Is it alive? It very much has an immensely passionate community of students and hobbyists using it in ways well past its intended use (e.g. it's some of the cheapest mocap hardware you can buy). But I don't think you've been able to officially purchase one for 4+ years now. Hard to call that "alive" in a business sense.
Honestly a real shame that Xbox hasn't pivoted it into some other team that can market it towards creators. In particular the whole "VTuber" phenomenon may benefit form a cheap(ish), dedicated motion tracking device instead of relying on a high end iPhone or fanagling with some generic webcam.
After seeing this site and then the comments here, I am coming out of this with the general sentiment that Microsoft is genuinely thoughtful about addressing end-of-life products.
Their transition into the paid/enterprise space is very interesting. I'm very excited for them to find a non-advertising revenue stream, as it could help Google to stop being evil. They're still a very amazing company.
However, their approach providing free services is a bit subpar. I've ran into so many table-stake bugs that simply don't exist in MSFT offerings (e.g. copy/paste between Google office applications often breaks formatting).
Thanks to our mid-size enterprise contract, I can get someone to tell me that not enough people are complaining about it for them to fix it. Meanwhile, from asking my teams at work, everyone struggles with lack of polish across their applications.
You can buy USB cameras from Intel and Logitech with comparable sensor packages to a Kinect.
For Microsoft's hardware efforts that is often seen as its own win when they can take something people don't know they need, package it in a commodity way to get competitors to take interest and build their own versions:
The scroll wheel on the mouse went from an R&D project at Microsoft to the Office team realizing it was the future of productivity and bundling mice with scroll wheels with Office to now just about no manufacturer would think to build a mouse without a scroll wheel.
The Kinect used console gaming as a trojan horse to commoditize thousands of dollars of lab sensors into an integrated $150 accessory to the Xbox 360 and now there are versions of that sensor package in laptops and smartphones and VR headsets and so much more. Kinect as a gaming brand may be dead (for now? AR/MR gaming has always been one for recurring fads, it may come around again, who knows), but the legacy of Kinect lives on in hardware all around us. The hardware didn't just go back to being thousands of dollars of lab equipment, it became part of the computing atmosphere around us. That's an incredibly interesting and weird win that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily credit Microsoft for being such a lever, such an instigator of change/innovation, such a bridge between R&D dreams and "background" reality.
(ETA: Microsoft still sometimes uses the IntelliMouse brand as a bit of a retro-throwback, but the above analogy does help show how much that brand is very related to the Kinect brand. Almost every mouse today is an "IntelliMouse" under the original brand meaning. The brand did its job so successfully to point where people don't even sometimes remember the brand, other than sometimes retro-hardware fans.)
Really nice price too, while being (based on a bit of research) much more powerful than the old Kinect.
I'm not offering judgment on whether they ought or ought not to, I'm merely observing that they have power and are exercising it as they choose.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-tec...
Creators will absolutely pay a premium for such tech when the alternative goes for thousands of dollars (a quick google shows these devices selling on the order of 2000 to 7000+ USD). The SDK alone would generate much more value for such a product.
VR definitely killed any interest in the "core" gaming market, but I think the uses of motion tracking is a completely separate audience from VR anyway. Without some dedicated apparel, a VR kit can only track your eyes and hands. motion tracking gives you so much more data to work with, for potentially multiple subjects as well. People working with that data will easily pay themselves back with whatever they develop with it, which is why maybe a licensing deal (similar to Unity/Unreal Engine) may be a better way to monetize .
Once whatsapp and facebook messenger mobile started taking place it was already N years too late. Now in 2022, they have no chance.
- Skype has a full screen button for screen sharing, Teams always takes up some space with their little frames at the sides. Annoying as hell
- Skype has a 'actual size' button. So even if someone shares a bigger screen, you can still read it. On some versions of Teams you can cheat a bit, by holding control and scrolling your mouse wheel. But that is more a side effect of their electron framework than something intentional. Especially non-power users will never discover this
- Skype had way more flexibility in configuring simultaneous call (someone calls your skype but you want your mobile phone to ring when AFK). This is a huge deal to me.
And those are three simple features that greatly impact my quality of life with the product. A non-functional feature would also be the sluggishness. A skype chat window is quick, responsive, instant. Teams always hangs around half a second when switching between chat windows. And on lower performance pc's switching to a chat takes more than a second.
1999 - 2013 MSN Messenger
Killed about 9 years ago, MSN Messenger (later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger) was a cross-platform instant messaging client. It was over 13 years old.
