[venomsnake]

They are moving in that direction since the W8 store was revealed and they are doubling down right now.

All parts of the company will share and contribute to the success of core offerings, like Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, Office 365 and our EA offer, Bing, Skype, Dynamics, Azure and our servers. All parts of the company will contribute to activating high-value experiences for our customers.

High value experience is euphemism for gatekeeper from what I have seen.

[bornhuetter]

I agree with you that Microsoft is becoming more closed, and that that is a bad thing. However, when you say "full steam ahead to the biggest walled garden on earth. We are still the Borg" it is so over the top that I can't take your comment seriously. Similarly to how I pretty much write off any comment that uses the terms M$ or "Cupertino idiot tax" unless used ironically.

[criley2]

If people want Microsoft to be "less closed", then they should stop avoiding Microsoft for platforms like Google and Apple, who are whooping Microsoft's ass by being far more closed.

Between the anti-open Google+/Play/Hangouts universe and the anti-open iOS iGarden, I'm surprised that it has taken Microsoft this long to catch up to their anti-open competitors.

[venomsnake]

Openness has nothing to do with abandonment of microsoft. It has all to do with the fact that they could not deliver good mobile device. And still can't.

They made errors on every step of the game - allowed carrirs to have saying on the devices, abandoned all lessons learned from PCs and building ecosystems and threw an inferior iOS me too (the UI was better though, the ideology the same)

[criley2]

I trialed a Nokia Lumia 920 with WP8 for a month before settling on a Note II, and I must say that I strongly disagree with your analysis of WP8. It seems very biased and it seems to be ignorant -- as in I don't believe you've actually used the platform as a daily driver for any period of time.

No offense, but calling it a "me too" iOS competitor is about as nuanced as calling Android a "me too" iOS competitor -- technically, Android is a "me too" product, just more mature, but it don't serve any useful end to point that out.

[venomsnake]

I was talking about the totally botched launch of WP7 mostly (and I have used wp7 device). While WP8 may be amazing it was just too late.

Android have the "dominant market share" thing going on about it.

MS had very short window to make a dent in the smartphone war but because of "reasons" never really got together to create a product that could be the smartphone win 3.11/98

[Gigablah]

My Nokia 900 is a great device, and I really like the OS.

Unfortunately the ecosystem never really picked up. I'm already looking to switch back to Android because I can't use WP with devices like my Pebble, among other things.

[ladzoppelin]

I absolutely love my Nokia 928 and think WP8 mobile is amazing. Don't really understand what you are talking about here..

[city41]

WP8 is the best phone OS out there. I absolutely love my Nokia Lumia after owning several iPhones. The mobile device is not the problem, the app store on the device is.