Windows Phone 7 To Get Multi-Tasking, IE9, Xbox Integration

geek4 writes "Microsoft is planning to introduce multi-tasking and full integration with Internet Explorer 9 in future updates to its Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system later this year. IE9 on Windows Phone 7 will use the same core browsing engine as on PCs. Microsoft also talked about the importance of multi-tasking, and claims it can now offer fast task switching without causing serious detriment to the battery life. In particular, Microsoft said, this will improve the experience of using third party applications. In a demo, a Microsoft engineer showed how a music application called 'Slacker' could keep music playing in the background while the user moved between different applications. By holding down the 'back' button, users can also see all their recently accessed applications, allowing them to switch easily between them." Microsoft also demonstrated how they're integrating WP7 with Xbox 360 consoles, showing a video of players using their phones as an auxiliary touchscreen controller to interact with a Kinect game.

Comments

A Little More Information

[eldavojohn]

Microsoft is planning to introduce multi-tasking and full integration with Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went on to explain that this would involve installing easily exploited libraries and components of IE9 into WP7 kernel space with full read/write access to all other WP7 kernel modules so it could run faster than competing browsers on the devices. He then bragged that it would be extremely trivial for such a compromised phone to broadcast and infect all XBox 360's within range. Where botnets had once been constrained to the family PC, Ballmer boasted a larger market for penetration and manipulation sitting next to televisions in 50 million homes and nearly everyone's pockets. Ballmer explained that this new strategy was actually a throwback to the days of IE6 and he suspected that this move would make IE9 as pervasive as IE6 once was. Sony and Nintendo were unavailable for comment but it's clear Microsoft has once again won the hearts -- and minds -- of the world's malware authors.

Re:A Little More Information

[EdZ]

it would be extremely trivial for such a compromised phone to broadcast and infect all XBox 360's within range

A browser exploit can cause a phone to spontaneously sprout limbs, open your 360, connect itself to the JTAG header, and perform the NAND dumping and flashing nonsense currently required to run unsigned code? That's one hell of a phone!

Re:A Little More Information

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

it would be extremely trivial for such a compromised phone to broadcast and infect all XBox 360's within range

A browser exploit can cause a phone to spontaneously sprout limbs, open your 360, connect itself to the JTAG header, and perform the NAND dumping and flashing nonsense currently required to run unsigned code? That's one hell of a phone!

Ooh. Nokias are real nasty. You've gotta respect the Japanese. They know the way of the samurai.

Re:A Little More Information

[WrongSizeGlass]

Ooh. Nokias are real nasty. You've gotta respect the Japanese. They know the way of the samurai.

Isn't Nokia a Finnish company? When did Japan invade Finland?

Re:A Little More Information

[GCsoftware]

Well both our countries enjoy undercooked fish and are addicted to bath houses, so the difference isn't that huge really.

Re:A Little More Information

[h4rr4r]

us, the consumer

Speak for yourself. I am at times a customer, I am also a producer. I am never a consumer.

Re:A Little More Information

[GigaplexNZ]

They did so while the world was too busy with shock over the Nokia/Windows Phone 7 announcement.

Re:A Little More Information

[Gilmoure]

The Apple iPhone can already connect and control the Apple TV.

Re:A Little More Information

[bmcage]

It's a quote from Transformers. Are you not a nerd?

Re:A Little More Information

[WrongSizeGlass]

It's a quote from Transformers. Are you not a nerd?

Apparently not ... I don't see many movies and now it's starting to show.

WSG: I'd like Things I Don't Know for $200, Alex
Trebek: I'm sorry, that's a very large category. You'll have to be more specific.
WSG: (sad) Ohhh ...

Re:A Little More Information

[Anonymous Coward]

You try so very hard to defend Microsoft, but you won't find too many takers here.

Microsoft has worked long and hard to earn their reputation. It wouldn't be right for their efforts to turn up empty handed now, would it?

And finally I would just like to point out I got labeled a troll for daring to point out

No, that wasn't why you were labeled a troll.
You were labeled a troll for taking an obvious joke at Microsoft's expense and attempting to defend them as if they deserved a break or as if anyone took them seriously anymore.

They are going to be the butt of many jokes for a very long time due to their behavior, and they have quite the debt of evil to work off with good deeds, so much so that they could act like saints for a number of years and still not be caught up.

Multiple times in your post you preach about how choice and competition is good, however Microsoft is very much against both of those things as proven by the past 15 years of their actions.
If you truly cared about choice and competition, you would not be singing praise onto them just yet. History shows it takes them a few months to bare their true colors and try to crush competition and lock their customers in removing any choice.

While you can look on the bright side and say 'only time will tell', we can continue to remember history and fully expect Microsoft to continue the same behavior they always have in the past, proving you wrong as they have time and time again.

Do with this insight as you will. It is not meant as a personal attack, but a personal explanation.
However your own history also leads me to believe you will take it as such (And yes you have lashed out at me personally before, for much less than I have said here, thus the anon post.)
I can only hope you prove me wrong on that prediction however.

Re:A Little More Information

[redemtionboy]

I tried in every way possible to scrub that atrocity from my memory. MichaelBayEXPLOSIONSRAHHHHHH!!

Re:A Little More Information

[perryizgr8]

transformers.

Re:A Little More Information

[tehcyder]

It's a quote from Transformers. Are you not a nerd?

Since when did "nerd" mean "someone who wastes their time watching and quoting from absolutely shite films"?

Re:A Little More Information

[paladinsama]

Since the beginning of time... probably even before that.

Re:A Little More Information

[alcmaeon]

Clearly, Finland has been invaded by the Japanese, hence the faux-Jap name "Nokia." If Finland were still independent, their flagship phone company would have a cool Finnish name like "Torvalds" and the OS would be names something like "Linux."

Re:A Little More Information

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Are you serious?

How about lately news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does not save Nokia....

Multi-tasking

[sakdoctor]

The 90s called, asking for its unique selling point back.

Re:Multi-tasking

[jokermatt999]

Come on, be fair. It took Apple waaay longer than that to figure it out.

Re:Multi-tasking

[commodore6502]

>>>The [80s] called, asking for its unique selling point back.

Fixed. Preemptive multitasking first came to the home in 1985 (on commodores). The other persons were slow to the table (Win1998 and OS X 2001), and acted like it was an innovation, but of course it wasn't.

As for Microsoft and Internet Explorer, they are trying to repeat the success they had in taking-over the PC, but now on mobile phones. I hope they >> null: (i.e. fail).

Re:Multi-tasking

[mazesc]

Exactly. It's just awful, how slowly things are evolving in these locked down mobile systems.

Re:Multi-tasking

[Anonymous Coward]

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Windows_Mobile#Version_history

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/IOS_version_history

I fail to see how it took Apple longer than Microsoft to figure out multi-tasking, since the Windows mobile platform has had no less than 6 additional years of development over iOS (although both still suck).

Re:Multi-tasking

[shutdown -p now]

The other persons were slow to the table (Win1998 and OS X 2001),

The date of 1998 for Windows makes no sense. If it's the reference to Win98, then Win95 had the same kind of multitasking 3 years before that - and yes, it was preemptive (though IIRC there were ways to lock up the system if you wanted). If talking about Windows in general, then NT 3.1 had it in 1993.

Re:Multi-tasking

[msauve]

Preemptive multitasking first came to the home in 1985 (on commodores).

No. Xenix was introduced earlier in the '80s, and MP/M before that, on various (non-Commodore) personal computer architectures.

Re:Multi-tasking

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Multitasking on mobile devices is a different problem than multitasking on desktops. With a desktop, the challenges are primarily allocating memory and CPU. With mobile devices, network and battery are the resources that need to be optimized. So with a desktop app, you can shove it int he background, give it limited cpu cycles and memory without any architectural changes. With mobile devices, it is a lot harder to limit because you don't want the CPU running all the time and even if nothing else is using the network connection, letting some background app use it constantly will result in draining the user's battery and potentially costing them data usage fees.

A good example is push based notifications. If applications ping a server regularly to see if they have updates or if there is a message, that uses a lot more of both resources than if it subscribes to a network service that notifies the device when the same event occurs. The problem is, the former is easier to code and the way developers are used to doing things on desktops where they don't have to worry about battery and data nearly as much.

So when Microsoft says they are adding in support for multitasking, does that mean:

• They've developed a suite of services, optimized for these resources, that applications can hook into ala the iPhone? This is great for battery life, but limits the functionality of third party apps.
• They've built OS level controls that limit resource usage by background apps in order to save battery life and built APIs to make sure the apps will still function as the user expects?
• They are letting apps run willy nilly and use any and all resources and are planning on using their store distribution model to get rid of poorly coded resource hogs?

In short, multitasking for mobile devices is a difficult problem, with different challenges from traditional multitasking on desktops. Google engineers have repeatedly stated that they consider multitasking and battery life problems to be one of their greatest challenges and current failings. Microsoft announcing that they're coming out with something is, then interesting, although it may be a poor clone of one of the other vendors' implementations.

Re:Multi-tasking

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're counting previous versions of Windows Mobile... they could multitask before Apple even put out the iPhone.

So what the hell is your point?

Re:Multi-tasking

[Dogtanian]

The other persons were slow to the table (Win1998 and OS X 2001),

The date of 1998 for Windows makes no sense. If it's the reference to Win98, then Win95 had the same kind of multitasking 3 years before that - and yes, it was preemptive (though IIRC there were ways to lock up the system if you wanted). If talking about Windows in general, then NT 3.1 had it in 1993.

Personally, I'll happily concede that your dates were right, because they're the ones I would have used (had Commodore6502 not raised the subject first) to point out that even in the best case (Windows NT), MS still took 8 years (i.e. the best part of a sodding *decade*!) to get it at all and were over a decade behind for Windows 95, which was their mainstream Windows at the time.

A ******* decade! No need to exaggerate for that to still be poor.

Admittedly, Windows 3.1 still had co-operative multitasking, which meant that if (e.g.) you were telnetting to a remote Internet BBS server (yeah, this was circa 1994)- and the server wasn't responding, then the way the MS telnet client was written, it wouldn't relinquish control until the connection timed out and you could get your desktop back. (Easily enough time to boil a kettle and get some coffee). And even that was still around five years after the Amiga's fully co-operative multitasking.

This isn't just an "Amiga was great!" comment- although the Amiga *was* great for its time, MS should have caught up before then. It's as much a criticism of MS-DOS and those versions of Windows and how pathetic it was that its never-known-better (and conditioned to think that this was "normal" or the way that "proper" computers worked) users actually thought that pre-emptive multitasking was something brilliant, shiny and new in the mid-90s, instead of wondering why it was such a big deal when any remotely modern operating system should have had it years before that.

