No More Firefox For Windows Mobile

angry tapir writes "Mozilla has decided to stop development of a version of its Firefox mobile Web browser for phones running Windows Mobile. The reason is that Microsoft has closed the door to native applications on smartphones running its new Windows Phone 7 Series software. More reasoning can be found in a blog post by Stuart Parmenter, director of Mobile Engineering at Mozilla."

Comments

Re:First Post

[rubycodez]

The Greater Nashville Apartment Association thanks you! http://www.nashvilleaptasn.org/

But next time please take time to put something relevant to the topic in your post.

Preemptive Strike

[SuperKendall]

Given that Microsoft has a closed app store model for Windows 7 (just like the iPhone) the chances are good Microsoft would not allow Mozilla to run anyway, even if they wanted to make a nice Silverlight based browser...

That was an interesting choice on Microsoft's part, I can't believe they are not trying to grasp a lot of C# developers that have shifted to the iPhone just to move where the marketshare is. Now those guys have no reason to switch back anytime soon.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[Anonymous Coward]

who wants windows mobile after the last 6 fiascos? c64 apps are feeling more responsive...

Re:Preemptive Strike

[Anonymous Coward]

> Given that Microsoft has a closed app store model for Windows 7 (just like the iPhone) the chances are good Microsoft would not allow Mozilla to run anyway, even if they wanted to make a nice Silverlight based browser...

I wonder, will the Apple fanboys defend Microsoft for this?

(I, for one, hate the closed app stores on all platforms. I wouldn't have such a big problem if you could get apps (without jailbreaking) from somewhere other than their store, but I do have a big problem with using any device that restricts what I can run on it.)

Re:Preemptive Strike

[Anonymous Coward]

As an apple fan, I say Meh. Who cares?

Re:Preemptive Strike

[shutdown -p now]

Given that Microsoft has a closed app store model for Windows 7 (just like the iPhone) the chances are good Microsoft would not allow Mozilla to run anyway, even if they wanted to make a nice Silverlight based browser...

We don't know the exact rules for store approval process yet, but all information on that so far only mentioned malware and stuff such as "indecency" as reasons for rejection, and nothing even remotely similar to Apple's "no compete" clauses.

That said, it still sucks big time. There are rumors that there will be a "non-publicized" way of uploading apps directly via USB, circumventing Marketplace, but somehow I suspect this is really only about SDK debugging tools - not exactly something you expect a non-developer (even a power user) to be prepared to tinker with.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[IainCartwright]

Microsoft will not have a closed app store model for winmo7 (although they will have their own app store). You can get an SDK and emulator right now - for free - and make XNA/Silverlight apps that can be downloaded to a winmo7 phone.

If you want to be an good Apple fan you should try not to spout nonsense - your ignorance makes Steve look bad.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[Hal_Porter]

Can you try that again with more Braveheart e.g.

THEY CAN TAKE OUR LIVES BUT THEY CAN'T TAKE OUR WEB BROWSERS! FREEDOM!

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[maxume]

(If you are running Vista or Windows 7 you can...)

Re:Preemptive Strike

[im_thatoneguy]

Given that Microsoft already has an app store and hasn't made any motion to filter what goes into it... I think it's safe to say anyone will probably be able to release anything they please.

Just because there is a gate doesn't mean there is a gatekeeper.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[obarthelemy]

It will be very interesting to see if MS can get it right this time. WinMob grabbed some marketshare thanks to OEMs' efforts to hide all the suckiness... They were not that successful, and MS now says they can make their suckiness go away at the cost of openness and customization... I'm not convinced.

MS has not been very successfull outside their seminal OS monopoly. I'm not sure how they can leverage that for the mobile market... and it seems they aren't, either.

I'm still looking for something that WinMob 7 does that others don't.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[aristotle-dude]

> Given that Microsoft has a closed app store model for Windows 7 (just like the iPhone) the chances are good Microsoft would not allow Mozilla to run anyway, even if they wanted to make a nice Silverlight based browser...

I wonder, will the Apple fanboys defend Microsoft for this?

(I, for one, hate the closed app stores on all platforms. I wouldn't have such a big problem if you could get apps (without jailbreaking) from somewhere other than their store, but I do have a big problem with using any device that restricts what I can run on it.)

Why would anyone but the most rabid MSFT fanboys defend this? Apple offers an API for "native" app and game development. What MSFT is doing is more akin to the PDK released by Palm OS which is also not fully "native".

Re:Preemptive Strike

[bhtooefr]

You'd be surprised at how quickly someone will write a somewhat friendly wrapper for the SDK's USB loader, and distribute it somewhere like XDA Developers.

There's a rather significant WinMo modding community, they're not gonna lie down for this one.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[SuperKendall]

We don't know the exact rules for store approval process yet, but all information on that so far only mentioned malware and stuff such as "indecency" as reasons for rejection, and nothing even remotely similar to Apple's "no compete" clauses.

That's a good point, although they seem very keen to protect "the experience" so I tend to think they will act similarly to things that would replace core functions... but I think they are also trying to allow apps to sort of extend the core experiences (like things that can present different information feeds in those opening tiles) as a kind of relief valve for that energy.

That said, it still sucks big time. There are rumors that there will be a "non-publicized" way of uploading apps directly via USB, circumventing Marketplace, but somehow I suspect this is really only about SDK debugging tools - not exactly something you expect a non-developer (even a power user) to be prepared to tinker with.

I'm pretty sure it will be jailbroken just like the iPhone was, so technical users can do what they want (as they always do). Then I think you'll see a power user path a lot of people will be able to use. What will be really interesting to see is who clamps on down jailbrake exploits more - I think it will be Microsoft, eager to have this platform be as utterly secure as they can make it.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[Anonymous Coward]

but this jailbreak thing flies in the face of why people used winmo in the first place. being able to have a usable operating system on a mobile phone that leverages the windows development system. They are also pissing off their partners by allowing no shell modifications (HTC sense for example). They are throwing more than a decade of development out the door and why? to chase apple's tail. In the process they manage to make something not as slick as the Iphone, not as OEM friendly as android, not as hacker friendly as android or maemo, not as wide spread as android or symbian. The only thing they got is visual studio support and all that means is a fuckton more babe of the week and fart applications.

Really microsoft, are you even trying in the mobile space anymore?

Re:Preemptive Strike

[shutdown -p now]

Yeah, you can jailbreak iPhone, too.

But I want a platform that is friendly to development - truly open, and not "open" in a sense that you have to pry it open with a sledgehammer (and do so every time an update is released).

Furthermore, I want to get access to applications that are written by people who work with such a platform. If they have to jump through enough hoops to do so, and may not even be able to legally distribute what they've made, many will just switch to a more open platform. By switching as well, I will get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[shutdown -p now]

That's a good point, although they seem very keen to protect "the experience" so I tend to think they will act similarly to things that would replace core functions...

The very limitation of only being able to use XNA/Silverlight already imposes significant barriers to that extent - as we see from this very story. I don't think any special policies are even needed with such limitations in place.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[RightSaidFred99]

Do you have a source for this? All I see are vague third party ramblings that WinMo7 will be closed.

If it is, and if it's like Apple's store then Microsoft might as well not even bother, they're doomed. I love MS development tools and would be tempted to look at a Windows 7 Mobile phone, but not if it's closed to installing apps from outside the app store.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[SuperKendall]

Mostly the Engadget link I posted in other responses above, and other stuff posted during SXSW. Engadget claims to have "triple checked" for what it is worth, and is quoting Microsoft executives directly.

They hinted at it during the announcement though, I didn't think it was much of a surprise to be honest.

I still think Microsoft might have a shot at getting back in the game. The closed app store is a major turn off for a lot of technical people I know, but is not for a huge majority of the populace. Being Microsoft there will be a TON of push behind this platform. I think they have the dominant position to become a player again, in a way they could not with the Zune.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[Z00L00K]

And this will certainly cause problems for custom applications that are developed for a single customer.

There are cases where it's really of interest to develop an application that are going to be executed on a low number of devices (maybe 50 units). If that has to go through the app store and approval process then Windows Mobile is dead as a dodo for that kind of development.

I have been developing one that also extends the OS platform due to limitations of the Windows Mobile OS. This means that running it in the gaming platform or Silverlight wouldn't be feasible.

So next project would probably be Android.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[ultranova]

If they have to jump through enough hoops to do so, and may not even be able to legally distribute what they've made, many will just switch to a more open platform.

Do such platforms exist? Is there a smartphone that allows you to download and install random staff from the Internet as a PC does? Or are all of them basically just mobile storefronts to the manufacturer's shop?

Re:Preemptive Strike

[shutdown -p now]

And this will certainly cause problems for custom applications that are developed for a single customer.

There are cases where it's really of interest to develop an application that are going to be executed on a low number of devices (maybe 50 units). If that has to go through the app store and approval process then Windows Mobile is dead as a dodo for that kind of development.

There has been some talk about how "enterprise customers" - which I assume to mean precisely what you talk about here - will have some other means of deploying applications.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[tsa]

My Nokia E65 runs Symbian. I can download and install whatever I want from whatever website I want. But Symbian is as good as dead, and good riddance. Hopefully the new Linux OS they are now developing is as open as Symbian.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[shutdown -p now]

Do such platforms exist? Is there a smartphone that allows you to download and install random staff from the Internet as a PC does? Or are all of them basically just mobile storefronts to the manufacturer's shop?

Windows Mobile was such a platform (hence why so many people who used it precisely because of that are so pissed about WP7).

Of those which still have a future, Android is one (subject to operator's whims if you get your phone through one, but you can always just buy Nexus One and sidestep the whole issue). Maemo/MeeGo is another. S60 is still around, too, I guess, though it seems that MeeGo is what it'll be for high-end Nokia smartphones in the future.

Not sure about Pre - I've heard some stuff about them opening up more lately.

Of those mentioned, I'd say that Android is about right in hitting the "open for development" / "just works" balance that I expect from such things. Maemo is both more open and more featureful - heck, it can run OO.org! - but there are practically no third-party apps written specifically for it, and desktop Linux apps, when you can get them to run, are not designed for screens that small (or touchscreens as opposed to mouse, for that matter). Whereas Android - you still get the app store, and it got plenty of stuff in it - it just doesn't lock you into it like others do. Oh, and dev tools are also better for Android so far, though I'd expect that to change soon as MeeGo switches to Qt - Qt Creator is probably the single nicest IDE I've seen on Linux so far.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[drb_chimaera]

Nokia's Symbian defaults to allowing signed apps only, however you can disable that quite easily and install what you will, and IIRC you can freely install Android applications - you don't *have* to use the Android store.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[michaelhood]

If they have to jump through enough hoops to do so, and may not even be able to legally distribute what they've made, many will just switch to a more open platform.

