UI: Impressed

Name/Identity: Unimpressed

Strong-arming partners: Impressed

I didn't expect Microsoft to pull it out, but so far it looks like they have the most innovative UI since the iPhone debuted in 2007. Frankly, this looks like a nice "fuck you" to the competition out there and I'm actually pleased to see it. Thankfully (for everyone) Windows Mobile 6.5 was no indication at all of what the new platform was bringing to the table. It's still early and much of what has been shown (at least what I've seen) is only a little more in-depth than checking out the slip-cover on a new book.

Android and WebOS have been no competition for the iPhone. Google seems to have no control over what partners do with Android and by all accounts they may be digging themselves into the predicament Microsoft was in with previous versions of their Mobile platform.

This new platform should simply have been called "Windows Phone" - none of this "7" or "series" bullshit. Let's hope MS sees the obvious issues and drops the non-essential parts of the name. With the more simple name it enables them to keep moving forward with a unified platform, which is what it seems they want to do, based on their announcement.

OEMs will be more tightly controlled, pretty much having most of their freedoms cut-off when it comes to branding the UI. That's a very good step. No customs skins are allowed for instance. The hardware will also have more stringent minimum requirements, hopefully making sure the experience on every handset is similar and giving developers a clear target to aim for.

We won't see an actual product ship until sometime late in the year, but things look pretty good insofar as competing with Palm and Android. I don't think in the short term Apple's marketshare is going to be affected at all by this platform. I do hope that the aggressiveness of MS gives them a kick in the ass however.

Apple claimed that they had some years head-start on the competition, and while that remains true in terms of the apps available for the iPhone, the platform itself is nearly unchanged in almost 3 years - it's really been a standing target. Maybe we'll see some shakeup this summer at WWDC. What's also going to be interesting is to see how developers take to this new platform, since software for Windows Mobile is not compatible. Another good thing. Like I said in another thread, you have to start with a purpose-built OS sometimes, and the old Mobile platform just wasn't a good foundation for a phone or a hand-held computer.

Oh. NO Flash and NO third-party multi-tasking. Sounds familiar.

I expected them to integrate their Zune stuff with Windows Mobile 7. I had no idea that they were going to completely abandon every aspect of their previous platforms and build their phone OS entirely around the Zune platform design philosophies. That is a shocker to me. I keep reading things that say "if you're a Zune HD owner, you may find some of this familiar." I own a Zune HD, and the ENTIRE OS is clearly riffing on the design aesthetics of the Zune HD. And I definitely think that's a good thing, at least compared to Windows Mobile 6.x.

I will admit that the Zune does not have the prettiest initial static design look. It's very spartan, with simple white text on black background. But once you start moving in any direction, IMO it's a stunning interface. I simply love my Zune HD.

That calendar app, though, is just funky looking...

I am definitely interested in seeing where this is going, but I doubt I'll have one of these Windows 7 Series Phone Human Ear Edition devices (or whatever it's called), as they still plan to exclude the Mac platform. It's their choice to make, but I abandoned their desktop platform over 6 years ago, and a new phone isn't going to pull me back.

Dumping the entire OS and starting from scratch is what they needed to do, and I'm glad they finally felt the competitive pressure to do such a drastic thing. Microsoft does some of their best work when they are legitimately trying to compete in a market, and do their worst when they have killed off the competition. It's a shame they don't see the need to do this on the desktop side though. Windows 7 is still just lipstick on a pig, much like their Windows Mobile 6.5 efforts.

One of those unusual cases where I get to agree with just about everything Bruno says

I wrote this elsewhere:

"Sounds like they might finally be getting their act together, the old Windows Mobile really looks dead and they are talking about banning skinning of the UI (how long will that last).

Talk about a flaky demo though, the perfect touch was the "I'm out of battery" icon flashing away in the corner.

I'm not sure I get the whole Zune/XBox UI thing, particularly the bit where the title at the top of the page gets cut off and all this menus where you can't see all of the items on them without scrolling.

Still, if nothing else it will give Apple a boot up the arse to get on and do something more useful with the lock screen and app launch pages.

I wish Apple would add a physical back button to the iPhone, it makes so much sense."

It will be interesting to see if this is designed purely to be a consumer device and whether they'll roll out yet another rehash of the old Windows Mobile for businesses.

For now, yes, Windows Phone 7 Series is just a consumer plan. The old Windows Mobile will live on for a bit longer for enterprise customers. I guess in a way, we are back to the old consumer(9x)/corporate(NT) split on Windows, this time it's in the mobile space.

That's an interesting observation. I think they pretty much have to stay with 6.5 for business for a while, it's really not their choice, they have to cater to the corporations.

I don't think it's the same as the "consumer(9x)/corporate(NT) split" though. The difference here is that most people only have one phone, whereas with PC OSs, you have users using one thing at work and one thing at home.

With the former point, I assume you're talking about what you see in this image. If so, you really do get used to it, mostly because the transitions are as smooth as can be. Essentially, in every part of the UI, the very top of the screen has become the back button, but it's a back button with a little context and design aesthetic. It did take me a little getting used to visually, but I like it now.

As for your second point, I'm not entirely certain what you mean, but I do have an issue with how my Zune handles long text. Well, essentially it doesn't handle it. The text just goes off the edge of the screen and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

This is absolutely the most annoying when it comes to podcasts. For example, I listen to Buzz Out Loud from CNet. When I go into my list of episodes, I'll usually have two or three of them backed up. But it's hard to know which is which, as they all look the same because the episode number is cut off. Fortunately you can set up the Zune software to play your podcasts in both chronological orders (oldest or newest first), but it's still very annoying, and I can see it being more of an issue if you have some important information that you need to see on the phone version.

There are two examples of what I am talking about right there in the image you linked to.

Firstly, what screen am I on ? I can't tell because at the top of the screen all I can see is the bottom half of three letters. Very pretty and designery, but not very discoverable.

The second example is right below it, I can see the first three items of a menu, "Artists", "Playlist" and "So..." But I can't see what the third menu item is (or if the menu extends beyond that) without scrolling, again not very discoverable.

Another example of this sort of undiscoverability I saw in the demos was the contact lists. There is no A-Z list on screen, you have to know to tap on the letter that you can see in the list to pop up the A-Z list.

It is the discoverability of the iPhone UI that makes it usable by "normal" people like my wife. I can't see the Zune-like UI being frictionless in the same way because of these discoverability issues.

But I'm being a bit unfair, given that I've never actually played with a Zune let alone a Windows Phone Series 7 Phone (snappy).

I know a lot of people who carry two phones with them for exactly this reason. One is for work, and one is for personal use. Depending on how good (or crappy) the separation is between work and personal e-mail on the WPS7, many people may still opt to carry two devices. And if their work demands specific Windows Mobile apps, then it's almost certain someone will have two phones. The consumer base never really was there for Windows Mobile, and what is left will be fleeing the platform to focus on WPS7.

