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I miss having a viable "3rd" option.
The rise of the iPhone and Android was a wild time back in the early 2010s.
It's still shocking that Microsoft just couldn't come up with a decent third option at all. Goes to show that Windows only exists out of pure inertia at this point, and Microsoft is now incapable of building successful consumer products that people love using.
They did, about three times, each time abandoning it before the ecosystem could stabilize.
Admittedly, the last time nobody even wanted to buy in because everyone expected them to drop the OS within two years. Which they promptly did.
They never build something with the attitude "Let's make the best thing for the consumer!"
It's always "Let's make the best thing for the consumer... Buuuut we also need to integrate this fuckery here!"
It's no way to break into a market where you are far behind. You need to put consumer needs first. Period.
The last Microsoft product that actually is good is VS Code. It was build with the end user in mind and quickly took up steam.
In today's climate with so much competition, you can't half ass things, just because "you're a big player". Microsoft refuses to accept this reality.
Windows 11 is the next step in the process of them fucking up big again.
I had a windows phone. It was really good, it had all the functionality apps, it could run emulators, but it didn’t have the user base. Good compatibility with windows 8/8.1. But people hated those OSs. Microsoft was too late to pick up blackberry’s failing market and too early to capitalize on windows 10s popularity.
Visual Studio Code is quite well liked
IMO MS for consumers and MS for developers are two totally different beasts. Typescript is also a beloved tech.
Good point.
Vscode is essential just because of what they call "intellisense". You download the package for the programming language you want and then it shows you lists of variables and members in classes, shows you tool tips with relevant comments and some autocomplete suggestions. This is so invaluable and saves so much time. I can't just remember the entire codebase and every function, variable and overload of it myself. Switching tabs and windows all the time every time I forgot the overloads for that one function is an impossible waste of time when I'm doing anything complicated.
I know there are actually FOSS ways to do this now finally but I've never successfully set it up. Hopefully that stuff will be working well, easier to use and more refined by the time Microsoft pulls the plug in Vscode for Linux.
There have always been other solutions though. Someone here mentioned eclipse as a FOSS solution, but there are others. Even vim and kate have pretty good language comprehension thanks to working with language servers. Likewise products like JetBrains while they can be expensive are very good pieces of software. I actually don't even use VSCode that often anymore thanks to Kate and the JetBrains suite. VSCode itself is open source and you can use one of the pure open source builds, or any of the other programmers text editors that exist.
... FOSS ways to do this now finally
Ahem. Eclipse would like a word.
Was doing Java, C, PHP, and Python on it close to 20 years ago. With language API support & documentation implemented by plugins.
That said, I do tip my hat to MS for developing LSP for vscode - and eventually making it an open standard.
I would totally consider a Windows phone if they could actually pull it off.
I only run one hands free Linux system now, but a Linux phone would also be cool. It would have to be compatible with Google Play apps though as I need certain things for work.
Linux phones can already run Android apps and Google Play using WayDroid. You're going to have a problem if anything you use requires it to pass an integrety check, though, like some banking apps have.
Current Linux phones have a lot of problems but surprisingly Android compatibility is not bad.
I love my Windows Phone! So much so that I literally still have it in a drawer full of out-of-date tech - it works fine but is no longer compatible with my cell service provider :-/
You will soon need to watch a 30 second commercial to change your screen dimming.
I love my (newish) wired Intellimouse! It's never connected to a windows computer...but I love the mouse.
The thing that made Microsoft the de facto computing platform for several generations was the sheer laziness of IBM. Basically nothing about the model 5150 PC was proprietary to IBM; it used lots of off the shelf components, and they even arranged a non-exclusive license for DOS from Microsoft. The only thing IBM actually owned any intellectual rights to was the BIOS, and the minute Compaq made a compatible but non-infringing BIOS it suddenly became not IBM's platform, it was Microsoft's platform. No other system at the time did that especially in the reach of small businesses and ordinary citizens; the closest was CP/M which still required machine specific versions of the OS, software, even data disk formats weren't interchangeable.
That led to mass adoption, then "This new Windows computer can still run your DOS software" followed shortly by "AOL Keyword TRENDY" and look where it got us.
Private life no way but for my job where everything is microsoft. I would kill for a onedrive centered windows Phone with copilot ocr.
The OneDrive app on Android seems to OCR images just fine though.
Not smooth enough on my work device.
Microsoft has a way of ignoring our software policies and suddenly allowing functionality which is otherwise blockef off.
I assume this is giving some of my IT coworkers a huge migrain but it not being my responsibility means i mostly reap benefits.
A third Option would be bad. Many apps can't manage to build a good App for two platforms, imagine having to support 3. Also Android is so flexible you can build it into pretty much anything.
With a little luck, things like Graphene could be that 3rd option, sort of.
The big problem is Android doesn't require a standard BIOS like PCs ended up with. So hardware drivers have to be developed/released by the hardware vendor (which they generally don't publish them).
My last pre touchscreen phone ran Nokia's Symbian OS, I kinda wish they would have updated it and stayed competitive, but they transitioned over to Windows and picked the wrong pony...
I haven't been able to confirm it myself but I've heard that postmarketOS doesn't suck as hard as it used to anymore