Do such platforms exist? Is there a smartphone that allows you to download and install random staff from the Internet as a PC does? Or are all of them basically just mobile storefronts to the manufacturer's shop?

Yes.. Windows Mobile, ironically. (not Windows Phone 7). Here's a subforum at XDA-Developers for the phone I have: http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=491

Re:Preemptive Strike

[rodgerd]

Nokia N900.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[delinear]

So long as it's only insecure on jailbroken phones, MS have perfect deniability - I think they'd take that, it really depends where they see their market, as gatekeepers for content or as OS providers. Sure, they'll want to do both, but to some extent they're counter productive (people would rather have an open OS which runs counter to the gatekeeper walled garden approach) so they'll probably opt for somewhere in between (a walled garden but not too difficult to jailbreak the phone).

Re:Preemptive Strike

[rodrigoandrade]

Do such platforms exist? Is there a smartphone that allows you to download and install random staff from the Internet as a PC does?

Yes, WinMo allows you to install any WinMo app you want from any site you want.

Unfortunately (or not) that may change with WP7.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[mlk]

Windows Mobile 6.5, Android and Symbian based systems.

Before the iPhone all smartphones were open playgrounds (assuming none-evil or lazy operator).

Re:Preemptive Strike

[UnifiedTechs]

Do such platforms exist? Is there a smartphone that allows you to download and install random staff from the Internet as a PC does? Or are all of them basically just mobile storefronts to the manufacturer's shop?

The blackberry platform is still open to installing any applications you want, or ones you build yourself. They have an App store, but it is optional and many apps are downloaded direct from the developer still.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[Octorian]

RIM BlackBerry is another such platform. You can download and install 3rd party apps from anywhere. Of course the OS itself is closed (like most of 'em), but anyone can code for it.

They now have an App Store (because everyone else does), but there are also 3rd party App stores, and you can easily distribute your apps directly.

They do require code signing for some APIs, but its just a small one-time administrative fee (and then you can sign your own code as many times as you like). That's just to track who has access to some device integration and crypto features as a form of CYA, I think.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[maxume]

I'm running XP. I actually downloaded the installer for the SDK. It told me it wouldn't install on XP.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[Anonymous Coward]

WebOS from Palm is like this (Pre and Pixi). Palm even gives you root access to your phone if you want by simply typing a special string. It's published, well-known, and your great-grandmother would have no trouble following the instructions (assuming she is alive and well enough to press buttons on a phone... otherwise she wouldn't care anyways). There's an excellent 3rd party app installer called Preware that you can think of like Synaptic for Ubuntu or the equivalent of other package management front-ends. It has feeds for the official app store and several 3rd party repositories. It uses ipkg for package management and it is great to work with.

I have the Palm Pre Plus from Verizon and it's been great. WebOS is the best mobile OS I have ever seen. It's also getting Flash pretty soon.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[Anonymous Coward]

One more thing... Tweaks to core OS functionality are allowed and are quite common in the 3rd party repositories for WebOS. It's running Linux so you can do a lot with that if you want to. I have openvpn client and sshd running on my Palm Pre.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[GameboyRMH]

PalmOS 5 and older, older versions of Windows Mobile...as for latest-gen OSes, only Maemo/Meego allows you to install any damn thing you want, no strings attached.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[Kelson]

Do such platforms exist? Is there a smartphone that allows you to download and install random staff from the Internet as a PC does? Or are all of them basically just mobile storefronts to the manufacturer's shop?

Droid does.

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

But yes, Android phones let you download and install apps from the internet in addition to apps from the Android Market. There's a checkbox in the system settings to turn this capability on or off, but it's easy to find (at least on Android 1.6). Also, it only enables/disables *installing* the apps. Once they're installed, you can disable it and they'll continue to run, so if you're concerned about random stuff installing itself, you can leave the feature disabled most of the time, then enable it only when you want to install something, and disable it again afterward.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[IICV]

Yep, just for fun I ran a Java program I'd written for a class on my N900 (read an XML file using SAX, parse it into a relational format, put that in a database). After I installed a Debian image - using the EasyDebian installer that's available in the official app manager (which is itself just a pretty wrapper around some standard package manager, I think) - everything from the JRE to My-fucking-SQL worked perfectly the first time. Sure, it took 45 minutes to run instead of 2 seconds like on my desktop, but still! This was an app I'd written using nothing more than Eclipse, that needed to interoperate with a database, happily running on my phone (as was the database!).

There's even a guide out there on how to get Drupal running on the N900, but it basically consists of "install the debian image, apt-get install drupal".

Re:Preemptive Strike

[dfghjk]

Yeah, Apple offered it a year after the iPhone shipped. Before that, the official line from Apple was that you didn't want it because there was too much risk of destroying the cell carrier's infrastructure. I see no why Microsoft can't defend the decision the same way Apple did, i.e. with lies.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course...? Android. Hello? Where have you been?

I can't believe this

[bsharp8256]

How dare they not allow native applications to run on their smartphones? Microsoft should die and burn in hell, etc., etc.

Oh thats a shame...

[BatGnat]

Good thing I got rid of my Windows mobile for an Andorid phone.

If MS want to drive away developers, let them move to Android...

Re:Oh thats a shame...

[Anonymous Coward]

Android has its own issues. For example, the game some Android phone makers play with modders, where every version change unroots phones, or actually bricks (as in permanently trashes w/o change to reflash) devices.

I actually miss Windows Mobile. To use the phone to its fullest capacity (yes, including capacity), I had to do no hacks, no low level patches. Just install the right program and go. Every other vendor, I have to play the game of either continuing to run a backlevel OS, or upgrade to the latest and lose capabilities until they are re-hacked in.

Of course MS locking down stuff in Windows Mobile 7 pisses me off.

My next phone, I just want something that was like my old HTC Wizard -- won't brick if someone has a badly cooked image (just a reflash), keeps root/jailbroken, and is easily hackable without the vendor pushing out patches to kill phones.

Re:Oh thats a shame...

[Anonymous Coward]

Android has its own issues. For example, the game some Android phone makers play with modders, where every version change unroots phones, or actually bricks (as in permanently trashes w/o change to reflash) devices.

You can ALWAYS reflash an android phone

Re:Oh thats a shame...

[symbolset]

It seems a lot of people had that idea. The quarter ended this January, Microsoft dropped 4% (19.7% to 15.7%). This closely matches the 4.3% (from 2.7% to 7.1%) that Google gained with Android. Three more quarters of this trend before the W7 launch and they'll be entering a green field with nowhere to go but up. If progress is delayed at all (when have we ever seen that from the WiMo team?) they'll have the advantage of a whole world market where nobody remembers how much their mobile products suck. Maybe this is part of their evil plan to reboot their mobile brand.

Re:Oh thats a shame...

[jonwil]

Nokia N900. Can replace the kernel and root FS out of the box without the need for hacks. Nice beefy hardware.

If Nokia sold an N900 with OVI Maps for Australia bundled with the phone (like they do now with various Symbian phones) and with 2100/900 3G bands for Vodafone Australia, I would seriously jump on it as my next phone.

Conversely, if someone made an Android handset with Google Navigator for Australia (especially if it integrated with Google Transit so I could say "I want to from where I am now to this location, tell me what transport options to take") and that was as hackable as the N900, I would go that route.

But since it doesn't look like any manufacturer plans to release a phone with the combination of "really hackable" and "GPS navigation that doesn't cost big bucks", I will stick with my Motorola Z6.

Re:Oh thats a shame...

[jonaskoelker]

or actually bricks (as in bricks)

FTFY.

Now I just need to fix the dictionary of every clueless tech writer who uses the word "brick" because it sounds cool, despite not knowing what it means. I guess I shall have to cease using writing implements and begin using clue bats to achieve this goal. Sadly :(

Re:Oh thats a shame...

[AnEducatedNegro]

if you brick an android its because you did something dumb. REALLY DUMB. cyrogen, joeys kernel, etc. all do not have this problem as long as you keep the revision the same as your phone. the only problem i have ever run into was flashing my phone from a custom kernel to an official cell carrier upgrade. and then all that did was make it more difficult to keep root (had to back down to a previous kernel and upload an unofficial kernel with all the fixes, took 2 seconds).

don't forget android has a complete dev environment so you can test your phone mods before you apply it to your phone. second, android phones have a recovery mode so you can reflash everything . there is no permanent damage, please stop modding parent insightful, it is completely wrong.

Re:Oh thats a shame...

[BatGnat]

You obviously don't use a android device. You don't have to upgrade.

But at least you get an option. With Windows mobile, the version you get with the device (almost) never gets an upgrade.

Re:Oh thats a shame...

[BatGnat]

Agreed

Re:Oh thats a shame...

[MobyTurbo]

Android has its own issues. For example, the game some Android phone makers play with modders, where every version change unroots phones, or actually bricks (as in permanently trashes w/o change to reflash) devices.

I actually miss Windows Mobile. To use the phone to its fullest capacity (yes, including capacity), I had to do no hacks, no low level patches. Just install the right program and go.

Palm's WebOS is like that, root out of the box (well, with the developer's mode code activated by typing from the keyboard, which Palm has pledged not to remove, and even if they did, you can always install ssh then and have a prompt to use.) and it has the ability to install apps both from the official "App catalog" and homebrew apps.

There's a thriving homebrew community, which makes unofficial apps, patches the OS without needing to flash a new ROM image (though no patches are needed for full access), and makes themes for WebOS. Palm's WebOS is also a lot more like Linux under the hood (Android of course shares the custom Android Linux kernel but that doesn't make a GNU/Linux system by itself) than Android. Palm has also released an official "PDK" in beta for native apps, but you can get or make homebrew native or JavaScript apps without the official PDK. (Linux games and emulators port easily, as it includes now SDL as well as OpenGLES.)

A lot of people sing the praises of Android's openness because it has the Linux kernel and some open source Android components, and Google has a reputation for being a "good" company, but really the Palm Pre and also Nokia's N900 (which is basically a Linux PC in a phone...) are much more open for hacking than Android.

Too bad Palm is in trouble and the N900 is a transitional device. Nokia is making some big changes to Maemo, going with their historic tendency to break backwards compatibility with new versions in both Maemo and Symbian, so people with N900s are getting the software rug pulled out from other them. Palm, as everyone knows who follows these things, is in deep financial trouble.