It's so bad that eventhough most businesses depend on teams, they, as well as everyone else, would be better off if teams suddenly disappears from one day to another.
edit: Just a few things that annoy me basically on a daily basis:
- The status isn't always up to date. Sometimes it takes minutes to you or your contacts to show the correct status.
- It is (unsupprisingly) not very responsive
- It hogs my CPU when its idle and especially during video calls. So much so that the fans of my 2020 MBP start spinning up - which otherwise only happens when I run a build/tests. This is especcially bad considering all other video call software (zoom, discord) run just fine.
- The UX is terrible when you are active in different organizations. It's riddled with bugs. Every time I switch organizations I have to type in my password twice because for some reason the login session expires instantaniously. If I switch back an forth sometimes some functionality like shring screen or accepting calls just stops working and I have to restart teams.
- It tries to include the formatting if you copy+paste in chat. It always looks bad and sometime is ittetating because the font size is way smaller.
- Cameras or shared desktops regularily freeze
- You cant set the audio level of individual participants. This is especiallly annoying if you're in the same room as other participants of larger meetings since you'd then head them twice.
- Because of the messy permission system between multiple organizations it's often not clear wether or not you can certain contacts of are allowed to use the chat in meetings.
- I can’t create bullet points and numbered lists because breaklines will frequently send the message instead of continuing the list.
- You’ve already mentioned this, but the ability to change volume for individual speakers should be considerer core functionality. I’d rather use Discord for office work than Teams for this reason alone.
What’s weird to me is that Teams, for me at least, was a good product about 3 or 4 years ago. Definitely more stable back then; I had fewer complaints.
Is that a recent change? Up until a few month ago I worked at a company that banned the Zoom client for "security reasons" and had to use Zoom on the web for all my Zoom meetings and it never was a problem.
Try pasting with Ctrl-Shift-V instead of Ctrl-V
To communicate you've got "Chat" then "Teams", On "Chat" you can reply to one message, and on "Teams" you can post on the Threads to reply.
On the UX side, at one point I experienced bad memory leak if GPU acceleration was enabled, The shortcut for starting the voice call is the same as the "paste only the text" shortcut in other application (causing more than one department wide voice conference started by accident)
However Teams has no more or less QA and other problems than ever other MS product I use... I dont know if that is good or bad but ......
Maybe? That doesn't tell anything about Webex being worse than Teams, though. People may also leave Zoom to make a better Zoom tomorrow.
What I really dislike about teams is that it downgrades my 4K video feed to 480p.
Why restart the application if it cannot connect to the internet? Why can't I have native notifications? Why iOS app's notifications are unreliable?
I really can't believe the quality of this thing. While I don't like Microsoft, I agree that they can write semi-decent software. Teams is not one of them.
My experience has been the opposite. But that could have just been that it fitted our setup well. Or that I haven't tried better.
You mean that simple tasks take many billable hours?
Hmmm ...
Product A costs 2 bazillion, and is perfect - for a 10 year lifetime, it works perfectly and requires no support. Zero additional cost.
Product B does about the same, costs only 1 bazillion, but is rather shoddy - over a 10 year lifetime, it will require a further 3 bazillion worth of fixes, support and extra resources. That does feed a lot of families, though.
Take your guess at what happens.
Yeah, me neither.
Maybe it's part of some Office / Outlook insane bundle from hell?
Free zoom with the 40m limit provides a better experience.
Don't know that I really agree with this. Google does have experimental services and tools that they've killed (RIP Google Reader), but they have always provided migration for their core services. Look at Messaging, for example. Gmail chat -> Hangouts -> Hangouts Chat(?) -> Allo(??) -> Hangouts (again?) -> Android Messages.
The problem is not that they leave users completely stranded, the unending shift from app to app for no good reason is itself the problem.
And to be clear I do think Google is worse at this than Microsoft is. But the important difference isn't over whether they provide a migration path. Forcing your users to migrate every year or two is bad, regardless of whether the migration is handled "well".
Talk to all the happy GSuite/Free users around now. Or people who developed Chrome Extensions prior to Manifest V3. Or who were banned from Google Fi, Youtube, or your app store of choice by an automated, broken algorithm. Or who developed Workspace Docs prior to mandatory security audits at price points which will break most independent developers. Or....
The key difference is Microsoft has exactly 2 or 3 things on the entire list where any users were left stranded. For Google, you're a statistic. If a change breaks 10,000 small businesses, Google looks at the impact on their bottom line, and goes ahead with the change.
Microsoft bends over backwards to NOT do this. AWS as well. It's not that it never happens, but if you've bet on your business on Google, you're basically guaranteed it will happen at one point or another.
