The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Microsoft to wave goodbye to mobile 'experience' boss?

Entertainment and Devices in line for redesign

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

All change at Microsoft, according to the Wall Street Journal which reports J Allard - responsible for the Xbox and parent to the stillborn Courier - is top of the leaving list.

Citing the omniscient "people familiar with the matter" the WSJ reports that Microsoft will likely announce a complete reorganising of its Entertainment and Devices Division, including the departure of J Allard, whose titles have included CTO and chief experioence officer, later this week.

The division, which includes the Xbox, Zune and Windows Mobile, made $1.67bn in sales last year - but revenue from Windows Mobile is in terminal decline (hopefully to be supplanted by revenue from Windows Phone 7), so it's the Xbox that makes money with Microsoft pinning its hopes on the hand-position-tracking Project Natal to keep that revenue flowing.

Windows Phone 7 is coming late to the party, and bringing little that's not already on the table, and despite leading the world towards slate-based computing almost a decade ago Microsoft has been surprisingly lackadaisical about putting together a platform that can compete with the iPad.

Videos seemed to show Microsoft Courier could have provided a credible alternative, but the gap between a video demonstration and a commercial product is broad, and Courier never made it across.

Which is probably one of the reasons behind J Allard's departure - he was credited with responsibility for overseeing that project, and Microsoft blogger Mary-Jo Foley reported his disappearance from the Microsoft campus last week following the cancellation of Courier, and that in turn must prompt some serious changes in the division.

Quite what new management can do we don't know, but they'll have to pull something quite remarkable out of the hat to start the long process of catching up with the competition. ®

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Windows Mobile is doooooomed

Windows Mobile and its predecessors easily beat off all comers as being the worst OSs I have ever used. Completely inconsistent UI, appalling lack of stability leading to hard resets numerous times per day, general flakiness, complete lack of visual appeal etc etc.

I am no fan of Microsoft's, but I have been favourably impressed with Windows 7 despite the atrocious dog's breakfast that was Vista and I have even considered buying a Windows 7 laptop. However, my experiences with Window Mobile have been so negative that there is no way I would ever touch it or its progeny with a barge pole. Never did an OS deserve to wither on the vine as much as Windows Mobile and I am fully confident that it will.

Bye bye.

2
1

While you're here

Which lottery numbers should I pick this week and will it rain on my birthday?

1
0

Let's face facts

Microsoft has been the bane of the computer industry since its inception.

Just tell me how many times you've had to hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

Give me Unix/Linux anyday and let's finally bid farewell to Microsoft...

0
0

More from The Register

1,000 O2 staff chose redundancy over Capita
Betrayal, or just decent terms?
Google launches broadband balloons, radio astronomy frets
A careless Loon could blind the square kilometre array
 breaking news
Pttow! Ofcom kicks hams out of MoD bands
Geet off my land, you, you ... 'secondary user'
 breaking news
Now you can use your phone instead of your wallet at the ATM, too
Blimey, these little paper towels out of the vending machine are really expensive
 breaking news
UK.gov's £530m bumpkin broadband rollout: 'Train crash waiting to happen'
Whitehall whispers of damning watchdog report next month
 breaking news
MySpace zaps millions of teens' tearful rants, causes wave of angst
'Your crappy redesign SUCKS, I wanna read my blogs' screech users
 breaking news
Microsoft Office 365 on iPhone NOW: No, we're not making this up
Word, Excel, Powerpoint for your pocket-stroker
 breaking news
EU signs off on eCall emergency-phone-in-every-car plan
GPS and a mobe in every car - do you suppose the NSA would fancy that?