I'm happy I got my Pre though, it's really an excellent somewhat underrated device with a terrific operating system that in a lot of ways (multitasking managment ("swipe to close"), openness, large media-drive partition program installation for software like games instead of Android's limited RAM space) is superior to Android. The only thing that's missing is the large software library, though WebOS has over 2,000 programs available for it, so I've been surprised at what I can do with it anyway, including 3D games unavailable on Android and open software and tinkering that doesn't rely on you re-flashing the device unnecessarily or rooting it from an exploit that could be closed any day... If you want a modern operating system that is as open as Windows Mobile without its drawbacks, I'd recommend the Palm Pre or the Nokia N900, in spite of their drawbacks. I must admit though the new HTC Evo 4G on Sprint is making me wonder if my next phone will be Android. I do hope Palm will make it though.

Re:Oh thats a shame...

[rdnetto]

If Nokia sold an N900 with OVI Maps for Australia bundled with the phone (like they do now with various Symbian phones) and with 2100/900 3G bands for Vodafone Australia, I would seriously jump on it as my next phone.

Ovi Maps comes free with the N900 and has Australian maps available. The frequencies you mentioned seem to be supported, according to the wikipedia article. And the N900 is available here, though it is a little pricey.
I have one and couldn't be happier with it.

Re:Meh.

[iggymanz]

since you forked out for a phone running a Microsoft OS, you deserve only the best closed source browser money can buy to run on it. Enjoy your closed-source world.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you should have said "fuck you very much, Microsoft, and fuck me very much for buying a windows mobile"

Re:Meh.

[Pojut]

Considering I got it for free, I'm not too upset about it :-)

So basically

[Voyager529]

Microsoft is going to create a need for a WinPhone Dev Team to figure out how to jailbreak Windows Mobile phones?

I mean seriously, it's like they're taking everything that I like about owning a WinMo phone and throwing it away. I *like* having a file browser on my phone. I *like* having native applications. I *like* HTC's SenseUI. I *like* being able to use my phone as USB mass storage. I *like* being able to HardSPL my phone and use a custom ROM from HTCpedia or xda-developers. I *like* being able to tether my phone using a standard data plan. I *like* Opera Mobile. These are all features that WinMo had and the iPhone didn't. Between these and the dropped calls (oh, and iTunes), I ditched my iPhone and couldn't be happier. Now they're taking away even the possibility of all of these features? Sure, I could completely understand hiding the file browser by default. I could understand not allowing HTC to ship SenseUI enabled by default. I could understand wanting to streamline the process and moving away from scouring the internet for CAB files and shifting toward a more standardized development process. But seriously Microsoft, don't try to copy Apple's shortcomings at the expense of the very reasons why I chose a WinMo phone.

Re:So basically

[Nerdfest]

Basically, moving to a closed store model throws away one of the few things that are good about WinMo. Next to a phone running raw Linux (like the Nokia N900 *drool*) it's the most open phone. unfortunately, I find it slow, clunky, mildly unstable, and unusable without a stylus. I've recently switched to running a hacked in Android OS, and it's about as stable as WinMo, but is faster and much nicer to use. The XDA developers are doing great work, and when the last few features are working, I doubt I'll use WinMo again, and may move to the Nokia when I have the option.

I tried a beta of Fennec, and really, it needed a lot of work anyway.

Re:So basically

[pushing-robot]

Speaking of native apps, it's kind of funny how every new smartphone repeats this:

Apple, 2007: Javascript is good enough!
Apple, 2008: Okay, okay, here's a C SDK.

Google, 2008: Java is good enough!
Google, 2009: Okay, okay, here's a C SDK.

Palm, 2009: Javascript is good enough!
Palm, 2010: Okay, okay, here's a C SDK.

Microsoft, 2010: Silverlight and Flash are good enough!

Re:So basically

[mykro76]

I *like* having native applications.
I *like* HTC's SenseUI.
I *like* being able to use my phone as USB mass storage.
I *like* being able to ... use a custom ROM from HTCpedia or xda-developers.
I *like* being able to tether my phone using a standard data plan.
I *like* Opera Mobile.

Android welcomes you.

Re:So basically

[Microlith]

Nokia, 2005 - 2010: C! C++! Shell Scripts! Python! Perl!

I'm just sad that Maemo wasn't on more phones until the N900 came out.

Re:So basically

[FlyingBishop]

It's still unclear that Flash is going to be available. Ostensibly the motivation behind sticking with Silverlight is security, so that kind of goes out the window if they add Flash.

Re:So basically

[eugeni]

Don't worry, no matter what they do, you still can copy-and-paste on WinMo!

Err.. can you?

Re:So basically

[shutdown -p now]

I mean seriously, it's like they're taking everything that I like about owning a WinMo phone and throwing it away. I *like* having a file browser on my phone. I *like* having native applications. I *like* HTC's SenseUI. I *like* being able to use my phone as USB mass storage. I *like* being able to HardSPL my phone and use a custom ROM from HTCpedia or xda-developers. I *like* being able to tether my phone using a standard data plan. I *like* Opera Mobile. These are all features that WinMo had and the iPhone didn't.

I wholeheartedly agree. I was actually waiting for WinPhone 7 MIX announcement to decide which smartphone will be my next. That decision was made next day after the announcement, and the phone is Nexus One...

It seems that Android now is everything that WinMo used to be - open in terms of what you can install on it, both native and managed applications allowed, great RAD development tools, decent documentation.

Sadly, I can understand why WinPhone was made that way - no-one can deny Apple's access with iPhone, and that makes it abundantly clear that most casual users don't care about openness of platform for developers - or even understand the concept - even if it still does affect them indirectly. So copying iPhone's model is the obvious choice so long as $$$ are involved.

Still... what happened to "developers, developers, developers"?

Re:So basically

[shutdown -p now]

Microsoft, 2010: Silverlight and Flash are good enough!

Unfortunately, it's more complicated than that. It was already announced that native SDK will be available - but it will only be provided to OEMs, and only for writing preinstalled applications.

Re:So basically

[mlts]

Provided your phone maker doesn't push out an update that bricks your rooted phone. Find me an Android phone maker where I don't have to keep at a backlevel ROM so I can keep root (for example, the latest level on the Cliq locks out root and the holes to get root.)

Re:So basically

[Colonel Korn]

I *like* having native applications.

I *like* HTC's SenseUI.

I *like* being able to use my phone as USB mass storage.

I *like* being able to ... use a custom ROM from HTCpedia or xda-developers.

I *like* being able to tether my phone using a standard data plan.

I *like* Opera Mobile.

Android welcomes you.

And me, too. WinMo was a flawed platform with some really good flexibility that resulted in some great features not found in the iPhone. Android started with a more solid platform and duplicated the nice aspects of WinMo. WinMo7 (or whatever it's called) may quite possibly be as solid as Android/iPhone/WebOS at its core, but it's giving up the only advantages Microsoft has built in the mobile space. iPhone is the most mature of the mobile platforms, WinMo7 looks essentially like a wannabe iPhone, WebOS is attached to a rapidly sinking ship, and Android is apparently the best of all worlds. Come July I'm heading to Android.

Re:So basically

[Hurricane78]

Well, then go with one of Nokia’s Linux phones. They seem to walk in the opposite direction and make the systems freer and freer. (They own QT, which gives you a feeling for their dedication.)

Re:So basically

[Verteiron]

It's my understanding that most rooted Android images also disable auto-updates from the provider. Certainly the rooted Droid images do.

Re:So basically

[Espectr0]

That's because it's intentional, and more like:

Company: javascript/java/flash/silverlight are good enough for now, since we want to sell the devices while we have time to develop a native sdk!

Re:So basically

[sixknowspring]

That was a pretty funny (insightful) summary; definitely noted. And, I'm guessing that WinMo7 is going to follow suit soon enough.

Re:So basically

[Christophotron]

Provided your phone maker doesn't push out an update that bricks your rooted phone.

This interests me a lot. I am a WM user and I have never owned an Android phone (yet) but at this rate it looks like my next phone will have to run Android or Meego. In the Android case, I certainly plan to run a rooted phone with a hacked ROM like Cyanogen. Isn't it possible to block carrier OTA updates? That's a *serious* downside to Android if not.. The whole purpose of a hacked ROM is to have total control over my own hardware. If the carrier can screw it all up on a whim, then I'm not really in control, am I? I certainly had no idea that could ever be possible. On WM, there was never any such thing as an OTA update, and I like it that way..

Re:So basically

[tepples]

Microsoft, 2010: Silverlight and Flash are good enough!

XNA, the .NET based SDK for Xbox 360, came out in 2008. So when does the public get the C SDK?

Re:So basically

[bhtooefr]

Not on WinPho 7, except in very limited circumstances.

They really are copying the iPhone. Except, they didn't get the memo that Apple finally got around to adding copy and paste to the iPhone.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still unclear that Flash is going to be available. Ostensibly the motivation behind sticking with Silverlight is security, so that kind of goes out the window if they add Flash.

security? Either (a) you are on a massive amount of drugs, or (b) MS has managed to make a more secure version of Silverlight for the phones than for Vista/Win7/XP. You choose.

Re:So basically

[uberjack]

Unfortunately, Android's support for native C code leaves a lot to be desired, as one cannot write entire applications in C. At the moment, the NDK is all but useless to most developers (myself included) that need it for more than just libraries.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

There has always been a native public SDK for Xbox 360. That's what most games are developed in. You think Call of Duty:MW2 is written in C#? :P

The only difference from the XNA kit is what you need to pay for it and how you get approval to release the game.

It is a *public* SDK though and not private/MS Only.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would bother to jailbreak a WinPhone? Really?

Just one more in an ever expanding list of reasons to ditch Windows for Linux, now on the Nokia N900!

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

Google need a Java API. This shitty Dalvik thing is not quite good enough because libraries like JRuby can't work in compiled mode on it.

The others need a Java API too. I'm sick of crashy sof

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

what are you, the voice of AT&T? go suck an egg. you will not be modifying this phone. I will flash the latest energy rom to my windows mobile 6.5 phone and i will tether whenever i damn well please. i will use up all of your precious bandwidths and there is not a god damned thing you can do about it. except maybe cancel my contract so i can switch to a more reasonable carrier. ohhhh noooooooes what a tragedy!!