The same MS-DOS users who get nostalgic about the rudimentary "configurability" of all those tedious configuration files but don't realise that they only needed to dick about with that sort of stuff in the first place because their OS was a GUI pasted onto a kludgily-hacked descendant of an early-80s ripoff of a late-70s Z80-era operating system (i.e. CP/M) masquerading unsuccessfully as something modern. And they'd say "yes, but it was fifteen years ago" like that justified it. Yes, it was the 1990s- not the ******* 1970s.

Bleh.

Re:Multi-tasking

[shutdown -p now]

Well, MacOS was no better at the time, and lagged for more. And, yes, the majority of users at the time considered all that quite normal. So by all accounts I dare say that it was Amiga which was ahead of its time, not MS and Apple which were behind.

Re:Multi-tasking

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed but MS had the ability to see what Apple did wrong and still made the same mistakes. That's what people often complain about when it comes to MS that they're always at least one step behind the competition which is what will happen when you rely on the competition to come with ideas to 'borrow'.

Re:Multi-tasking

[dr00p]

You are absolutely right .... except ... my S60 Symbian N95 phone did that long time ago. In fact it still does it better than iOS or Android...
Too bad it's one of the few things it does really good.

Re:Multi-tasking

[phonewebcam]

"A poor clone of one of the other vendors' implementations". Bing!

Re:Multi-tasking

[dannys42]

I'd give you +insightful points if I had any.

I'd also like add that Apple is the only mobile company I know of (please correct me if I'm wrong) that actually seemed to seriously address these issues when they said "multitasking." (Personally I think they should've given it a new name and branded it, but that's another story.) In true Apple fashion, if they couldn't address those issues, they simply weren't going to release the feature. All the techies complained about it, but when they finally did implement it, they went all the way. It took them time to figure out the issues and figure out the use-cases that developers really wanted when they said "multitasking."

Google, on the other hand, capitalized on Apple's bad press by saying, "here you go you can have multitasking" And they just did it the same way that the desktop did. And of course people ran into performance and battery life issues.

Microsoft had multitasking even in WinCE devices. But every person I knew that had the thing constantly had to jumble through the task manager, closing apps.

In Apple's approach, while I do understand and appreciate what they've done technically, I love the fact that I don't *have* to know anything about how they did it to use the device. It just works and I don't have to worry about apps burning my battery life.

Re:Multi-tasking

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The problem is, the former is easier to code and the way developers are used to doing things on desktops where they don't have to worry about battery and data nearly as much.

multi-tasking is all about manageing multiple CPU entities and nothing at all to do with battery life or power management.

Thank you for demonstrating my point.

Seriously though, if you're using the term so narrowly WP7 already has multitasking and iOS always did. Clearly you did not RTFA.

Re:Multi-tasking

[h4rr4r]

It also means you can't do what you want with it. Believe it or not, there are some apps I want to stay open all the time.

Re:Multi-tasking

[Dogtanian]

Well, MacOS was no better at the time

Come to think of it, I *had* intended mentioning that the Mac was even later (didn't get proper pre-emptive multitasking until OS X in the late 90s IIRC). However, I kind of forgot about that when I got into the general anti-MS-DOS rant. :-)

And, yes, the majority of users at the time considered all that quite normal.

That says more about the blinkered state of mind of users who hadn't used anything but MS-DOS and considered its limitations and foibles to be normal, rather than a sign of it being an exceptionally dated OS full of kludgey workarounds to its original design limitations.

So by all accounts I dare say that it was Amiga which was ahead of its time, not MS and Apple which were behind.

You could argue it that way. That said, there was no good reason that (e.g.) Windows should have taken almost ten years to get around to doing the same thing.

But I think that MS-DOS's architectural limitations approaching the mid-90s weren't simply not as good as the Amiga. They were ******* dated in absolute terms, because the OS was basically a hacked ripoff of the 1970s CP/M! There was nothing "magic" about pre-emptive multitasking- could easily have been done on the Pentium, the Amiga's mid-80s 68000 was much less powerful- MS-DOS was just dated crap by then.

And because the users hadn't used anything but MS, they probably assumed this was the way it was meant to be.

Of course, now that multitasking is commonplace on computers, a "typical" user would (rightly) be shocked and annoyed if subjected to the restrictions of Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS.

Re:Multi-tasking

[ArAgost]

though IIRC there were ways to lock up the system if you wanted

Oh, there were lots even if you didn't want to.

Re:Multi-tasking

[lord_mike]

They didn't seem to have a problem with multitasking on previous windows mobile devices. I've used Windows Mobile devices going all the way back to Palm-Sized PC (i.e. version 1) and multitasking never presented much of a problem back then, nor did it present much of a problem with version 6 a year ago.

What their announcement means is that they realized that dumbing-down their devices to try and be like the iPhone was a stupid move. They thought that "simplifying" features might make their buggy software more "robust". It ended up only making their devices look lame and behind the times.

Re:Multi-tasking

[BitZtream]

Perhaps you should stop thinking what you learned in your CS class applies to the real world and actually join the real world long enough to notice the fact that phones that blindly multitask fucking suck. Example: Windows Mobile 7 ... Full on multitasking ... and no battery life unless you had perfectly written apps ... which is rather rare. Don't stop that shitty app thats eating CPU, welp it doesn't care, its be happy to run in the background while your battery drains because as you said, it can manage the memory and CPU while it happily drains the better because the user forgot its running in the background.

Versus something like multitasking on the iPhone which is really task switching with the capability to run a few very low resource background threads as needed.

You can take any phone that lets apps run away with like a desktop OS and shove it up your ass as it'll probably be more useful there.

Why are you talking about kernel locks? $50 says you don't even know what BKL means (and no, going to google it now doesn't count douchebag) You clearly don't know what you're talking about so you'd probably do well to just STFU before someone schools you, won't be me, I'm just too lazy tonight. Just because you read someones blog doesn't mean you actually have a clue, and those of us with a clue can see through better than the windshield on my car. So linux and NT had shitty kernels in the past, whats your point? They had global locks that killed performance in an SMP environment so it didn't scale for shit, again, whats your point, has nothing to do with Mobile phones and nothing to do with multitask, its related to SMP. 1995 called, they want their clue back. If you think the BKL that is so common to OSes is a piss poor design than you've never worked as a professional where the right technical decision could be the completely wrong practical decision for countless number of reasons. When pretty much everything ran on a single cpu, and you need to tack on SMP support in a hurry, its far more cost effective and efficient to throw some big locks into the kernel and move on ... adding proper SMP support to an existing OS takes a lot of time, effort and debugging to get all the things that were never intended to work that way into a state thats safe to do so ... which is why Linux for example has taken so long to clean up. For the first 15 years or so of Linux's existence there was no to very little reason you'd bother with SMP, and so coding SMP support would actually be inefficient.

Those kernel locks cause no performance degradation to speak of in a uniprocessor system and are irrelevant to any discussion about phones for that very reason. Maybe later this year or next when we start seeing dual core phones then it might matter, until then it makes no difference.

Re:Multi-tasking

[BitZtream]

You don't think Win3.1 had preemption? It did. It sucked at it, but it did. Generally due to the missing memory protection multitasking as just asking for death, but it was there, Mac OS 8 or 9 got preemption as well

Re:Multi-tasking

[gig]

Please, your content-based explanation of the actual issue is reducing the opportunity for freetard trolling. Explaining that running a NeXT box on a battery you can hide in your hand necessitated some new design thinking really gets in the way of trolls explaining that iPhone can't multitask because it is "closed" and is a "toy." Obviously, the 1337 user wants to run 10 apps in parallel for 1 hour, not 50 apps in serial for 10 hours like some kind of CS retard.

Re:Multi-tasking

[gig]

> They didn't seem to have a problem with multitasking on previous windows mobile devices.

Really? You got 10 hours of talk time, Web browsing, and video playback on a single charge on your Windows Mobile 6 phone? Cause nobody else got that until iPhone.

Re:Multi-tasking

[Rexdude]

Symbian solved this problem about ten years ago. You can load as many 3rd party apps as memory will permit without any artificial restrictions. But oh yeah, it's 'obsolete'.

Re:Multi-tasking

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It also means you can't do what you want with it. Believe it or not, there are some apps I want to stay open all the time.

Absolutely. If you don't have the option of running any and every app in the background your choices are limited. If you are a geek and knowledgable to make an informed choice about battery life versus the desired functionality, it is certainly not ideal to be restricted by what is allowed in the store, so if you want the iPhone hardware you probably will jailbreak it or install a different OS; or more likely buy one of the more open Android phones.

For phone makers and average users, however, it makes more sense to cover the limited multitasking use cases with services (alarms, audio playing, push messaging, etc.). There really aren't that many tasks a non-geek user wants to have running in the background and as has been shown in the Android ecosystem, if it is allowed, developers will code horrible apps that truly destroy battery performance on phones, moreover most users won't understand it is the app causing the problem and will blame the phone maker. They don't know the Facebook app or Handcent is failing to properly suspend or forgoing push messaging and constantly connecting to the internet and pinging remote servers. They just think the HTC EVO is a piece of crap because the battery only lasts 4 hours so they decide to never buy and HTC again. Guess what solution the average user and HTC prefers? Google is working on a solution now, but we don't yet know what it will be.

So?

[should_be_linear]

Roles are switched: MS is re-implementing experience that users are already accustomed to on Linux (Android). And expecting 3rd party developers to switch or at least "also support" their platform for 1% of users.

Re:So?

[ivucica]

Not only Android, mind you.

Re:So?

[PickyH3D]

As Nokia shifts to support Windows Phone, I think that 1% will start to grow considerably. At the very least, people will accidentally buy Windows Phone as they continue their Nokia stable of phones, which still outsells Android. Add to that their very real customer satisfaction rate (a large percentage [reportedly 90%+ in their marketing material] of a relatively small number), and you have a huge problem for Android.

Not to mention, as Android starts to falter based on its inability to force carriers and manufacturers to upgrade. Why is my friend still using an unrooted Evo running Android 2.2? According to the table on Wikipedia, less than 1% of Android users are running 2.3 (the version with the fix that stops texts from going to random people...). Over 10% are still running Android 1.5 and 1.6, combined.

My officemate (we're both Java developers) wants an Android, but he refuses to get one for two reasons. First, there are major hardware changes coming in the next month or two, which make it obvious to wait (he may actually get the Bionic). Second, fragmentation means he cannot depend on actually receiving any software support after whatever is initially on the phone. That's pathetic.

That is not a platform that I want to develop for, nor is it one that I want to even use. Google needs to take a serious look at this fragmentation and take care of it, or Windows Phone really will take over its current position. After all, it's not like most Android users have a track record for buying non-free apps that are locking them to the platform.

Re:So?