You have a good point, and I agree that if you just look at that screen, it's hard to tell where you are. But that doesn't really relate to how you use the OS. Screens like that are all transitional. You always know where you are because you know where you came from. For example, that screen shot is one click away from the home screen. Personally, I don't need an obvious reminder that I just clicked on "Music."


[for sake of information, the rest of the items are "Songs Genres and Albums"]

Again, you're correct, but what are the alternatives? You either have an intermediate screen where you choose between those items (that's how the iPod/iPhone does it, isn't it?), or you have a drop-down list where you see even less at one time. My preference is the way it's handled, because 99% of the time I select "Music" from the main menu, I want to find my music by artist. If I want another way to see everything, it's a mere two flicks away, and the player remembers your last view. I think this makes the player cater to the user more.


Well, I'm not certain how the iPhone does it, but doesn't it just give you an alphabet down one side that you can tap on to skip to a certain letter? Okay, fine, I'll concede that that's one fewer "clicks" away, unless you have fat fingers like me, in which case it's really hard to hit those letters dead on, and you have to do some additional scrolling.


I really do think that you need to check out the UI for yourself. I do agree that it is different from the iPhone, but I certainly don't think it's less "discoverable." The whole UI flows really nicely and very logically.

Of course, this is all getting very specific, and not even specific about what this thread is about. But I have faith in the UI that they're using because I like what they've done with the Zune.

However, one thing I will say is that Zune apps are just bad. I just don't like them or how they're handled. I don't know if that has any relation to the phone though.


I agree, some people do that. My wife dose that. What I said is that "most people" don't. And I think that's true.

Meh. Touch screen interfaces won't be mature until they've fully implemented LCARS on consumer devices anyway.

We'll have to wait and see how this all plays out and also what further refinements will be made to the new Windows Phone UI - it borrows from the Zune, but it's not the Zune UI from what I've seen/read.

MS appears to actually be trying. While the other guys... Aren't. IMO, Android is a total mess and the actions of everyone involved are devaluing the platform and brand more each day. You want the (now old by tech standards) 2.1 update on your phone? You may have to wait until Q3 2010. That's just ludicrous. I'll say it again. Google needs to take a firm grip on this situation and mandate that anyone claiming their phone is "Android" brand must have their updates ready to roll when Google says they need to be. Better still is a single Google source for updates.

As far as Palm is concerned, they make a tiny little splash every now and then, but no one's paying attention to these guys. They've had their moment in the sun already unfortunately. No matter how many times they show a Pre on the new series of 24.

Anyway, these nice MS moves aside, this whole thing might just play out like the whole Zune versus iPod situation. I hope not though. If I had pull at MS, I would have taken the same leap of faith here as the XBOX team did. Either absolutely no OEM licensing for Windows Phone or limit it to one or two top-tier brands that will each only supply ONE hardware product. Microsoft should have their own hardware available.

Ok, Microsoft is continuing their jack-assery. They're going to rename Windows Mobile 6.x to "Windows Phone Classic" - bad.

Bad because it's more dollars wasted on yet another Windows mobile rebranding. Bad because it serves to confuse and clutter the new Windows Phone brand even before it's established. With a plain "Windows Phone" they had the chance at a new brand going forward, completely void of ties to Windows Mobile. Now... Not so much.

No Flash AND third party multi-tasking does sound familiar...of the most popular smart phone ever.

These words from the lips of a disgruntled iPhone user.

IMHO, the genius of Android is mostly under the hood. They're doing a very clever process model, such that each app is running with a separate Unix user-id, thus limiting the damage that can be done if an app goes rogue or whatever. There are lots of other clever technical features. Most of Bruno's complaints seem to focus not on the technology, per se, but rather on the extent to which Google and its partners are managing it.

Google seems to be trying to pursue a business strategy of producing an open-source artifact which other firms can use at will, with or without Google's assistance. Needless to say, this limits Google's ability to require its "partners" to do anything at all.

What Google certainly can do is restrict the use of its Google brand. Many, but not all, Android phones are marketed as "The FuBar Phone with Google". Those last two words can be made into a series of tests and requirements, much like Microsoft has tried to do with the PC industry.

Tangential curiosity: Has Microsoft said anything about the Windows 7 software architecture, security model, and so forth?

The browser is the same codebase as IE for the desktop, so that's not a good sign for security.

Not much yet, but I fully expect it to be running Silverlight or some close cousin of Silverlight.

I know some one said something along those lines, but it really doesn't sound very likely. IE8 is pretty much all native code as far as I'm aware and I'd be staggered if they had gone to the trouble of porting that to an ARM CPU and WinCE.

Windows Mobile has always run processes under different process ids. Of all the developmental platforms Windows Mobile is the easiest to develop for bar none, everything is documented, no developer fees to pay etc etc... I don't think lack of apps is the problem with Windows Mobile either- it has thousands although most are very old and go back to the early PDA days. I think the problem with Windows Mobile is it just doesn't have the bells and whistles and touch-screen support that the iPhone has. In every other way it's probably superior.

User IDs, not process IDs. Maybe that's what you meant, but it's an important distinction. By default, no application has any access to any other application. There are IPC methods, but one process cannot scribble on another's space.

Oh, and Windows Mobile has had a horrid UI since day one. It's gotten better over the years, but it's still lousy. It's not bells and whistles; it's usability.

Minimum entry price to even compile a Windows Mobile app is $300 for Visual Studio Standard edition. Minimum price on the iPhone is $0 (XCode is free). The $99/year comes in when you want to run an app directly on an iPhone, and it also covers distribution. Windows Mobile, it's going to be whatever costs one would normally pay for web hosting/bandwidth.

As far as it being easier to develop for, it all depends on what you know. For someone starting from scratch, I'd expect learning C# and .Net would be no more easier or more difficult then learning Objective C and Cocoa.

$0 ever for Android development. $25 once if you want to publish on the Android Market.

The documentation is (currently?) really lousy, though.

I thought it was something like $30 to get an app on the market. No?

Oh, you're right. $25 one-time fee to register as a developer for the Android market.

The Windows Mobile dev environment is really "not all that", sure it's Visual Studio, but the mobile stuff seems to have been bodged and shoehorned in. I had a number of test units connected on a network running code, and I lost count of the number of times that the bloody dev environment would randomly decide to run on one of those rather than my local dev unit. Not to mention the fact that Microsoft seem to have deprecated "native" development under Windows mobile to the point where you have no realistic choice but to use the .NET CF, which in one of the applications left much to be desired performance wise.

You can't write to another processes address space in WM. Every process has it's slot that it lives in- you can't do anything outside that slot (except for the shared memorya area), it's a simple but effective memory management system.

Agree about the UI. But also consider that you can run Flash and Java on a Windows Mobile device. Microsoft at least doesn't inject it's reiligous wars on it's users by not allowing certain things on it's platform (probably because they were sued in the past for similar behavior).