Re:So basically

[toadlife]

+1

Sadly, it looks like my Touch Pro 2 will be the last WinMo phone I own. My wife is getting the HD2, and that should be a fantastic phone, but after that, we will probably be moving on to either Android Phones (HTC with SenseUI of course), or maybe even one of those high-end Nokia phones with Linux.

WinMo, despite it's warts, is one of the most open phone platforms out there, partly due to Microsoft and partly due to sites like xda-developers. It's going to tough to find a phone platform that allows me to cook a program like Remote Tracker pre-configured, into my own custom ROM and track my phone using GPS, even if someone hard resets it and changes the SIM card.

As far as I know, no ready made solution quite like that is available (yet) on any other phone platform. :(

Re:So basically

[toadlife]

Who would bother to jailbreak a WinPhone?

People who hate swarms of whiny fanbois that chime in on random discussions with irrelevant comments for the sole purpose of mentioning the Nokia N900.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

Not needed. XNA is a C# SDK -> quite fast already.

Re:So basically

[freedumb2000]

Don't forget http://meego.com/

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the problem isn't lack of C, but the presence of Java* :p

Re:So basically

[tepples]

The only difference from the XNA kit is what you need to pay for it

Are there any other "special" qualifications for this like Nintendo's requirement of a prior commercial title on another platform and ban on home offices?

Re:So basically

[tepples]

Not needed. XNA is a C# SDK -> quite fast already.

XNA has a few problems.

• Your game has to be written from scratch in C#, not a port of a game for another platform written in C++. That's the same problem Mozilla faces in the article: it doesn't want to rewrite Firefox in C#. Sure, you'd have to write a new front end (graphics, sound), but if XNA supported C++, your back end (physics, AI) would stay the same. (Technically you can use C++/CLI, but the restrictions of /clr:safe and lack of the C and C++ standard library make it painful.)
• XNA 3.x has no way to output PCM audio; everything has to be pre-rendered streaming music and sound effects through XACT. (4.0 may fix this.)
• the language restrictions may make it difficult to create a convincing fantasy world without "grossly misrepresenting content in content info". (details)

Re:So basically

[Rennt]

Don't worry about it, this is classic FUD. Not only are carrier OTA blocked by default, but most popular mods have their own (optional) OTA system to keep you up to date.

Re:So basically

[julesh]

Company: javascript/java/flash/silverlight are good enough for now, since we want to sell the devices while we have time to develop a native sdk!

MS has a native SDK. It's not like this is the first version of their OS, it's just an incremental upgrade to previous ones with native SDKs already published. It should run the same apps with the same install process. MS just want to exert more control on what you can do with your phone.

Re:So basically

[Bearhouse]

.. what happened to "developers, developers, developers"?

Nothing. Balmer meant developers who worked for Ms, not in general.
Remember, that infamous jumping monkey scene was @ an internal Ms venue.
Non Ms developers? Well, you'll have to go through 'security' screening, I'm afraid...
Still, no big deal. Plenty of non-Apple developers have made good money by doing apps for iPhone.
I'm sure the same will be the case for WinMo7.

Meanwhile, Android continues to gain market share...

Re:So basically

[L4t3r4lu5]

I'm testing Android on a WinMob device now. The kernel image is badly out of date, but a lot of the hardware works. Wireless, Bluetooth, some app support... Camera and accelerometers are an issue, but being worked on. Right now it HaRET is used to load the kernel from within WinMobile (Kills Windows, replaces it with Android) but as soon as it's working it'll be cooked into a ROM image ready for flashing.

Here's hoping the Topaz is a first!

Re:So basically

[delinear]

I think I'm leaning towards Android too. I'd love to have an iPhone if they'd fix the main bugbears I have with it, simply because it's what my other half uses and I have my eye on a B&W Zeppelin Mini dock that we can both use. I could live without the fully open platform if they gave us flash and a decent camera, so I'll probably wait and see what they say come summer - if the iPhone 4 or whatever it's called by that time can fix these niggles, they'll probably get my custom out of sheer convenience, if not I have to say the likes of the Nexus or the HTC Legend are very tempting right now even without the bonus of the open platform.

Re:So basically

[FlyingBishop]

Insecure platform + insecure platform = one really fucking insecure platform.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2005 when the Xbox 360 was released.. maybe you never heard of the native C SDK called DirectX?

Re:So basically

[tepples]

I said "the public". How does one qualify to become an Xbox 360 developer?

Re:So basically

[MarkVVV]

Have you been living under a rock? Windows Mobile Phone 7 is not an incremental upgrade, it was completely rewritten and it's not backwards compatible. So, no, it should not run the same apps with the same install process.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing no, because the author of Braid, Jonathan Blow, didn't meet those criteria (which is why Braid shipped for the 360 and not the Wii, if I recall). He's got an interesting interview about the process somewhere; I'd link you to it except I'm too lazy.

Re:So basically

[diegocg]

Microsoft has said that they have broken the compatibility with older app, so apps will need at least a recompilation. It's possible that Microsoft has dropped completely all the Winmo UI code, so you migh also need to rewrite the UI parts.

Re:So basically

[TheRaven64]

I'm just sad that Maemo wasn't on more phones until the N900 came out.

It wasn't on any phones until the N900 came out. The 770, N800 and N810 were not phones. I have a 770 and it's quite a nice device (although the hardware is a bit dated and Maemo is the worst developer environment that I have ever used), but it does not have any way of talking to the mobile network or making phone calls (without a third-party VoIP program), so it doesn't qualify as a phone.

Re:So basically

[baker_tony]

hahahaha "rooted" phone. pfff. Also, first time I've heard that having a "rooted" phone is a GOOD thing! Great you have a backlevel ROM so you can keep rooting as well. Dear god, I'm so childish...

Now I'm gonna go off and poke fun at mechanic manuals that talk about nipples...

Re:So basically

[IDIIAMOTS]

Still... what happened to "developers, developers, developers"?

150,000 applications and 3 Billion downloads from Apple App Store happened. It tells Microsoft that developers are gonna be fine. Sure it's not going to make everyone happy, but its enough to be a successful platform in the current mobile phone industry.

Re:So basically

[NJRoadfan]

That's because it's intentional, and more like:

Company: javascript/java/flash/silverlight are good enough for now, since we want to sell the devices while we have time to develop a native sdk!

Except they already have one.... its called .NET Compact Framework. Yes so Windows Phone 7 will be a total rewrite. Wasn't the whole point of .NET to have the ability to write one application and have it run on any machine with a .NET CLI?

While it will break native apps that were written for the old WinCE libraries, they could just port .NET CF to 7. Someone could develop a runtime/VM for the older stuff if needed, kinda like StyleTap did for PalmOS apps.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

You would probably like WebOS from Palm then. Palm lets you do just about anything you want on the phone. Palm even gives you root access to your phone if you want by simply typing a special string. It's published, well-known, and your great-grandmother would have no trouble following the instructions (assuming she is alive and well enough to press buttons on a phone... otherwise she wouldn't care anyways). There's an excellent 3rd party app installer called Preware that you can think of like Synaptic for Ubuntu or the equivalent of other package management front-ends. It has feeds for the official app store and several 3rd party repositories. It uses ipkg for package management and it is great to work with.
I have the Palm Pre Plus from Verizon and it's been great. WebOS is the best mobile OS I have ever seen. It's also getting Flash pretty soon. I'm running openvpn client and sshd on my phone. The OS is simply Linux with an awesome GUI.

Updating a rooted Palm phone works just fine too, even with 3rd party apps and patches installed. So no need to block OTA updates. They're fine with you rooting the phone.

Re:So basically

[adolf]

Rooting my Droid involved only replacing the su binary that came with the device, with a different one. It is otherwise the same filesystem that the phone came with.

The MeMes on teh Intarwebs all say that this will preclude any OTA updates from happening, but AFAICT this remains to actually be seen.

Re:So basically

[edxwelch]

Hmm, I wouldn't count it as proper c++ until they brought out the open c plugin - that was around 2008, if I remember correctly.

Re:So basically

[jez9999]

Security? Never mind that - if Microsoft want to lock people in to their dumbass app store, Flash provides the perfect backdoor for developing an app without getting MS approval - just direct people to your webpage with the Flash plugin. That's the main reason Apple don't allow Flash on the iPhone. It sucks bigtime.

Re:So basically

[mykro76]

I have a Magic running Cyanogen, it has its own built in auto-updater and disables the OTA updates. No issues at all.

Microsoft is at it again

[Anonymous Coward]

They're just copying the iPhone restrictions from Apple!

Re:Microsoft is at it again

[Frosty Piss]

They're just copying the iPhone restrictions from Apple!

Yes, but it doesn't work the same. Apple can get away with it because of the Cult Factor. Widows Mobil and the phones it runs on doesn't have that. My boss, a diehard Windows network admin LOVES his Android phone.

Re:Microsoft is at it again

[Concerned Onlooker]

"Widows Mobil"

A gas station only for women who have lost their husbands?

Re:Microsoft is at it again

[Anonymous Coward]

So that millions that bought their first Apple product with the iPhone are immediately cult members? The only folks that sound like a cult are also always the first to start slinging the word 'cult' and 'fanboi'. Without fail, they are Windows users.

If your boss "LOVES" his phone, that's more disturbing that a typical cult member to my mind.

Re:Microsoft is at it again

[Frosty Piss]

You are clearly a member of the Cult of Jobs, Mr. Anon.

Re:Microsoft is at it again

[delinear]

Yes you're right, Apple's products tend to be aspirational while Microsoft's are generally sold on the basis of being functional. That's not to say everything Apple does is amazing or everything MS does just works, quite often that's not the case but nevertheless this seems to be the image both companies project, so it's bizarre that MS seem constantly attracted to this idea of being like Apple. They don't need to be, they've demonstrated they can be financially successful without the glamour, but it seems to be something they crave.

I worked for a big travel company a few years ago which very much dealt with the "bucket and spade brigade", i.e. cheap family holidays to tourist hotspots. The customers generally knew what they were getting and were satisfied with it, but the people at the top seemed to be constantly embarassed by the fact that their main offerings were considered low brow and were always trying to force the company down the route of appearing to offer luxury, aspirational holidays. Of course, this didn't fool the people who really wanted luxury holidays, it just had the effect of discouraging their actual customers. MS's approach here seems very much the same to me, they're not going to wow the natural iPhone customers over to their platform, they'll more likely just annoy their core customers. You'd think they might have learned this lesson already with the Zune, which by all accounts is a great little PMP, but just tried too hard to be "cool", who can forget the promises of Ballmer squirting at you?