[MemoryDragon]

Jepp the problem here is that IE9 still is significantly subpar compared to mobile webkit. I am not going to optimize any site for WP7 and its shoddy browser if I can cover around 80% of all other phones without extra effort.
It would be about time for the IE team to get off their collective asses and deliver a competition to webkit and mozilla instead of being 4 years behind constantly.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Always, always bet against the Slashbot groupthink. In this case, it's "Nokia is doomed!" That is not the case. Probably a good idea to buy Nokia stock now.

And you are right, the Nokia-MS alliance will eat into Android like crazy. Both platforms will be engaged in a race to the bottom.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I do have to say, many parts of that comparison except for the "expecting developers to follow for a 1% market share" aren't really that valid. The majority of windows features are generally slightly improved versions of linux's past. UAC = SUDO from 1980, NTFS more or less is ext2 grade of security (loong way to go considering still needs regular defrags etc...), big problem is right now Microsoft has no possible edge to get in, all competitors already have market share, fully developed apps and several years worth of popularity. Microsoft has... most of the features both competitors already have, and integration with a games console? They certainly don't have an ease of use advantage over apple, nor software advantages, they also don't have flexibility and freedom over android. The only possible advantage I could see is they might have an edge in software to synchronize with office/outlook down the road.

Re:So?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Always, always bet against the Slashbot groupthink.

So... buy Apple?

Re:So?

[Reapman]

Whole lotta FUD in there...
"less than 1% of Android users are running 2.3 (the version with the fix that stops texts from going to random people...). Over 10% are still running Android 1.5 and 1.6, combined."

First off, ya, Gingerbread is basically not here. I'll agree on that point. However your touting this sending texts to random people thing as a major issue. I use texting quite a bit on my phone (thanks to a handful of people that I know that use it all the time) and have NEVER had this issue. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I think your blowing it far FAR out of proportion. I also don't know anyone else with an Android phone that has this issue. I've seen more issues with iPhone's autocorrect when I had an iPhone (or Android's autocorrect, or anyone elses) then Android's "MAJOR" text issue.

Secondly using your own numbers, your telling me that 89% of Android phones are running 2.x? Ya, that's some SERIOUS fragmentation.

"Second, fragmentation means he cannot depend on actually receiving any software support after whatever is initially on the phone. That's pathetic."
WHA?!?! no software support? Where did THAT come from? Ok so PC's have more then 1 OS and more then 1 Hardware type. Are you telling me I cannot depend on getting any software support for my PC?

I develop app's for Android and have had zero issues, the biggest challenge is making sure the graphics are ok on different screen resolutions - any Java programmer that can handle threading is going to have no problem handling different screen resolutions. Hell, it hasn't hurt the PC industry any...

What, did Programmers suddenly become dumb or something? ZOMG, I have to support 800x480 AND 800x400.. ZOMG, only 89% of people use Froyo, I don't know what Operating System version to target!!

Give me a break...

Re:So?

[ADRA]

Why not compare the 'fragmentation' of android against platforms that actually have some history in the mobile game shall we?
1. Android 2.3 is brand new and I think anyone paying attention to Android will know that it takes at least 6 months before any amount of -normal- people can actually start using them. If Google released 2.3 in 6 months with 50% market update adoption, would that somehow change your perception of the OS? For the 10% on obsolete equipment, its your decision to support them or not into the future. If you don't care about the shrinking 10% of the market, then skip them and support at least 2.0 or 2.2. Frankly, for most non-games or niche phone-features applications, 1.6's API is more than enough. Developing my own applications, I never thought that my applications would ever break on OS upgrades and lo and behold they still work even though they're compiled against API 1.6 on practically any phone/device that android runs on. Native applications don't upgrade as smoothly as that, but thats the trade-off that you accept when you build targeted platforms.
2. Which platforms have a better upgrade cycle?
2a. Windows Mobile -- Did these phones ever get OS upgrades? I doubt that often
2b. Symbian -- Ditto from WP. You pretty much get what you paid for
2c. Apple -- They will release updates in timely basis or they'll just completely drop support for the phone. It seems that 2 years is the effective EOL for OS upgrades.
2d. Windows Phone 7 -- We'll wait and see, but if its anything like their old release cycles, then buyer beware.

I'm in the Nokia/WP7 nay sayers camp on this one. I'm pleasantly optimistic about Blackberry's moves. Their success isn't assured, but at least they seem to be making good moves to move their brand and company forward. For a company I threw in with MS, Palm, & Nokia, I think they have a chance to rebound. Nokia and Microsoft have yet to prove that they are making any kind of compelling solutions. WP7 is alright, but for a closed ecosystem product, it has to out-quack Apple. As for open-ish systems, Android will continue to eat competition in terms of Value and rapid innovation.

Re:So?

[SpinyNorman]

I don't think anyone in the market for a high end smart phone is going to be unaware what it's running and buy one by accident. More liikely current Nokia owners screwed by this about face and lack of upgrade path are going to look elsewhere next time. I don't think Nokia yet realize the amount of customer loyalty they've just lost. Any Nokia customer who wanted a Linux (Maemo) based phone will now have to switch to Android or even HP (Palm's WebOS).

Fragmentation is certainly an issue for Android, but this is more an issue for app developers who'd like to target a large unified market than it is for users. If you really want Android 2.x (or 3.0) so bad and can't get it on your current phone, are you really likely to switch to Microsoft out of spite, or just go buy yourself what you want (or just do nothing)?

I don't see Microsoft as guaranteeing major updates either.. Will your old MS phone run WP7? Will your WP7 phone run Windows 8 (already in beta, and targetting mobile devices)?

Re:So?

[ThePromenader]

MS is re-implementing experience that users are already accustomed to

...and pushing it on their greater yet-unaware market share... in other words: business as usual!

Re:So?

[Dog-Cow]

NTFS does not need defragging, and for a long time MS did not have any official API to even allow for it. Third-party software hooked into the filesystem drivers and were basically barely-sanctioned hacks. In terms of security, NTFS has supported ACLs (both mandatory and discretionary) from day one. Ext2 has no such support.

Re:So?

[Junta]

I think Nokia is running a big risk here.

If their position is so strong (outselling Android), then doing any sort of platform burning is sheer madness. So to make this drastic move in the first place, the supporting fact of 'outsells Android' has to be presumed to be faltering.

If they've decided they *are* losing on platform but have good hardware, then binding themselves *exclusively* to the MS offering seems dubious. They said their number one priority is knocking out Android's share. If they aren't propping up their own platform, they shouldn't put their business on the line for the sake of MS when they can hedge their bets and do both.

Re:So?

[Voyager529]

There's no way to upgrade phone running Windows Mobile 6.0 to 6.5, or upgrade Windows Mobile 6.5 to phone to Windows Phone 7.

This is complete crap...well, it's mostly crap. My HTC Rhodium got a 6.1->6.5 upgrade FROM THE CARRIER. My HTC Excalibur got a WinMo 5.0->6.0 upgrade FROM THE CARRIER. quite a few other devices got upgraded software on old-school WinMo. xda-developers took care of a few other upgrade paths; e.g. if I wanted to run 6.5 on my Excalibur there were quite a handful of ports for it. The HTC Leo happens to have a WP7 compatible processor architecture, so again the xda devs have manged to port a mostly-working build of WP7 to the handset. Neither HTC nor T-Mobile are providing officially blessed versions of WP7 for the handset, but that's different than saying it's impossible.

Re:So?

[PickyH3D]

I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I think your blowing it far FAR out of proportion.

Intentionally to make the point. Sure, it happens to a very small group, but the odds of it hitting you probably increase with every text that you send on an Android 2.2 device. My point isn't even that it's the end of the world. Rather, my point is that such fundamental issue could be left unfixed on your phone, and that's a huge deal.

Secondly using your own numbers, your telling me that 89% of Android phones are running 2.x? Ya, that's some SERIOUS fragmentation.

They're not my numbers. I linked to them directly on Wikipedia.

And yes, that is serious fragmentation because what I didn't note was that of that 89%, 31.4% are running Android 2.0, or Android 2.1, which came out well over a year ago. A tenth of the platform is using Android 1.5 or 1.6. Roughly a third is using Android 2.0 or 2.1. About half is using Android 2.2. Less than a hundredth is using Android 2.3. Those are huge percentages in every single group, except the latest release that was not even released this year.

WHA?!?! no software support? Where did THAT come from? Ok so PC's have more then 1 OS and more then 1 Hardware type. Are you telling me I cannot depend on getting any software support for my PC?

You missed the entire point. This goes right back to my original point of the texting bug. If you are stuck in Android 2.2 with a brand new phone, then you have no support.

What, did Programmers suddenly become dumb or something? ZOMG, I have to support 800x480 AND 800x400.. ZOMG, only 89% of people use Froyo, I don't know what Operating System version to target!!

Tell that to the Angry Birds developers. And 89% are not on Froyo. It has not even broken 60%. Clearly the target, but also clearly a joke.

Re:So?

[DigiShaman]

Well, I can say from a support side of things, all those different Droid GUIs makes my life hell. It's not like the iPhone or BlackBerry where the UI is somewhat unified across multiple phones. But the Droid platform sucks for remote support because vendors (and their mothers too) tacks on additional shit. It can become confusing as hell to walk someone over the phone through configuring corporate e-mail.

Re:So?

[lord_mike]

XBox has been MS's only real success story in the last decade and they did it by making their system open, flexible, and network aware than their competitors--basically what Android did to iPhone. They don't have the same advantage here.

I love how you mention Zune as a great success story... The Zune has been Microsoft's second biggest failure to date (next to the Kin, which was a preview to WP7). Unfortunately for Microsoft, WP7 has Zune written all over it--same ideas, same marketing, same distribution, etc. The ultimate failure of the Kin has been a bad omen for WP7, which has been marketed as the Kin+. They need to make big changes to catch up. Microsoft is making a bold, smart move with Nokia to stay relevant, but it is still a desperate move with the odds against it paying off. If it does pay off, then it will be big, but it's like a hail mary pass at the end of a football game--hope it works 'cos it's all you got left.

Re:So?

[jomcty]

NTFS does not need defragging

You're joking, right? I wish I had some mod points to score your comment funny.

Re:So?

[flimflammer]

I'm sure original Windows Mobile users were accustomed to multitasking too. I'm not really sure why Microsoft opted not to support multitasking initially on WP7 but it's not like this was their first jump into mobile operating systems and they are just learning this now.

Re:So?

[cbhacking]

How so? Serious question, what have you found that IE9 can't do but (mobile) WebKit can? The whole idea behind IE9 is that you can use exactly the same HTML(5) and CSS(3) as for other browsers, but IE9 will (sometimes) do it faster.

The current WP7 browser is based on IE7, so yeah, it's shoddy in that sense (it actually works well in the little testing I've given it, including some sites that mobile WebKit can't handle). The point of this announcement is that the next version of the WP7 browser *won't* be "shoddy" any more.