Separate UIDs is important, but so is the security policy around them. Does Windows Mobile lock things down to the point that one app can write files out to its persistent store and have some guarantees that no other app can read them? If you were building something like, say, a DRM-enforcing app (e.g., the Kindle app), that sort of thing would be a prerequisite to keeping your secrets safe.

Every Windows Mobile product I've ever used stored applications and data in RAM. You lose battery power and you lose all your apps and data. That's just the beginning of the historically shite Windows Mobile experience.

It's the consensus among programmers that developing for Mac OS and the iPhone, is a pleasure as far as the frameworks and APIs go. I've only heard horror stories from developers and customers about .NET

The rumor du-jour is that Microsoft are looking at making their own handset. Likely OEM from HTC. IMO, this is the absolute only way they stand a chance at all in the market. Devices from third parties marketed under those third-party names are likely going to have a poor showing. Even with cumulative platform deployment courtesy of their OEMs, they're more than likely going to fall significantly short in overall market penetration, let alone touching the iPhone. Having untalented third parties touching your goodies can also lead to all sorts of other issues, including licensing woes for media. MS has been (rightfully) the sole Zune developer.

The closer together MS ties the new platform to the old, the greater their chances of failure. It's like they're tying their new shiny life raft to the hull of a sinking Titanic.

Are you talking about .NET generally or .NET on Windows Mobile ?

If you are talking about mobile then, fair enough. If you are talking about .NET generally, they I couldn't agree less.

.NET + Visual Studio is a great development environment, far better than any of the alternatives I've used (Eclipse and XCode to name two).

As someone who developed a non-trivial GIS application on .NET I can't relate to those experiences. With .NET you get visual GUI development, instead of the stone-age XML file GUI design with Android, and very good code portablity with .NET code that runs on PCs. Battery power/Memory problems? Nope- my application is for hiking so it is shows where you are on huge Topo and Elevation maps. The tiled image file database I made got up to half a Gig on the Storage Card. Not only that it is recording your track log while you hike. I have gotten eight hours of battery life out of my phone while doing this easy- and my phone is notorius for bad battery life (Moto Q).

I'm not familiar with (at least non-ancient versions of) Visual Studio's GUI editor, but there is a visual, drag-and-drop GUI editor included with the Android SDK. It may require that you use Eclipse.

Hey, it's what I've heard. My own experiences with MS's GUI tools were that they (and all third-party offerings) at the time (Visual Studio a few years back) sucked pretty bad. I mean even compared to Apple's tools from a couple of years before that.

I suppose right now the whole subject for mobile is kind of moot. If you want any chance at making any type of money (and that's not guaranteed), you develop for the iPhone/iPod. If you want decent income on another platform you have to make something for a vertical market and then hope to get a big corporate contract. There's pretty much no point to retail for an indy developer on any other platform at the moment.

I think the non-iPhone argument is that you've got less competition. There may be five hundred iFart apps on the iPhone, so your ability to crack that market (hehe, crack) is nil, but you could have a shot at being the #1 fart sound generator on Android.

Also, by going with a non-iPhone platform, you may have a better shot of attracting helpful attention from one of the phone network vendors (e.g., Verizon) who might say "wow, your fart generator is fantastic; we'd like to include it on every phone and pay you a stack of cash." That's just not happening with Apple.

Fart jokes aside, another benefit of non-iPhone platforms is that you can gleefully violate all the rules that Apple enforces on what you can and can't do. If you want to do a better mail client or a better web browser, knock yourself out.

I'm not sure I know of a better mail client being denied from the app store. There are many better browsers available though.

I concur with the theory, but the reality is that the other platforms don't have a meaningful number of customers nor any significant momentum in the app sales channel. It might make sense to port something if it's easy, but I'm not sure I'd be willing to invest time unless it was under contract. Apparently a lot of other people must feel the same way judging by what's out there now.

We still need to hear a lot more from MS on their strategy in this space. I just read something the other day that mentioned they'd be in a position similar to Apple in 2007 where only approved, high-level "partners" would be writing native apps for the new Windows Phone. Anyone else have any concrete news on this subject?

Windows Phone OS, that contracts nicely!

Apparently Microsoft are now going to concentrate on Windows Phone 7, having just killed their new Kin product line. I'm still not sure how that total POS ever made it to market in the first place, but I suppose Microsoft loves to throw money out the window. I really wish they didn't, then perhaps my Microsoft stock would be worth more than it was when I bought it (and it was a looong time ago).

EDIT: Here's some backstory on how the Kin was doomed long before it was even announced: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/30/what-killed-the-kin/

Microsoft is eventually going to stumble so hard they'll have a hard time standing back up again. They need to realize that they're a software company and not a Windows company.

The most intriguing part of that story was the idea that Windows CE, itself, may be in trouble, with Microsoft considering unifying everything about "Windows 8." Presumably, if Apple can shoehorn OS X into a phone, then Microsoft can shoehorn some variant of WinNT as well.

Meanwhile, Nokia's done a deal with Intel on this whole MeeGo thing, and that leaves you wondering where Microsoft's supposed to end up. Thinking aloud, and with absolutely zero inside information, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft bought RIM. It almost makes sense. Blackberries are the predominant way that corporate types access their Exchange servers from the road. If Microsoft controlled that, then they could build out a corporate platform that latches into customers who won't go running away just because the competition has a shiny new phone.

If they were smart, they'd then leave RIM alone while developing a super-duper new Windows-based platform, rather than the way they blew it with the Sidekick platform, as the Engadget article spells out.

Backup? Whats a backup? We don't need any backups!

Wow, finally. That Kin thing was an interesting experiment, but it seems that Microsoft were the only ones who couldn't see its inevitable failure.

It's sad that the Kin made it through and the Courier did not.

There was a great Engadget podcast a month or two ago, where Josh got into a somewhat heated debate with Engadget's friend, analyst Michael Gartenberg. Gartenberg insisted that the Kin phones would be huge, and catch on like crazy. Josh represented all sane listeners in the argument, and was astonished at the assertion. Looks like as usual the analyst didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

I tell ya, I want to know how to become an analyst. It seems I have to three things in order to do so:
1) predict things that will obviously come true
2) occasionally predict something out of left field
3) every so often predict the iPhone will come to Verizon

Anyway, sorry to get off topic. I celebrate Kin's death. The ONLY thing cool about those phones was that they were the first Zune phones. But that will be meaningless when the Phone 7 phones come out.

I did get hands on with the Kin phones at a Verizon store a few weeks ago. The hardware felt a little clunky, but like something a teen might carry. The screens, however, were pretty bad, with low pixel density and low brightness. In fact, it really seemed like the brightness was turned way down on the Kin 2 I tried, but despite about 5 minutes of fiddling with it, I couldn't for the life of me find a settings menu to change the screen brightness. I had thought these phones were for idiot teenagers, and here I was overly frustrated that I couldn't find a basic user experience setting.

Fail.

