When History Repeats Itself: Is Apple the new Microsoft?

Let me first start by saying I am one of the biggest Apple fanboys that you’ll ever meet. I have probably bought every Apple product they’ve offered more than once in the past decade.

As a developer, iOS is one of my favorite platforms to develop on. The consistency of the devices, paired with Apple’s focus on the user experience made the iPhone the go-to mobile platform for app proof of concepts and initial mobile releases for start-ups.

Although Apple makes awesome hardware, their software and service releases have been less than stellar. Do you remember Ping, mac.com or me.com? Me neither. Raise your hand if a failed time machine backup resulted in the loss of important information. <<hand raised>>

The Death of Windows Mobile

I have spent the last 15 years implementing enterprise mobile solutions for Fortune 500 companies. As part of this experience, I was very involved in the first major project where Microsoft tried to catch up to Apple and Android with Windows Mobile 7, followed shortly with Windows Mobile 8.

The requirements we gathered for this large retailer was to form the release of Windows Mobile 8 for embedded/rugged devices. What made this project fail was that Windows Mobile was controlled by Microsoft’s consumer mobile team. If this team did not agree with a requirement, then the requirement was not included in Windows Mobile.

This team was so hyper-focused on developing the next iOS that they did not care and had no industry experience with enterprise mobile scenarios. Below are some of the examples that were red flags for me.

Read More