Re:So?

[cos(0)]

I am not an NTFS expert, but I do know that Windows XP's official defragmenter can operate on NTFS partitions. If you believe its "before" and "after" charts, it actually optimizes block layout. I have no doubt that Vista and 7 have the same.

Re:So?

[exomondo]

And yes, that is serious fragmentation because what I didn't note was that of that 89%, 31.4% are running Android 2.0, or Android 2.1, which came out well over a year ago. A tenth of the platform is using Android 1.5 or 1.6. Roughly a third is using Android 2.0 or 2.1. About half is using Android 2.2. Less than a hundredth is using Android 2.3.

Oh no, iOS has serious fragmentation too:
4.2.1: 52.89 %
4.1: 27.50 %
3.1.3: 6.43 %
4.0.2: 3.36 %
4.0.1: 2.95 %
4.0: 2.94 %
3.1.2: 2.52 %
3.2.2: 0.49 %
3.0: 0.22 %
3.1: 0.21 %
3.0.1: 0.10 %
3.2: 0.10 %
3.1.1: 0.10 %
4.2: 0.09 %
3.2.1: 0.07 %
2.2.1: 0.02 %
2.2: 0.00 %
From here

Seriously, targeting multiple OS versions and hardware configurations has been normal through the life of the desktop PC, this is not new.

Re:So?

[exomondo]

the problem here is that IE9 still is significantly subpar compared to mobile webkit.

How so?

I am not going to optimize any site for WP7 and its shoddy browser

Specifically what is 'shoddy'?

Re:So?

[exomondo]

I love how you mention Zune as a great success story... The Zune has been Microsoft's second biggest failure to date (next to the Kin, which was a preview to WP7).

You're thinking of the Zune player, he means Zune as in the Zune platform.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, WP7 has Zune written all over it--same ideas, same marketing, same distribution, etc.

Really? I don't see much similarity in their ideas, marketing and distribution to the Zune player.

Re:So?

[jrumney]

I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I think your blowing it far FAR out of proportion.

Intentionally to make the point. Sure, it happens to a very small group...

Probably a group that can be counted on one hand, and only under very specific circumstances (Drafting a message, cancelling, then sending another message to a different contact whose phone number ends in the same 7 digits). The issue only received a huge number of spam comments after it was linked on facebook, 4chan and the like.

Re:So?

[jrumney]

Google is no better than Microsoft was the first time around because the hardware manufacturers are the same. The only difference for Windows Phone is that now they have Nokia as well - so even more variations in hardware to cope with. There is no way that Microsoft can release the updates itself - mobile platforms do not have the standard hardware architecture that PCs do, and making a mobile platform support all the hardware platform variations in existence would bloat it to the point where it is no longer mobile enough to compete.

Re:So?

[Tacvek]

NTFS is not as dependent on fragmentation as the FAT operating systems, and Microsoft has been improving the way blocks are selected with each release of Windows NT, so with Version 6.1 (A.K.A."7") never running a defragmenter is not really a problem if you are only using say 25% of your disk space (which is quite common for many users.) Win7 nevertheless comes with a scheduled task for background defragmentation that is active by default. (I'm not entirely sure if Vista has that task by default.)

Re:So?

[gig]

No, Microsoft is doing the same old thing as always: re-implementing experience from an Apple product. The experience is not multitasking of 3rd party apps, it is long battery life due to aggressive management of 3rd party apps, i.e. go to sleep when the user dismisses you.

As for Android, there are 10,000 complaints about its shitty battery life for every compliment on its multitasking.

Re:So?

[gig]

It's actually not that hard to have a 90% customer satisfaction rate when you have zero mainstream users. The small number of people who have bought a Windows Phone 7 device right now own Xbox, Windows 7 Ultimate, have Zune passes, and a pretty good chunk of them actually work for Microsoft or one of their partners. It's like iPhone's 90% customer satisfaction rating in 2007 did not really tell us it would have a 90% customer satisfaction rating today. Apple had to do a ton of work to carry that satisfaction from the 6 million who bought the 2007 iPhone at least in part on faith and the 200 million who use iOS today. Maybe Microsoft will do that work over the next few years, but 2 million licenses sold to handset makers in the first quarter in 2010 smartphone numbers, that is not a lot of faith. That's like 7 days of iOS or 5 days of Android. That is less than Windows Mobile 6. The Nokia deal is already a reboot.

Re:So?

[gig]

> However your touting this sending texts to random people thing as a major issue

You missed the point. Yes, the bug itself is bad, even if it only affects a few users, when it bites you, it bites bad, it can be very embarrassing if a text meant for your girlfriend goes to your mother or a co-worker it's a privacy flaw, the privacy of your text conversations is compromised until the bug is fixed. However, the larger issue is how do bugs get patched in the wild on Android? There's no way to patch it overnight because of Android's carrier-style updating. With iPhone's iPod-style updating, Apple would ship iOS v4.2.4 (or whatever) and this bug would be fixed on 75% of handsets within a week, and 90% within a month. Worldwide, every carrier. iOS has had bugs of this severity that were just erased almost overnight. They're gone, they are history, the platform moves forward, the users feel supported.

Re:So?

[cowboy76Spain]

It's actually not that hard to have a 90% customer satisfaction rate when you have zero mainstream users. The small number of people who have bought a Windows Phone 7 device right now own Xbox, Windows 7 Ultimate, have Zune passes, and a pretty good chunk of them actually work for Microsoft or one of their partners. It's like iPhone's 90% customer satisfaction rating in 2007 did not really tell us it would have a 90% customer satisfaction rating today. Apple had to do a ton of work to carry that satisfaction from the 6 million who bought the 2007 iPhone at least in part on faith and the 200 million who use iOS today. Maybe Microsoft will do that work over the next few years, but 2 million licenses sold to handset makers in the first quarter in 2010 smartphone numbers, that is not a lot of faith. That's like 7 days of iOS or 5 days of Android. That is less than Windows Mobile 6. The Nokia deal is already a reboot.

The GP talks about satisfaction of Nokia users (now, per WM7)

Of course, not that carefully understanding what are you talking about is needed for successfully trolling/fanboying (in fact it should be avoided to enter any relevant, verifiable data into the discussion).

Re:So?

[Reapman]

Feel supported? Why is it it took over a year for my phone's bluetooth to work with my 2010 car? And only when I switched from iPhone to Android? A few months after I ditched my iPhone apparently Apple fixed it but by then they lost a customer . Ya I felt supported alright... I bet more people were affected by that then this texting bug..

The only issues I can think of Apple fixing "overnight" were easily reproducable issues that affected everyone, not a bug that almost nobody has had and is almost impossible to replicate...

Brain to get Multi-tasking, IE9, Xbox Integration.

[Tibia1]

Fixed that for you.

Re:Brain to get Multi-tasking, IE9, Xbox Integrati

[msauve]

"The same thing we do every day, Pinky. Try to take over the world."

It didn't have this already?

[Posting=!Working]

Am I the only one that's really surprised that multitasking wasn't already a feature? I thought it was weird when they announced it for the iPhone 4 like it was some huge breakthrough. Symbian might be a piece of crap as a smartphone OS, but, damn, they've had multitasking for 10 years now. It's not a hardware issue. How did this get ignored for so long in iOS and Windows phone?

Re:It didn't have this already?

[dunezone]

Pff, the Windows Phone SDK doesn't even give us access to the flash on the camera unless you're an OEM developer.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[LWATCDR]

It is sad that none of the other Smartphone OSs seem to multiask as well as WebOS. The card interface is actually very good.
Gee so WP7 will someday be as good as IOS, Android, WebOS, and Symbian. Gee sign me up......
BTW Windows Mobile has had multitasking for a long time as well. Microsoft took it out of WP7 because? Maybe because IOS didn't do it and they wanted to copy IOS?

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Pumpkin Tuna]

Mainly because the times when I actually need to use two programs at the same time on my iPhone are vanishingly small. It already did some multitasking (ie, listening to music while web surfing. In fact, the main complaint was that people wanted to be able to stream Pandora while doing other things. When it comes down to it, you're looking at a screen smaller than a deck of cards. Multi-tasking on that is pretty much useless.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[ivucica]

I have multitasking on my jailbroken iOS 3.1.3. Let me tell you, that device has barely enough memory to run one app. Most work just fine, but Twitter for iPhone is a major resource hog, and trying to multitask it with, let's say, Opera and Stanza? No-no.

It's easy to go "why the hell is that an innovation", especially considering Windows Mobile had it 10 years ago. On the other hand, it really wasn't working out well on WM, and on iOS, it would've made the experience horrible.

In retrospect, I'm happy with how the situation was handled with iOS, but maybe, just maybe, Microsoft should have not repeated the same mistakes and put them into spotlight once Apple has resolved their issues.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Fri13]

I dont want samekind multitasking as Symbian use (the same from desktop/server OS's). I want to use what Android, iOS and WP7 has currently. A "Smart multitasking". Meaning that I as a user, dont need to think what is running in background, will apps eat my battery, did I close the heavy game or anything else.
And still with "smart multitasking" I can enjoy fully things like background rsync backup to my home computer while I browse web or I watch youtube.
Buffering a streamed movie from my home computer when I am typing SMS and so on.

With smart multitasking, the background jobs are not left out behind to allow them to do what ever they want like on Symbian.
The laugh is with Symbian that user really need to take care about multitasking. While "smart multitasking" allows user just to forget and actually just use the damn phone as it would be a simple device what people just carry with them to be possible contact people.

The multitasking what desktop/server computers (and Symbian) use would be needed on smartphones if they would allow running two tasks same time at the screen. That the user would actually have a need for two separate window at sametime.

There are different demands for multitasking. Smartphones does not have none of them.

WIMP design (Window, Icons, Menus and Pointing Devices) does not work on smartphones or tablets. The IMP design is the fundamental function that we actually forget the window options and we just manage tasks, not windows. The task management must be moved to be made by the device itself as smart way.

On desktop/server computers the same smart multitasking would be a pain in a ass, but it is true savior on smartphones and tablets.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[ItsLenny]

IOS STILL doesn't have actual multi-tasking... it just allows certain threads to continue running in the background.. but the app itself is suspended it's basically just fast app switching +

Re:It didn't have this already?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

IOS STILL doesn't have actual multi-tasking... it just allows certain threads to continue running in the background.. but the app itself is suspended it's basically just fast app switching +

And and iPhone users are very thankful for the battery life that saves.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Posting=!Working]

Multi-tasking is something I use nearly daily, and wouldn't go back to a single task phone.

Off the top of my head, here's a few things I use multitasking for. This is far from an exhaustive list, just the first bunch of things I could think of.

