Joe Belfiore, the Former Head of Windows Phone, To Leave Microsoft After 32 Years (windowscentral.com) 35
Microsoft Corporate Vice President Joe Belfiore will leave Microsoft after 32 years with the company. From a report: Belfiore has served in several roles at Microsoft but is currently the CVP of Office. His plans to retire were announced internally in an email sent out to employees and later shared publicly on Twitter. Belfiore will be a senior advisor and coach to aid the transition until summer 2023. The Office Group will be led by CVP Ales Holecek, who has led the division alongside Belfiore for several years, and CVP Sumit Chauhan, who will move up from their role as head of Office Organization. Many of our readers know Belfiore best for his time in charge of Windows Phone. He co-led that division from 2009 to 2013, which included Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia. Belfiore then went on to lead the Windows 10 team for almost five years.
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pardon me, gentlemen, but from your conversation i have to assume that you guys actually use windows phone?
myself i still cling to a 7 year old bb priv just because keyboard but ... a freaking windows phone!! man, that's some extreme mix of luddite and nerd right there. compliments!
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I was the proud owner of a Windows phone. Very nice camera, thank you. It now sits next to my bed and serves as my alarm clock. Its browser still works, too, in case my wife and I have a late night need to catch a little Elvis or Jan and Dean or yes, Jerry Lee Lewis. A month or so ago its weather app inexplicably stopped working.
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No, Kin was initially managed by James Allard before Andy Lees dragged it into his fifedom. It was a stupid product though - way to acquire a product and kill it.
Windows Phone Sucked (Score:3, Insightful)
The only "achievement" Windows Phone had was that it brought down Nokia thanks to their planted Manchurian candidate.
Re:Windows Phone Sucked (Score:4, Insightful)
The only "achievement" Windows Phone had was that it brought down Nokia thanks to their planted Manchurian candidate.
Windows phone itself wasn't bad at all... the whole Metro interface made MUCH more sense on a phone and tablet than it did on the desktop. And Microsoft had diligently been pursuing the phone market from the very beginning. But after Apple changed the game with the iPhone, Microsoft was just too slow getting Metro into the phone market. They had heavily invested with CE and Windows Mobile, but the public wasn't ready for a smartphone with a PC-like interface (MS also made the strategic mistake of thinking business use would drive smartphones, as they had with desktops, while Apple knew it was personal use that would be the big driver of adoption). By the time they arrived with Metro, Google was already in with Android, and by then, there was no room for another major smartphone system. Two seems to be the magic number on smartphones and desktops. Had Microsoft beaten Google to the Number Two spot, we'd likely see an iPhone-Windows Phone ecosystem today.
Re:Windows Phone Sucked (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows phone itself wasn't bad at all...
I take that you didn't try to develop some advanced apps for Windows Phone.
I tried and there were many system calls that were there, documented, but never implemented by Microsoft so nothing happened when they were called.
"The light was on but nobody home", and I wasted many hours on that and I can assume that many other developers ended up in the same quagmire and gave up trying to make decent apps for that platform.
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Windows phone itself wasn't bad at all...
I take that you didn't try to develop some advanced apps for Windows Phone.
I tried and there were many system calls that were there, documented, but never implemented by Microsoft so nothing happened when they were called.
"The light was on but nobody home", and I wasted many hours on that and I can assume that many other developers ended up in the same quagmire and gave up trying to make decent apps for that platform.
Nor did he try using a Windows phone... "the light was on but nobody was home" pretty much describes how it was to use one.
I had to carry a Windows Phone around for work. The phone part was the only bit that kind of worked, it was easier just to check my laptop every 30 mins to make sure nothing had crashed overnight than to trust the Windows phone to get the email.
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Agreed. A coworker had it, mostly like to due to an out of control contrarianism, but the UI actually seemed very reasonable and useful compared to iPhone and Android at the time. They _could_ have merged their designs with Nokia designs, but they were too intent on having Windows from top to bottom despite the awfulness of the Windows architecture. At the same time Nokia had some really good stuff in the pipelines, even into beta, that were ungraciously terminated.
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> And Microsoft had diligently been pursuing the phone market from the very beginning.
Ah yes, Win CE [wikipedia.org]. Looks like they finally renamed that stupid name to Windows Embedded Compact.
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yeah it was awful by all standards. not only that but they pushed it out way too early.
so people were having conversations with microsoft going like this:
startup: "yeah so when are you going to put support in the api's so that we can port our app over you keep giving us free devices and lunches to do?"
ms evangelist: "you don't need the api"
startup: "I guess we don't need to make a port of the app then".
they poured awful amounts of money into the wrong things, it doesn't matter how much developer pr you do i
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yeah it was awful by all standards
The truth is somewhere between "awful" and "not as good as iOS / Android". They were already late to the game so couple that with needing to be better than the competition was the killer.
Buy anyway, nuance is boring so "awful" it is.
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I had an Android, then switched to a Windows phone. From a user's standpoint, the Windows phone UI was *much* better IMHO. I don't know about how easy it was to program.
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Forgot to add, the battery was easy to replace.
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It was also the only phone that I've been able to plug into a USB hub and have working keyboard/mouse/video. I really liked it, but it didn't make enough money fast enough so Ballmer lost interest.
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I struggle... (Score:3)
To understand why this is newsworthy? I mean him no disrespect, but his two notable activities are heading the windows phone group when they acquired Nokia and 5 years running Win10 group.
So what?
Do we now celebrate Win10? Windows Phone? His extended career at MS (32 years)?
I'm certain he's a fine fellow, largely did his work in the background, and had a good career. Why am I supposed to care?
Re:I struggle... (Score:4, Funny)
Because his replacement is Lennart Poettering ;-)
(I am kidding, I have no idea either why we are supposed to give a damn about this guy leaving MS)
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which is to say sumthin!!!!
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To understand why this is newsworthy? I mean him no disrespect, but his two notable activities are heading the windows phone group when they acquired Nokia and 5 years running Win10 group.
well, wikipedia says he was "microsoft program manager" for os/2. whatever "program manager" means, and despite os/2 being one of the most underrated osses ever but actually done by ibm, that participation still makes him holy even if only by association, and worthy of reverence, you fool. enough with the heresy! repent!
No, we don't (Score:2)
Many of our readers know Belfiore best for his time in charge of Windows Phone.
That was what, 10, 15 years ago?
Windows Phone wasn't bad (Score:3)
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(I had the Firefox OS developer phone as my daily driver, when I was naive enough to think that HTML5 mobile would rule the world.)
Alas, I am content video-watching via Firefox + ublock Origin on Android - I don't need or want their Youtube app experience. And that goes for a whole bunch of other services that companies deliberately cripple their HTML5 interface on mobile such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc.
The ironic thi
Retired at 54 (Score:2)
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His Goo-goo dolls haircut always irked me. Yes I am that shallow.
32 years of negative accomplishments (Score:3)
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I take it you never used a Windows Phone.
Windows Phone (Score:2)
Thank you for your work on Windows Phone, you single-handedly ensured that the mobile phone industry has robust platforms, one being Free Software.
Windows Phone UI was great (Score:1)