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Windows Mobile 6.5 Launched, Panned
Barence writes "It's not Windows Mobile 7, but at least it's here. PC Pro has posted its full review of Windows Mobile 6.5, as found on the new HTC Touch2 handset, which is also reviewed. If you're expecting something to challenge Apple OS and Android, prepare for a very large let-down. The damning quote: 'Business users, as much as consumers, deserve a phone that's quick and intuitive to operate as well as one that hooks in neatly to Exchange and Outlook and is easy to manage centrally. If this is the best [Microsoft] can muster in the year-and-a-half's worth of development time since Windows Mobile 6.1 appeared, we'll be dramatically lowering our hopes for Windows Mobile 7.'"
we'll be dramatically lowering our hopes for Windows Mobile 7.
MS Engineer: 6.5 is coming along nicely but it's not fully baked yet. If we try to make the ship deadline we'll have another Vista on our hands. 7.0 looks good though. Can we have an extension on 6.5?
MS Management team: Our engineers tell us 6.5 looks like another Vista. How about we really cripple it so 7.0 looks like the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...then Microsoft is headed towards irrelevance in this field.
The most damning part is how it claims it is less for private users and geared towards businesses. That's just another way of admitting that they were driven by bullet points and not by how people would actually use the devices. They only expect IT departments to buy them, and not the people who actually use them.
Windows Mobile has become a Terry Schaivo. The only reason it's not dead is because Microsoft refuses to pull the plug on the poor thing.
i remember when smartphones and PDA's were first taking off 10 years ago and people were coming up with interfaces Bill Gates decreed that MS will have a "consistent user experience" and that was the end of any chance that MS had at success.
Apple and RIM went back to the OS 9/Win 3.1 days for an interface that works on a mobile device and it proved to be popular. MS stuck with it's stupid start button and pocket versions of MS Office and IE. i had a pocket PC back in the day and IE was so bad that it wouldn't close out and you had to reboot the device to free up memory.
Then there is Microsoft's use of selling a bare OS to Chinese and Korean companies who make the device. Apple, RIM and Palm proved that if you control the phone hardware and the OS you get a good user experience and a good brand name. MS and Google's strategy of using OEM's means their customers don't care which OS they use and no one knows the names of the phones since they are always changing and are considered throwaways. the phone manufacturers put on their own GUI's and themes so you can have two WinMo or two Android phones side by side and they will look completely different.
This is why people are buying blackberries and iphones. when you compare the 2 year cost of the phone it makes sense to buy a brand name.
Yeah, "stylus hand cramp" is a thing of the past with the iPhone, Android and the Palm Pre, yet the review states that most of the applications require the use of said implement. If that means that the damn thing is as unfriendly and frustrating as the WinMob devices I've used in the past (especially the PIM apps, which were so backwards I don't know how it even got mildly popular as a mobile OS).
The fact is that Microsoft need to remove the existing UI libraries and do what Apple did - create a Touch variant of their current libraries. I.e., a ".NET Touch". All packaged applications need to be implemented in this for consistency throughout the system.
However with Microsoft competing against itself in the mobile OS stakes - Pink Phone UI, Zune UI, WinMob UI, they haven't got a hope in hell of creating a single, decent, developer-friendly and attractive mobile interface.
HURD is worse than a complete failure, because it's basically a never-was. It's the bit player without a speaking roll who still managed to be ushered off the stage due to a chronic inability to grasp the blocking of the scene.
OS/2 and BeOS were complete failures... they had their chance and got beaten down. And its not because they were inferior products, its because they just couldn't sell themselves. Windows succeeded not because it was better, but because Microsoft was able to position it to the point where it didn't have to sell it.
Linux is to HURD in the same way, only bigger, than Windows is to OS/2 or BeOS. Windows was supposed to be a stop-gap until OS/2 was fully functional, but then it just sort of took over all the momentum and steam rolled the original plan. Linux was supposed to be a stop-gap kernel until HURD was fully functional and a completely GNU system could be deployed.
Well, that shit isn't ever going to happen, just like OS/2 is never going to rise from the dead to regain its rightful throne as king of the corporate desktop. Shipping isn't everything, and it isn't even enough -- you need to ship at the right time to steal the momentum and draw in a critical mass. Windows did it, Linux did it, and both left a trail of dead bodies in their wake.
But I still prefer BSD...
(especially the PIM apps, which were so backwards I don't know how it even got mildly popular as a mobile OS).
I'll tell you how. Certain managers (who I shan't name) decided they liked Outlook, saw the Microsoft name attached to a mobile phone and thought "Great! Outlook while out of the office!".
In extreme cases, they are so locked in this mindset that they point-blank refuse to try anything else.
"In fact, 6.5 might be lousy because all effort is going into mainline instead."
You're serious, right? Or, are you playing on the posts above that say MS is a joke?
I'll answer you, with a serious answer. Mobile devices are being sold NOW. More and more people are becoming accustomed to devices that WORK. MS knows better than anyone (witness past exclusivity agreements) that the time to corner a market is in the early days. If MS wants to be relevant in the mobile devices market, they need to get into it NOW, not next month, not next year. It's a now or never thing. Each day that passes without a compelling reason to use MS OS's is one more nail in MS's coffin.
The mobile market belongs to *nix and Apple. It's just that simple. Chrome may or may not become relevant, but again, time is working against them, just as it is working against Microsoft.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If you're expecting something to challenge Apple OS and Android
Well actually as well as Android and "Apple OS", I was more interested in how it compares to the likes of "Nokia OS", "Blackberry OS" and "Motorola OS". It seems odd that Slashdot only seems to acknowledge the existence of the Iphone and now Android, when the vast majority of the market is made up of other manufacturers...