Looking for a business on Google maps and checking their website.
Taking a quick picture while doing anything else.
Games pause and minimize when I get a phone call, text or have to/want to do anything else.
Browsing the web or playing a game while waiting for apps to download and install.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Fri13]

Have you checked multitasking apps for Android? They offer cards and even same kind Ui's as what Maemo has on N900.
You have lots of different ways and gestures to give you possibilities to get wanted.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[shutdown -p now]

It's not at all a technical issue. Both iOS and WP7 can handle multitasking just fine on OS level, and you can see that in action if you use the stock apps (e.g. media player, which plays in background). It's strictly a limitation on third-party software, deliberately enforced.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[bdh]

How did this get ignored for so long in iOS and Windows phone?

Because other than in a bullet chart, multitasking doesn't show up in marketing.

I have a Nokia 5800. I have several friends with iPhones (3 and 4), and they're constantly trying to prove that the iPhone is "better". Sure, Symbian multitasks like no one's business, but the iPhone has more apps and a better UI. So iPhone grabbed something like 70% of the Japanese smartphone market in 3 years, while Nokia has had to partner with Microsoft just for survival.

Another example was OS/2. OS/2 had pre-emptive multitasking years before the Windows operating system(s) it was competing against, but it looked like crap, and users stayed away in droves. The same was true comparing Windows 95 to MacOS prior 1995; it wasn't until Apple went to a Unix based system in 1997-ish (my memory's fuzzy about the dates) that the Mac got features like pre-emptive multitasking and proper dynamic memory allocation.

Tech features may sell to slashdotters, but most of the population cares a lot more about the UI than what's under the hood.

Like most of my geek buddies, on Friday, I looked at Nokia's partnership with MS as one of the longer suicide notes in history. On Saturday, I was out with friends who aren't all techs, and I was surprised that many of them considered it a good thing, and were interested to see what a NokiaSoft phone would look like.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[EXrider]

Of course it's good, anything that's competition to keep the developers of iOS and Android on their toes is good. Hopefully HP can step up to the plate with Palm now as well.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[PickyH3D]

Microsoft completely wrote their mobile platform starting from a new WinCE kernel. In their eyes, Windows Mobile is no-more.

Therefore, the APIs could note be written and effectively tested in time to ensure performance and battery life were maintained. This is similar to the fact that when WP7 was announced, iOS (then, iPhone OS 3.0) had not announced multitasking, nor had they announced that the original iPhone (2G) would not be supported at all, and the iPhone 3G would not support multitasking.

As it turns out, the iPhone 3G does not have enough memory to handle multitasking. It's performance is abysmal, at best, with it turned on (on a jailbroken device). So, with that in mind, I would consider the brisk pace that Microsoft has actually developed the entire OS, "soon" (mid-to-late 2011) to be including multitasking, a very good sign. Under two years to have a fully featured mobile OS? That's faster than Google.

My biggest concern with Windows Phone 7 is how long will Microsoft play ball with the carriers before simply bypassing them to send users the updates directly. Users will have waited about two months for the first WP7 update simply because the carriers are dragging their feet and stifling everyone, except themselves. I hope this process woke Microsoft up because users getting screwed by the carriers is going to look bad on Microsoft, as the carriers will not accept any of the blame.

The only mobile OS development that has been faster might be WebOS, which took a nosedive following HP's purchase of Palm.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Pumpkin Tuna]

Not sure it you are meaning to be ironic or not, but doesn't a non-multitasking iphone do all that anyway?

Re:It didn't have this already?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

BTW Windows Mobile has had multitasking for a long time as well. Microsoft took it out of WP7 because? Maybe because IOS didn't do it and they wanted to copy IOS?

Or maybe they were trying to address certain stability and battery life issues with WinMo.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[WARM3CH]

WP7 and old iPhone did supported all of the scenarios you presented. The point is in none of your examples 2 programs need to run at the same time. The suspend/resume model used in WP7 and old iPhone is/was sufficient for all those cases. What is new is the possibility to bug the CPU in two user programs at the same time (both OS can/could run multiple system tasks at the same time). It is sometimes needed but circumstances are much more limited than initially appears.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Aqualung812]

When it comes down to it, you're looking at a screen smaller than a deck of cards. Multi-tasking on that is pretty much useless.

I commonly run Glympse while listening to Pandora on my way home, so my wife knows when to expect me. I also sometime run Trapster to check for speed traps. None of those apps give a shit about the screen most of the time. That then allows me to run one of many apps that show traffic information on the screen. Running 4 apps at the same time might slow my charge rate to a crawl, but it is extremely useful.

At the same time, the lack of that ability is keeping me from moving from iPhone to WM7. However, this fall I'm sure I'll try one out.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Kizeh]

In my case, run a turn-by-turn GPS navigation program (Ovi Maps) while streaming music / podcasts to my car stereo, and have the phone check email and facebook for updates so that when I stop they're fresh and up to date. Run a GPS sports tracking thingy (like Sports Tracker) while playing music when mountain biking and allow me to check maps, web, email, whatever while waiting for slower people to catch up.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[LWATCDR]

"This is similar to the fact that when WP7 was announced, iOS (then, iPhone OS 3.0) had not announced multitasking, nor had they announced that the original iPhone (2G) would not be supported at all, and the iPhone 3G would not support multitasking."
But Android and WebOS did have multitasking.
I just can not bring my self to praise Microsoft for copying IOS quickly. They had been in the Mobile space for years so there is no excuse for playing catch up. The fact that IOS came out and ate their lunch is reason enough for shame. The facts that IOS is now got features that WP7 now just trying to catch up to again is also a fail.
This is a pigs ear.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[DigiShaman]

Are we sure that not doing multi-tasking is at the requests of the Cell Carriers? I seem to remember that each tower can only handle X amount of connections at any given time. By having a multi-tasking OS, that could potentially leave cell phones latched onto the network (data side) 24/7. Eventually, rolling drop offs will occur in densely populated cities. I'm not sure if this applies to both GSM and CDMA or just one of them.
 

Re:It didn't have this already?

[h4rr4r]

I use an app to track my hiking (keep a record of GPS coordinates and time basically), while listening to pandora while checking email and such. It is my understanding iPhone would not even do that today.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Posting=!Working]

The last example I gave does require two programs to run at the same time.

Web pages loading while I do something else is also convenient. I do that nearly everyday.

My whole point in the list was not to enumerate every reason, but that multitasking is useful on a phone, and should have been in all smartphones for years now, but was ignored. There's probably another 20 or so ways I use multitasking on the phone, I just went with the first few I thought of.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[jo_ham]

Which is exactly what Android does too.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[R3d M3rcury]

While I'm not sure I'd agree--I've heard good things about WebOS, but have never seen it--the issue is more about concurrent background processes than concurrent UI.

You're right--the iPhone screen is pretty tightly packed and it would be pretty tough to have two UIs in that space that could be used simultaneously. That said, just because an App is in the background doesn't mean it's shut off. There are plenty of examples--listening to music from whatever source (downloaded music, streamed music, etc) while doing something else. Navigation and phone calls--I don't want to miss my turn because I was on the phone. Video/Audio recording and phone calls--if I'm watching or listening to The Big Game and a phone call comes in, I'd like to be able to go back to where I left off and see that touchdown/goal/basket/home run. Heck, just the classic--I want to get directions while talking to someone on the phone (something I did Friday night) is important.

So while the UI might switch out, giving my phone the ability to monitor, record, and give me information while another application is on the screen is very valuable.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[mobby_6kl]

There were no stability and battery life issues with WM that would require gutting the mature platform and replacing it with the useless piece of shit that is WP7.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Are you saying that battery life on WP7 is shitty and that the UI will become unresponsive if you don't reboot it once a week?

I'm not saying that in the tone of "you're wrong", rather I really am asking. I haven't used one of those phones.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Webz]

No. With a non-multitasking enabled iPhone, you cannot listen to an audio app and use another program at the same time. The only program that was an exception to this rule was the stock iPod app.

The most popular example of a non-iPod app that people wanted, as mentioned, was Pandora.

The iPhone doesn't even have true, unfettered multi-tasking enabled for front end apps (of course it supports it internally). What iOS has are pre-approved background services, which are like light gateways into faux multi-tasking. Namely, one is audio (like Pandora).

Re:It didn't have this already?

[mjwx]

It's not at all a technical issue. Both iOS and WP7 can handle multitasking just fine on OS level, and you can see that in action if you use the stock apps (e.g. media player, which plays in background). It's strictly a limitation on third-party software, deliberately enforced.

Basically, what you're saying is that Apple and Microsoft could not make an operating system that could be relied upon to sandbox processes and terminate aberrant or non-responsive ones.

However did Google manage this well tested feat of engineering?

Re:It didn't have this already?

[shutdown -p now]

Basically, what you're saying is that Apple and Microsoft could not make an operating system that could be relied upon to sandbox processes and terminate aberrant or non-responsive ones.

However did Google manage this well tested feat of engineering?

No, what I'm saying is that Google didn't actually manage to do that - it's fairly easy to write an Android application that sits in background and actively drains battery.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[BitZtream]

I commonly run Glympse [glympse.com] while listening to Pandora [pandora.com] on my way home, so my wife knows when to expect me

Might I suggest asking her to loosen the fucking leash on you a little bit? I'm pretty sure you're going to be unhappy with everything in life regardless of the phone if your wife needs up to the second/meter updates on your drive home from work. That isn't healthy.

Thank god their about to make using a phone while driving as bad as a DUI here, you need to stop fucking with your phone and drive instead.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Aqualung812]

Might I suggest asking her to loosen the fucking leash on you a little bit? I'm pretty sure you're going to be unhappy with everything in life regardless of the phone if your wife needs up to the second/meter updates on your drive home from work. That isn't healthy.

Look, dick, I'm the one that found the program, I'm the one that chooses to send her the updates. Most of the time, she never even looks at them. My commute runs anywhere from 1 hour to 3 hours depending on traffic. Since I'm actually in a very healthy marriage that I'm very happy about, I have found over the last 10+ years that it is considerate to let people you love know when you're going to be late. From your response, I can see you have no understanding of being courteous.

Thank god their about to make using a phone while driving as bad as a DUI here, you need to stop fucking with your phone and drive instead.

Actually, I'm setting all of these apps up in the parking lot at work before I leave. By giving my wife the option to check a website when I'm running late rather than calling me, I'm actually NOT fucking with my phone. Your great advice is to either not send her my position and then answer her call when I'm late, or ignore her calls when I'm running late so she can sit & wonder if I'm safe in traffic or bleeding to death on the side of the road.

