The Microsoft To Do app hasn’t got near customer expectations, let alone Microsoft’s promises. Now there’s some hints about why.
To Do was born from Wunderlist, a popular app that was bought by Microsoft. Redmond summarily closed Wunderlist, to the annoyance of the apps many fans. Microsoft promised the app would be the same and better as Microsoft To Do … but that hasn’t happened.
Wunderlist founder, Christian Reber came with the app to Microsoft but left last September. Dr Windows (in German) flagged some tweets from Mr Reber.
He wrote about working at Microsoft (translation from Google Translate):
“I slowly got used to it, was not a pleasant experience … Wunderlist will be much longer than announced, there were technical porting challenges. I wish the team that succeeds. “
continues :
“Originally, the goal was to run the app for ~ 1 year, and then have Microsoft to-do ready. But will take even longer, as long as Wunderlist remains online (which makes sense) “.
Last, he explained the reason for the delay:
“Explanation: Wunderlist’s API runs on AWS, and should then be ported to Azure. But that was extremely time-consuming, so everything had to be rewritten (also for Exchange / Office integration). But it’s easier said than done, that’s why it takes so long. “
The comment about moving from Amazon Web Services to Microsoft’s Azure is interesting. The next time you hear Microsoft saying how easy it is to move to Azure, it’s worth keeping in mind that even Microsoft’s own ‘clever clogs’ have trouble doing it.
In the meantime, keep using Outlook Tasks, OneNote or your preferred list maker such as Evernote.