Re:Microsoft versus Sun's Java and JavaScript

[plover]

-5, very completely wrong.

Oracle bought Sun, not Microsoft. I can't even imagine a reason for Microsoft to buy Sun other than to let a raving DEVELOPER throw chairs at Java until it was utterly destroyed.

And Java and JavaScript are completely unrelated. JavaScript is to Java as fish is to phishing. They sound similar but are in no way the same thing.

Mozilla running JavaScript threads? Srsly?

Let me fix that:
-10, truly most completely wrong.

Shame on me, RTFA.

[headkase]

So the reason Microsoft is not allowing native applications is because they are requiring apps to run in either Silverlight or XNA. This is a classic strike against for-profit closed-source: their priorities do not always line up with their users. Remove the profit-motive and all of a sudden you are following your users not trying to make your own tech the standard of the day. I like my software bottom-up please, not top-down.

Re:Shame on me, RTFA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remove the profit-motive and all of a sudden you are following your users not trying to make your own tech the standard of the day. I like my software bottom-up please, not top-down.

Remove the "for profit" motive?!? That's like asking geeks to remove the "for sex" motive.

Re:Shame on me, RTFA.

[shutdown -p now]

So the reason Microsoft is not allowing native applications is because they are requiring apps to run in either Silverlight or XNA.

There's more to it. XNA applications are normally not sandboxed - they can do "unsafe" operations (pointer arithmetic etc) which circumvent GC and various runtime checks, but also work faster. They can also do P/Invoke calls to DLLs written in C. But, heck, even given just C#, but with a full set of its "unsafe" features, it would be possible to write a C-to-C# compiler, and performance would be pretty good at runtime too (maybe about 10-15% slower than gcc).

Silverlight, theoretically, doesn't preclude all that stuff, either. It's normally sandboxed when running in the browser, for obvious reasons, but it doesn't have to be sandboxed everywhere.

The problem is with the platform itself - it sandboxes all managed applications it runs, both XNA and Silverlight...

Re:Shame on me, RTFA.

[W3bbo]

XNA is sandboxed on the Xbox 360 (in fact, XNA on the Xbox 360 runs on top of a variant of the Compact Framework and not the full desktop/server Framework distribution).

C-to-CIL compilers already exist, Microsoft includes one as part of VC.

Anyway, Silverlight actually disables unsafe code, so C# is gimped in this regard on Windows Phone 7 ( http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/p/2983/182246.aspx ).

Re:Shame on me, RTFA.

[im_thatoneguy]

Their priorities perfectly line up with their users. By forcing everything to run in managed space they can more easily develop a stable predictable environment. Once you open up core functionality then you get blue-screens of death and their ilk.

I'm sure we'll eventually get a full SDK. But the majority of apps can run fine as a managed application--the exception being something like a web browser.

Re:Shame on me, RTFA.

[shutdown -p now]

C-to-CIL compilers already exist, Microsoft includes one as part of VC.

That much is true.

XNA is sandboxed on the Xbox 360 (in fact, XNA on the Xbox 360 runs on top of a variant of the Compact Framework and not the full desktop/server Framework distribution).

.NET CE is not restricted to sandboxed applications - .NET CE applications for WinMo6 can P/Invoke stuff and do unsafe operations just fine.

With respect to Xbox360 I cannot say for sure, but I've heard (on XNA forums, IIRC) that, while XNA project type won't let you enable /unsafe, if you do it manually, you can actually run unsafe code.

Anyway, Silverlight actually disables unsafe code

"Silverlight" doesn't disable anything because Silverlight is just a framework. It is entirely possible to make it run non-safeboxed applications. That it is not allowed on WP7 is a distinct and conscious decision.

Re:Meh.

[Pojut]

Not sure why there's so much hate for it...been working fine for me

Meh

[PPH]

So there will only be 11 selections on the browser choice menu.

I can still pick Opera.

Re:Meh

[Savage-Rabbit]

So there will only be 11 selections on the browser choice menu.

I can still pick Opera.

And those are all written in C# and are therefore ready to deploy on Windows Phone 7 Series devices at a moment's notice are they?

Methinks Firefox is only the first casualty of this decision. Portability is a pretty important thing in Mobile App development. Fennec, for example, is being developed for several Mobile OS platforms simultaneously. Moving to C# forces a lot of software companies to re implement a C# version of their apps from scratch if they want to market them on Windows Mobile devices.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only are there a ton of other browser options, but they're virtually all better than Fennec. After nearly a year and 4 alphas, the software just plain doesn't work... performance is crippled and really basic stuff (navigation) is more or less impossible. Mozilla's idea of shunting the navigation icons off of the screen so that you have to pan to the right-most portion of the page was a bit of foolishness that I'll never understand.

In short, you won't be missed.

Re:Meh

[PPH]

And those are all written in C# and are therefore ready to deploy on Windows Phone 7 Series devices at a moment's notice are they?

The implementation language is not the installed object. C# stuff runs on .NET if I understand all the Microsoft promotional stuff. You can code in C, C++, Java, VB, Perl, or Fortran and build a .NET app. Or so Microsoft pleads when they try to get us to port our apps to that framework. And the port should be dead simple. According to Microsoft.

Please tell me if this is not in fact the case, as we would like to tell MS "bullsh*t" the next time they come by with their sales pitch.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I took the nethack source code, loaded it into Visual C++, selected /CLR and compiled targeting the MSIL / CLR 'processor'.

Worked fine.

(I suspect it produced a MSIL assembly that made a lot of P/Invoke calls to x86 dlls, but it did work first short.)

Re:Microsoft versus Sun's Java and JavaScript

[all204]

And Java and JavaScript are completely unrelated. JavaScript is to Java as fish is to phishing.

Great analogy!

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, militant FOSS weenies. What ya gonna do...

But they can't even copy that right....

[SuperKendall]

They're just copying the iPhone restrictions from Apple!

If that were true Mozilla would not have dropped the platform, because the iPhone allows native development (it's just a question of which built-in libraries you can use).

Re:But they can't even copy that right....

[CyberDragon777]

If they copied Apple perfectly Mozilla would have dropped the platform anyway, since Apple doesn't allow apps to compete with built-in functionality.

WebOS

[thule]

Check out the new Palm phones. Qt was recently ported to them. Palm has not, in any way, prevented people from hacking the phone.

Re:Meh.

[BronsCon]

Freedom isn't free.

Eh

[jav1231]

It's an Android/iPhone world now. WinMo and Palm are marginalized.

Re:Eh

[Nerdfest]

Especially since Palm is rumoured to be moving to Android.

Re:Eh

[rwven]

Palm is a software shop... Why would they give up the one (semi) valuable thing they have? There'd be no reason left to even consider them.

Re:Microsoft versus Sun's Java and JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you say that? There's nothing about cars. Hmph.

Re:YUO FAiL IT

[Concerned Onlooker]

Eliza? Is that you?

Re:Meh.

[Jenming]

It costs $1.05

ROFL!

[jmorris42]

Good grief, just how stupid can these guys get!

Just about the ONLY nice thing people say about Windows on a phone is that it is an open platform for all the corporate junk. Now it is a closed clone of the iPhone complete with app store. All the evil with none of the hipster kewl artsy metrosexual buzz.

Without a monopoly Microsoft couldn't sell icewater in hell.

Re:ROFL!

[Sheen]

kinda like how linux cant get a proper marketshare, even tho its given away freely eh?

Re:ROFL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, in hell, Microsoft owns the icewater monopoly.

Re:ROFL!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't buy icewater in hell. It would all evaporate.

Re:ROFL!

[CAIMLAS]

You forgot: there are also fewer bearded women in the Windows Mobile world than the iPhone world. (Or maybe they're perpetually-pubescent men. Hard to tell.)

Re:ROFL!

[Bearhouse]

All the evil with none of the hipster kewl artsy metrosexual buzz.

Fantastic summary that made me smile; thanks!

Re:ROFL!

[UnknowingFool]

I mean is anyone truly surprised that MS is copying Apple's strategy here? MS hasn't been innovative for a decade or so. The last decent thing they did was to make Windows 7 not suck as badly as Vista which isn't a high standard.

Re:ROFL!

[Anonymous Coward]

All the evil with none of the hipster kewl artsy metrosexual buzz.

Yeah, but the WinMo phone will come in BROWN. Take *that*, Apple!

Windows 7 Immobile

[syousef]

Bone heads. Apple's partially closed approach has been a PR disaster. Despite having a slick phone, there are plenty who'll avoid it like the plague. Only the fact that it was first to market has saved it So MS, who's anything but first to market with advanced smartphones, decides to go one better and close development to everything except CNA and Silverlight? (while Ironically Apple won't support Flash). It's like watching Dumb and Dumber.

Re:Windows 7 Immobile

[Nerdfest]

I was thinking it was more like "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels".

Re:Windows 7 Immobile

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been a PR issue, but it has not affected sales in the slightest. People still are buying from Apple's app store in droves, and the app developers toe the Apple line. Why? Because people still buy from the platform in droves, and to be honest, the people who want to tether, jailbreak their phones, or be able to install custom stuff they have are in a very small minority to the masses who take what they are given.

The sad thing is that *all* phone platforms now are becoming closed. Windows Mobile 7 slams the doors when previous versions allowed anyone to distribute apps as they so chose. Android makers will push updates that brick rooted phones. Apple wages an arms race with jailbreakers.

Re:Windows 7 Immobile

[radish]

iPhone wasn't just first to market, it created the market. Given that it's still selling better than any of the competition I'd say that MS would be pretty happy to get anywhere near the level of success as Apple. It's hardly surprising they're not doing anything very differently...

Re:Windows 7 Immobile

[Vegeta99]

Huh?

I've got an iPhone 3G now, but before that, I had an AT&T Tilt (HTC TyTN II) that, when all you fanbois were stuck in 2G world without any GPS, had HSPA and a much better GPS than the iPhone has. Oh, and I had TomTom back then too, because I didn't have to wait for Pope Jobs to approve my heresy.

Apple, on the other hand, would be happy to have the success of RIM.

Re:Windows 7 Immobile

[radish]

By "the market" I meant finger friendly touch screen phones which an emphasis on visual style and simplicity of use. That's what iPhone invented, and that's what Android, WebOS and now WinMo7 are trying to catch up on. Getting hung up on individual features (GPS, 3G, Camera, whatever) is what defined the market before Apple entered it, and what gave us generations of barely distinguishable, dull as ditchwater Nokia candybars and HTC sliders. They realised that it's the HCI aspect which was the most important for a phone, and also the one the existing manufacturers were ignoring. That requires good software, good design, and appropriate hardware (like capacitive screens).