Thanks, but I'm not taking your advice.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Palmateer]

Um. My HTC Vogue with WM6.1 multitasks quite nicely. I can easily run half a dozen different applications concurrently, and yes, music does continue to play either from local storage or 3G streamed while another application is in the foreground. Personally I found Android Froyo on the same device to be quite frustrating from a multitasking perspective. Perhaps that was because of the implementation on a device with such low RAM available.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Jim Hall]

From the summary:

Microsoft also talked about the importance of multi-tasking, and claims it can now offer fast task switching without causing serious detriment to the battery life. In particular, Microsoft said, this will improve the experience of using third party applications. In a demo, a Microsoft engineer showed how a music application called 'Slacker' could keep music playing in the background while the user moved between different applications.

I consider that basic functionality. Listening to music while flipping between apps is something I do all the time. Go to lunch, listen to a podcast or some music - maybe surf the web on my phone and respond to a few emails.

How did Windows Phone 7 even hit the market without this basic feature? The 3 people who bought WP7 must be happy Microsoft is fixing it.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[LWATCDR]

No do they require root and what are they called?

Re:It didn't have this already?

[DdJ]

I use an app to track my hiking (keep a record of GPS coordinates and time basically), while listening to pandora while checking email and such. It is my understanding iPhone would not even do that today.

Actually, the iPhone will indeed do that today. There's all sorts of multitasking in there.

Your app can do anything it wants for up to ten minutes in the background, but after ten minutes if you want to keep background processing, you have to ask for permission (via a pop-up alert).

But that's not needed for what you're talking about. There are specific categories of use that permit unlimited background processing without requiring the user to re-authorize it on a periodic basis.

One of those is background GPS tracking. It's available in two modes, basically a "high resolution, high power consumption" mode that fires off precise location events and a "lower resolution, lower power consumption" mode that only triggers on more extreme location change events (I think for that one you have to at least change cell towers for it to trigger). So that covers your "track my hiking" part.

Another permitted mode is background audio (which people sometimes don't realize potentially includes both input and output). So this covers the "Pandora" part.

You can have both the GPS tracking part and the Pandora part in the background no problem. And then you can do "checking email and such" in the foreground without having an impact on that (unless you run out of memory -- then all the running apps get a low memory warning signal, and if they can't cooperatively deal with it, something may get killed).

So, yeah, the exact scenario you describe presents no problem at all on today's iPhone running the updated OS.

Re:It didn't have this already?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

If the battery life of iPhones is with some significant software led saving then that's the only possible conclusion because iPhones often need charging as frequently as any other equally priced competitor on the market, if not more frequently in some cases.

I did a quick search using the terms "iphone android battery". Try it yourself. Of the top ten hits, eight are comparisons that say the iPhone is winning on battery performance versus a specific Android phone or Android phones in general. One was not a comparison. One claims the Samsung Infuse "should have a better battery life" based upon the hardware but did not perform any actual tests. So where do you get this idea that iPhones don't do better for battery performance than Android phones? Google's own Android blogs have developers talking about the problem regularly with some calling it Android's biggest weakness right now. Maybe you'd care to provide some reference to support your opinion?

Re:It didn't have this already?

[Posting=!Working]

You know, I didn't really look at what I wrote again, but how did this get a +5 insightful mod when it's main complaint is wrong.

Two of my examples could get by with suspend/resume, and the third wouldn't be as useful if it did. Taking a picture while on a call cannot use suspend/resume, and installing apps while browsing the internet needs two concurrent programs. Also, suspend/resume wouldn't keep the GPS up to date when I went to a website from Google maps. It also wouldn't let me start the web page loading/downloading (.pdf menu, for example,) and go back to the map while it does. It could get by with suspend/resume, but it would suck.

Circumstances are common for those that can do real multitasking on their phone. 3 of the 4 examples I gave need 2 programs to run at the same time the way I use them, a far cry from the none you claim.

Sorry if my quickly assembled list had something that wasn't actual multitasking. But the quickly assembled reply is just plain wrong.

Re:Xbox?

[commodore6502]

Halo is no better than the thousands of other Bloody simulators. I'd sooner play fun games like Metroid, Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy, Dance Revolution, and so on.

Sweetness

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm totally pumped for these new additions. It's true, they've been playing catch-up with WP7, but it's an incredible platform and the velocity of feature additions is quite impressive. I've developed for all three major platforms and I have to say, Silverlight with c# is a pretty amazing developer story. The UI is arguably the most attractive and innovative, the XBox and Office integration is unparalleled and the hardware holds its own. I sure would love to see some 4G support, though.

Re:Internet Explorer

[sakdoctor]

IE9 isn't so ridiculously far behind the other browsers, for this to be funny any more.
If Joe-six-pack must use a browser at all, let it be IE9. (And not IE8)

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Then both people using it will really be impressed.

Microsoft plays catchup?

[harl]

Am I reading this right? Windows phones will now be able to do things android and iphones have been doing for years?

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[Haedrian]

... iphones have been doing for years?

Tehehe

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[Shados]

I remember when my Palm got that feature, in 1999 or around there (I forget the exact year).

Now that was awesome!

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[Yvan256]

If Microsoft released a 3D modeling tool, would it be called Scatchup?

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[Aqualung812]

Am I reading this right? Windows phones will now be able to do things android and iphones have been doing for years?

No. Windows phones will now be able to do something that Windows phones were able to do in 2002, 5 years before the iPhone was invented, 8 years before the iPhone got it, and 6 years before the Android was released.
I never understood the huge step back they took, other than Microsoft Marketing told them to ship before it was ready, a familiar story.

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[ThePromenader]

Almost! I think it would be called 'ScatUp'. As soon as I find a link to confirm this, I'll squirt it to you.

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[BitZtream]

Yea, except, Windows Mobile had multitasking before Android or iOS were even a wet spot in someones underwear. They just made it unavailable in WinMo7 so they could copy Apple, without actually understanding WHY Apple didn't support it.

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[BitZtream]

Except your palm didn't have multitasking, it had task switching and due to the way Palm OS worked, there was no 'ram' to speak of, everything ran from flash and stored on flash, your app didn't 'start' and need to initialize itself, it was just ready to go because the state was always saved so switching to something else meant you never lost the state of the previous app. Apps didn't have to do anything to take advantage of it because thats the way the OS was designed. When you switched to another app, the old app just wasn't executed anymore and the new one was.

Don't get me wrong, it was awesome and really far more useful than most multitasking today. Multitasking is silly anyway, what people really want is the ability to have some small background processes running or being run periodically to do things while they work elsewhere. People think they need multitasking because they want to switch between apps and not have to start all over again. Lets be realistic, very few people actually NEED to have 2 apps open with external connections at the same time, but it would be nice if they could play Angry Birds and still get Skype calls without having Skype open and wasting the battery power that goes along with it. Hence why Apple says 'multitasking done right'. Its what the user wants rather than what the user has been told they want from someone else or what they think they want because they don't understanding what the difference between multitasking, background processing and task switching is.

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[harl]

Ooo I missed that. Please send info on this 2002 Windows phone!

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[harl]

Yeah and Unix had it in the 70s. What's your point?

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[Aqualung812]

Press Release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/feb02/02-19PhoneEditionPR.mspx

Touchscreen: http://gdgt.com/htc/pocket-pc-phone/
Smartphone (standard cell keyboard): http://gdgt.com/htc/canary/

Any other Google research I can do for you?

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[Shados]

No, that was the older palm revisions. Palm OS eventually added real multitasking, and you could have an app doing a long process (let say, a game), switch out of it, do something else, come back, and in the game you were dead because the game was still running.

Apps had to be programmed specifically to take advantage of it though, unlike Windows Mobile.

The point wasn't "Palm did it first!" though. It was "Wow....I remember reading those news posts talking about Palm OS the same way back then....and even THEN Palm was late, nevermind today"

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[jo_ham]

iOS has been able to multitask since before it was called iOS. It just wasn't available to third party apps until the phone's hardware caught up (it's just no good on a 3G, which is why you can't officially have 3rd party mutitasking on that model).

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[microbee]

Which is the case for Windows phone as well

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[Rexdude]

s/android and iphones/symbian and windows mobile 6.5/g
FTFY.

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[dunkelfalke]

I still have two of those HTC Wallaby phones and they both still work just fine (after a couple of battery replacements of course).

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[harl]

Were there phones that ran that?

Why did MS remove multitasking? Other than apple who thinks multitasking is bad?

Re:Microsoft plays catchup?

[harl]

Nice. Why'd they backtrack?

Astroturfing 101

[Flipao]

Don't make it sound like a press release, it's cringe inducing.

Re:Astroturfing 101

[UnknowingFool]

Most people who actually use Ubuntu can cite specific reasons why. Also don't try to fill the post with as many MS keywords as they can.

This is good

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good.

Before you reach out for the pitchforks and torches, let me finish the sentence: this is good for competition. Now that Nokia will ship WP7, Apple and Google will find themselves with a worthy competitor in the smartphone market. At least when it comes to user experience.

Unparallelled XBox integration?

[grimJester]

The most absurd part is that the stuff he's excited about makes no sense. Did he use a Dilbert press release generator?

Re:Xbox?

[SilverEyes]

NO other games have ENERGY swords or anything. BROLLCALL!

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=285

Lol, got to love people who can't read stats

[SmallFurryCreature]

Yes, Nokia sells a LOT of phones. Dirt cheap dumb phones in poor countries. They probably make so much money at it that they aren't at all in trouble. Oh wait they are.

The big money is in the smart phones and there Nokia has lost out.

Same as WM7 has been loosing out. Both have tried competing in this market and Android, iPhone and Rim have left them in the dust.

So now they are going to combine their epic powers of fail for what?

The idea that Android has to look out for Windows Phone is the same idea as MS fanboys had with every previous iteration of MS CE/Mobile and got knows what other names they have used to hide the fact of old vinegar in crappy bags.

Re:Lol, got to love people who can't read stats

[PickyH3D]

Your entire post seems to suggest that all Android phones are powerful phones. In reality, they fall along the entire gamut of the market. A smart phone does not necessarily have to cost a lot, nor does it have to be a good phone, and Android definitely covers that ground.

Palm is even about to cover that ground with their new credit card sized, WebOS 3.0 phone. The fact that Windows Phone 7 already included a smaller screen size in its specs immediately suggests to me that you not only ignored them because you assume anything pro-MS is done by an MS fanboy (I currently own an iPhone 4 on AT&T, but I am tired of iOS), and that you lack the ability to see beyond what is happening the market right now.

I never once suggested to anyone that Windows Mobile 6.5 would beat Android because it was a hack on top of a dated OS. Windows Phone 7 will scale down nicely, especially given their strong development tools rooted with WPF, which places a strong emphasis on vectors. Contrast that to Android, and you don't even know if an app will run on your phone (whether by performance or other reasons), and I'd take the smaller WP7 experience that any day of the week.

Re:Lol, got to love people who can't read stats

[exomondo]

Same as WM7 has been loosing out.

Well there is no such thing as WM7...but of course WP7 hasn't been 'losing out', it's only been out for a couple of months.

