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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday September 27 2017, @12:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the use-what-works dept.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has revealed he uses an Android-powered smartphone, rather than a Windows one.

"Recently, I actually did switch to an Android phone," he said, speaking on Fox News on Sunday.

Microsoft's own Windows-powered phones have failed to make a significant impact on the smartphone market, which is dominated by devices running Google's Android operating system.

However, Mr Gates said he had installed lots of Microsoft apps on his phone.

When asked whether he also had an iPhone, perhaps as a secondary device, he replied: "No, no iPhone."

He did not reveal which particular smartphone he currently uses.

Beware the chef who won't eat his own cooking.

Also at VentureBeat and CNET


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by choose another one on Wednesday September 27 2017, @09:00AM (2 children)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 27 2017, @09:00AM (#573706)

    > Windows took off, because it was a crap piece of software that you could program to do anything you wanted

    Nope, Windows 3.x took off because it ran all the old DOS stuff. DOS took off because Bill G end-ran IBM on exclusivity and Compaq won the bios cloning lawsuit, and Bill was very happy to sell to any and all PC clone makers. Windows 9x/ME carried on the success by still running all the old DOS stuff.

    Windows NT 3.51 was, for its time, a _much_ better OS (rock solid, portable, etc.) than consumer Windows (as was OS/2), and it still allowed people to use the hardware and software as they pleased. Yet it didn't take off (outside of limited corporate and niche markets), NT 4 went backwards a bit when they stuffed the graphics into kernel to improve perf - didn't attract any consumers, but did piss off a lot of existing users and devs. Only with XP and unified driver model did windows NT finally take off - because it had (enough) backwards compatibility, it ran almost all the old DOS stuff...

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday September 27 2017, @03:17PM (1 child)

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday September 27 2017, @03:17PM (#573834) Journal
    A lesson that Microsoft failed to learn with Windows Phone, which couldn't run any of the existing Wince software and (initially, at least) could only run .NET code and so made it very hard to port existing Windows software (Mac apps, for example, use almost the same frameworks as iOS ones and so you can share all of the code apart from the UI between iOS and macOS - and if you want mobile UIs that don't suck, you really want to make people rewrite the UI rather than try a quick and dirty port from a desktop OS).
    --
    sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:42PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:42PM (#574074)

      Activesync sucks balls. Still does.

      WinCE was only slightly like NT or Win3.x. Not even close in the way you really ran applications on the thing (32 max exes at a time and 100% pre-emptive time sliced with poor memory protection between applications). The only similarity it had was some of the APIs matched up. Most of the time they did not work exactly the same. WinCE was pretty much outsourced to about 3-4 different companies who made a total botch job out of it. Then MS put a heavy 'tax' on each and every CE box out there at about 30-50 bucks a device. Android tossed that model out the window. The OEMs ate it up and told MS where to stick it.

      could only run .NET code
      .NET was *WELLLLLL* after WinCE first came out. You did not see .NET phones until about WinCE 6.0. 5.5 if you sweet talked MS into the right package. Even then only some phones were actually able to run it at all depending on the features the OEM added. That was around 2006 (just before iPhone took the ball and ran with it). Before then they were bastardized versions of Win32. Then add in the carrier making every application 'qualify' to run on the phone including .NET apps. It was a nightmare up and down.

      Waste of time for my resume. I spent years writing for that trash platform. Paid the bills though.