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Microsoft Bans VoIP, Rival Stores At Mobile Market
narramissic writes "Microsoft has identified 12 application types that won't be accepted at the MarketPlace for Mobile store. Among them: VoIP apps, programs that are larger than 10MB, and programs that change the default browser on a device. Overly restrictive? Maybe. But perhaps the clear set of rules (PDF) will prevent confusion similar to what's been encountered over Apple's policy for approving or rejecting applications from the App Store."
Excuse me for saying this, but does anybody else think this is MADNESS!!?? They are not going very far with those restricitions. Follow the way of the Zune.
When my Karma level reaches 0 I feel in piece with the Universe
We're up in arms because they don't want you using other companies products on their stuff?
This seems like a fairly normal corporate model: why give other companies a chance to wow your consumer base?
Meanwhile, Apple's latest evil is barring Trent Reznor from using his music in an app when they sell the uncensored version of his music on itunes. I think Apple is winning the 'my store is more evil' award for now.
The no VoIP will have been imposed by phone companies who don't want their customers making cheap calls. These restrictions don't seem excessive to me, merely the result of enforcing software standards (from TFA) and the usual price fixing from mobile phone companies.
Anyway, can't you just install unofficial apps (not from the store) if you want to bypass these restrictions? Any sort of software protection preventing this will likely be broken in short order...
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
*chants* Android! Android! Android! Their motto is "Do No Evil", and I'm very gullible!
This isn't about devices, this is about an App Store. If I understand correctly, you can install whatever you want on MS devices, you just can't get everything from the app store. From Apple, you can't install anything on the device you purchase from them without their permission.
And RIM is ahead of them. I read just yesterday that RIM overtook Apple in marketshare of mobile devices. Not that any of us ever doubted Linux would one day surpass MS and Apple.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Sadly one of the banned apps is the only thing that would make me return to WM -- an alternate dialer. The default dialer app uses about 50% of the screen real-estate for the virtual buttons, pretty much necessitating the use of a stylus to dial. Apple uses almost 100% of the screen, making dialing with your finger on glass much more reliable. Of course, the BlackBerry uses actual buttons, so that's what I have.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Ignore the sensationalist headline, Microsoft's VOIP policy is actually the same as Apple's. VOIP is prohibited when it's over the mobile carrier's network, but it's allowed if it's not going over the mobile network.
This means the an app that only connects over wifi, like Skype for the iPhone, would be fine.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Windows® Marketplace for Mobile
Prohibited Application Types:
1. Applications that are or distribute alternate marketplaces for content types (applications,
games, themes etc.) that are sold or otherwise distributed through Windows® Marketplace for
Mobile.
2. Applications that link to, incent users to download, or otherwise promote alternate
marketplaces for content types that are sold or otherwise distributed through Windows
Marketplace for Mobile.
3. Applications that promote or link users to a website, or contain functionality within the
application itself, which encourages or requires the user to purchase or pay to upgrade the
application outside of Windows® Marketplace for Mobile.
4. Applications that enable VoIP (Voice over IP) services over a mobile operator network.
5. Applications that sell, link to, or otherwise promote mobile voice plans.
6. Applications that display advertising that does not meet the Microsoft Advertising Creative
Acceptance Policy Guide http://advertising.microsoft.com/creative-specs.
7. Applications that replace, remove or modify the default dialer, SMS, or MMS interface.
8. Applications that change the default browser, search client, or media player on the device.
9. Applications with an OTA (over the air) download >10 MB.
10. Applications that run code outside Microsoft runtimes (native, managed, and widgets)
11. Applications that publish a userâ(TM)s location information to any other person without first having
received the userâ(TM)s express permission (opt-in) to do so, and that do not provide the user a
means of opting out of having their location information published.
12. Applications that publish a userâ(TM)s data from their mobile device to any other person without first
having received the userâ(TM)s express permission (opt-in) to do so, and that do not provide the user
a means of opting out of having their data published. A âoeuserâ(TM)s dataâ includes, without limit,
contacts, photos, SMS or other text communication, browsing history, location information, and
other data either stored on the mobile device or stored in the âoecloudâ but accessible from the
mobile device
Microsoft reserves the right to update these policies as needed to protect the Windows® Marketplace
for Mobile service or the users of the service
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Man, who would have thought the once-cool MS would one day become as heavy-handed as Apple!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Really?
1-3 make good business sense
4,5,7,9 are probably rules pushed by the provider
7,8,10 protect tech support
11,12 are to protect the consumer
6 is probably just a loophole to make sure they can get around any creative ideas that would have been intended to fall under 1-3 but might not be covered.
Of course if you are unhappy with these rules maybe you could return to the open and free policies of buying apps for your iPhone...
These issues are caused by the poor configuration and bloatware installed by the carriers, not Windows Mobile. Once I corrected my phone and ditched some of the crap installed by AT&T, my phone became a stable, feature rich, fast thing of beauty. Check out xda-developers.com for guidance.
