Meet danah boyd, principle researcher at Microsoft, daily driver smartphone is an iPhone

Taking aside danah boyd’s non-traditional spelling of her name, she is well known in tech and social media circles and focuses much of her research on youth and the impacts of social media.  Since joining Microsoft Research in 2009, she has collected the data of her research and published a highly acclaimed book, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, released earlier this year.  It should not surprise anyone that some (or many) folks at Microsoft do not use Windows Phone on a regular basis. It may be personal choice, or professional necessity when it comes to testing applications for a given platform.

In boyd’s case, it is the latter, and she admits that an iPhone is her everyday smartphone, “but I despise the device.” Using the iPhone to test apps in development, what she really misses might surprise some – she is longing for her old Sidekick. danah also prefers a Kindle tablet and uses Evernote over OneNote. She also owns multiple other Apple devices, including a MacBook Air, though she also has a Lenovo too.

Microsoft is interesting in that it provides its services across all the major platforms while competing against them at the same time. Office of iPad is working well, and Office for Android tablets will roll out before a touch-optimized version is even available for Windows tablets.

While there is nothing really unusual about Microsoft employees using other platforms, it is striking how one would so openly express such dissatisfaction with a product. Maybe it is time for someone to convince danah to dump the iPhone and introduce her a slick new Android device like a Samsung Galaxy S5 or HTC One (M8), or better yet, a sharp Windows Phone like a Lumia 1520 or Lumia Icon.

source: BGR