Windows Phone 7 Hits Technical Preview Milestone 195
suraj.sun writes "Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system has today reached its biggest milestone yet, with a technical preview announced placing the OS on the 'home stretch' to launch. 'We are certainly not done yet — but the craftsmen (and women) of our team have signed off that our software is now ready for the hands-on everyday use of a broad set of consumers around the world — and we're looking forward to their feedback in the coming weeks, so that we can finish the best Windows Phone release ever together,' Terry Myerson, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Windows Phone Engineering, wrote tonight." There's coverage around the net including
CNet,
NeoWin and
Engadget.
My question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this a release that, purely on quality/merit (let's not talk about mindshare or openness -- presumably both are lost causes), is at all competitive with the alternatives?
In a sense it's amazing to me, given how much longer Microsoft's been trying to get something done in the Mobile arena, that they have been completely unable to gain any traction so far. Were Windows CE etc. trying too hard to be compatible with Desktop Windows? I don't know, but it's baffling that a company with so much of a headstart over would now be its chief competitors managed so little.
It's hard to point to openness as the reason with Apple's walled garden as a ready counterpoint, but what did go wrong?
Re:Ah, let's just call it done (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it's just Outlook. (Files can synch.) You get a wierd error with 64-bit activesync with 64-bit office; it doesn't work!
Re:Ah, let's just call it done (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft ascended to supremacy because the PC was in a niche where IBM was irrelevant, and further was more important to a larger segment of the population than the segment that cared about IBM's dominance -- large computers and servers. IBM was never displaced from their market and Microsoft will never be displaced from the desktop. And now history is repeating itself. The iPhone and Android are in a niche where Microsoft, like IBM before it, is irrelevant. And honestly I haven't seen an effort to get into a market this feeble since since Atari released the Jaguar.
This is ultimately a good thing. Microsoft can only seem to do interoperability when they don't have a monopoly. Portable devices will destroy IE's ability to ever set the tone for the web again. Considering the damage they have done to the progress of the web their fall is something to celebrate.
And yes, scads of IE dependent corp machines will remain for years to come. The web will move on. Truth be known the inability of IE 6 to deal with highly interactive sites will be seen as a benefit by CEO's since employees won't be "playing" on the clock. That's fine though - the rest of us can move on.
"Don't bother with this disaster" (Score:3, Interesting)
From http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/windows-phone-7-dont-bother-disaster-211?page=0,0 [infoworld.com]
They should drop "Windows" from the name. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nice (Score:2, Interesting)
The Zune was dead on arrival, had it come before the iPod and done everything it would have been a modest success, but how can you look at the Zune and -not- see that this is just an MS branded iPod?
Re:"Don't bother with this disaster" (Score:4, Interesting)
From http://www.zdnet.com/blog/cell-phones/microsoft-windows-phone-7-technical-preview-a-definitive-guide/4286?pg=8&tag=mantle_skin;content [zdnet.com]
Windows Phone 7 is a huge departure for the smartphone group at Microsoft and takes quite a radical approach to the way people use their phones. Unlike the iPhone, Google Android, and Palm webOS, WP7 is not focused on the application experience, but is centered on helping you interact with the people you want to and complete the tasks you need to complete with apps mainly working in the background or having other technologies (like Bing Search) do better at meeting your needs without more apps.
The current experience is amazingly stable and fluid and I am quite impressed with what they have done. It has taken some time and they were pretty much out of competing for customers for most of this year, but it looks like they will come out firing with all they have this coming holiday season.
Re:Sex Everywhere Already (Score:4, Interesting)
Hah! I see you've never heard of the Bechdel Test [wikipedia.org]. Almost all modern media inherently promotes a surprisingly patriarchal view of women; they're either the token girl, or talking to men, or talking about men - it's basically all about the guys. Even supposed "chick flicks", despite in theory being about women, generally have female characters whose sole purpose in life is to give the lead woman someone to talk to about the lead man.
And these are the things we show children; almost no Disney movie, for instance, will pass the test.
Given that sort of insidious bullshit, porn is refreshingly straight to the point.