These restrictions don't seem excessive to me, merely the [...] usual price fixing
Price fixing. Not excessive. Right...
I'm shocked by the mobile telephony prices in the US: $0.25 per text message. What The Fuck??
I get 50 messages for free every month (and 50 minutes of calls) for a monthly fee of nothing, and $0.032 per text after the first 50.
That's in the socialist haven that is Denmark, where income is most evenly distributed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality#cite_note-0 -- UN Gini, second most equal by CIA Gini, more equal than the US by every metric).
Apple's policy may be messy, but for me the important difference is that MS doesn't seem to be interested in individual developers (see faq. As a result, I (currently iPhone developer) do not care for them either.
I use Windows Mobile devices since 2004 and I love them - they are very versatile. Never had the problems you mentioned so maybe your device is broken or you have installed a lot of crappy software on it.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
... game with VoIP, that needs 15 MB and has its own in-game browser. How will I sell this thing now! *waaaaahh*
I even had a cool name for it: eMacs mobile
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Dictionaries are a whole excellent App category that exists on the iPhone, and can be supremely useful when traveling. Microsoft is eliminating them for no discernible reason. Yeah, the MS App store is going to be a HUGE success. Good luck with that.
I have my WMPro 6.1 HTC Touch fairly highly customised with a different start menu, browser, dialer, Cisco VPN, MS Office Communicator, etc. I do find that it is a bit sluggish and yes, every few days I need to soft-reset it (there are some apps which will force this if they are left running in the background like TCPMP). On the whole I love it as it can do practically ANYTHING I can imagine a tiny computer could do. I can access my office computer desktop, online streaming multimedia, read almost any book, play games. My wife has the identical device without almost no customisations and I think it's been soft-reset maybe twice in six months. And we got these for $0 when we renewed our cell contract (unlimited internet usage) for three years. It's not perfect, but it suits me very well.
It's only for VOIP apps that work off a mobile network. So Skype can still be on Marketplace, just not allowed to work over a cellular network, only Wifi.
It's not much different than what Apple has allowed. Except they are idiots because of banning the NIN App.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Here's a headline worthy of FOX News. An impartial headline would be something like "Microsoft sets WinMo App Store Acceptibility Guidlines". But when run through the Slashdot yellow journalism filter it becomes "Microsoft Bans VoIP, Rival Stores At Mobile Market". Classy.
Can you imagine what it would be like, if there was one central store for your personal computer software?
The situation with the phones (Apple's, Google's, Microsoft's) is totally absurd.
And yet, people are talking about the restrictions on the software in "market," rather than the existence of these "markets" and the railroading of so many users into them.
User, you've got TCP/IP. The world should be your market.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
To not get a Windows Mobile device
Why is this news?
Just like the VOIP thing, the 10MB limit seems only to apply for "OTA apps".
To me that's a weird restriction though as it should be enforced in the store what users can or cannot download over the carrier network, but instead it seems like possibly you are required to tell them which mechanism your app allows.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Interesting. My device is from AT&T. So you're saying AT&T badly broke WM6 phones and never tried to update/fix the problem? That's horrible. I'll look at XDA forum--hopefully there's a way I can strip out AT&T's malware without having to become a mobile phone expert in the process.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Yes, the fact that you spent the time to figure out how to do custom ROMs for phones clearly indicates that you are more intelligent than the other 99.999% of the human population. We are all very impressed.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Microsoft has a mobile app store?
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Mod +1 Meme
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Currently you can download and install Windows Mobile apps from anywhere. Something keeps whispering in my head that Microsoft will totally copy Apple's "Locked In" App Store concept with version 7. Why not? It appears they are attempting to copy the rest of the concepts as well.
Doesn't the fact that you have to go in and fix it indicate that its broken? Most people want a phone to work out of the box, not have to spend however much time afterwards getting it to work.
Actually, I think the restrictions are reasonable. One thing to note is that it doesn't say the apps must change your default browser or dialer back to Microsoft's, it says you can't change them at all. In a way, this could be viewed as a good thing. Do I really want my copy of "Epic Game" changing my default browser from Opera for example? Or changing my dialer to something they made to promote their game? I think what MS is doing is fine, sure there is the problem that you can't get alternate browsers from the Market, but this isn't the iPhone. We can get are apps elsewhere.
I can understand why network operators ban the protocols. Particularly when they offer their own phone services. But why Microsoft? Are they getting into the phone biz themselves?
Be afraid, Verizon (Qwest, AT&T, et al). Be very afraid.
Have gnu, will travel.
(1) RIM sold more devices in the last quarter; marketshare has nothing to do with that. You are quoting nonsense. In addition, iPhone sales dropped off a cliff last year when people realized a new iPhone model was on its way, and the same is happening now.
(2) What the hell are you talking about with Linux surpassing MS and Apple? RIM devices don't run Linux. The closest thing which exists to handheld UNIX is the iPhone, which is based on BSD UNIX and the Darwin kernel, just like the desktop version of Mac OS X.
