t**********g 发帖数: 3388 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Seattle 讨论区 】
发信人: HousingBlack (房黑 饭托 APOL托 おじさん), 信区: Seattle
标 题: 各大媒体盛赞Windows Phone操作系统
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Sat Jan 7 23:16:53 2012, 美东)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/technology/microsoft-defying-
“GORGEOUS,” raves The Huffington Post.
“Best-looking smartphone operating system in the industry,” gushes Slate.
“Far superior to most if not all the Android smartphones,” says TechCrunch.
Sounds like the usual adulation for a gadget from Apple. In fact, they’re
actually accolades for a new product from Microsoft.
Microsoft?
Exactly. Long ridiculed as the tech industry dullard, Microsoft actually has
a hit, at least with the technorati. It’s cellphone software called
Windows Phone — and they need it to be a blockbuster here at Microsoft
Central.
Yes, Windows and Office products are ubiquitous and highly profitable. But
they’re about as inspirational as a stapler. While the likes of Apple have
captured our imaginations with nifty products like the iPhone, Microsoft has
produced a long list of flops, from smart wristwatches to the Zune music
player to the Kin phones. Steve Jobs used to deride Microsoft for a lack of
originality. In his opinion, the company didn’t bring “much culture” to
its products. With Windows Phone, though, Microsoft is finally getting some
buzz.
“I am a devoted Apple fan — I was in line for the iPhone,” said Axel
Roesler, assistant professor for interaction design at the University of
Washington in Seattle, but Windows Phone “strikes me as quite different and
an advance.”
Windows Phone, which began appearing in devices last fall, certainly stands
out visually. It has bold, on-screen typography and a mosaic of animated
tiles on the home screen — a stark departure from the neat grid of icons
made popular by the iPhone. While most phones force users to open stand-
alone apps to get into social networks, Facebook and Twitter are wired into
Windows Phone. The tiles spring to life as friends or family post fresh
pictures, text messages and status updates.
Even so, relatively few consumers have been tempted, and sales have been
lackluster. A big problem is that, initially, the handsets running Microsoft
’s software, made by companies like HTC and Samsung, were unexceptional.
Even more important, wireless carriers, the gatekeepers for nearly all
mobile phones, have not been aggressively selling Windows phones in their
stores. Most promote the iPhone and devices running Google’s Android
operating system.
And so Microsoft has struck a partnership with Nokia, and executives at both
companies have high hopes that their handsets will catch on with consumers.
On Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas,
Nokia plans to introduce a sleek metallic Windows Phone called the Lumia 900
that will be sold by AT&T in the United States, according to two people
with knowledge of its plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because the
product has not yet been announced. Unlike other handset makers creating
devices with Microsoft’s software, Nokia is not also developing Android
phones.
“We are doing our best work for Windows Phone,” said Stephen Elop, the
chief executive of Nokia and a former Microsoft executive.
While the customers’ verdict is still unknown, the group that developed
Windows Phone has already profoundly affected Microsoft itself, influencing
work on other consumer products. The next major version of software for PC’
s, Windows 8, will look a lot like Windows Phone, which Microsoft hopes will
help it work better on tablet devices. A Windows Phone-like makeover was
also part of the new software update for Xbox, which along with Kinect is
one of Microsoft’s few consumer hits.
Bill Flora, one of the designers of Windows Phone, said the care that
Microsoft took in designing its products had changed vastly since he joined
the company out of art school in the early 1990s.
“Now, instead of 80 percent of its efforts being unenlightened, just 20
percent are unenlightened,” said Mr. Flora, who recently left Microsoft to
form his own design firm in Seattle.
THE tale of how Microsoft created Windows Phone starts with the introduction
of the iPhone, in 2007. To Joe Belfiore, now 43, an engineer who oversees
software design for Windows Phone, that was the spark.
“Apple created a sea change in the industry in terms of the kinds of things
they did that were unique and highly appealing to consumers,” Mr. Belfiore
said in an interview at Microsoft’s campus here. “We wanted to respond
with something that would be competitive, but not the same.”
Microsoft had been an early player in smartphones with Windows Mobile,
software that ran on devices made by Samsung, Motorola and others. But one
word describes its early effort: complicated. Windows Mobile had a complex
array of on-screen menus, including a start button for applications that was
borrowed from Windows PCs. The software ran on sluggish devices that had
physical keyboards and, in some cases, styluses.
nce the iPhone exploded into the marketplace, Microsoft executives knew that
their software, as designed, could never compete. So in December 2008,
Terry Myerson, who had just taken over engineering for the mobile group,
convened a meeting that members of his management team came to call the “
cage match.”
With a prototype of a new Windows Mobile phone on a table, Mr. Myerson, a no
-nonsense engineer , led a heated debate over whether any of the software
could be salvaged. No one was leaving the room until the issue was resolved,
he said.
Seven hours later, the meeting finally adjourned, after Mr. Myerson got a
call from his wife saying a pipe had frozen at his home. By then, a
consensus had emerged that there wasn’t much technology worth saving. “We
had hit bottom,” Mr. Myerson, who is now 39.
