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A Windows Phone 7 For Every Microsoftie
theodp writes "So, how can Microsoft guarantee its Windows Phone 7 devices will enjoy broader adoption than the ill-fated Kin? By giving every Microsoft employee a free one, that's how. A Microsoft spokesman confirmed the move, explaining that the idea is to thank employees for all their work, and make sure that they have experience with Windows Phone 7 devices. Microsoft has nearly 90,000 employees worldwide."
Don't buy WP7. It's made out of PEOPLE !!
I'll use a Windows Mobile phone, too... if it's free. Sure as hell never paying for another device running WinCE, the most pointless operating system ever.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's absolutely mind-boggling that Windows Phone 7 is missing some very fundamental features, like copy/paste, third-party multitasking, and universal search.
Absolutely mind-boggling you say? How about absolutely doomed?
In the past, competitors like Apple were lambasted by the public for not having such features, so you'd think Microsoft would take precautions not to repeat such mistakes.
You don't understand, Microsoft is adept at watching Apple do something right or make progress and then totally just think that they're different and special and therefore won't suffer from those problems.
What's worse, the rest of the smartphone world isn't slowing down, and with Windows Phone 7 not scheduled to launch till the holidays, the divide could get deeper.
It's called releasing a phone that's already behind the curve. So, unless you have a product name that causes people to hemorrhage cash regardless of the features, you're doomed. Like the release of the Zune. Except it appears Windows Phone 7 doesn't even have an exclusive 'squirt' functionality.
Criticisms aside, there's a lot we like about Windows Phone 7. The Zune integration is killer, and the core apps are much improved.
Zune integration is 'killer' you say? That's going to do it, huh? Well, everybody who owns a Zune now has the option to integrate it. All five of them. And the core apps are much improved? After suffering from the ailments of IE6 you think I want any version of Internet Exploder on my goddamn mobile device? You're insane. I don't care how refined it is.
We also commend Microsoft for being able to acknowledge that its old OS wasn't working and taking a chance on rebuilding something from the ground up.
Really? You're telling me that Microsoft owned up to and acknowledge its old OS wasn't working? I've never known Microsoft to tell their customers that something is wrong.
Long story short this product is doomed with a 97% confidence of certain doomage.
My work here is dung.
But only to true employees, not to temps and interns.
but, I think the interface is very sleek and my company develops business applications to Mobile devices and I am in the group to develop applications for Windows Phone 7. The application interface is pretty good and we recently got couple of those Samsung devices to test our applications and it does do a good job. No doubt this current version of OS do not provide support for SQL-CE DB or multi-tasking or even copy & paste. But .net provides pretty good infrastructure to concoct a rudimentary in-memory db for our case. Other things would have been really useful for what we do. Despite these deficiencies I think, this is a pretty good OS and good UI from MS.
They will put it in a drawer and keep using their iPhones.
Windows Phone 7 isn't even real Windows CE. The user can't load and run apps designed for previous versions of Windows Mobile, only apps designed from Silverlight or XNA, and even then only from the official app store. Want to make your own apps? 99 bucks a year, just like iPhone. (To be fair, iPhone copied this app store model largely from Microsoft's XNA Creators Club and Xbox Live Indie Games.)
Maybe Microsoft is interested in finding out who uses it, how and why and likewise from the non-users. I don't understand what the big stir is about a company using it's own product and looking for employee feedback.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
One of the perks of working for an auto company is the ability to lease a car at a drastically reduced rate. And once you reach a certain salary level, the auto company "pays" the lease so the car is effectively free.
There are controls - Chrysler, for example, wouldn't give employees Vipers or Prowlers - but there was a pretty broad selection of cars to choose from.
Except for a period in the late 90s/early oughts where the only GM company car was the Pontiac Aztek.
I'd drive past their plants/offices in Detroit and the employee parking lot was solid Azteks.
