Archis's Blog

Many think I’m an “Apple Fanboy” – which is sort-of true (I’m a fan of the iPhone, not Apple.) It’s a matter of semantics really – I appreciate and value a good thing when I see it. When you don’t have a good product, fanboy or not, I don’t care a lot.

Always good indicator of Microsoft’s product quality is the employee’s Facebook feeds. Managers at MSFT don’t have to panic – none of my friends leak any information.

For anyone with plenty of time and academic curiosity to test my hypothesis, they should go analyse the Facebook/Twitter timelines of employee posts. One of the things I learnt the hard way in my almost-five years there is that very very few Microsofties are what you might call – true academicians (though those that exist are the ones behind what you see succeeding today.) My respect and admiration for Terry Myerson is a matter of Google’ing my past posts, and I’d dare you to find anyone of the thousands of people to whom I complain about WP to, to quote even a single instance where I have spoken against him.

The trend there is to throw around the word ‘innovation’, ‘synergy’, ‘dynamism’, etc. a lot and quote past examples, and find new process names to try. It’s pretty annoying to hear a softie promote their product at times (there was one blog out of the thousands who really questioned whether all softies speak the way Charlie Kindel does – most do in fact.) I have many analyses as to why most Microsoft people appear to be totally out of touch with reality (heck I worked on Messenger and Hotmail – you don’t even want to go there!) The problem is, for a large part of the last decade, all you had to do was build stuff, and it’d get a cool few million users without any effort and you post-justify success with MBA-speak. Windows was the vehicle. You slap some WPF on there, and it inevitably gets picked up. You never have to convince or sell developers on, how or why, WPF improved the things you could do compared to other alternatives.

Which is why when WP was announced, the first thing they did was to hold an iPhone funeral. My FB feed was practically filled with death-threats. Try and suggest one feature missing in your Windows Phone, and you get attacked with all kinds of straw-men. The same rhetoric over and over distills down to one or more of the following:

1. Whatever you ask for is irrelevant. Yes, it’s only perception that you need a compass in maps. People got along fine before, and people will get along fine without it. Don’t be such a prick and feel entitled to anything. We don’t owe you anything, so don’t suggest features.

2. The iPhone never had it in 2007. (Not sure what they try to say here, but in their world apparently, that’s a defense)

3. Maybe it’s not for you (and this is said with some kind of pride of elitism – we’re the 1% few who appreciate the true value of a magical world-saving device)

4. It’ll be successful in 2015 (this one really confuses you – I could go on and on about how utterly ridiculous it is to expect me to pay $300 bucks for your phone NOW because it’s 3rd model four years from today will leap frog the competitions model then after you’ve paid for a couple of additional $300 upgrades.)

I got sidetracked. My apologies. As I was saying, the academicians – let me clarify here. There is a mistaken belief that Academicians are people without purpose. Heck they know purpose and they know money. What it really means is people who are dedicated to building a good product, just ‘because’! In its day Microsoft did come out with some pretty good stuff just because – COM being the best one I can name right now. Even Windows Mobile was pretty impressive for its time.

I think at this CES finally, there is a Windows Phone device that really makes me “think”. I’m not saying I’ll buy it – because I recently threw out my Focus for a 4S (yeah, if you made me pay $300 bucks for a shitty device, I’m waiting till a WP offers me TWICE as much as my iPhone to make up for the difference. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.) But for once, I see a device I would have been genuinely (as opposed to defensively) proud of, if I worked at either Microsoft or Nokia.

Many of you may not know this, and it seems like a pretty childish thing to do, but one way to get softies to shut up about their ‘superior’ OS for the past year, was to carry a few hundred dollars or a couple of blank checks in your pocket. Anytime someone used the word ‘superior’, I would pull out a check for $700 bucks and put my iPhone on the table and ask them to give me their replacement. Don’t argue with me. Don’t debate with me. You know better than me. Here’s my money. I’m waiting to be impressed.

An indication of good times though, is clearly from the lack of those outrageous death-threats flying around on FB this time. After CES, they have gotten factual, and that’s a mighty good sign. The N900 actually looks pretty good, and if they can fix the app situation (which is still bad) they just might do well. I was also impressed at HTC adding the 16mp camera. Now don’t you go telling me it may not add quality. We dished it out to them when they defended lack of dual-core, and we must face it. When it comes to specs, a WP has the most powerful camera I’ve heard of in a phone.

The software though really has to deliver fast and has to finish off the remaining ‘magic’ of the equation. Apps, including Facebook’s own, must provide full-fidelity (a concept I learnt is very important, and I learnt it at and from Microsoft.) Skype MUST match the Facetime/iMessage magic. If not none, then at least minimal, signin dialogs, and stuff. Just detect what’s on the other side, and enable video and Messenger IMs without the two users first having added each other as contacts on Messenger or Skype. If they pull that off, and do it fast, and make sure they remain feature-compatible with other phones – they just may expect my few hundred bucks for my next upgrade in 2 years.

I do see a good change in attitude. Instead of speaking of killing things and being the No 1 in 10 years, they are slowly learning the reality that others have pretty decent products too and will probably be here for a while. Making a good product and selling a decent amount of phones in the short-term may not be a bad compromise to dreams of world domination in four years.

After five years of watching shitty products being promoted with zeal, I’m happy to see great products promoted calmly for what they are – simply good products. I’m impressed!