“That frankly gives you the freedom to try new things, build a new team and
set a new path,” he added.
The decision was to start from scratch, a move that had serious consequences
. Not only did it delay a Windows phone, it gave Google an opening to woo
Microsoft handset partners to Android.
Charlie Kindel, a longtime Microsoft manager who joined its mobile team in
early 2009, compared the pain caused by starting over to the predicament of
Aron Ralston, the hiker who amputated his own arm in 2003 after it was it
pinned under a boulder in the Utah desert.
“This boulder comprised of Apple and Blackberry rolled on our arm,” said
Mr. Kindel, who left Microsoft last summer. “Microsoft sat there for three
or four years struggling to get out.”
Mr. Myerson also had to rebuild the mobile team — and Mr. Belfiore was his
first major hire.
Mr. Belfiore is a rare breed of Microsoft executive: he joined the company
in 1990 fresh out of college and stayed, even as others fled to work for
companies with more pizazz.
For much of his career, Mr. Belfiore worked on the design of Windows and
Internet Explorer, the kind of Microsoft software that is everywhere but not
always admired for innovation. But he was also known for spending hours
testing Microsoft technologies outside the office to see how they could be
simplified.
In recent years, Mr. Belfiore earned a reputation in the company for working
on more adventurous projects, even if they sometimes bombed in the market.
Before he joined the mobile group, for instance, he oversaw design of Zune,
Microsoft’s ill-fated answer to the iPod. A version of the product released
in 2009, the Zune HD, was praised by reviewers for its spare design that
featured elegant typography and snappy, animated screen transitions as users
flipped around music collections. But the Zune HD came out years too late,
well after the iPod had cemented its lead.
Mr. Belfiore took over the mobile group in early 2009, just as designers
were finishing up the earliest prototypes for Windows Phone. In those
prototypes, Mr. Flora drew inspiration from the signs in airports and other
transportation hubs. He borrowed the emphasis on clarity, clean typography
and broadcast-quality transitions between screens from Zune, which he had
worked on with Mr. Belfiore. The ideas gradually gelled into a software
design language that Microsoft calls Metro.
But there were challenges beyond design. Microsoft had to take a fresh
approach to working with phone makers so it could have its slick new
software function properly. Unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn’t make its own
hardware. Before it restarted its mobile strategy, Microsoft did little to
ensure that its handset partners were putting its software on devices that
could run it well.
No longer would that be tolerated. Microsoft gave its handset partners
detailed specifications of the types of technical innards required,
including processors with certain amounts of power and screen technologies.
Handset makers grumbled about the rules, but the result was phones that ran
better.
“It’s not just about software,” said Albert Shum, general manager of the
design studio for Windows Phone. “It’s about the whole end-to-end
experience.”
When senior executives got their first look at the software, Mr. Myerson
said, there was “some hesitancy.” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief
executive, didn’t like that the first screen that appeared after turning on
the device contained oversized type that cut off the day of the week. (
Wednesday showed up as Wed.) Revisions were made.
But the group was given its creative freedom. And the critics, at least,
have approved the final results.
“It looks like nothing we’ve seen before from Microsoft,” said Michael
Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner, the technology research firm. “The
company is being somewhat bold and saying what worked for them in 1992 won’
t work now.”
Still, last summer, Mr. Ballmer told Microsoft investors that he was
disappointed with Windows Phone sales. In mid-December, he named Mr. Myerson
, the engineering head, to take full control of the group. He charged Mr.
Myerson with improving the Windows Phone advertising campaign and
relationships with wireless carriers. A software update for Windows Phones
in the fall added a number of improvements to the product, including basic
editing functions like copy and paste.
BUT this year is crucial; it will show whether a respected product is enough
to help Microsoft make up for lost time. Even if it feels good to be a
favorite of tech critics for a change, Microsoft needs a blockbuster in the
mobile business, not a cult hit.
“Entering the market so late with this experience has created some special
challenges for us,” Mr. Myerson said. “I think if we were there earlier it
would be different.” | m*******i 发帖数: 8711 | | g*****g 发帖数: 34805 | 3 1% of market share, yikes.
TechCrunch.
【在 t**********g 的大作中提到】![](/moin_static193/solenoid/img/up.png) : 【 以下文字转载自 Seattle 讨论区 】 : 发信人: HousingBlack (房黑 饭托 APOL托 おじさん), 信区: Seattle : 标 题: 各大媒体盛赞Windows Phone操作系统 : 发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Sat Jan 7 23:16:53 2012, 美东) : http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/technology/microsoft-defying- : “GORGEOUS,” raves The Huffington Post. : “Best-looking smartphone operating system in the industry,” gushes Slate. : “Far superior to most if not all the Android smartphones,” says TechCrunch. : Sounds like the usual adulation for a gadget from Apple. In fact, they’re : actually accolades for a new product from Microsoft.
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