Note to Microsoft: get smart about mobile or quit
By Stephen Pate – It’s about time for Microsoft to stop putzing around and get smart about mobile. Or quit.
Did you know you cannot Tweet a story from your Windows phone? Unbelievable as that sounds, the people at Microsoft who decide what to program into Windows phones don’t realize everyday people like to Tweet stories they find.
Windows Phone does not include Twitter sharing
Somebody or several somebodies in meeting rooms at the Bellevue head office of Microsoft, has their nose out of joint about Twitter or never Tweeted anything like sports scores, or the Scottish referendum results.
So a Windows Phone has no built-in capacity to share anything with Twitter.
You can share stories to Facebook except Windows Phone can’t remember Facebook logins and passwords from one day to the next.
The Microsoft Mobile promise
You can also share to Outlook and OneNote because Microsoft wants you to use their products. Ironically the marketing slogan on Microsoft Mobile is “Live it. Sync It. Share It.”
Left in the lurch with Leonard Cohen
I was reading a great article about Leonard Cohen shared on the Bob Dylan site Expecting Rain – A Song of Love and Memory for Leonard Cohen at 80. Expecting Rain is running out of articles just about Bob Dylan so anything tangential to Dylan will get a listing.
My Windows Phone would not let me share the story with a friend.
The author Ezra Glinter takes the reader back and forth from the 1960’s when Leonard Cohen was a young poet becoming a singer to this month when Cohen turns 80. It’s a long story with references to places, streets, bars and restaurants around Montreal which is Cohen’s first home and coincidentally my home for the 60’s and early 70s.
The story about Leonard Cohen that Windows Phone could not share
I was reading this story on my Windows Phone while settling in for my afternoon nap, the luxury of my age and disability. Glinter has written a long story and I’m getting sleepy.
Lying on the sofa, I start to reminisce about Montreal and the good old days.
My retirement dream includes a winter living in Montreal in a third floor walk up somewhere off The Main where the apartment is only centrally heated and the windows freeze in the winter.
Thankfully, that is not a practical dream shared by my wife or my circumstances of needing a wheelchair to be mobile. But why not have a romantic dream eh? Think of the icicles hanging down from the window ledges.
So I’m thinking: I’ll bet my friend Chris, who lived in Montreal, would like this story. Let me share it with him, only there is no Twitter sharing on my Windows phone. OK, I’ll share it on his Facebook page but that won’t work either since the phone has forgotten my Facebook password and so have I.
When I woke up, I remembered the Leonard Cohen story, found my iPad, got the story and shared it with Chris and his sister Diane on Facebook. It only took a few seconds to share it on the iPad because Twitter sharing is baked into the Safari browser. I also tweeted the story because I think other people will like it.
I know I could have shared the story from an iPhone because I had one before this Windows Phone. Windows Phone used to share with Twitter but Microsoft removed Twitter sharing. When that happened I pushed as hard as I could with Microsoft but they didn’t care.
“Looks like the feature is not available,” tweeted Windows Phone Support @WinPhoneSupport. “As a workaround, you can copy & paste the URL into your tweet.” Is Twitter On The Outs With Windows 8 ?
This week my Windows Phone stopped working and needed a hard reboot. While it was out cold, the thought crossed my mind: if this thing is Kaput I can always go back to an iPhone 6 or get a Galaxy 5. Both of those phones understand sharing on Twitter and Facebook.
Follow me on Twitter at @sdpate or on Facebook at NJN Network, OyeTimes and IMA News Buzz.
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