My point is that for Google's core services, they generally due try to migrate users to a product that provides the same basic features, but that this isn't good enough. Forcing users to migrate because of pointless churn in your app offerings is already the problem, regardless of whether the migrations are handled well. Google is worse than Microsoft in this area not because they leave users stranded (usually), but because they're constantly switching their focus in products like messaging.
Try telling that to Picasa users.
When Google announced it was "moving on from Picasa", they stated:
"We apologize for any inconvenience this transition causes, but.... Google Photos is a new and smarter product that offers a better platform for us..."
A better platform for Google. Not users.
Many Picasa users, like my father, were left frustrated and confused by the change. He was not a "cloud user" of anything, and he took lots of hi-res photos and wanted to manage them locally. Picasa failed to install on Windows 10, and some people were even rolling back to Windows 7/8 just so they could keep using the Picasa application.
I hope you don't consider migration from locally controlled photo management to the cloud as "generally the same features", because it isn't.
If you started a business which relies on functionality in Manifest V2, and Google wants to block ad blockers with Manifest V3, you're SOL. If you started a small business which makes Workspace apps for local companies, and Google starts requiring a $50k security audits which are greater than your profits, you're SOL, and those local businesses are SOL. And so on.
There is no migration path, at least which allows you to stay in business. I'm not talking about changing chat clients. I'm talking about Google razing thousands of small businesses to the ground because they don't matter to a $1.8T goliath. All of these businesses were Google's partners in a Google ecosystem, not competitors.
Microsoft -- at least modern Microsoft -- doesn't do this.
This is why I always advise people never to rely on Google for B2B. It's transactional; it's fine for making a quick buck if you've got something you think will make you a mint for a year or two, but it's not fine for building a sustainable business.
Eventually these "core products" will be abandoned, because let's face it, they are not even core products. Core product for GOOG is ads. And that's the difference.
Average Android users, maybe had a clean migration?
On iOS (or worse Windows) you had to seek out new apps each time and there was nothing but confusion. Both platforms, at least in the US, have more than their fair share to be considered statistically significant to "most people" and "I need to find and install some new app" is certainly much more friction than "didn't notice the migration happening".
(Not to mention anecdotally, my GChat experience was through XMPP federation and was amazing while it lasted and I entirely got stranded by the "migration" to Hangouts. Everything including my contacts list was in XMPP. I know that I'm statistically insignificant to Google in that transition and statistically insignificant to "most people", but I also wasn't the only person stranded that way.)
> Skype for Business Expiring in over 3 years, Skype for Business (formerly Microsoft Lync and Office Communicator) was an enterprise instant messaging software developed by Microsoft as part of the Microsoft Office suite. It was almost 18 years old.
It’s still around because of a lengthy transition path Microsoft offers and they admit that and then start talking about it in the past tense…
Behind the scenes, it uses SIP and SDP for establishing calls - back in the day at $BigCo, we were developing a software suite for debugging SIP infrastructure, and Skype for Business was surprisingly easy to integrate. Shame that Teams switched to a proprietary Microsoft protocol now.
It also seems Microsoft sometimes is held to a higher standard when it comes to supporting products long after they are out of service.
Compare that to Google and Android for instance... it's a big mess with millions of outdated and insecure devices.
It also seems Google sometimes is held to a higher standard when it comes to supporting products long after they are out of service.
Compare that to Microsoft and Windows Phone for instance, or UWP, or even Windows... it's a big mess with millions of outdated and insecure devices.
UWP isn't "dead" and its technologies continue to get updated.
Windows' left behind devices that no longer receive security updates are after at least a decade of active security support. XP was offered several lifelines, way beyond the security support of any single Android version in the history of Android. Windows 7 seems on the path to similar lifelines and maybe won't have quite the same record of security support, but will still see active security patches for much longer than any Android version could imagine.
I’m no fan of MS, but they tend to err on the side of overextending support and backwards compatibility. I would have killed Works 10 years before they did.
And some of these are just failures. I still have my MS Bob floppies, but come on.
But I kinda wonder the same thing about Apple’s Pages/Numbers/Keynote. I’m not sure the overhead to maintain those ultimately is worthwhile. It makes me think back on the old ClarisWorks or FileMaker setup where you ostensibly had an external company that made the product, but it was an Apple subsidiary. They could then offer the product for multiple OS’s. I’m not saying that business model was all that successful, but is there a place for an MS works in the time of Google docs?