The Kin phones are what you get if you let somebody who is obsessed with the idea of "Web2.0", clouds and social networking design a phone but not actually have any experience of phones or UI design. The social networking parts are clunky and have an awful interface.

If Microsoft hadn't actually released it, I would have assumed that the two Kin phones were concept phones.

There is a setting to disable the light sensor and do manual brightness.

I don't really see Microsoft buying RIM. If they did, I think it would only lead to the death of the Blackberry, so it would just be another huge money pit for MS. It would probably be a good idea, for the reasons Dan mentioned, but that's also why I don't see it happening. MS are too Windows-centric, I'm sure their toilet paper is covered in WIndows logos. I can't see them doing with RIM anything much different than they did with the Sidekick, that is, redeploying it with a new OS.

MS would be better off abandoning the NT kernel and everything in its current iterations of Windows and going at it with something new and fresh. That's the path they need to take if they really want to copy Apple. Not buying up hundreds of Macs to study its UI for ideas to toss into Windows as eye-candy.

It was obvious to everyone that not even teens were going to go for the Kin, since most of them had also long ago abandoned the Sidekick for iPhone, Android or Blackberry. And no one, even someone not in their right mind, is going to give up one of those for a Kin.

I suspect that may be more to do with how far from reality the courier "demo reels" were.

People seem to think that courier was really doing all that stuff on the bench, whereas the far more likely reality was that the courier project had these amazing goals but it was nowhere near the concepts. Remember the courier pictures of two windows mobile devices glued into a leather folio from 2009?

If you were as cynical as me, you might think that the concept videos were leaked by the courier team to try and drum up some customer "pull" that would help them get internal support to enlarge their team 10x to actually make the product's functionality approach the demo.

On what Microsoft should or shouldn't do: Microsoft took a big gamble with the NT kernel, ultimately killing the Win9x line, and that was clearly a good thing by the time they got to WinXP, with many people still running it some nine years after its release. With modern smartphone hardware, there's no reason Microsoft couldn't move NT onto a smartphone in precisely the way that Apple moved OS X. (I'll argue that there's nothing wrong with the NT kernel, but rather with the behemoth environment that's grown up around it. Android has done what looks to be a nice job of redoing the Linux userland without monkeying with the kernel, so far as I can tell.)

Of course, as you point out, Microsoft seems to have this thing about producing products that have their own software stack from top to bottom. For example, there was their famous effort to move Hotmail to a Windows platform, and Kin can be seen as moving Danger to a Windows platform. Microsoft could well have left both of those alone and focused on evolving things on their original platform, but they didn't.

Mostly I just see Kin as a spectacular management failure.

Ahh, one other point. Kin may well have stood a chance if you weren't required to have the $30/mo. data plan. For contrast, Verizon just introduced the Pantech Jest, which is available free with new contract and without any data plan at all. Assuming the software's any good, this could well be quite popular with the teenage set.

There's nothing wrong with the NT kernel. All of the cruft is in the Win32 layer on top.

Oh don't get me wrong, I never thought it was a functioning product.

I've agreed with the general consensus that the Courier might have just been too difficult to bring to reality from concept. The user interface they were displaying was certainly ambitious and not a simple feat to pull off.

Still, I wish they'd tried, and the rumor is that J Allard was pissed that they didn't. I don't know if he quit over it or not, but I think they're going to miss him.

Well, the actual launch is getting close, anyone here looking at a Windows Phone 7 phone? (Gah, even the shortened name still seems awkward, guess I should use device instead)

I'm still pretty curious to see how the phone works in person, but I don't see myself owning one. I doubt Microsoft is going to bring any of the sync software to the Mac, and even if the phone is the next best thing, it's not going to be good enough to drag me away from OS X.

Google appears to already be concerned about it, based on comments they have made. Seems odd to me to make a comment like "the world doesn't need another platform". The same could have been said back when Android (pre iPhone era) was just another platform to compete against RIM, the old Windows Mobile, the old Palm OS, and Symbian as a business smartphone.

The whole quote from Google is absolutely ridiculous. :



You create a new platform because

a) you think you can do it better
b) you want to make money.
c) you can leverage existing technology and skill sets to make more content available.

. . . just like Google did.

Where MS thinks they can do it better (based on their people interviewing on podcasts) is they feel it helps everyone to build a developer-centric app creation process and store, rather than a consumer driven one. I have my doubts as to whether this approach will even touch the existing smart phones, but it will be interesting to see. I have little doubt that Silverlight will be the best and easiest way to create smart phone apps. XAML + C# is a powerful, powerful combination. IMO, C# surpassed Java a long time ago in terms of the best laid out general purpose language, and XAML is absolutely awesome for building content presentation. I'm not certain on the specifics of what they are planning to do with the store, but the claim is that it will be easier for consumers to "find your app" and for developers to be rewarded for creating great stuff.

I guess the notion is that this will allow the best apps to be created for the windows phone (much like windows desktop has a richer library of available applications than Apple, even if Apple continues to win in certain markets such as sound engineering and graphics), but that might not work for phones the way it worked for desktops. The problems with this line of thinking are:

a) The iPhone has a huge head start on great apps
b) Android's Java is still the most popular development language
c) Running apps, while very important, is not the core feature of a phone.

As a developer, the idea of creating content and being rewarded for it excites me, especially since I can leverage skills I already have. In fact, I probably WILL look into writing a windows phone app once I have time to breath in my current work project (and I can be confident people are actually buying these phones and creating a market for the software). Unfortunately, as consumer it will be very hard to drag me off of my iPhone, and that's the rub I think.

A funny thing is that the project I'm currently on is a banking product and part of what we are building is a monitoring/trouble shooting tool that graphically represent the health of our back-end process and allows us to correct certain error states. This is currently built in WPF, but it would not be difficult at all to change to Silverlight and make the app available for a Windows phone. Once the system goes live each of the developers will be on call during banking hours, so having this application available on our phones would be a HUGE win. This means there's a chance we could end up with company owned Windows phones (right now they pay for my iPhone service). As cool as that would be, I'm not sure I desire it because that would mean giving up my beloved iPhone.

I agree with just about everything apart from this:

For lots of the iPhone users that I know, apps very much are the core of using the "phone". How people use an iPhone in my experience is very different to how they use non smartphones.

I don't really know how this compares to other smart phone users, because I know very few smart phone users who aren't using iPhones...

1. Andy Rubin from Google is a total douche and a completely disingenuous person. He's working for the perfect company, since that's Google motto.

2. Microsoft's OS is great news for everyone other than Google - if anyone is going to lose market share to MS it will be Google. The MS phone simply doesn't compete with RIM and Apple's products for OEM attention. It's going to help create confusion both in product execution and delivery for OEMs and it's going to create branding and market confusion for consumers for those OEM's products- good news for Apple and RIM.

3. I don't see the road ahead paved with fantastic apps for MS Phone. I see the potential for a lot of crap given history and the ease of development with new tools. You make something too easy and people are going to take a very easy/lax approach to quality as well.