The idea that Android has to look out for Windows Phone is the same idea as MS fanboys had with every previous iteration of MS CE/Mobile and got knows what other names they have used to hide the fact of old vinegar in crappy bags.

Sounds like you haven't even used a WP7 phone.

Re:Lol, got to love people who can't read stats

[UnknowingFool]

No what the poster is saying is that Nokia has a huge market share but to be clear most of it is in dumb phones. The majority of what they sell today is will not be affected by WP7. Smart phones are where the growth is right now and Nokia is losing to the likes of Apple and Android. The problem I see is that everyone will have a WP7 phone and there's very little I see that Nokia can do to stand out. With Android they could have customized it to their owns, but with WP7, MS calls the shots. If MS decides to stab them in the back, there's very little they can do about it.

Re:Lol, got to love people who can't read stats

[gig]

Nokia still makes more than 5 times the profit of all the Windows and Android handset makers combined. Nobody has shown how to make PC-style 3rd party operating system phones profitable. Apple, Nokia, and RIM take 90% of all phone profits. Everybody else is working for tips or for free. Motorola made Verizon Droid purely for charitable reasons, and LG has had to pay for the privilege of making Android phones.

The big money is in iPhones. Apple's average selling price is almost triple everyone else, and they take more than half of all handset profits (all handsets, not just smart handsets). The smartphone has moved downmarket and is replacing the feature phone. Android started out talking about freedom, but now the phones are actually free. The feature phone money of today is the smartphone money of tomorrow. The phones are just going to get better browsers, better apps, etc.

It isn't that Nokia is in such a bad place, it's that they were sort of paralyzed, petrified, standing still. All they needed to do was get moving to restore some investor confidence and reclaim some of their lost valuation. But the Microsoft deal isn't really moving so much as continuing to stand still but now they are wearing a sandwich board that says "Windows Phone 7 coming in 2012."

Re:Lol, got to love people who can't read stats

[perryizgr8]

No what the poster is saying is that Nokia has a huge market share but to be clear most of it is in dumb phones.

that is wrong. in the samrtphones market, nokia still sells the most number of units. more than android and more than apple.

Re:Lol, got to love people who can't read stats

[UnknowingFool]

If you read what I wrote, I said Nokia sells way more dumb phones than smartphones. Their dumb phones sales outnumber their smart phones like 10:1. This WP7 deal is not likely to affect their dumb phones at all. I never said they were not the leader in smartphones; however I did say that they are losing marketshare to Android and Apple in the smart phone market. Seeing as how smartphones represent the largest growing segment of the phone market, Nokia is right to be worried about falling behind.

Windows phones did that in the past

[grimJester]

Windows Phone 7 was lacking a lot of functionality the earlier Windows Mobile had. It's just a new not-yet-complete OS.

This makes me wonder if they're using a more agile-style approach and releasing what functionality they have completely tested instead of releasing the complete functionality regardless of what they've had time to test? It does make sense in a phone OS.

Re:Windows phones did that in the past

[BitZtream]

Its not a new OS, its the same old with features hidden from the users and devs so it acts more like iOS because Microsoft doesn't actually understand why people like iOS.

Re:Windows phones did that in the past

[wan9xu]

maybe they tested some features thoroughly, but completely forgot the app marketplace. or the landscape display. disclaimer: i have a WP7 phone.

The UI Sells It

[g00head]

I'm a WP7 user, and very happy with my decision. I've used iOS, WM6, and Android - hated iOS and it's page after page of little icons, hated WM6 until HTC Sense (would have stayed with that on my HD2 if apps were coming out), and loved Android (HD2 and a Desire) except it began to feel like iOS+.

Metro is such a clean, fast interface, lets me see just what I want to see exactly when I want to see it. There's very little hunting/searching for something, as if I use it more than once per day I just pin it to the front page. It just fits extremely well how I want to use a phone.

Although I do have to say, if I couldn't have test-driven it on an HD2 I probably wouldn't have taken the leap to full fledged WP7 hardware. Kudos to MS for not legalbomb XDA from orbit when DFT released the ROM into the wild. If they continue to be smart, they'll let the mod community flourish they way they did with WM6 - that's the only thing that made the platform stay as relevant as it did, for as long as it did.

Re:The UI Sells It

[kirkb]

WP7 has a great solution for avoiding "page after page of little icons": a piss-poor selection of apps to download ;)

Seriously though, iOS could use some shell improvements to help deal with having hundred(s) of apps. I recently condensed 11 pages of "little icons" down to 3 pages of folders. It's an improvement, but I think apple should start looking at new shell paradigms (no, not Metro!)

Re:The UI Sells It

[g00head]

And I agree with you, WP7 desperately needs to enlarge its App library - MS should probably seriously reconsider the $100 dev fee (or so I've heard). They need Joe Blow to be designing apps on their spare time a la Android Market, else WP7's App selection will look a lot like WM6's...

Re:The UI Sells It

[iserlohn]

Metro is a UI ripped out from a graphics design mag like "Wallpaper*", "GD USA" or "Print". It's basically something you would find on a MP3 player or game UI. Looks nice, but usability suffers when your interface starts to get busy.

Re:The UI Sells It

[BitZtream]

So you didn't like iOS and Android because you installed too many apps and needed a bunch of pages to access them all?

Tell me, how did WP7 work around this? Haven't found any apps worth downloading yet?

I have 6 pages of apps on my iPhone, and I take it off the first page once in ... well I don't know how long its been because ... just like you ... all my important apps are on the first page where I put them so I'd have quick access to them. The rest of it is stuff like TomTom, ssh client, rdp client, all the stuff that I want to have with me if I need it, but I rarely ever use since I'm always near a real computer and its far more enjoyable to do so on a real PC than a phone.

You sound exactly like those retarded Microsoft commericials on winmo7 ... you're claiming a 'feature' of WinMo7 is better ... when its exactly the same as what its 'better' than.

How much does MS pay you? I can respew MS commercials too for the right price and I'm not going to be anywhere nearly as transparent about it as you are.

Re:The UI Sells It

[shutdown -p now]

I recently condensed 11 pages of "little icons" down to 3 pages of folders. It's an improvement

It would help if large folders didn't take 2-3 seconds to open on iPhone, unless you reboot the phone every few days (oh, the irony of doing that to an Apple product!).

Re:The UI Sells It

[the linux geek]

WM6 had a huge app library, and the best thing was that you didn't have to get it from any kind of curated "app store." Software could be written in whatever programming language the developer felt like, and frequently went far beyond the "download data from a web API and display it" crap we get on Android/iPhone/WP7. WM6 had its issues, but "no software" was never one of them.

Re:The UI Sells It

[Altus]

I access games a lot on my Iphone and I dont keep them on the first page because I dont need access to those right this second, I cant take a moment or 2 to find them.

The problem is, now my phone is on page 3 or 4. I would really like it if, whenever you woke up your phone, it snapped back to page 1 and your most important applications. It would at least make a nice setting. That way I would always know how to quickly get to my mail or my camera without having to use up one of the 4 bottom most spots. In fact, such an option would probably result in me changing the 4 applications that I keep on the bottom.

Re:The UI Sells It

[tooyoung]

I'm a WP7 user, and very happy with my decision. I've used iOS, WM6, and Android - hated iOS and it's page after page of little icons, hated WM6 until HTC Sense (would have stayed with that on my HD2 if apps were coming out), and loved Android (HD2 and a Desire) except it began to feel like iOS+.

May I ask, why have you owned so many phones? Not trolling at all, really just curious. I've seen many similar posts on other stories and it always blows my mind that people seem to have owned like 5 different phones within the past two years. Is this so that you can test software on multiple platforms, or do you just like to swap out a lot?

Re:The UI Sells It

[exomondo]

WP7 has a great solution for avoiding "page after page of little icons": a piss-poor selection of apps to download ;)

Lucky i've got a whole page of iFart clones on my iphone.

Re:The UI Sells It

[anethema]

Put your games all in a folder on the second page.

If you're on another page and want to quickly get back to the first page just hit the home button again. Always brings you to the first page. (unless you are already on the first page, then it brings you to the search page).

Also, a free cydia tweak called '5 row dock' or something similar allows an extra icon in your bottom dock. Love it.

Re:The UI Sells It

[R4nneko]

I agree, I really like the interface and the general look and feel.

Unfortunately it lacks two applications I really want on my phone. Latitude and an SSH client.

I use latitude a lot with and really miss it when that is not there. Not knowing where those friends who have it are when I am attempting to time things or contact them.

I use SSH even more for irssi on a remote server. I am rather surprised that I simply have been unable to find any apps at all that handle that.

Re:The UI Sells It

[terjeber]

How much does MS pay you?

Sigh. Why is it that whenever someone says something that brainless Apple fanbois don't like, it has to be paid for by MS or something?

I own an iPhone 3G and a 3GS. I was planning on getting a new one this year as my contract expires, I still might do that. I got a WP7 phone because I need to keep an eye on what goes on in all markets, and I also needed to look into what programming for WP7 was like. Just in case it took off. I therefore bought the cheapest (and incidentally the only one available on my carrier) WP7 handset out there, the LG. As a developer, keeping an eye on other platforms and options is paramount, and honestly, in my opinion, if you are mobile developer and you are not investigating WP7 development are just being irresponsible. This is why, in addition to my two iPhones, the WP7 phone I also own a Galaxy Tab.

I have quite a few apps on my iPhone, mostly productivity stuff, and also, very important I have Amazon Kindle with all my books. It is crucial for travel.

Once Amazon delivered Kindle for WP7, I had all the mandatory functionality I needed for WP7, and, to what would have been a huge surprise to me before getting the WP7 phone, this is now the handset I carry on a day-to-day basis. Honestly, it blows my 3GS out of the water when it comes to usability.

I have also spent a little time developing for WP7. Having done Java for large-scale commercial apps (at IBM among other companies) the move to C# was trivial, and held a number of very, very pleasant surprises. C# is clearly an improvement over Java for app development, and with the work that has gone into LINQ and the new features in 4, doing enterprise apps in C# has significantly higher productivity than in Java. Particularly if you are prevented from using Spring, but even with Spring, Java lags behind .Net right now, except for of course cross-platform features. For anything that needs to run cross-platform, Java is still king. Obviously

Now, back to developing for WP7. The first app I created is basically a standard enterprise offering. Relational DB store, app with a SOAP interface, HTML component, and in this case, a WP7 client. I had never worked with Azure before, and I had never worked with WP7 development prior to sitting down. I started after driving my wife to the airport Sunday at 5. I had the cloud services, the SOAP interface and the web interface, plus the WP7 app, fully done before going to bed. I went to bed early enough not to fall asleep in meetings the next morning. The app displays data, does statistical calculations on the data, allows creation and storage of new data to the cloud from the phone, etc.

