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The original was posted on /r/microsoft by /u/Riyakuya on 2024-02-25 11:35:52.

This is a genuine post out of curiosity. I, just like many others, have been using Microsoft products ever since I was a child. Of course there have been some missteps like Windows ME and Windows Vista, but on the other hand, there have also been some products that deserved much more appreciation than they got. I will summarize some of those products here and I’m curious on your opinions and information you have on it!

- Lumia and other Windows Phones

For some reason these phones always had a niche following of loyal fans but never got adopted by the masses. And to me that is strange. The UI of those phones was at the very least unique and intuitive but definitely fast and smooth unlike most Android phones at the time. Yes, Microsoft entered the game a tad bit later than Apple and Google in that generation, but the base OS was solid. Why people and developers never picked up on it will always remain a question for me. Also, a little sidenote. Mobile phones that could run apps and had touchscreen interfaces where nothing new when the first iPhone/Android phones were announced. In that regard it seems like Microsoft actually created a unique interface compared to Apple and Android who in the end just started copying each others ideas.

- Hololens

Granted, the dislike/low adoption rate for this product might be Microsoft’s own fault. They showed it off almost as an accessory for the Xbox One, but then went on to never release it for that platform and only made it available for specific usecases. But aside from that, not a single soul mentioned the Hololens and its capabilities when the Apple Vision Pro was introduced. Hololens can do so many similar things, and did it years earlier… but yet hardly gets mentioned at all. Again, maybe they caused that themselves by not making it mainstream. Maybe they were too early with this product? But to not recognize it at all just seems off to me.

-Windows Tablets

Way before the iPad was even a thing, Microsoft actually released multiple tablet products that somehow barely got picked up by the masses. Why was this? Steve Jobs acted (as he often did) as if he invented the wheel with the iPad, but he really didn’t. The majority of everything he mentioned during the introduction of the iPad had already been possible before, on Windows tablets. Was Microsoft also too early with this technology? What is the reason this never became a success?

-Kinect 2.0

Forcing people to buy it by including it with the Xbox One and with that pricing it 100 dollars above the competition was maybe not the best move. But, when you look at the product itself as it is, it was really a great piece of technology. The hate it got for being “always on” never really made sense to me in a world in which people looked at their smartphone screen nearly 24/7. A smartphone screen that had a camera at the top that was always pointing straight at their face and of which nobody could ever really be sure (at that time) if it was on or not. Let alone all the other features a phone had like microphone and location. Xbox Live was and still is a closed ecosystem that, as far as I know, was only partially “breached” once without any major consequences. It is a much safer environment than using a mobile phone. But fine, back to the product itself. In a way it was quite revolutionary. The built in sensors could recognize your face to log you in, recognize your voice and could even physically see your heartrate. A similar technology is even used by Apple today with their FaceID technology. Kinect 2.0 was designed to make your experiences easier and yet it mostly just got hated on. Was this really because of the Xbox One? Were there no people at the time that could see through that and actually appreciate the technology for what it really was?

There are more examples that I can name, but I won’t. The post has already been long enough. I will close it off by mentioning MSN messenger. A messenger app for PC (at the time) that basically did everything that other messenger apps do these days, but then years earlier. From simple chatting, a contact list, profile pictures and the use of emoji, to having voice and video calls and sending different kinds of files in a quick and easy way. Of course it wasn the only app of this kind at the time, maybe not even the first. This is more of a “why did they ever kill it off and not made it a smartphone app” than anything else.