Quite a few people noticed that Steven Sinofsky, former head of Microsoft’s Windows division, is now tweeting from an iPhone and naturally assumed that now that he’s out of Microsoft, he’s abandoned Windows Phone for iOS.
His use of the iPhone was first noted by 9to5Mac:
We were tipped to a tweet from Sinofsky (@stevesi) from January 11th that was sent from Twitter for iPhone. We soon discovered a second tweet from the same platform on January 4th. Sinofsky is still tweeting from his Microsoft Surface and the Web, but we don’t see as many Windows Phone-based tweets as we do earlier in his Twitter timeline.
Who knows, maybe he is just evaluating the competition some will say.
But I really don’t buy that argument. I rarely, if ever, see Microsoft alum using Microsoft products after they leave. And I’m guessing Steven and his team fully evaluated the competition frequently during his tenure in Redmond
I think it’s a bigger issue. Their own employees don’t cherish their own products.
That ain’t a good sign.
But Sinofsky didn’t really abandon Windows Phone, as he responded in a comment on Bijan Sabet’s blog. Turns out he did want to see the work of other companies (including Samsung):
It is precisely what you say “Who knows, maybe he is just evaluating the competition some will say.” I have owned every iphone released (and every ipad and galaxy and kindle). It is far better to actually use a product day in and day out so before CES I started using it and will use it for a month or so. Just prior I was using my 920. In Office I spent a long time using SmartSuite or Google Docs for the same reasons.
@albertjelica Sure I use an iphone at times. I have a Samsung too that i use.I want to be familiar with the work of all companies.
— Steven Sinofsky (@stevesi) January 14, 2013
In another comment, Charlie Kindel, former Microsoft employee working on Windows Phone 8 writes:
I use a combination [of] MS and non-[MS] tech. My phone is an HTC 8X with WP8. I have used, at length all generations of iPhones and Android devices. My laptop (that I’m typing on) is an [MacBook Air]. I run Outlook for Windows on it, in a Parallels VM. I pretty much use MacOS only for app switching. I much prefer the UI of WIndows. My desktop workstation runs Win8. I have Linux VMs up the wazoo.
Using products made by other companies isn’t a practice followed only at Microsoft. Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of Internet Software and Services, has used the 7” Samsung Galaxy Tab, and surprisingly found it pretty good, which is how the company knew there is a market for 7-8” tablets.
