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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?
To be fair, the Zune could've been a success had MS not screwed it up. The hardware was actually quite good and the few people I know that owned them really liked them.
Microsoft will be enforcing content restrictions on Windows Phone 7 applications, by preventing users from sideloading applications as they previously had done with Windows Mobile. This results in all applications having to pass through the Windows Phone Marketplace where content restrictions apply.[34][35] Users are free to sync whatever content they want to their phone or view any website from the web browser.
Microsoft said that applications containing pornography will be prevented from being installed on Windows Phone 7, as well as applications containing images that fit the definition of "sexually suggestive". Violence and all nudity will be censored from apps. Suggestions or depictions of prostitution, sexual fetishes, or basically anything that "a reasonable person would consider to be adult or borderline adult content" will be forbidden from Windows Phone 7 apps.
Microsoft elaborated that it would disallow apps containing "images that reveal nipples, genitals, buttocks, or pubic hair".
When will the US understand that sex is not bad, evil or something that should be banned from adults? Of course, the games with violence and killing will be allowed, but no, not such unharmful and natural thing like nudity or sex.
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.
The thing is, they never had a head start at all - because they were always going down a different path. It's not so much compatibility with Desktop WIndows, as it was reliance on a stylus and a physical keyboard.
Android and iOS were built from the ground up to make use of touch. Neither iOS or Android (to some extent) are reliant even on a physical keyboard, though one can be present... for small mobile devices that simply is a better path, and one Microsoft never chose to explore.
So it's not so much Desktop compatibility, as it is trying to simply move the existing UI conventions to mobile (unless that is what you meant by compatibility).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Pornography is not created as "art". Its sole purpose is for people to look at it and then self-abuse themselves into a climax. That is not sex. Sex requires two people.
Because multiple people never watch pornography together, right?
It's fine that you prefer to have a puritanical worldview, but let's not pretend it's held by everyone or in some way rationally based.
I hated Windows Mobile more than I've hated any version of Windows OSs.
Words cannot describe what an absolute pile of garbage that was.
I would rather have tent stakes driven through my eyeballs than spend money on a Windows OS for mobile.
I would rather sit on a cactus doused in sulfuric acid than use Windows Mobile.
I would rather watch The Phantom Menace on repeat for a month while covered in bees and spiders.
I would rather have been given a writing credit for Battlefield Earth.
I would rather be in a relationship with Mel Gibson than use Windows Mobile.
Worst of all, I think I'd rather sign a lifetime contract to use a Kin.
What exactly is it that makes nudity so bad?
It's not that nudity is so bad, it's what happens when kids are exposed to porn that people are concerned with. Kids have raging hormones that operate whether they are prepared for the consequences or not. And by consequences i dont mean teen pregnancy (kids who are getting some at that age are probably not downloading porn apps on their phones). The problem is that porn presents sexuality in its most mechanical form. No love, no personal relationship, just rubbing. Women are presented as easy and submissive. They do what they are told, and don't seem to need anything more than a man in the room to be ready and willing to do whatever the man wants. Young men are obviously not going to assume that all women are as slutty as the "characters" in a porn vid, but they cannot hope to understand how women actually feel about and have sex by watching porn. Parents and schools are the last places kids turn to when it comes to sex, and by the time they actually see a real nude person in their bedroom, they've probably seen thousands of digital ones there for years.
And that's just the boys. Consider how a porno makes most girls feel. They see women doing things that the average adult would stutter to explain. Almost all of the women they see are submissive and objectified (that may be something some women are into, but they don't show the woman negotiating her contract or explaining what she will or wont do). So-called "soft" porn or skinimax flix are a little more sensitive to the female psyche, but they are less and less common. (Check out how many of these series are on vs how many websites there are dedicated to the more damaging "slutty" porn).
I am not against images of nudity or even porn for adults (watch it myself from time to time...). But to ask with incredulity why people are so concerned with nudity is to ignore the fact that kids are NOT adults. They are not prepared to deal with the condensed and distorted view of sexuality that porn presents.
Nudity is not the issue. It's the developing psyche of children that people are concerned with.
PS: For the record, i am not religious at all so i am not coming at this from a moralistic point-of-view. I simply have a young daughter who's well-being is my top priority in life, so i think about this stuff a lot.