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