Step 1. Create a marketing page showing off the platform including a blurb about apps. Make sure to grab icons from popular apps on other platforms to hint at what is coming soon.
Step 2. ?
Step 3. Profit

Or rather in this case, upset the developer because his icon was used without permission when said developer hadn't even decided on porting the game to the platform. Oops.

Hopefully those developers from the podcasts go and smack the marketing people.

I'm an Android user (well I will be when my HTC Desire comes back from repair), and I very rarely use it for making phone calls. That said: if it's lousy (like WinMo lousy) at making the few phone calls that I do make, it's not going to stay in my pocket for long.

This is certainly true- I was amazed myself how my experience with my iPhone was completly different than with a blackberry curve, which I mostly just used for phone and email. The apps are a HUGE part of what makes the iPhone magical.

But I only realized this AFTER buying my iPhone. My perception befor jumping into iPhone land was that apps were simply "nice to haves". In that sense (the mind of a new customer), the quality of apps in the store would probably not sway my purchasing decision the way they would a desktop OS.

I'd forgotten for a second how lousy my WinMo phones were at making calls and sending texts. The iPhone might not be as good as my old Nokias when it came to being a phone, but it is many times more usable as a phone than those WinMo phones I suffered with.

A lot of crap does not mean no fantastic apps. If users can connect with the quality apps (something that is part of the MS strategy), then the number of poor apps is beside the point.

And I don't really know that Silverlight is "too easy". You have to know what you are doing (like with most other platforms). If you do, then it is very powerful.

But beyond that- it isn't about how easy or difficult Silverlight is. There are plenty of developers out there who already possess skills with WPF and Silverlight- these developers will be able to instantly translate those skills to the new phone and get cracking creating visually stunning apps. One of the TAs on our current project is already doing this in his off time (building a chord finder app for musicians) and will be ready to go soon after the phone ships. For him, the real bonus is getting to leverage the skills he already has.

The problem, of course, is that if no one is interested in the phone his app won't sell

The same was true for me. I bought the iPhone before there were any real apps. The base functionality was great, especially the built in real web browser and proper HTML e-mail. It was only later that value was added with tons of third party apps. This is why when I did my Android experiment, I wanted the first part of it to be focused on what the core experience was. For me, it wasn't better then the core experience of the iPhone, and due to serious issues like the GPS, the phone went back before I even dug into the app market.

If I were to consider a Windows Phone 7 device, the core experience has to be solid. Once that part is proven, then the apps start making the device even more useful. It seems like Microsoft did put a lot of effort into the core, so it's something that looks promising to me.

It will be interesting to see how this shapes up. Android and Windows Phone 7 take the same approach of offering a platform on a ton of varied devices made by third parties. This mirrors the current Windows PC market today, but that market only exists in it's current form due to Microsoft's illegal actions in the 90s. With real competition this time around, I'm watching to see how this plays out. Google is going with the more open approach for OEMs and carriers to change what they want, Microsoft is being a little more controlling this time compared to their older Windows Mobile attempts.

Apple, RIM, and HP (Palm) are on the other side, providing the platform and the hardware as one single piece. So far, this approach has worked well for both Apple and RIM, and may work for PalmOS now that they have a large company to help push forward the marketing message.

Not only do consumers have choice in the mobile space, they have choices even inside the different strategies.

I am.
1. I love Zune way more than any iPod I own, and if (IF) MS succeeds in creating a UI just as good for a phone, I'd love to use it. And I'd use 1 device only as phone/music player. But, sadly, they'll only make devices with little 32Gb storage, at least initially, I am afraid, which will make it no replacement for my Zune, should I ever decide to get one soon.

2. I need it for work. I need to sync, daily, w/o issues, with my Outlook. This is a must for me. No way Android or iPhone could do this as well as my old and slow Palm Treo 750. And I have no intention to go through Gmail or whatever.

3. I've had and "tested" iPhone and Android a bit, and never got into the "Apps" thing. They're nice and cool, I had fun with some of them, but I only ended up using the one that "recognizes songs". I even forgot its name. I know that if I used those phones longer I would have done much more with Apps. But, honestly, that's way down in my priority list. And, it seems, the song-recognising app will be in WP7.

4. It seems some WP7 devices with real, physical qwerty keyboard will be available at some point (Samsung? LG? Can't remember). I'd love that. No touch-screen keyboard I've tried feels as nice as the one on my Palm Treo 750. No, not even the iPhone one.

Of course, I'll try WP7. I like a lot what I saw so far on line, but it may turn into something poor in reality. In which case I won't know what to do and if my Treo's keyboard keeps breaking (yes, it feels great but it is getting progressively worse in accepting key-presses. Its terrible.) I may have to resort to accept the "stupid" RIM I would get at work otherwise. And wait that Android improves to do what I want (likely, at some point), or that the iPhone does (unfortunately very unlikely).

Oh, and I need tethering. Unlocked. What happened with that? Is Android doing it, no limits, no carrier-lock, and what not? Is Apple? This has been so discouraging for me in thinking to change phone... Windows Mobile has been doing this forever and it "just worked" for me over the last three years, and Nokia did it great before that. I've been tethering for the last 8 years, and I just don't want to change to something that doesn't do it any longer. Which, incredible, could even be WM7 itself, based on what I read months ago. But I just did not have time to look into this, so maybe now all of them do happily?!

Works fine for me under Android for mail and calendar, without going through Gmail.

Well, to be fair, it syncs with Exchange. I use Outlook as little as possible. I try to use Exchange as little as possible, honestly.


There are a variety of Android phones with physical keyboards, both horizontally and vertically aligned. Or do you need one that isn't a slide-away deal? If that's the case, the only one I know of is the Motorola Charm, which is a MOTOBLUR phone, which is to say, Android Jr.

Even better, the Droid Pro

Oh, good point. I thought that one was slideaway for some reason.

I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but I was listening to a podcast that was essentially all windows developers who use MS tools. They had a big discussion about how excited they were about developing for the new Windows Phone. They talked all about Silverlight, XAML, the marketplace, and all of that junk. Then at the end one guy asked- "Ok, so someone gives you $800 (or whatever) to buy a new phone six months from now (presumably after the windows phone is out), what phone do you buy? To a man they all said iPhone.

Engadget liveblog of the announcement

Notable: "We'll have 9 phones available when WP ships in November, from HTC, LG, Samsung, Dell.... you'll see phones with keyboards, phones for music, very large screens, and of course, ruggedized for the hardest user... like this Dell device"

We'll have to wait a little bit for all the technical details to come out.

And, of course, you can't watch the videos if you don't have Microsoft Silverlight installed. Fail.

Current impression, maybe one hour into the presentation, is that Microsoft has built all sorts of integration with their various cloud services (SharePoint, Exchange, etc.), so if you've already bought into all that, then a Microsoft phone will make a lot of sense in the same way that if you've bought into Gmail and other Google services, that an Android phone is an obvious benefit.