While I understand you are going for a bit of sarcasm, I went the XDA forum rout and found several things that seems to have cleared up all the problems I was having with my tilt. It was all due to default settings set by AT&T and crap they installed originally. Best of luck, I love my phone now, but before the editing, the battery only lasted about 6 hours. (~36 now w/blue tooth enabled)
yet you need to "Jail break" an iPhone?
Where as Microsoft has to list 12 different type of applications they won't allow in their store, as usual the Apple list is both shorter and simpler. It consists of: Apps we or AT&T simply don't like.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
the easiest way to remove customisation from a windows mobile device is to hard reset it and when it boots and sais: installing custom software in three seconds, do a soft reset. then you'll have a clean virgin windows mobile to tamper with. custom roms from xda-developers are still a better solution, though.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You mean Firefox Download links like this one?
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:q6uTxKUV5qQJ:membercenter.office.microsoft.com/+download+firefox.com+site:microsoft.com&cd=19&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Interesting. My device is from AT&T. So you're saying AT&T badly broke WM6 phones and never tried to update/fix the problem? That's horrible. I'll look at XDA forum--hopefully there's a way I can strip out AT&T's malware without having to become a mobile phone expert in the process.
I see you've never owned a cell phone before this one. Vendor-branded phones are almost always produced for the sole purpose of screwing up the originally nice OS provided by the manufacturer. AT&T does this, Verizon does this, Sprint does this, and T-Mobile does this. I can't comment on Boost Mobile :P
My Sprint phone barely lasted one day for idle, talking, and a few hours of train rides. I installed a modded OS and voila: 2 days of battery life for the same behavior, instantly functional GPS that works in my basement (it didn't before), no more UI lag, and a lot more functionality (unlimited free phone calls).
My last phone, with Verizon, crashed a lot while I was in the camera mode. The image would freeze and then the screen would go into it's stupid Verizon shutdown animation (complete with sound, even when in silent mode). I loaded up a ROM based on the manufacturer's carrier-agnostic software and never had the problem again, nor did I have the shutdown animation.
AT&T modded the OS on my previous phone to remove nice features like bluetooth/cable data transfers in order to force me to buy ringtones and pay to get photos off my phone. Fixing that only required flipping a few bits in the phone's memory - I stuck with the original OS after doing the modification. This was back before everyone loved to screw up phones though.
I think that Apple's leverage over AT&T with the iPhone is a good reason to buy from them. AT&T isn't at liberty to go reskin and break the OS.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
For years, I wondered one thing... Why on earth Symbian developers are so paranoid about the .sisx (installer) size while everyone on planet who can afford a $20 application has a flat/wifi line? For a goodly written Symbian application, the "device on board flash" is not an issue either, you can install the application to memory card and it can swap in/out to built in flash (e.g. temp files). J2ME developers on other hand, has some issues and I can understand them. The deep issue with J2ME is the sandbox system which requires apps to play around in their own directory. Great security comes with a price as usual.
I was updating my brothers iPhone 3G and noticed there are even 10-12 MB card deck games, real stuff is way bigger. I guess it is one of the reasons why iPhone apps are so eye candy, they really don't care about size. Recently shipped "Myst" is 700 MB. Even iPhone users went crazy for that one, I just ask "So what?".
If they limit to 10 MB, Developers will have 3 options and nothing else.
1) Compress using better (but slower) algorithms
2) Give up eye candy
3) Have a base application install and get the rest from Web (e.g. Yahoo Go! 3.x J2ME does it, good surprise when you are on GPRS on first launch)
Why bother? Really, Windows Mobile devices have good internal flash memory and massively expandable with memory card. Bandwidth cost for consumer? If 12 MB is problem for him, he has a "byte by byte ripping" provider, 10 MB will hurt too. iPhone is successful because Apple's attitude is "enough, it is a smart phone, use it like that, 2010 is arriving soon" and they keep it that way.
The entire "App store" success comes from that. It is not the LOOK of it, it is how it does have different attitude on doing things. Once again MS misses the "real thing" while copying, that is why Apple came up with "photocopying" term I guess.
Wow, you really don't understand it, do you. But don't let that stop your from posting your mangled rubbish.
RIM has always had a higher marketshare from Apple, since RIM has been around 4 times longer than Apple, and sell devices on all networks. They have over 50 million devices, iPhone has over 20 million.
Now, what you recently read was that there was a BB model that sold more in the last quarter than Apple, beating the iPhone for the first time since the 3G model. BB has always sold more than the iPhone, because they have lots of models.
> larger than 10Mb, and change the default browser
I guess that'd rule out Internet Explorer then?
I have never owned a smartphone of any sort. I have used WM6 and WM5 phones which were provided by my employer. Both have been complete garbage, but then both came with "branding" software.
I just went through a process I found online to remove branding software from my WM6 phone, and it does seem to be more responsive. It's still bad enough that I would not consider spending my own money on such a phone.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.