<NELSON>Ha-ha!</NELSON>
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I'll agree that 'eating your own dogfood' is good for the phone's development team, but do you really think everyone else has any real input into it? Real customers don't even get real input unless there's an antenna-gate or something.
I've been wondering for a while why companies seem to be so inept at listening to their customers. I understand the concept of 'vocal minority' and all that, but certain things should just be obvious when someone complains about them. Like lack of 'cut and paste' functionality on a 'smart phone'. I'm sure someone at Apple said 'What about cut and paste?' and someone shrugged it off. I'll even admit that I don't see why it was a big deal. But it -was-. And even after thousands of people started mocking the iPhone for not having it, Apple continued to ignore the complaints. That's the part I find so hard to believe.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I'm sure employees aren't going to use the phone without service, and if MS is going to pay for all of their service plans, it's going to cost them quite a bit!
You can give your employees a phone, but you can't make them actually use it.
Call the employee on each day when the employee is scheduled to work. If the employee doesn't pick up, record it as an absence.
I bet they can't wait to receive this gift.
I can't wait until someone jailbreaks them and comes up with a way of running Android
I'm sorry but this is a stupid statement and a stupid article. Apple gives a large number of it's employees an iPhone and Google gives a large number of its an Android phone. It's call "eating your own dog food".
In addition they get a friendly pool of testers who can give them instant feedback (and probably quite detailed given that they'll naturally try to use it with the products they are managing) on the devices in real world situations (such as bugs, issues, integration with web services, exchange support) and can also simulate some scenarios (such large scale remote activation, wipe and locate) far better than a couple of devices in a lab can.
Finally, if you're a manufacturer of a product, it doesn't look very good if your employees all use your competitors does it? Whenever I've dealt with a Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Apple, HTC or LG rep I've never seen them use anything but their own phones and I'd be concerned about the statement they are making if they did.
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Even to its own employees Microsoft has to give its new phone away ;)
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if 90,000 voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
839*929
I don't care how refined it is. In other words: I don't care how much MS does to step up their technology.
Not true. I own an XBox360. I have a partition with a legit copy of Windows XP at home on one of my desktops. But I will never ever use IE again. I even get a little sick when I have to use IE to update XP. Firefox, Chrome, Opera I'll take anything over IE. Having had to develop to support IE6 for the longest time, I am jaded. I am biased. But if you get burned by something, you usually don't reward the company by continuing to use that product. This is how I feel about IE. I don't want it on my phone.
I hate them and anything they do will not be good enough for me.
No, I'm critical of them and everything they do. Similar to when I tear apart Google or Apple. They are big players with big resources and bigger responsibilities. They do get things right once in a while, this phone and the Zune were not done right in my opinion.
I'm a raving fanboi with a chip on my shoulder and if you want an honest opinion of a product from a company that I hate you're not going to find it here.
Well, to use either-you're-with-us-or-against-us-black-and-white extremes, I can't criticize anything around here without being accused of being a raving fanboi. And who am I a fanboi of exactly?
I really wish they had an ignore button around here.
Yeah, it's called your foes list. Log in, change your relationship with me to 'foe' and then add a foe modifier of -6. As long as you're logged in, you'll never see my posts again. Please, do us both a favor.
My work here is dung.
This is a great move by Microsoft. They are getting the phone exposure while giving employees incentive. Plus this is great PR for Microsoft on the employee side and on the public image side.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
Maybe MS just wants to find out if there are any major design flaws before releasing it to the public... say... like an antenna design flaw... booyaa!
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
I've been using this so-called OS for a while and I am quite positive that when Microsoft made the move from the unstable, bluescreening, freezing, and crashing Windows 95/98/ME 16-bit kernel to the stable Windows NT 3.51/4.0/XP/2000 32-bit kernel they had to do something with the 16-bit operating system developers so they made them all work on Windows Mobile! This is the only logical explanation as to why Windows Mobile sucks so bad, freezes so often, crashes every week, and manages to screw up my phone ever few months on its own corrupting all data... for the last three Windows Mobile phones that I owned. All builds of Windows Mobile 6.5.5 are so horrible from one to another with major changes to the GUI and lack of stability that I have had to downgrade my phone back to 6.5.0 to get some stability and usefulness out of the phone.