They did announce a big feature coming to the phones next year.

Hopefully it's real copy and paste like the iPhone that includes support for text formatting and images, and not just simple text only copy and paste.

Engadget has on-going coverage of the various phones. So far there's nothing distinctive about any of them other than the small Windows logo, making them look just like any other generic smart phone that could be running Android.

Dell seems to have the best looking handset, coming up just short of the best looking image of all, which is the one MS used in all their demos and early promotional slides.

Plenty of offerings with all manners of hardware keyboards, including the Dell I just mentioned.

I like that Microsoft is completely owning the software stack, versus all the customization happening in the Android space. Big unknown whether Google will find a way to crank down on the crapware, lame skinning, and associated madness.

(I will say, for the record, that Android 2.2 on my Droid X was a world of difference better than Android 2.1. Battery life went from "barely a day if you never touched it" to "50% left at the end of the day, despite heavy usage." I'm also quite happy with the improved Gmail, calendar, etc. At this point, even if I could switch to a WinMo7 phone for free, I wouldn't leave because I really enjoy the quality integration with Google services.)

I was surprised to find that WP7 doesn't support memory cards and that none of the phones announced today have more than 16GB (and most are 8GB). With a couple of meaty apps and some recorded 720p video those 8GB ones are going to run out of storage pretty quick.

I know I'll draw the ire, and I'm not forgiving MS for this, as I don't have silverlight installed either, but I will point out that this isn't much different from what Apple did at their last press conference.


The improvements you experienced weren't issues for my Nexus One, but I definitely experienced the same huge difference with the upgrade. 2.2 just sped things up considerably. And perhaps that's why your battery life improved - you were able to get things done faster and turn the screen off


As for the WP7, I think MS has a good product, and I'm interested in the platform, but I won't be switching due to the Google integration with Android. If, however, there were a full GMail client on WP7 and full integration with Google Calendar? Honestly, I would consider it. One of the reasons is that I'm scared that when my Nexus One eventually craps out or becomes totally obsolete, I honestly don't think I'm going to have a phone to switch to, since nobody seems interested in making a plain-jane Android phone anymore (even the G2 is sounding scary to me). The other reason I would switch is Zune Pass. It's hard to explain how awesome the Zune Pass is if you don't have it...

From the end user perspective, sure. From the back end, not really. Silverlight is a proprietary technology controlled by Microsoft, just as Flash is a proprietary technology controlled by Adobe. Apple's stream was using something that they are publishing as a standard with the IETF, just one that no one else has chosen to implement into their browsers. Again from the end user perspective there isn't much difference here since people were locked out. There still isn't any way to guarantee 100% of an audience can watch a streaming video, but at least Apple is trying to make a new standard that works around the problems of the old one (RTSP), instead of making some new proprietary method.

Back to WP7, I just noticed that this is yet another big phone launch without CDMA support in the US. WP7 Verizon phones are a no show, and there is one phone that will be on Sprint sometime in 2011. All the launch phones are aimed at AT&T or T-Mobile. I doubt WP7 will have a huge impact on the Android install base in the US, since most seem to be on Verizon after the big marketing push of "DROID" started last year. if the iPhone couldn't convince diehard Verizon people to switch carriers, I don't see Microsoft having any better luck.

I really don't see why people don't like downloading Flash or Silverlight. It doesn't bother me one bit that they are proprietary- but then it doesn't bother me to run a proprietary OS either. In either case the goal is I want to be able to run applications, and both Flash and Silverlight allow me to do that.

Simply, my desire to watch this Microsoft video is outweighed by the "oh man, I need to install more random software on my Mac" to make it happen and who knows if it will play nicely with Chrome and ... oh bother.


So, umm, what's Zune Pass all about, then?

Basically it's just a music subscription service. There are others out there, but this one appealed to me the most. It gives you unlimited download and streaming access to any music in the Zune Marketplaced that has been licensed for it. Frequently there are artists that don't have their music on there, but I come across those rarely enough. The argument against subscription services like this is that when you stop your subscription you lose all your music. Well, in addition to the unlimited access you get for $15/month, you also get 10 downloads per month to keep, free and clear. If you think that you would have bought at least an album a month anyway, you could think of the deal as getting the unlimited streaming for $5-6.

The major appeal of a Zune-capable phone to me is the possibility of wirelessly streaming my data to my phone wherever I am (with sufficient data coverage).

5. And I will need real excel in it.




What can I tell you. I just don't want that kind of uncertainty in an activity that I perform, for work, daily.

Yes, I know of several people reporting issues with sync also using Windows Mobile in various versions. Just, simply, that's not me. I must have been lucky with my phones.

Anyway, my list was not aimed at comparing Win Phone 7 to Android, but to every other phone system around. Some of the features I need are in android, others aren't.


Syncing with exchange is different than synching with Outlook. I personally need Outlook Sync. I use Outlook every day, all day long at work, quite extensively (and I love it more than any of the zillions other clients I used at home through the years, so that I ended up using it at home as well). I know that many hate it for various types of reasons, but again I must have been lucky so far.

So, either a phone syncs with Outlook properly, or I don't buy it. I'd rather get some Windows Mobile 6.5 phone when my Treo fails for good, if Android does not offer that same level of reliability by then and WP7 lacks in other regards.


I like slide keyboards, as they allow for large lcd. I actually like the Dell Venue Pro they just presented, provided its real keyboard is rock solid and can last enough. Again, my Treo 750 was just superb in terms of keyboard touch and feel and accuracy - never tried anything better -, unless it is dying on me and it is every day more frustrating. And, it was supposed to be the best real keyboard out there, when I bought it.


Exactly! What a poor choice. Windows Phone 7 now allows me to update my status on facebook but its storage can't be expanded. What an evolution. I am so happy now. :-| I just can't understand why they have to get rid of the features that would be regarded as a premium over a competitor like the iPhone, and that you don't "have to" use if you don't want to or know how to. Would a mem card reader introduce some security risk, maybe? Some excessive complexity of some kind?

Removing the memory card clearly simplifies some things. You no longer have to worry about your apps or data going away while things are running. I can understand from a developers point of view why that might be desirable...

That's exactly the reason why I think some devices require you to remove the back cover and then the battery before you access the mem card. I am disappointed they did not consider that as a sufficient solution, though.

For one, neither are available on my phone or tablet of choice today. And due to their proprietary nature, they likely never will be. Apple gave Adobe 3 years to bring Flash to the iOS platform (possibly longer if they were given specs prior to iPhone shipment in mid 2007). Politics aside, locking into vendor proprietary plugins results in the inability to be platform agnostic. The desktop market is pretty stable and not changing much these days, but the mobile computing market is exploding, with tons of OS choices. None of the mobile platforms allow both Silverlight and Flash today, though maybe WP7 will be the first.

On top of that, Flash on the Mac is just a very horrible experience. It's pretty crummy on Windows with Firefox based on what I saw at Mozilla's crash page. In both cases, the proprietary nature of the plugin prevented Apple or Mozilla from being able to fix the problem, and instead they had to work around it by running plugins out of process. And neither company can address any performance issues.