Re:Windows 7 Immobile

[syousef]

By "the market" I meant finger friendly touch screen phones which an emphasis on visual style and simplicity of use. That's what iPhone invented

What a bunch of revisionist nonsense. You've defined the market as a very narrow subset of the smartphone market based on a single feature (touch screen). Smart phones have been around for a long time. The iPhone may have popularised touch screens but it did not innovate. Go crawl back into your Apple fanboi hole.

Re:YUO FAiL IT

[Cryolithic]

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

Windows CE

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why everyone's going ape shit here. I've actually looked at the API. Yes it's massively changed, it's very xaml and .net oriented and they are obviously trying to throw the Win32/CE stuff out the door, but it's still very powerful from what I had time to test in a week, many options and I do not see them locking applications out.

Other than that the interface and rule changes we can only have Apple thank to thank for. Let's just hope the one button mouse doesn't catches on next.

Re:Windows CE

[Hal_Porter]

The problem is all the old Windows Mobile applications won't work - it might as well be a new OS. It's madness really - WinMo was never the most elegant of OSs but it had loads of software. If I'm going to move to a new OS it's much more likely to be Android than Windows Phone 7.

Re:Meh.

[Starayo]

Oh, that's not too bad.

Ok guys, I can cover freedom for... twelve people.

Re:Microsoft versus Sun's Java and JavaScript

[foniksonik]

Should have been flipped around:

Java is to JavaScript as Fish is to Phishing

Sounds better and more similarity.

RIP Windows Mobile

[foxylad]

Windows Mobile is just another ball that Microsoft dropped, and Windows Mobile 7 isn't going to bounce that ball high enough to catch again. It'll soon be used only by employees of corporates who are trapped in the Microsoft ecosystem, who'll all have their own Apple/Android phone in the other pocket.

Microsoft have had years to catch up to Apple, and failed miserably. Android is evolving faster than either - I have a Nexus One and in my opinion it demonstrates Android has already overtaken Apple. I predict Microsoft will buy RIM to try and bolster their market share, but that it'll soon be a two-horse race between Apple and Android.

So smart move, Mozilla - no point flogging that dead horse.

Re:RIP Windows Mobile

[radish]

It'll soon be used only by employees of corporates who are trapped in the Microsoft ecosystem, who'll all have their own Apple/Android phone in the other pocket.

Really? Speak for yourself. My iPhone's getting long in the tooth and will be replaced this year. I'm kinda spoilt for choice with the new iPhone, things like the Droid and now WinMo7. No decisions yet but the Zune HD is a great device so a phone version of that makes a LOT of sense if you ask me. Maybe that should be their tagline: Windows Mobile 7 - Think Different :)

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's only $0.99 in Apple's App Store :)

Why not? It's proven to work.

[SuperKendall]

I wonder, will the Apple fanboys defend Microsoft for this?

I think they did it because they see it works for Apple, and they are tired of being the industry whipping boy for security flaws in a platform. And honestly, who can blame them? They have formed a safe vantage point from which they will probably not be the worst platform for mobile security going forward.

I got the vibe the 7 app store was going to be closed right after they announced Windows 7 Series Mobile (any misordering of words there is not disrespect, I just have given up remembering the proper order), just because of how they framed it...

I think the closed app store model is a good idea that has helped Apple avoid some problems on the platform. What I think is a much, much less good idea is not offering the native SDK out of the chute - did they learn nothing from Palm of all people? And as I said, I think they have made a terrible mistake in not re-courting C# developers to come back into the fold. I'm sure people will jailbreak the 7 phones just like the iPhones, and we'll see some interesting stuff from that.

As far as looking for people to defend Microsoft I'll do you one better - I will even defend what they are doing with cut and paste (as in not having it). I still think it's possible to do some magic with data flows that might approximate cut & paste for most people and be an interesting alternative, so I am interested to see what they are doing.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeh, buts thats only apple tm freedom, so

when you actually get the app, all it does is make farting noises.

Win 7 will probably kill Windows on mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

Without getting into a lot of detail, TFA is correct. For those of us that bet on WinMo as the 'real developer's platform' alternative (a.k.a. native SDK) now that Palm's gone, the Win Phone 7 announcement is a colossal fail. Win Phone 7 manages to copy all the worst of the iPhone, and band-aids it with an awesome DirectX port. But it's a broken platform, just like the iPhone.

The Win 7 announcement was like flipping a switch for us. We went from "betting the farm" to "well, they're dead now" basically overnight. Win Phone 7 will probably be the best gaming phone ever built. Awesome, if you make games...

It's really a classic MS moment. They brought some amazing new stuff to the table. And then completely f^%ked it up. Deliberately throwing away compatibility because some designer told programmers how computers should work. Sigh. Welcome to the new church. How long did the Inquisition run before people figured it out?

How sure are you? Microsoft says otherwise.

[SuperKendall]

Microsoft will not have a closed app store model for winmo7 (although they will have their own app store). You can get an SDK and emulator right now - for free - and make XNA/Silverlight apps that can be downloaded to a winmo7 phone.

Oh really?

Like Apple and Google, Microsoft has also thrown their hat into the ring and launched an application store called Windows Phone Marketplace. The marketplace won't be empty at launch because Microsoft has a list of impressive development partners such as EA, Foursquare, Namco and Sling to name just a few. But it will indeed be a closed system, similar to Apple's iTunes App store, being the only vehicle where the end-user can download software to their smartphone.

Am I sure? Pretty sure.

Though there's no way for end users to purchase and install apps outside of the Marketplace, Microsoft is naturally working on a solution for trialling apps on a limited number of devices; if we had to guess, it'll be something akin to Apple's ad hoc installation mode, but Charlie Kindel has said that it won't be available in the first release of the platform. For now, the only way to do it is to unlock devices one at a time through the developer portal, and Microsoft isn't talking about how many devices you'll be able to unlock on an account right now.

The iPhone is totally open as well if you count the ability to develop whatever you like and deploy it - it just costs a little more, but once you have paid you can put anything on the phone.

If you want to be an good Apple fan you should try not to spout nonsense - your ignorance makes Steve look bad.

The thing that really amuses me about the whole Windows vs. Mac thing, is how often the Mac people end up knowing so much more about both platforms than the people who only really know Windows. And so the trend continues it would seem.

If you have other details illustrating the degree of openness for Windows Mobile Series 7 that you claim, by all means share them with the group.

Windows Mobile 7 Series has app review process too

[SuperKendall]

I think it's safe to say anyone will probably be able to release anything they please.

I'm not sure how you missed the news if you have been paying attention to WIndows 7 Phone Series at all but... not so:

We just got out of a meeting with Microsoft's Todd Biggs, who dropped a little bombshell on us: the only official way to get apps on a Windows Phone 7 Series device will be to download them from the just-detailed Windows Phone Marketplace. That means developers will have to abide by Microsoft's technical and content guidelines in order to make it in, with the very real possibility of rejection - sound familiar? Todd told us Microsoft plans to avoid Apple-style submission headaches by making the process transparent and predictable, with a group of Microsoft execs regularly meeting to examine edge cases and refine the guidelines as needed, but even the best intentions can be led astray by a sexy app or two.

This is both New and Surprising!

[Anonymous Coward]

So a development team locks itself into a Microsoft platform and SDK, then gets screwed over.

Re:This is both New and Surprising!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Suddenly their code only works on Windows 7 Phone. And Xbox, PCs, and Zune. And looks great on all of them. That's wayyyyy more lock in than iPhone... ;-/

WiMo, Microsoft's second OS/2

[koko]

Wait -- then MS's OS/3?

And it's not that bad, really, it's not. It's not popular in the west; I could count the WiMos I've come across the past few years. Head East and it's still popular.

Skype? Gone. FF? Gone. Is Opera next?

Re:Windows CE (NOT - WM7 is client of CE, not CE)

[Anonymous Coward]

WM7 (6.x, 5.x, 4.x, 3.x, 2.x) are based on CE, the underlying OS. Windows CE is still "native code", with a Win32 API, if you want to classify it that way. WM* is a shell, if you want to put it some way. The current WM, 6.5.3, is based on CE 5, which has been generally available for five years. It also has a 32 MB process address space; 32 processes max. No, really. CE 6 does away with that. No current Wm* uses CE 6.

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I waited years for this. I used it back when it was an alpha and called Minimo. It has always supposedly been coming soon. I doubt they ever would have finished it anyway. This is a convenient escape for Mozilla.

Nokia/Symbian Phone?

[mpapet]

http://www.symbian.org/

It's as open as you can possibly get. I understand coding at the OS level is some C++ weirdness or something. But it's all there. Media freedom, OS freedom, works great, lots of apps.

Dude, Check Out Nokia Then...

[mpapet]

http://www.symbian.org/

What choices do we have now?

[Anonymous Coward]

iPhone = locked / appstore
Andriod = crappy java unless you root
WM7 = see iPhone
Blackberry = blah

I don't know what other choices we have? There is mobile java spec that works on the masses of handsets.

Was really looking forward to having firefox on the WM6 platform. This really sucks... and it seems like MS will continue to support WM6 for quite some time into the future because the products are so different and really have different target audiences. Unfortunately practically no handset vendor is going to want to ship 6.x when 7.x is available.

At this point I'm likely never to go to WM7 because I hate the iPhone and everything it stands for. Whatever you might think about WM6 you at least had the freedom to do whatever the hell you wanted with it. I guess my next phone will be andriod :(

I just want a single platform that allows us to write real applications using native code considering the lack of memory and CPU on handsets.

Re:What choices do we have now?

[bnenning]

Andriod = crappy java unless you root

It's really not that bad. I was surprised at how many bouncing balls I could get my Nexus One to animate at 30fps without any attempt at code optimization. And the NDK works great if you can isolate your CPU-intensive code into separate methods.

What gives Microsoft the right

[Billly Gates]

If I buy the phone then why in hell can't I use it.

Did I only buy a "right to use it"? This is redicolous and should be illegal. I own the hardware and the mega telecom companies are making sure people rent.

Imagine if we only purchased rights to use things instead of owned them? No homes, products, food, or healthcare. Everything just rented to make some person some more money.

