Comments on: Windows Phone 7 Series: prediction

By: Nic Wise

Nic Wise — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 07:47:57 +0000

yeah, I know. Objective-C was 1986, so I guess I should say “a modern language”

By: Ben Dyer

Ben Dyer — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:05:03 +0000

err…

ruby-1995
python-1991
java-1995

But the rest of your points are valid, I’ve tried playing with xcode, and my motivation ran dry before I achieved anything.

By: Nic Wise

Nic Wise — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:14:32 +0000

Thanks Michael I rather enjoyed writing that paragraph.

Yeah, I saw The Gu’s post – it is easy, but using MonoTouch (which I’m playing with at the moment) it’s nearly as easy to do iphone apps, so we’ll see. I’m not sure who all the 150K apps in the iphone store are for – not me, thats for sure. I use maybe 5 on a regular basis, and a few more maybe once a month….. But without those 5, I’d leave the platform.

Those apps would be:
Byline (Google reader client)
Tweetie 2
Remember the Milk (todo app)
Tube Delux
Currency (currency converter)

Almost everything else I use on a regular basis are the built in ones, which make it quite easy to move platforms.

By: Michael Washington

Michael Washington — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 16:52:12 +0000

Man you are a great writer, “…and leak memory all over your nice new carpet” It took me 10 minutes to rad the entire post because I had to pick myself up off the floor I was laughing so hard.

Oh yeah and I agree with everything you said.

Honestly, the problem is that it is TOO EASY to make a Windows Phone app. ScottGu just posted his Twitter Windows Phone app and it took me less than 1 minute to read and Fully understand all the code.

On day one there will be 50k apps. Most will suck but about 500 will be really good. by next year there will be 500k with 10k really great stuff.

By: Nic Wise

Nic Wise — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:00:06 +0000

I’m not so sure about multitasking on a phone – I’ve gone without it for so long on the iPhone that I dont know if I care – and I like a working battery life. MT works nice for large devices, but not so much for small ones

that said, being able to write something which runs in the background – a worker process – thats a totally different matter, and which is what I suspect apple will do. MS already have a precedent with the Azure worker processes…..

cut and paste is useful and trivial to add. Expect it in SP1

As for WinMo apps – sorry, I dont see this being a big problem. I’ve not come across a company which uses many, if any, of these, esp inhouse ones. If they are inhouse, chances are they are in NetCF, and they then have .NET people who would be, I imagine, VERY happy to upskill and port them over.

By: stuartm

stuartm — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:41:27 +0000

I think there’s a fifty-fifty chance of it succeeding or failing… Microsoft’s biggest benefit is it’s advantages in the enterprise. Windows Mobile has always had many features which appeal to the corporate environments such as centralised policies, good Exchange integration, multi-tasking, and heaps of mobile applications created for business applications. But Microsoft’s change in tactics may alienate itself from the Enterprise.

For starters, none of applications for previous Windows Mobile devices will work with the new Phone 7 devices, so enterprises that rely on current mobile applications will be forced to either remain on Windows Mobile Classic devices (6.5) or re-develop all their apps for the new platform. So perhaps the new development tools will be great for developers in general, but there’s a huge cost to enterprises that have to re-develop their in-house apps.

Also, the new Phone 7 devices lack features which have always been available in previous Windows Mobile devices – the two big ones are multi-tasking and copy/cut/paste. Now I’m sure that Microsoft will eventually incorporate those two features into Phone 7 devices, but it seems unbelievable that they haven’t done all they could to enable these features from day one.

As for the consumer market – you mentioned it above, Windows Mobile is just not ‘cool’ and I’m not sure if Windows Phone 7 Series (what a mouthful!) devices will be any better. To compete against the iPhone you need to have a differentiator – Palm Pre doesn’t seem to offer anything better than the iPhone and sales have slumped recently. Android’s differentiator is the open platform, which appeals to geeks and others that value their ‘freedom’. But from what I’ve seen so far, Windows Phone 7 seems to be just trying to catch up to where the iPhone was two years ago. Just offering a different UI is not going to win people over to Phone 7. This Dilbert cartoon seems relevant to this: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-09/

So if Phone 7 is moving away from it’s enterprise advantages, and the devices don’t appeal to consumers, then I’m not sure that just having a good development environment will help them.