Compare that to the state of HTML and Javascript. Microsoft basically declared themselves the winners in the browser market, and promptly got rid of most of their engineers on the browser team. Web 2.0 came along, requiring better javascript performance. Had it been a proprietary Microsoft tech, things would have stalled out till Microsoft saw it as a priority. Instead, Mozilla, Apple, Google, and others were able to just make their own new browsers with better javascript support, along with building new mobile platforms. And by reintroducing competition, it forced Microsoft to reform the IE team, and finally at version 9, they are catching back up to where they should have been years ago.

Sure, I want to run applications too. I'd also like to avoid giving any one platform support to the extent that it becomes dominant. In the case of Microsoft and Adobe, their definitions of "good enough" don't match mine. And once they hit good enough, they don't bother to keep innovating. Until their track records improve, I refuse to trust them with such vital technologies when the field is still advancing frequently.

[/soapbox]

Engadget has an okay spec sheet here for all the phones announced today. No specs in the chart regarding battery life or capacity.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/11/windows-phone-7-handsets-the-tale-of-the-tape/

Of note, the Samsung Focus does indicate it has a MicroSD slot on it, so it seems external expansion is possible. Odd that it's the only phone to offer it, and still caps out at 16GB.

Tangentially, have you tried the Flash 10.2 beta on Mac? It seems to work noticeably better. And under Linux, too.

Not that I'm disabling FlashBlock anytime soon, but it's not so egregiously awful as it was.

As Silverlight goes, the performance under Linux is pretty bad. As in infinitely bad. As in it doesn't exist. Yeah, okay, there's Moonlight, but it's at least a full version behind. Most stuff I've tried simply doesn't work under Moonlight at all. And it's not exactly open source, so it's not like it could be ported to another Unix. I don't think that there's a Silverlight for Solaris, for example.

Politically and emotionally, I don't want Microsoft to succeed in any way. Part of this is just based on my antagonistic attitude towards them, but that is based on how underhanded they've been with their "Embrace and Extend" attacks.

Paranoically, I have no idea what it's doing. I think that in part it implements BITS, AKA "Please waste my bandwidth". I have no idea why I'd want to let that infect my computer.

I get not trusting MS- they have behaved badly and earned a reputation for not playing well with others. Based on that, wide adoption of Silverlight may never come. However, I don't think that makes proprietary browser plug ins inherently bad. They exist because of the limitations of what you can do with HTML for building apps- after all, HTML is a language that was designed for displaying documents, not creating interactive applications.

Now maybe HTML5 is going to do away with all of that- I remain a bit skeptical, as I've felt for a long time (way before Silverlight ever came along) that web app development needs a clean break from HTML. But if HTML5 is all that and a bag of chips- fantastic. Even then, having alternatives promotes the drive of competition to innovate and add functionality.

My guess at the reason MS hasn't stepped up with Moonlight and gotten it working at an acceptable level is that they are realistic. No matter how good a product the provide on Linux, Linux users aren't going to use it because it's MS. It really isn't worth their time to try and grow a user base that will never accept them. Of course, this just perpetuates their windows-centric view of the world that ultimately causes the world not to trust them.

The part that drives me nuts is that MS has invested a lot of brilliant minds into developing Silverlight and it is GOOD. It's such a waste that because it has the MS name attached to it it won't thrive the way it should based on the value it can provide developers and consumers.

FWIW, I totally get not downloading a plug in to idly watch some video- I don't think this machine I'm typing on now has Silverlight installed, but if it was something I were truly interested in I wouldn't hesitate. It doesn't bother me too much that my phone doesn't support plug ins because mostly I'm not running internet apps. Rather I'm usually consuming content, which HTML does really well.

There's also the question of why there's a virtual machine if its only real platform is going to be Windows. It would make more sense to just then give me a real application so that I don't have to worry about browser issues with conflicting plugins and whatnot.

Why does it have to be in the web browser at all? If you really want apps delivered via the web, then implement something like Java's Web Start.

I dunno; it just seems stupid. Flash has history dating back to when web interactivity was very slight. Java has even more such history, but is more than just an applet enabler. Silverlight seems very late to the game and didn't really bring anything new: "Look at me!! I can do it, too!!"

Windows only real platform isn't just Windows. While Microsoft don't release their own version for Linux, they do support the Mac. So the same code written for SL needs to run on both the Mac and Windows.

It has to be a virtual machine because it is .net, the virtual machine brings with it all the normal benefits of a selection of languages, garbage collection, sandboxing of code etc

It doesn't have to be in the browser. SL also supports installing apps locally along the lines of Java's Web Start.

Don't get me wrong, I mainly wish SL didn't exist, but given that MSFT decided to do a Flash replacement, I think they did a good job of it.

... so,

1. No thetering if I understand it correctly. I thougth it would be left to the carrier, which would mean, here in Italy, open tethering with 3 out of 4 major carriers leaving it open. That's too bad.

2. Good that they use Zune software to sync both media and contacts/calendar; I love Zune software and how flexible and effective it is. Bu
t I don't know how well it will work with Outlook and how flexible it is in that regard: I have my music server with all MP3s at home, my contacts at Work, and I want both on my phone.
Multiple music servers are handled generally well with current Zune sw, but what about contacts now? I am really hoping they do this right.

3. No cut & paste now. This is just annoying to me. I expected some sort of step back from Windows Mobile 6.5 in many ways because WP7 is more geared towards the non-tech user (which I don't criticize, per se), but why oh why this? It will make me wait, for sure, until next release.

What's the big deal with Cut&Paste? Again, I am guessing some security issue?

The rest, at least in theory, I really like, including the live tiles concept. I think it could be a nicely conceived device, just as I think Zune is.


Now that I think about it: how about radio? I can't see it mentioned in the specs of any of the soon release WP7 phones! Zune radio is just great. How can they have dropped that too?
Ok. Omnia 7 does come with an RDS radio. That is good.

You'd be wrong...

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/13/microsoft-announces-windows-phone-7-sync-software-for-macs-due-t/

"OS X application which will allow you to sync 'select content' from a Mac of their choosing to a Windows Phone"

I'm guessing by "select content" they are saying, don't expect to sync your DRM'd iTunes files

Seems odd to me not to announce this during the actual product reveal, but it's good to hear in any case. Rumor from windows fanboy #1 (Paul Thurott) is that Microsoft is working with a third party to make it happen for now. Sounds similar to the old iPod on Windows solution where Apple licensed MusicMatch. I wonder if they are doing that to test the waters before having the internal Microsoft Mac team devote time to it.

I suspect this sloppy announcement was due to some flack they received from Mac customers recently. And by "select content" I believe they mean it won't be able to sync everything you will be able to sync in Windows, at least for the time being.

I'd be amazed if the software wasn't C#/WPF/XAML based.

