Microsoft’s Mobile Apps Win Big on Phone and Tablet, But Fall Short on the Desktop

For over two weeks now, I've secretly made a major change to my daily workflow and have been using as many Microsoft mobile apps on PC, tablet, and smartphone as possible. And my relative levels of success speak volumes, I think, to the state of Microsoft's mobile efforts here in mid-2016.

First, I do want to get one thing out of the way. I know that many of you will read the preceding paragraph and think something along the lines of, "Shocker: A Microsoft blogger is using Microsoft apps and services." And truth be told, I did consider a tongue-in-cheek clickbaity-type headline for that very reason. But I don't want to diminish the message here with humor, as I think this is in fact a very important topic.

In any event, I feel strongly that everyone should at least occasionally test alternatives to the apps and services they use regularly. Whether you're just a typical user, a personal technology enthusiast, or a reviewer---like Brad Sams, who recently underwent his own experiment using Microsoft Edge---it's important not to confuse familiarity with better efficiency and productivity. Personally, I've always gravitated to what works best. And if that means using a Google or Apple product or service, or some third party solution, so be it.

For long-time Microsoft fans, of course, this kind of behavior is sometimes seen as controversial. Some simply can't bear the thought of using an Apple device or a Google service, with justifications ranging from the emotional ("I just hate them so much") to the moral ("Google violates my privacy") to the pragmatic ("This other thing simply works better").

And that's fine. But even if your point was to argue that Microsoft's solutions are superior, wouldn't you need to actually experience the alternatives in order to be proven correct? And wouldn't you need to keep reevaluating those alternatives as they improve? I mean, what happens when you wake up one day and Apple actually made the iPad Pro a viable personal computing platform?

OK, that's crazy talk and, yes, I just violated my own rule about undercutting this message with humor. That didn't take long, sorry.

Anyway, you don't have to spend your life testing apps and services, that's what tech reviewers are for. Brad and I do this, and of course so do many others. As Jerry Pournelle, who I consider the original blogger, once pointed out: I make these mistakes so you don't have to.

Not that using Microsoft's mobile apps is a mistake, per se. In testing these apps anew---by really using them in place of the apps and services I'd normally use---for the past few weeks, I've come to better understand how hard it is for Microsoft to please its very diverse user base, especially when it tries to do so across such a weird variety of device form factors. So whether its Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps running on Windows 10 PCs, tablets, or phones, or mobile apps running on Android or iOS devices, Microsoft has achieved varying ...