Screw you and I hope Android is better at this

Re:What gives Microsoft the right

[Amarantine]

Oh you can use it in any way you please. You have that right. MS (and Apple and everyone else) has the right to sell a device with or without features as they see fit. And you have the right to buy it, or to buy a different product, or buy nothing altogether. If you don't like the (im)possibilities of this phone, shop elsewhere.

Nowhere does the law say anything about "any phone you intend to sell should have the capability to install applications from ANY source." In fact, i would be more worried if such a DOES exist.

So stop whining, and let your money talk.

Oh, and how is this different from Playstations, where you can only play Sony-approved and -labelled games? It's not as if this technique is anything new.

Re:Windows Mobile 7 Series has app review process

[jrumney]

On behalf of the Open Source community, I'd like to thank Microsoft for giving a helping hand to Android.

Just Requiring CLR?

[snowman2010]

It's not clear to me from the linked article, but it sounds like Microsoft want all apps running on the phone to be "managed" code running on the CLR engine. This is just plain sense. It means that they can then run all apps in the same memory-space, and be sure that they are all nicely "sandboxed" so they can't corrupt each other's memory. If non-sandboxed code is allowed, then the OS has to run each app in a separate process with its own memory-space. That makes life more complicated, and adds overhead. I'm sure microsoft don't want to handle user complaints about os crashes, and have to analyse them knowing that some of the processes on that system are not sandboxed. It's a little like the Linux "tainted kernel", where you get absolutely no support if you load non-gpl kernel modules. Of course in Linux, you have the *option* of loading the modules if you really really want to. Still, I'm sure linux distros aren't keen on having lots of users with tainted kernels, and that Microsoft feel the same about their phones. Limiting apps to using CLR isn't crippling, and with the XNA lib for fast graphics added things should be even better. Ok, not quite native speed but pretty close...

Re:Just Requiring CLR?

[jabjoe]

So how can you compete with native MS products when your stuck with CLR? It's not a level playing field. Firefox done in CLR vs IE native? A native process can crash itself, but it shouldn't be able to take the OS with it because it has it's own address space. This overhead is small and old, and really isn't a problem, and is nothing compared with CLR/Java. There are many smart phones that's OS is just a port of a standard OS, they manage just fine. This brings me back to my point that a company can't make a closed platform and closed software for that platform, one must be open for fair competition. In this case however, there is viable macro competition. So the result is Windows phone suck and no one will buy them.

Re:Just Requiring CLR?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know were you've been in the last 30 years or so, but today we have a nice thing called "virtual memory". Apps run in their own adress space, sharing the system memory, and if one app crashes it doesnt take the system down. VM sandboxes are just a reimplementation of virtual memory in software, and they are know to add overhead. I think the problems cames with users, a native app can be hacked to access other processes from the same users (and of course, the files). Fortunately, it's not impossible to run apps with different user names, or just use SELinux, which allows to sandbox native code.

Re:How sure are you? Microsoft says otherwise.

[feepness]

The iPhone is totally open as well if you count the ability to develop whatever you like* and deploy it - it just costs a little more, but once you have paid you can put anything** on the phone.

* Subject to limitations of no on platform multi-tasking. ** Subject to approval by Apple Corporation.

Re:Microsoft versus Sun's Java and JavaScript

[mwolfe38]

I think this should get +5 funny. I hate when that sun javascript screws up my computer too. Oh and that mozilla sure needs to get up to the times, haven't they heard of Internet Explorer 6! Seriously though, Microsoft/java debacle was many years ago but you make it sound like it was just yesterday. Oh how time flies.

Re:How sure are you? Microsoft says otherwise.

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that really amuses me about the whole Windows vs. Mac thing, is how often the Mac people end up knowing so much more about both platforms than the people who only really know Windows.

Well, I don't know about Mac users in general, but you have pretty much proven time and again that you are an ignorant Apple fanboy.

Don't need to root

[AC-x]

The thing about Android is you can do a lot more with it without having to root it. You can download and install apps from anywhere, not just the android market, and replace the home screen, the on-screen keyboard etc. with alternative versions all without having to hack anything.

They've even got free tether apps in the android market.

Thanks for not saying "PC vs. Mac"

[jonaskoelker]

The thing that really amuses me about the whole Windows vs. Mac thing

For those of us who can't find large differences between an Apple laptop running Linux and an Dell laptop running Linux, thank you very much for not framing the debate as PC versus Mac.

I can't tell you how badly I hate that choice of words. It pulls me in (because I use a computer that either is or isn't made by Apple) but then leaves me out (because I use software that both isn't made by Microsoft and isn't made by Apple).

It's a relic of the past---from when PC meant IBM-compatible PC. The IBM PC business has died out as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible#The_declining_influence_of_IBM.

The word (/abbrev.) PC means nothing having to do with being a personal thing and much more about being a consumer-affordable general purpose computer (i.e. my Wii/router/phone isn't a PC, nor is my Cray 1, but my Apple laptop is); at least that's the way I use it and hear it used, except maybe by people who need to distance themselves from the majority of people who run Windows on an Intel box.

Get over yourself. Yes, I run something else too. I don't go around telling everybody about it any longer. I was a fan boy. Now I'm pretty chill about it. Linux is the set of trade-offs that works best for me; if you like something else that's fine with me. Heck if you prefer Blackbox to Fluxbox or vim to emacs, that's cool. Use what works for you. Even if it's made by a company I don't like.

Just leave me out of your mud wrestling match between you and The Windows Sheeple. Maybe we can have a beer together when you get over it?

Thanks. </rant>

Re:How sure are you? Microsoft says otherwise.

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing is for sure: I will never ever buy a programmable device on which I cannot install any software I like in a way that is solely controlled by me. NEVER.

Oh Jesus

[theolein]

...The thing that really amuses me about the whole Windows vs. Mac thing, is how often the Mac people end up knowing so much more about both platforms than the people who only really know Windows. ...

This makes me weep. I'm a system administrator for a large design company, running Mac servers with about 45 Mac clients and 10 PC clients. The Mac users are so singularly clueless about what a computer does and how it does it, it makes me cringe. It's good that OSX is simpler and more robust than Windows because, man, do they need it.

What Mac users especially are, is loud-mouthed know-it-alls who think they know more about any topic in IT because some rabidly Mac centric blog, like Daring Fireball or Roughly Drafted writes totally false articles on why Flash won't work on the iPhone (They said it's because the OS doesn't have a cursor so roll-over events won't work, which is so utterly pathetically wrong, it's just sad), for instance. Those same "knowledgeable" Mac users will then go on to scream that piece of falsehood at the top of their lungs on the internet.

Yay Mac, because having to apply one's brains is sooo uncool.

Re:Oh Jesus

[Domini]

Are you perhaps not confusing cause and effect?

The Mac is so stable and easy to use that one does not have to know a lot about computers.

Frankly, there is a whole world out there of more interesting things to know. As a system administrator you have probably wasted so much time tending to Mac people's computer needs whilst they are off on vacation in the Caribbean that it has made you bitter. Darn clueless Mac fanboiZ.

I know a lot of rocket-science dudes and girls who have macs but don't know the first thing about 'computers'.

I used to be a unix system admin and felt about the windows users in the maths and art lab just as you do. Wish I had come to my senses years earlier.

Re:Oh Jesus

[ejasons]

Yay Mac, because having to apply one's brains is sooo uncool.

And yet, those people are your bosses, and are the sole reason that your job even exists. You must feel so inadequate...

Re:Microsoft versus Sun's Java and JavaScript

[delinear]

It's a bit disingenuous to say they're completely unrelated. They both share a common ancestor in C, and JavaScript borrows heavily from Java syntax (same reserved keywords, similar naming conventions, some JavaScript objects such as Math() were pretty much ripped directly from the first iteration of Java). IIRC, even the name isn't a coincidence but was part of a deal with Netscape to bundle JRE with their browser (I seem to remember prior to that JavaScript was called Mocha or something similar).

Sure they are a world apart now, but to say they're completely unrelated is just as wrong as it would be to assume they are in any way the same thing. Apes and men are a world apart but they're still related (well, if you rule out creationism, which I am doing in the case of JavaScript as no deity could be that cruel).

just requiring silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft will only support development of applications running in the Silverlight runtime environment, or of games in the XNA Game Studio runtime environment, it announced last week at its Mix conference. It will not allow third party app developers direct access to the phone's hardware, where they might be better able to exploit its potential"

DUMB MOVE MICROSOFT

[Anonymous Coward]

And I was actually interested in your new phone. No longer..

Re:Windows Mobile 7 Series has app review process

[dunkelfalke]

It is a sad thing, really. I used Windows Mobile since 2003 and genuinely liked it because of the freedoms it gave to me. Windows Mobile 7 is the reason why my next device will run Android.

Ugh, why do you put up with the struggle?

[jonaskoelker]

for example, the latest level on the Cliq locks out root and the holes to get root.

Get a Nokia N900. It's not Android, but it's Linux, it's a damn fine phone/skype/IM/facetwitter appliance, and it comes with xterm preinstalled and gainroot ready in the repositories.

Downsides: slightly heavy, slightly big, slightly short battery life (but maybe I ought to not use the screen as a flashlight, no?). That hasn't made anything impossible for me, it's just something I have had to adapt to.

Upsides: Nokia loves you. Nokia loves your nerdy peculiarities. They want you to hack it, see http://blogs.nokia.com/pushn900/

Re:Microsoft versus Sun's Java and JavaScript

[plover]

And fish and phishing have something in common, too: one is cold and slimy, the other makes a tasty lunch (especially with lemon.)

Bottom line, though: I. Fed. The. Troll. I was had. We probably don't need to worry any further about what I said.

How about the Nokia N900?

[jonaskoelker]

I actually miss Windows Mobile. To use the phone to its fullest capacity (yes, including capacity), I had to do no hacks, no low level patches. Just install the right program and go.

Funny, that's exactly what I've experienced with my Nokia N900.

Heck, even better than that, on day one I install code I had contributed to Simon Tatham's puzzle collection, file bugs against it, and start looking at how to develop for this mean ass machine.

I don't have to pay corporate overlords (for what, gcc? ^_^), no one is going to say "no, you can't have that software"; I'm free to play and build, and turn my phone into exactly what I want it to be. And other people want to do the same thing, so it's not like I'm all alone :-)

It has its warts, so look into reviews and troll posts on maemo forums, and decide if they sound like you can live with them. But Nokia loves you and wants you to play. /* I'm not paid to write this, I just evangelize to what I assume is an eager audience (of at least one person) */

MICROSOFT IS EVIL!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

MICROSOFT IS EVIL!!!
MICROSOFT IS EVIL!!!
MICROSOFT IS EVIL!!!
Oh wait, Apple has does similar things and we KNOW they aren't evil. Oh, to hell with it.
MICROSOFT IS EVIL!!!