(Once upon a time it was the case that "smartphones" ran a branded off-the-shelf OS like Symbian or Windows, like Android today, so I could understand doing a comparison of only those ... except "Apple OS" doesn't fit into that category anyway.)
Even Ballmer admitted it's not the release he wanted and that they'd wished they could've got Windows Mobile 7 out the door earlier instead. It's wrong to assume that Windows Mobile 7 will only comprise of a year and a half of additional work on top of Windows Mobile 6.5 when Windows Mobile 7 has been receieving development time in parallel with Windows 6.5.
It's too early to judge how 7 will end up, and it's no suprise 6.5 is dissapointing. Microsoft knew they were caught with their pants down in the mobile market and now they're frantically playing catch up. Whether Windows Mobile 7 will be their catch up we'll realistically have to just wait and see, but it's wrong to assume what the quality of 7 will be like based on this rather poor release that is 6.5.
The mobile market belongs to *nix and Apple. It's just that simple. Chrome may or may not become relevant, but again, time is working against them, just as it is working against Microsoft.
The mobile market is also (or rather, has historically been) substantially more fickle than the PC OS market. It's fairly easy to move between devices when all the information you need on it can be re-downloaded from Exchange or other groupware of choice.
This has made cornering it a whole lot harder.
The mobile market belongs to *nix and Apple. It's just that simple.
Sales figures suggest otherwise. For phones, the market is dominated by Nokia, with many other companies around too (e.g., RIM). If we include netbooks too (as you suggest, with your Chrome comment), then Apple have zero presence there, whilst Windows obviously have a major presence. Even though Microsoft aren't doing too well on handhelds such as phones, netbooks are going to become a major influence on mobile computing.
If Ballmer says this isn't the release he wanted, then why didn't he kill it? It says a lot about a company if you "have" to release a product even though it's crappy, and all that it says is very bad. Not to draw yet another cliched Apple parallel, but look at Steve. Rumors abound that Apple has been working on this tablet mac since 2003, and that Steve has been unsatisfied with it and has refused to release it because he doesn't feel it's a product people want. Yet Apple's stock isn't tanking on this news. Why the hell can't Steve reign in something like this?
Thus continues the long slow decline of Microsoft, who can't even generated shit that smells like shit any more.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
The Knicks called, they want their astroturf back.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Why did they pick the low-end WM6.5 device to review? Why didn't they use the Touch Diamond 2 (AT&T Pure) or the Touch Pro 2 (AT&T Tilt 2) to base the WM6.5 review on? Those devices at least have good screens (480x800).
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
To me it's obvious that Apple would be lucky (and quite happy) to capture 10% of the smartphone market...
Well "Captain Obvious", I guess they got Lucky after all.
"RIM increased its share of the lucrative (smartphone) market to 19.5% (7.4 million units) from 10.9% while Apple more than doubled its share, up from 5.2% to 10.7% (4.1 million units)."
That report is from March 2009. Before the 3Gs, and the $99 iPhone 3G...
So who is that market share eroding from? Windows Mobile.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The UI reponse and stability issues are really all that anyone who owned a WinMobile phone after version 5 complained about.
Oh, really? How about when the phones look like they're on the network, with nice, full signal meters, appearing ready to make/receive calls and send/receive emails, but they actually are doing neither and will not until rebooted? That happened with me with two of the three company-issued WinMo phones* I've used in the past.
Believe me, it's a real treat when you're on-call over a weekend and come Monday morning everyone is asking you why you didn't answer the client emergency calls or respond to the downed server alerts that came in. Well, turns out those are pretty easy to miss when your phone never made a peep. After that happened to me twice I stopped trusting my WinMo phone when I have on-call duty, and started having emergency calls directed to my personal cell phone, and server alert emails sent to my personal mail account when I have on-call duty. This has happened to a few co-workers, too.
For two months now I have had my third company-issued WinMo phone, an HTC Touch Pro running 6.1, and I'll be damned if I'm going to trust it or any Windows Mobile-based phone, regardless of version, after being burned by its predecessors.
~Philly
* HTC PPC6700 running WM6.0 and PPC6800 running 6.1, neither with any software other than what they had out of the box.
The mobile market belongs to *nix and Apple. It's just that simple.
Sales figures suggest otherwise.
What Nokia has going for it, is the fact that it gained dominance years ago. Symbians market-share is going down fast, while sales of iPhone is growing fast. The only reason why iPhone does not dominate the market is is the fact that it has been available for just a bit over 2 years. You can't take over a market like this in such a short time.
Symbian is becoming Nokia's VIsta. And they know it too, their new flagship-phone runs Linux, not Symbian.
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Ironically windows mobile is the most "open" platform today. If you have an HTC device, going to xda-developers.com can get you a 6.5 ROM port for nearly any recent model. I can't install any software I want on a iPhone without dealing with app store, not sure what BB development environment setup looks like, Android will eventually garner more development support, but right now, with Visual Studio and .NET I can write and deploy whatever I need on the phone without 3rd party interference.
Windows Mobile 7 is going to require new hardware (fast processors, multi-touch etc.). The recently announced HTC Leo will be one of the first devices on the market that will support 7 out of the box.
I am not a "business user" but I did an extensive bake off for my personal needs of the winmo devices vs the iPhone. As hard as it was for this Mac and Unix user to accept, the winmo platform best fit my needs. My Tilt running a 6.5 rom will be replaced this week with a Tilt2 (aka TouchPro2) when AT&T releases them on the 8th.