to be little more than extortionists. They will never willingly promote Apple.
The lack of Instagram hurts (Not me so much. I do my best to make sure my photos AREN’T utter crap. Why would I want to apply filters that do the opposite?), but the lack of FM isn’t that big of a deal – TuneIn Radio is a great app. The stations I listen to are available, plus it makes it easy to actually figure out what stations are available in my area – the only alternative is to sit and hit the seek button over and over and over and over. The Sacramento region has a lot of stations. The dial is damn near full.
Though, it is curious that WP7.5 had FM radio capability and 8 doesn’t.
There are two fully functional Instagram apps on WP that have been there for a while now. The UX is the best on any platform also. If you’re hurting that much for Instagram then these will fit your needs 100%.
Instan….. what?!
Seriously, that application manages to raise my interest level all the way up to 0%.
Never understood what is it all about.
I think it underscores a broader problem Windows Phone has, and that is connecting to niche apps which are the flavor of the month. These type of apps in general need to make their way to the platform faster.
Microsoft can do this by being more engaged with start ups by running accelerators, seeding funds, etc. Its a trickle down sort of thing imo.
INstagram is NOT the new deal killer.
No one in my family (2 daughters and 4 g-kids) would even touch it with a 13m Bargepole.
So without Instagram what is the new deal killer then?
Faceblock?
Twatter?
MySpace?
Pah.
Its news because you (and The Verge) reported it as such.
Microsoft had posted up an information page like they do for all updates, but don’t let that get in the way of your “editorializing”. Unbelievable.
How many posts does it take to get the Jessica Alba Limited Edition Windows Phone?
God I really wish I didn’t spend so many poster points on that gold plated Kin signed by Joe Belfiore. What was I thinking?
Truth hurts.
Yeah, inconvenient truths like growing sales and market share. It has been amusing watching you have to reach more and more lately.
Now, I get to see how good T-Mobile is on updates. When I bought my Lumia 710, it came with WP7, but 7.5 was already available at that point. They never did release 7.8 for it, though.
My HTC 8x is no longer available through them. I hope they update it.
If TMo didn’t roll out the 7.8 update it already shows you the type of carrier they are. I’m extremely disappointed in them.
I don’t know for sure, but I think they may have rolled out 7.8 for some of their phones, but just not the Lumia 710.
I would love to know Thom why incremental updates are such a bad thing? As a software dev small incremental changes are easier to manage and quicker to roll out.
hum… is that really what you understood that Thom said ? if it was … i recommend english lessons. Or are you just trying to disagree with him any way you can ?
i dont usually agree with all Thom writes .. but … damn… i would have given up writing on OSnews if it was me… almost as i am giving up reading OSnews.
I interpreted his comment as their incremental updates being too few and far between (and hence news), not bad in and of themselves.
Of course, I’m American, so I may have translated his English incorrectly. 😉
exactly … anyone just reading the parent comment will think that Thom is against small incremental updates !