Just sayin'
Not sure why people are surprised, its enterprise software. Look at SAP, they "kill" their ERP every few years for end-of-life and upgrades. I don't blame them, customers don't sign perpetual deals and they expect to sign a new ones every 5-7 years for whatever the new flavor is. It's different for free products because there is no explicit end of life and it surprises people.
Would Zoom even exist today if Microsoft never bought Skype?
It's miles ahead any competition and pretty much the only tool which will give you decent calling experience on spotty connections.
Before zoom I was mostly doing audio calls on a computer, with zoom video is easily manageable (actually, not sure if that's a plus for society, it certainly increased the meetings / productiveTime ratio).
Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on anything related to this.
I feel similarly about the Google Home Max. Was it really killed in 2020, if the latest version of the firmware came out in 2022? Can we say that Google killed the Pixel 4, since the hardware is no longer being sold but it's still receiving updates?
The inclusion of Angular 1 is also kinda questionable to me. Even though Angular 1 code isn't totally forwards compatible, there is a pretty clear migration path for moving to Angular 2 and beyond
to them, google killed Angular.
Nexus line was an Affordable/ value reference implantation of Android
Pixel is an overpriced atrocity marketing platform for Google.
Pixel IS NOT a replacement for Nexus
https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/29/9410551/google-nexus-6p-a...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/google-pixel-review-...
yes that it killing it
Can confirm, Kinect is dead. You can only get them refurbished now, they’re no longer manufactured. The new consoles no longer support Kinect, we had to dig out an original Xbox One for her.
When the Kinect launched, Microsoft had trouble getting a critical mass of players that would attract developers. Without developers adding support to their games, Microsoft had a hard time marketing the device. This led to them bundling it with the Xbox One, but consumers were upset that they were being forced to buy the accessory.
I’m impressed they held out as long as they did, but eventually Microsoft caved and removed the Kinect from the bundle and dropped the price of the Xbox One. At that point, the Kinect was essentially dead. They quietly stopped manufacturing them and the new consoles no longer support them (though I’ve heard rumors you can buy 3rd party USB adaptors).
It’s a shame. That device is SO much more engaging and approachable for kids than trying to teach them to use a controller.
Developers generally disliked it. It just didn't work well as a game controller.
The Wii was much more practical. You still had a controller in your hand with physical buttons, which makes a big difference, and it worked as a fairly accurate pointing device. Those more than made up for the limitations of accelerometer-only motion control.
In the end, couch coop that was pretty essential to the 360 just kind of withered away in the Xbox One era (when games like Halo competing on looks with other consoles decided they couldn't afford the frames/resolution costs of split-screen coop anyway) and that missing "controller number indicator" no longer mattered in the end, but in the original plans of the Xbox One the hybrid Kinect/controller gaming support was key to things like couch coop.
It's still interesting to wonder about that road not taken if more developers had considered Xbox One hybrid Kinect/controller controls more seriously beyond just the few experiments we did see.
I dunno. I had the original kinect for the Xbox 360 and the controls were wonky. A controller might be weird for a few hours but especially kids should be able to pick it up quickly and then it does exactly what you input, unlike the Kinect. However, I have watched multiple girlfriends struggle with 3D controller input so maybe it's just not for everyone and has nothing to do with kids?
XNA (C#) => DirectXTK (C++)
C++/CX => C++/WinRT (back to ATL / Visual C++ 6.0 dev experience)
Form/WPF => UWP (.NET Native / C++/CX / WRL) => WinUI 3.0 (.NET with CsWinRT, C++/WinRT)
.NET Framework => .NET Core
All of them require rewrites, leave relevant use cases behind, at least they leave the lights running for them to still be targeted, which makes many stubborn to keep using the stuff that actually works.
Did you use Microsoft Foxpro on Mac? I can assure you MS killed it without a migration path. What about the Zune? MS Money? Microsoft Reader?
The only reason people stuck with teams is because it was forced upon them by the IT departments who preferred teams because it was bundled in their license. Teams was very very very rough in the beginning, compared to zoom and slack.
Microsoft doesn't have the guts to call things killed off. And it keeps them in limbo forever. To me that's worse than just admitting you should move on. It's fine if they continue to offer it for business continuity purposes, and they would score many big points doing that. But don't claim they offer it at no cost
Examples:
Skype For Business => Teams.
Microsoft Edge => Chromium Edge.
Windows 10 IoT Core => It's not dead ???
Office Viewer => Web Based Office
Kinect => It's not dead ???
Microsoft Anti-Virus for Windows => Windows Defender
Come on, microsoft has big flaws but backward compat/keeping old product alive is where they are one of the best in the industry.