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Does Microsoft Finally Have a Phone Worth Buying?
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has finally shown 'Windows Phone 7 Series' and it's supposed to be a completely new smartphone OS. A phone from Microsoft to get excited about that is going to work properly and take on the iPhone's world domination? "
Iphone world domination?
I don't know what world is being referred here, probably the marketing and fairy tale world. Last time I checked, Apple was a marginal player in the real world (i.e., not some particular geography or some fashionable pundits).
In the real world, Nokia might be the one to talk about, but even so, its share is far from "world domination"
Has anyone posted this video of the interface yet?
http://www.windowsphone7series.com/multimedia/Media2
I hope they keep the UI design team that put this together. It's a refreshing change from the escalating UI-candy wars.
Don't forget the physical aspects either. The iPhone's GUI is succesful partly because the phone has an exceptionally good touch screen. And I don't mean multi-touch or pinch zooming, I mean a screen that registers touches and gestures accurately, so that the interface is easy to use even with fat fingers. Show me another phone that I can operate (even quickly type an SMS) one-handed using the thumb of the hand holding the phone... My message to manufacturers of competing phones would be: don't skimp on the screen!
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Until you can buy one at the store, it's another piece of vaporware from Microsoft.
Exactly. I liked how we never talked about the iPad before you could buy it for instance.
Except one company (Apple) has a history of delivering what they promise, and another (Microsoft) does not. It's not about a general rule of "we don't discuss product announcements", it's a general rule of "Microsoft announces things, then only occasionally delivers them"
But it becomes a bit ironic when the big example of recent MS vaporware used by other posters right here in this thread is how MS dropped WinFS from Vista. Which is exactly matched by how Apple dropped ZFS from OSX ;) http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=584
Why on earth won't it support multitasking when the previous versions have done so quite well? That's like asking whether Windows 7 will support these newfangled things called mice. Multitasking is not even a feature to ask about unless you're coming from the Apple camp.
That sounds completely reasonable, until you google "windows mobile 7 multitasking".
Here's what I got: one, two, three. That last one is official.
MS is attempting to get into the market by doing what they used to do best: Cloning. This means get every last bit of detail into their version of the product, *including* the drawbacks. They can fix this in later versions, and in the meantime they can say "what? it's not like the competition supports it...". This industry is absurd.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Pedantic-- Apple never announced ZFS for OS X. Some people at Sun mentioned that Apple was looking at ZFS, and Disk Utility had an undocumented facility for mounting ZFS drives as read-only, which had the effect of feulling a lot of speculation, but at no time did Apple ever announce that they were going to use or support ZFS.
This is different from the WinFS case, since MS had been putting WinFS in its product literature and presentations up until the Longhorn reboot. Apple fanboy rumors != Apple announcement.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Learn your history. Apple NEVER announced ZFS for OS X.
if so, they sure fooled the media to think they did at the time.. ZDNET: "Apple announces ZFS on Snow Leopard". http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=335&tag=col1;post-584
and even Apples own web site editors where apparently fooled to think so.. from ars technica "Up until Monday's WWDC keynote, the preview page for Snow Leopard Server specifically referred to ZFS support as one of its key features!" (as per story this web site info purged by Apple) http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/06/apple-dashes-hopes-for-zfs-support-in-snow-leopard.ars
Pedantic-- Apple never announced ZFS for OS X
More pedantic: Yes they did. Apple had ZFS touted as a feature for OS X 10.6 until a couple of months before 10.6 shipped... without ZFS. Archive.org doesn't seem to have recent caches of Apple's web page, but the Google cache has this. For those who can't be bothered to click on the link:
For business-critical server deployments, Snow Leopard Server adds read and write support for the high-performance, 128-bit ZFS file system, which includes advanced features such as storage pooling, data redundancy, automatic error correction, dynamic volume expansion, and snapshots.
They did have an entire page explaining why ZFS was great, but I couldn't find it in ten seconds of looking through the Google cache.
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You can do all of that on an iPhone.
Compose an email and exit out to the web browser, do your googling, then return to the mail app. You'll be right where you left off in composing your email.
If your browsing the web and want to text someone, switch to the messaging app, then when you're done, and reopen the web browser, you will be right back where you left it... sessions, cookies, even partially entered form fields and all.
If you're on a phone call, you can do anything on the phone... including run all other apps, listen to your iPod, browse the web, and look at your contacts. There is even a link on the main "call" screen that says "Contacts" while you are on a call to quickly jump to them.
About the only legit complaints I have seen (so far) about the lack of background tasks have been the inability to listen to 3rd party audio apps while doing other things... you can't stream pandora while browsing the web.
Even IM apps have a good way to "run in the background" with push-notifications.
Even IM apps have a good way to "run in the background" with push-notifications.
Note that "push" inherently means "tethering to a remote server". It's impossible to have an IM app that connects directly to AIM, Google Talk, etc. that stays online when you switch to another app. You have to trust a 3rd party service to connect on your behalf and tell your iPhone or iPod that you've received a message.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?