Comment by asveikau

I spent time at MS too, and I have worked on a WP app, and I don't think my comment has been grokked here. It was the app platform I was thinking of the most that was missing lots of features, and I would say the whole approach to how the app platform people exposed device capabilities was both wrongheaded and not at parity with what the other guys did. And instead of being aware of this gap and taking corrective action, they doubled down into Raymond Chen style "every feature starts at minus 100 points", which works well if you have a desktop monopoly but not as well in a truly competitive market, and meanwhile can be used to justify a lot of bad behavior.

I don't think the whole answer fits in a comment box though. If you have interest in learning more offline I can explain it further.