Windows Mobile 7 is now made incompatible with 6.5 and earlier versions just sounds like Microsoft is trying to push OS/2 on people by calling it better than Windows 3.11 without the compatibility shims.
I'm just looking for a new Google Android based phone to come out on a CDMA (US - Sprint, Verizon) network that has GSM capabilities with a SIM card and a full-size keyboard, such as the HTC Touch Pro 2 that I currently have to use and endure the Windows Mobile crap. Once that is out I'm ditching Windows Mobile forever!
If a MS employee leaves his MS phone prototype in a bar and no blogger considers it even worth stealing, does it make a ring?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
But why is this news? I mean, go figure, a company gives it's own employees a device it makes in house. Does this warrant discussion at /.?
Seriously call your union reps. No one should be treated in this way in a modern workplace.
Have any of you Zune haters actually used them??
Here's the problem. Unlike the iPod, where I can go to any electronics store and try one out, Zunes are always in a box, behind a glass case, or there's a fake one used for display. And since I don't know anybody who actually owns one, I've never been able to try one out.
It's the beer glasses set on top of it that make the ring.
It's because every bit of development takes resources, and it's well established that you can't just add more developers to get things done faster. I'm sure copy and paste wasn't a novel feature that the development team somehow forgot. More likely it just didn't make the cut for release.
I think it's very fundamental to why Microsoft hasn't been able to release compelling products - they worry about what every customer asks for and in the process deliver what no customer wants. It's _hard_ to avoid the kitchen sink mentality.
For starters, I am a little biased since I program primarily in C# and Silverlight so take it as you may.
I have always told people about my dislike for Apple products because they were so closed and tight and when the iPhone came out, I was like absoluetly not. I will never get one of those. (and to this day that has held true). However, about 6 months ago, I won a 32gig iTouch and I started to use it. To my surprise it was simple, elegent and worked. it was incredible. I have to admit that was impressed. I still wouldn't buy an Apple computer, but I have always been a PC guy and thats what I understand.
I have never used the Android phone so I can't say for sure one way or another if it is cool as well, however my friends say that they love it so that has to count for something.
Regarding the WP7, I am very excited about it, and not just as a fan boy. I have written apps for my windows mobile 6 phone but there did not seem to be a market for any of them, now with the new Marketpalce they are going to have on the phone, I am extatic to be able to put my games and apps up on the store to sell. What I ultimately would like to do, is make a multiplayer turn based game that is cross platform between the 3 systems so that my family (Who currently mostly have the iPhone) and my friends (Who currently mostly have the Android) can all play together. The big one that they love playing is 'Words with friends' and I must admit, I enjoy it as well with my iTouch.
I believe that Microsoft will get most of it right with this new phone OS because they are mimiking to an extent, Apple's App Store and Apples closed loop of what can be on the phone, i.e. XNA and Silverlight. While I would still like to be able to just write something and put it on my phone without going through the hastle of going through the app store, it might actually work out to be fine, because who knows, maybe one of the 3 games I am writing at this moment, will make me some money instead of it being just a hobby.
It got cut but not pasted.
English is not this
Paul's take on that "review" http://windowsphonesecrets.com/2010/07/16/dont-bother-with-this-blog-post-disaster/
A more nuanced summary of the reviews: http://reddevnews.com/blogs/redmond-review/2010/07/wp7-and-the-court-of-pundit-opinion.aspx
This space for rent.
And even after thousands of people started mocking the iPhone for not having it, Apple continued to ignore the complaints. That's the part I find so hard to believe.
Apple has a better grip on consumer psychology than most companies. Promise and don't deliver, and you get lambasted. Far better to quietly work on improving the product without responding to every request from customers. Apple's sales figures show that the initial lack of copy and paste was not a game-ending omission on their part.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