Re:How sure are you? Microsoft says otherwise.

[jcupitt65]

** Subject to approval by Apple Corporation.

I think the parent meant that as a dev you can put whatever code you like on.

You need Apple's approval to get on the marketplace, but businesses can get an Enterprise License and then put private apps on without needing Apple's say-so if they like. Google suggests this article if you're curious:

http://iphonecto.com/2009/09/09/deploying-internal-enterprise-application-iphone

Or of course you can jailbreak it, heh.

How much did Google pay Microsoft?

[ripnet]

How much did Google pay microsoft to kill Windows Mobile??? this is gonna be a huge boost to Android, now that MS have squandered the key advantage of WinMob (complete openness, effectively root access out of the box, existing app base)? It seems like MS are just starting over, when the game has finished. I love my Motorola Milestone, and am having loads of fun with the Android SDK (still unsure if Eclippse is better than Visual Studio - interesting approach compiling code as you go along, instead of in a build phase) The App store idea only works if you can get loads of apps on it. That applies to iPod, Android and erm, thats it. I would be suprised if even palm can survive against iPod and android. g

Re:How sure are you? Microsoft says otherwise.

[diegocg]

I don't think the app store matters at all. The problem here is that Microsoft does not allow to write apps in native code (except for partners like Adobe). It doesn't matter how open is the store, Firefox is not going to pass the filters because it's native code.

Vaporware with an attitute

[wye43]

Mozzila and lately firefox have tried for ages to release a version for mobiles and failed.

Now they come up with sensationalistic claims like that. I don't say Windows Mobile is great, because its not, it really sucks, including 7, but first work your way and do at least one release, then you can go ahead and make a fuss about not releasing something on a specific platform.
Firefox Mobile ... Forever?

Re:Microsoft versus Sun's Java and JavaScript

[TheRaven64]

They both share a common ancestor in C

Not really. Java is a descendant of Smalltalk via StrongTalk, JavaScript is a descendant of Self. They both have a bit of C-like syntax, but thinking of them as descendants of C is very misleading. JavaScript is a pure object oriented language with a Self-like object model and support for first-class closures. Java is not a pure object-oriented language (it has 'intrinsic' types that are not objects) with a Smalltalk-like object model. Aside from a superficial syntactic differences they are completely different languages.

Re:How sure are you? Microsoft says otherwise.

[cbreak]

Apps don't need to be approved by Apple if you install them yourself.

Who cares

[GameboyRMH]

More developers for Maemo/Meego (or even Android which offers relatively decent software freedom). Let Apple and Microsoft shoot themselves in the foot all day long, the competition is stiff and will gladly take the customers and developers they turn off.

Can you only run official-app-only?

[mdwh2]

We don't know the exact rules for store approval process yet, but all information on that so far only mentioned malware and stuff such as "indecency" as reasons for rejection, and nothing even remotely similar to Apple's "no compete" clauses.

That's not really the relevant point though. The problem with Apple's store isn't what their actual policy is (although the fact that they do use it to block any competing applications is all the more a problem). The root problem is the fact that they have control over what you run on your own phone anyway.

So - is it really true that Windows 7 on phones will also run Microsoft approved applications? If so, that's very sad, no matter how liberal their app store policy might be. All the while it was only Apple, it didn't really matter what a small percent of the market was like. Thankfully Microsoft are a niche player in the mobile market too, but it still worries me to see a trend where more and more platforms follow this closed model of computing. And what if Microsoft decide to do this for the desktop?

I'm glad that Nokia are number one - I just hope they stay that way, and don't follow the path of making a closed platform.

Re:Can you only run official-app-only?

[shutdown -p now]

So - is it really true that Windows 7 on phones will also run Microsoft approved applications?

Yes, though it looks like there will be some semi-official backdoors.

Re:Why not? It's proven to work.

[GameboyRMH]

Microsoft mobile team meeting:

OK guys, Apple made a fuckton of money on the iPhone, so we're gonna copy what they did step-for-step. Here's my hierarchical breakdown of the project.

- Phase 1: Massive initial fuckups, geek hardon removal
----Lock development down like Fort Knox
----Make sure no alternative browsers are available
----Leave basic functionality out of the OS and apps
-------Copy and Paste
-------Multitasking
-------Browser download capability

- Phase 2: Hype the LIVING SHIT out of this phone
----Spread rumors and then deny them
----Trendy ads - no Seinfeld this time
----*Idea: Plant some line campers on release day?
----Online media blitz
-------Rapidfire press releases
-------Sue bloggers for Streissand effect
-------*Idea: Torture Chinese factory worker over lost prototype?
----Promise to patch in some basic OS and app features left out in Phase 1, hype them like they're amazing new innovations

- Phase 3: ??????

- Phase 4: PROFIT!

Re:Microsoft versus Sun's Java and JavaScript

[prestomation]

I always liked "Java is to Javascript as car is to carpet"

Re:How sure are you? Microsoft says otherwise.

[dfghjk]

"The thing that really amuses me about the whole Windows vs. Mac thing, is how often the Mac people end up knowing so much more about both platforms than the people who only really know Windows. And so the trend continues it would seem."

That is not my experience, and I say that as a Mac user. The most ignorant users I've come across are generally Mac people. Apple panders to that customer.

"...but once you have paid you can put anything on the phone."

Paying also means agreeing to Apple's draconian terms.

Intuitively wrong

[SuperKendall]

That is not my experience, and I say that as a Mac user. The most ignorant users I've come across are generally Mac people.

It may not be your experience, but it is the general case. A simple thought expiriment explains why this is so.

Mac users often have to deal with Windows in other contexts. At work, helping out friends, systems in the wild like internet cafes.

Meanwhile unless a Windows user seeks out a Mac, chances are they will never encounter one.

So I really doubt that generally Mac users are going to be more "ignorant" about both systems than a Windows user would be.

Not stopped, but put on hold

[jonathan1979]

"Mozilla has decided to stop development of a version of its Firefox mobile Web browser for phones running Windows Mobile.

Twisting the facts... according to the blog they are not stopping development, but are putting it on hold, hopefully to pick it up when Microsoft permits it.

Because of this, we won’t be able to provide Firefox for Windows Phone 7 at this time. Given that Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don’t know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold.

Why not an iPhone then?

[SuperKendall]

One thing is for sure: I will never ever buy a programmable device on which I cannot install any software I like in a way that is solely controlled by me. NEVER.

Nor would I.

I bought an iPhone because I CAN jailbreak it. So far though being a developer has been enough power to meet my needs.

This should be amusing

[SuperKendall]

The Mac users are so singularly clueless about what a computer does and how it does it, it makes me cringe.

It would make me cringe too except I realize not everyone cares to know those details. I don't see how anyone can phrase it as a negative that the platform allows that to be the case for real world use.

The simple fact is though that a LOT more mac people will have had interaction with WIndows and the Mac, than Windows people will have had with Macs. Are you denying this blisteringly obvious fact of life? Anecdotes are all well and good but what matters is the whole. And on the whole, simply way more Mac users know about both platforms than Windows users do because is real life most Mac users still have to interact with Windows systems.

P.S. - I'd bet that at least two of the forty Mac users actually know UNIX systems better than you do, but they are just keeping low.

They said it's because the OS doesn't have a cursor so roll-over events won't work, which is so utterly pathetically wrong, it's just sad

Now this should be amusing! Please do tell us, oh genius sysadmin, how you do rollovers when pressing the screen is also the equivalent of mouse down? Rollovers are, by definition, non-interactive and reveal the information about the active state of an item on screen. Only you can't do that when a press means to interact...

I can tell there's a reason why you're a sysadmin and I'm a developer. Before you complain about "loud mouth know-it-alls" you should proceed to look in the mirror before you proceed to demonstrate the term for all and sundry.

It's funny that a throwaway line directed at an embarrassingly ill-informed Microsoft proponent got probably otherwise rational people so riled up that they proceed to post the most absurd things.

Re:How sure are you? Microsoft says otherwise.

[SuperKendall]

Well, I don't know about Mac users in general, but you have pretty much proven time and again that you are an ignorant Apple fanboy.

Says the AC lacking the courage or knowledge to challenge a single one of my facts.

Like I said, I appear to know more than you about the computer industry in general, much less Windows/Mac issues.

I appear to know more about Windows 7 than most people here, I guess they just hadn't been following the updates at obscure sites like "engadget". You should look it up sometime, I think it might be going places.

Not a limitation for devs

[SuperKendall]

* Subject to limitations of no on platform multi-tasking. ** Subject to approval by Apple Corporation.

That's only for app store submissions. Developers can run what we like on the phone, and of course there's also jailbreaking. You don't seem to know the platform very well.

Symbian dead? Not really

[Ilgaz]

Symbian is not good as dead, it is coming to 100M+ devices/year as soon as next year. Entire Nokia mid-end switches to Symbian foundation. E65 isn't a bad phone either, it just lacks RAM and software must be carefully chosen.

If you are American or you don't care enough to read Symbian sites, you don't have to know these. I must admit the Nokia's PR has been more pathetic than ever lately. What bothers me is, Developers who are advanced enough to join Mozilla also ignores Symbian which has everything one can imagine to develop on.

It is their loss really, Opera slowly gaining back its default browser status. In fact, already did on high end Symbians with the Opera 10 Mobile (which you can supposedly run on E65 unsupported, as single app like iPhone).

Re:Symbian dead? Not really

[tsa]

I like my E65 quite a lot. There is no smartphone on the market now that has the right combination of must-have features and price to make me chuck it. I run Opera 5 beta on it, which is a good browser, much better than Nokia's own. What I don't like about the E65 is the way it handles wireless LAN: for every different application it has to connect to an access port again, and even when you ARE connected in the mail program, when you have to send a mail it wants to connect again!

As a Symbian user, I gotta ask a single question

[Ilgaz]

Without any "Nokia" hate, just based on technical facts, can someone really explain why Mozilla team ignores/always ignores Symbian platform? Especially after the entire thing became open source?

It is not like we are begging for it, we already have Opera Mobile 10 and numerous (ironically,one is a ff proxy) browsers to choose from. Is there a purely technical reason for ignoring Symbian especially after the doors shut to their faces by MS?