In which case they might be using a third party so it is the third party that ports it to mono rather than Microsoft

I didn't run it for long to see how it felt compared to the older versions, as it has a fullscreen bug on my system. Any flash video player with the fullscreen option would initially show one frame properly, then the rest of the playback continued in a square in the upper left equal size to the video on the web page. It also wasn't hiding the OS X menu bar. Due to that, I've gone back to 10.1 for now.

I finally had a chance to check out two new-ish WinPhone teaser ads and I think they're both very well done. Great ads in fact. Happy to see they didn't go down the Palm route of irrelevant.

I think they'll have to follow them up with something that makes the point quicker however. The point of the ads is that you don't have to be a slave/drone to your phone and go through your day like a zombie.

Somewhat interesting field-test comparison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oetqyxl5WMU&feature=

In Italian, but with Eng Subs

As usual, Thurott is quite a bit off base.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=1fe7ea0f-3ad6-4137-8397-d412a3792c33

That's beta 1 of the "Windows Phone 7 Connector" for OS X. Digging around in the package, it definitely came from the Microsoft Mac team, with signs of the Mac BU code all over the place. Since I don't have a Windows Phone, the program doesn't do much for me when it runs, but it does indicate it syncs from the iTunes and iPhoto libraries. I also found Zune device logos inside the program, so I may try and borrow a coworkers Zune to see what it does.

Definitely impressed Microsoft is putting in the effort to let OS X folks use their new phone. For media syncing, this puts the iPhone and WP7 devices in the first party supported category, while Android and Palm owners on OS X still need to look to third party solutions.

Yeah, the ads were one of the dozen things Palm did wrong. MS seems to take a little while to get their campaign rolling, and definitely don't have the impact and effectiveness of Apple's ads. They do an average job, though.

Josh Topolsky actually made a good point about them on TWiT this week. He pointed out that MS basically did the same thing with their Bing ads. They started out with those bizarre "search overload" ads, which presented us with the problem that we face with search. They then followed those ads up with a series of ads showing Bing in action and all the things you could do with it. Josh surmised that they would probably do the exact same thing.

Again, I'm not saying this is the correct way, but it could be a lot worse. It could be Palm, after all...

You talking about the Palm adverts where you no idea what on earth it was selling until the text came up at the end?

Yeah, the ones with the creepy pale-white woman.

Or the ones that were sexist. Take your pick.

Yeah, and Bing definitely doesn't have that problem. Since it never seems to return much that's relevant to your search at all.

I remember I recently tried to use Bing to find something on Microsoft's site; some piece of Windows documentation that I knew existed but couldn't seem to find. (Probably due to their restructuring of the kb site without fixing any of the links inside it.) Anyway, Google wasn't returning what I wanted, so I tried Bing, and it was far, far, worse. It didn't even come close to finding anything relevant at all.

I figure that if Bing can't even find content on Microsoft's own site, there's not much chance that it will work well with anything else, either.

Also, I wish Google hadn't changed their image search in response to Bing. The new version is awful. I might start trying Bing for image search, since Google seems to think they've done something right there.

All that said, WP7S actually looks pretty good. I'm not going to use it, but it's not the goatse.cx that WinCE was.

I use Bing for image searches a lot when I'm looking for DVD artwork- only because the image search on Google is so hard to use atm. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but search for images on Google tends to go away and not come back for a while, while image searching on Bing is pretty quick.

Before the Google change I think I preferred Bing even then for image searches, but only slightly and not enough to change my habits to default to it instead of Google.

Google image search used to suck, not because of performance but because of execution and design. It presented the images in such a way that they were never aligned which caused the page format to change from page to page. That make it impossible to manipulate the controls from one page to the next (with a mouse) without hunting around for the small "next" or "previous" button.

It's cemented, cast in stone or whatever other cliché you want to use. Google sucks at design and UI. Just look at Analytics. What a mess.

Bing's image search is still much better than Google's in presentation since everything is on a nice grid. I'd like to see a few more options, but in terms of speed, it's also performing quite well. I'll probably use it more in the future. Text search however sucks with Bing as you guys have all pointed out already.

WInPhone isn't even out yet and I'm already wanting one of its features as a Jailbroken mod for the iPhone... The ability to hide the title/status bar at the top of the screen at all times, and swipe with your finger to either display it temporarily or to show a more detailed/larger device status report. IMO, that bar is one thing Apple did very very wrong. It's just too 1980's and a throwback to desktop computing.

I'm personally very glad Apple stuck with a fixed status bar, I wouldn't want to pull down a bar every time I needed to check signal strength, whether a GPS add is in the background, the time, whether wifi is connected, battery level remaining (and also keeping an eye on how fast I'm draining it) etc

If they ever make it hideable, I hope the make it optional (they probably won't make it optional knowing Steve).

I have that on my Nexus One.

I agree. Infact, a couple of versions ago TomTom went more fullscreen than it had previously, so now I have absolutely no idea whether or not I'm getting a voice or data service, I find that particularly irritating.

Yep, TomTom being fullscreen is very annoying. Not being able to see the battery indicator if you are using it without it plugged in is a pain in the arse.

Dell Venue Pro does come with a memory expansion slot.
So, it seems not to be true that WP7 will not support mem expansions.

If so, this is really good because then Venue Pro is, in fact, a real, good, audio player (=Zune), and actually more versatile than Zune because potentially expandable.

We'll see what the first real tests and review will say.

It isn't expandable in the way we normally use that word, if you add or change the memory card in WP7 you have to hard reset the phone and blow away all the data on the phone.

Does WP7 have the full backup/restore that iOS devices have ? Also can you backup one WP7 device and restore to another ?

It's essentially a way to upgrade your phone's storage, but like Andy says, it's completely interleaved with the memory that's already in the phone.

I'm sure MS's hardware must support making a backup. What will it do if it doesn't support syncing and by extension backup?

... mmmh. Interesting.

Well, that can ben annoying. But, on the other hand, if you have your contacts, music, photos, stored/synched on your PC, it's not too bad, theoretically, assuming hard-reset is a smooth enough - not even necessarily quick - operation.

Do you guys know what a hard reset practically means with WP7? Is there official software (Zune?) available to do so, or would it have to be provided by hardware manufacturer? Or even be unofficial?

Maybe Apps restore could potentially be a more annoying part of the process if licensing issue arised...


Back to Dell Venue Pro, it comes with microSDHC port. As of today, it means a max capacity of 32GB + 8 GB internal = 40 GB. Not yet comparable to a hdd-based music player, but promising.

A 64 GB microSD, which I believe will eventually hit the market, would bring total capacity to 72 GB; that may keep my entire collection without audiobooks and some podcasts; personally, it is a sacrifice I could accept to make as long as I can carry around one device only rather than two. It would be painful to go back and select what music not to sync in the device, for example, an approach I had hoped to give up once for good years ago when I first expanded my Empeg :), but still...

Also, I hope it sounds as good as the Zune.