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Windows Phone 7 Hits Technical Preview Milestone
suraj.sun writes "Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system has today reached its biggest milestone yet, with a technical preview announced placing the OS on the 'home stretch' to launch. 'We are certainly not done yet — but the craftsmen (and women) of our team have signed off that our software is now ready for the hands-on everyday use of a broad set of consumers around the world — and we're looking forward to their feedback in the coming weeks, so that we can finish the best Windows Phone release ever together,' Terry Myerson, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Windows Phone Engineering, wrote tonight." There's coverage around the net including
CNet,
NeoWin and
Engadget.
Is this a release that, purely on quality/merit (let's not talk about mindshare or openness -- presumably both are lost causes), is at all competitive with the alternatives?
In a sense it's amazing to me, given how much longer Microsoft's been trying to get something done in the Mobile arena, that they have been completely unable to gain any traction so far. Were Windows CE etc. trying too hard to be compatible with Desktop Windows? I don't know, but it's baffling that a company with so much of a headstart over would now be its chief competitors managed so little.
It's hard to point to openness as the reason with Apple's walled garden as a ready counterpoint, but what did go wrong?
No, it's just Outlook. (Files can synch.) You get a wierd error with 64-bit activesync with 64-bit office; it doesn't work!
Microsoft ascended to supremacy because the PC was in a niche where IBM was irrelevant, and further was more important to a larger segment of the population than the segment that cared about IBM's dominance -- large computers and servers. IBM was never displaced from their market and Microsoft will never be displaced from the desktop. And now history is repeating itself. The iPhone and Android are in a niche where Microsoft, like IBM before it, is irrelevant. And honestly I haven't seen an effort to get into a market this feeble since since Atari released the Jaguar.
This is ultimately a good thing. Microsoft can only seem to do interoperability when they don't have a monopoly. Portable devices will destroy IE's ability to ever set the tone for the web again. Considering the damage they have done to the progress of the web their fall is something to celebrate.
And yes, scads of IE dependent corp machines will remain for years to come. The web will move on. Truth be known the inability of IE 6 to deal with highly interactive sites will be seen as a benefit by CEO's since employees won't be "playing" on the clock. That's fine though - the rest of us can move on.
From http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/windows-phone-7-dont-bother-disaster-211?page=0,0
And "mobile". Hell, just called it Seven.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
The Zune could have been a success if MS hadn't decided to basically be late to the iPod revolution. I don't think there is a single person who looks at the Zune and doesn't see it just as an MS branded iPod in poo colors. Yes, the Zune's hardware was nice, but the average person sees it as a crappy rip-off of an Apple product, not to mention MS has tried to do things similar to the Zune with "Plays For Sure" except for the fact that the Zune can't even play that content.
The Zune was dead on arrival, had it come before the iPod and done everything it would have been a modest success, but how can you look at the Zune and -not- see that this is just an MS branded iPod?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Hah! I see you've never heard of the Bechdel Test. Almost all modern media inherently promotes a surprisingly patriarchal view of women; they're either the token girl, or talking to men, or talking about men - it's basically all about the guys. Even supposed "chick flicks", despite in theory being about women, generally have female characters whose sole purpose in life is to give the lead woman someone to talk to about the lead man.
And these are the things we show children; almost no Disney movie, for instance, will pass the test.
Given that sort of insidious bullshit, porn is refreshingly straight to the point.