Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 30 2017, @04:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the tsk-tsk-Tisch dept.

The New York Police Department's Deputy Commissioner of IT has defended the department's purchase of $160 million worth of obsolete Windows phones after a New York Post article criticized the "boondoggle". The NYPD plans to switch to iPhones:

On Monday, Jessica Tisch, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of information technology, wrote a scathing defense of the NYPD's choice of Windows phone.

The two-year project wrapped up in October and cost $160 million. It put Windows phones into the hands of all 36,000 officers.

The NY Post's Tina Moore originally reported on the change with the headline: NYPD needs to replace 36K useless smartphones. In the article Moore points out:

"Just months after the last phone was handed out, officials plan to begin replacing them all with brand-new iPhones by the end of the year, sources said."

This clearly didn't sit well with Tisch. She penned a retort that extolled the virtues of the Windows smartphone program, while also confirming that the NYPD has given up on Windows in favor of iPhones.

The smartphones purchased were the Lumia 830 and Lumia 640 XL.

Blog post defending the use of Windows phones. Also at New York Magazine, The Register, and Mac Rumors.

Older article about the "crime-fighting phone".


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @09:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @09:09PM (#561725)

    M$ phones [are] down to less than a fraction of a percent [marketshare]

    Upthread, takyon has mentioned the apps.
    Doesn't it make good sense to specify that apps be written using cross-platform tools such as Qt, [wikipedia.org] so that it doesn't much matter what hardware/OS gets used?

    ...or make it where those will run in any standards-compliant browser?

    How this chick (who does things like it's still 1999) got to be in a top tech position is a complete mystery to me.
    El Reg mentioned a few things: [theregister.co.uk]

    Ms Tisch, [...] it turns out, is the daughter of former Loews[1] CEO and billionaire James S Tisch
    [...]
    in 2014 [...], then-police commissioner Bill Bratton specifically identified Tisch as being the driving force for the plan and joked: "She's a terror if she doesn't get her way, so I usually let her get her way. So she's certainly getting her way with this technology."

    Here's a gem from that:

    the reason Tisch plumbed for the Lumia was because the NYPD was using Microsoft software on its video surveillance system--a system that Tisch has closely associated herself with and, back in 2012, demonstrated and boasted about to the press, raising eyebrows [nypdconfidential.com]

    [1] If that's the same Loews that I'm thinking of, they've been a Linux user for a long time. [google.com]
    Within the first 10 hits, there's something dated 2008.
    ...and I'm thinking that it goes back further than that.

    ...and I really like El Reg's alliterative subtitle:
    Bonkers buy-up by bungling billionairess.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +3  
       Interesting=1, Informative=2, Total=3
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   3