There is not a single platform in the world where I could have done this as fast. The .Net infrastructure, with Azure, SQL storage, WP7 etc, enabled the putting together of a real enterprise app in a few hours, without knowing the platform beforehand. Honestly, for business apps, this combo is several orders of magnitude more efficient than any competition right now.

As an enterprise app developer this is crucial. I am asked to put together meaningful solutions involving a number of data sources all the time. There is currently nothing that comes close to supporting this like the MS stack does at the moment.

BTW, I used to be a serious critic of MS in the 1990s and later on. I was an avid user of OS2 from Warp on. The majority of my work has been on Sun and HP servers using Java, and later on, on Linux using Java. I am not, and have never been, an MS fanboi. I do know what works for whatever situation I am in, and for ad-hoc enterprise apps where mobile is a requirement, the closest you get to MS productivity is probably Ruby on Rails. My second favorite at the moment. Rails doesn't do cloud like Azure does though. Not yet.

Re:Internet Explorer

[Merk42]

A lot of those users are ones who CAN'T update due to IT policies. Those same IT policies prevent something like Firefox from being default in a corporate environment due to the lack of management with Group Policy.

Re:Internet Explorer

[sakdoctor]

It probably will, but there are reasons it won't be quite so bad.
IE9 styles arbitrary HTML elements, and "does" xml.
IE6 - IE8 seem to have been maliciously designed to block all forward compatibility.

I hate IE as much as the next guy. But credit were it's due.

Re:Internet Explorer

[leenks]

Exactly. I'm a freelance consultant, currently working at a large UK company with a massive international parent. We are forced to use IE7 on our Shitrix thin clients for internet access. There are significant chunks of the web that don't work with IE7, but the IT department don't seem to care - as long as they can lock it down with Windows group policies it is fine with them.

Some days I have to leave the office and use my iPhone to access websites and then email myself files! Sigh!

Re:WP7 - The 'Metoo' Phone OS?

[BitZtream]

Right, because everyone hasn't been playing MeToo against iOS for the last 4 years.

Re:as a nokian

[BitZtream]

Its not new to WinMo either, its been in every pervious version EXCEPT this one. And is every version of WinCE before the 'split' if you want to call it that. I'd be willing to bet its just been masked from users to copy Apple rather than unavailable.

Everyone is just trying to copy Apple without understanding WHY people by Apple products.

upgrade to the palm pre?!?

[synapse7]

"By holding down the 'back' button, " The pre can navigate through as well as close apps via gestures, its really quite smooth(for most of you that have not used a pre). Jason

Yay

[sproketboy]

Yay! Focus stealing on my phone too! Like we haven't been tortured enough by that on the desktop.

Hatred?

[SuperKendall]

Wow check out the total blind hatred!

I didn't read any hatred - just a history of the Windows security vulnerabilities and how they came to be.

It's a warning that we don't want to trod that path again. That's not hatred, it's good advice.

Re:Hatred?

[SuperKendall]

Well then shouldn't we be pointing out the history of vulnerabilities on OSX and Linux too?

Since the story was about a BROWSER being added to Windows Mobile 7 to complete the traditional pairing of IE and Windows - no, it's utterly pointless to talk about Safari or Firefox since neither of those were embedded deep into the OS to create giant security chasms.

Even the worst Safari exploit is just going to get into your user account.

Re:Hatred?

[BitZtream]

Niether was IE ... ever ... but go ahead, spout random shit you read on some forum about why Microsoft is evil and by all means continue thinking it makes you look knowledgable. Safari is just as embedded into OSX as IE ever was. Microsoft uses the Trident rendering engine for providing HTML display support through out its apps and to third party software in the EXACT SAME WAY that OSX uses WebKit, KDE too for that matter.

The IE bundling issue was simply due to the way microsoft prevented other browsers from being added by manufactures by special deals and pricing that would go away if you bundled something else.

Now days, even a minor Safari exploit will get you root on OSX ... IF you happen to be running something with elevated privledges (i.e. you're root).

Funny story, Windows is the exact same way, since Windows NT you've been able to resolve this problem by simply not running as an admin, the fact that by default users were admins was a hold over from DOS where there were no permissions, and its taken time for them to slowly transition away from that without breaking all the apps out there at one time. Now days, Windows doesn't make users admins by default anymore so its just like OS X and Linux

But hey, don't let facts or reality stand in your way, you go right on spewing things well beyond your level of understanding.

Re:Hatred?

[exomondo]

Even the worst Safari exploit is just going to get into your user account.

Surely you haven't forgotten the exploit that enabled iphone OS to be jailbroken from the web browser? Security exploits don't come much worse than that.

Re:Hatred?

[SuperKendall]

Niether was IE ... ever

Well if you're going to be all revisionist about it, there's nothing more to say other than technically you are 100% wrong about IE integration.

Hint: Look at the EU litigation against IE for one of many examples illustrating why and how and how very deep your wrong goes.

Now days, even a minor Safari exploit will get you root on OSX

Like what? Haven't seen any for a year or two. Still don't run an OS X system without monthly virus scan, no need for more often... unlike a PC I don't need to take a 10% CPU hit just to keep my system up and virus free.

I'll not even bother to read your response as I'd just have to wipe the excess drool off my monitor. Enjoy your life in service to your computer, I know I'm enjoying my freedom from maintaining things... and the next time you get a keylogger (again!) know that I am laughing at you, not with you.

Re:Hatred?

[beuges]

If you actually believe that Internet Explorer was *ever* integrated with the Windows kernel, then you need a refresher course in "history".

The only time IE was part of the Windows kernel was in the dreams of commenters posting on slashdot.

Unfortunately, every time we tread down that path again, the path is always filled with the same misinformed FUD that gets modded up as insightful, with the corrections being modded down as flamebait. e.g. IE is embedded in the kernel, Dos ain't done till Lotus won't run, 640k should be enough for everybody. These have repeatedly been proven to be false, yet they still get spouted around on /. as if they were the gospel truth.

For a supposedly tech-savvy audience, and for the number of times people are quick to point out that Linux is "only a kernel, not an operating system", it's quite sad that people are completely unable to apply that same logic to the Windows kernel vs the Windows OS.

Stop spreading the FUD and we won't have to go down these paths every time someone posts the same tired old incorrect junk.

Re:Hatred?

[exomondo]

errr...why are you replying to me? I was illustrating the point that just because an exploit is in the mobile browser doesn't mean it's in the desktop version and vice-versa, this is regardless of whether it's an MS, Apple or FOSS platform.

Re:Internet Explorer

[asdf7890]

The problem with IE9 is many people can't upgrade. You'd be surprised how many people still use XP on older machines or netbooks at home, and how many corporate environments will be locked to XP (and in some cases IE6 with it) until near when SP3 drops out of extended support in 2014.

I run XP at home, as I refuse to pay for Windows 7 until there is compelling reason to do spend the cash and spend the time reinstalling the machine. Lack of security updates in 2014 might make me shift in 2013 if nothing has done before then, so I'm not moving last minute, but until then the only thing I'd particularly notice is DX10+ and that isn't worth the cost to me (I have a relatively beefy gfx card and occasionally play hight end games, but if any game dares *require* DX10 then to me it jumps from being a £30 game to being a £130+ages-reinstalling-my-desktop-environment so just won't get bought (I have far more valuable things to do with my spare time). Many people will be in the same position, but unlike me a fair number will be resolutely using IE8 (or below) rather than one of the more capable options which means as developers we have the choice: support the retarded IE8 and its senile descendants or lose a chunk of the market (though to be frank, I'm getting towards a mindset where that chunk of the market can go screw itself).

Some of our banking clients are moving to IE8 soon as some software providers are starting to refuse to support IE6 (Google dropping support for IE6 last year started that ball properly rolling: thanks G!), but they are not moving off XP any time soon so there will be no IE9 for them yet. IE8 is here to stay in those environments for at least then next two years, maybe three, and IE6 to a certain extent too.

Microsoft targeted the wrong market...

[lord_mike]

WP7 will not sell heavily until MS can break blackberry's hold on the enterprise market

They wanted to take on the iPhone, when they should have taken on the Blackberry. Plenty of IT managers would love to have an all MS shop with a phone that worked flawlessly within their systems. Instead, Microsoft targeted the consumer market (and added features that would actually alienate IT managers), forgetting that Microsoft has a severely damaged consumer brand. People run Ms software 'cos they have to, not 'cos they want to. In most consumers' minds, Microsoft is synonymous with bloated, unfinished, barely working, buggy software. They aren't eager to relive their PC misery with their phones if they have other choices, which is why the iPhone does so well. Apple has a great consumer brand and the iPhone (unlike the mac) is subsidized enough that the average user can afford it.

Re:Microsoft targeted the wrong market...

[lord_mike]

Most consumer's minds?? Say what? Most consumers just assume Windows and Microsoft is everything and nothing else matters.

Ten years ago, perhaps, but public attitudes have changed, especially after the Vista debacle. It wasn't me who stated that Microsoft is a damaged consumer brand, that came from a headline at CNN a few months ago. Ask any person what they think of Microsoft vs. say Apple and see what they say. Actually, you don't need to do that, poll after poll shows that to be true. Microsoft is at the bottom of the heap in consumer favorability. Microsoft has been unable to penetrate the marketplace with Zune, Bing, etc. no matter how much marketing they put into it 'cos people are put off by the brand. "Average. normal" people are the ones who have had the most problems with Microsoft software, not power users, and they are the ones who have run to Apple now that the company has become viable, and Google if they want a cheaper consumer-friendly option.

Re:Microsoft targeted the wrong market...

[mbkennel]

"Most consumer's minds?? Say what? Most consumers just assume Windows and Microsoft is everything and nothing else matters. They are totally indifferent to the problems, and don't even care about options."

Really?

My non-technical wife is at least as Microsoft-phobic than a Linux fanboy.

She considers Microsoft-anything to be an "infection" and was very disappointed when she had to install Excel for a class (some add on package didn't exist for OpenOffice) on her Mac.

And yes she had Windows computers for 10 years previously.

Funny I'm less anti-Microsoft than I used to be; because (a) their evil has been tempered by their humiliation and loss of power, and (b) Windows 7 is OK.

Re:Microsoft targeted the wrong market...

[PickyH3D]

Both Bing and Zune may have small market shares, but they both have grown substantially month-to-month over the past 2-3 months.

Microsoft's market percentage is small, but it's a solid number two in both markets.

I actually own a MacBook Pro, but I dual boot with Windows 7 because I vastly prefer the experience. The only negative is that the poorly written drivers for the Windows side lead to noticeably lower battery life, but that's thanks to Apple.

I am tired of Apple's stranglehold of their devices, and with the Mac App Store, it's only getting worse. I hate Java, but Apple's killing it off simply to make a tighter grip on their platform and funnel people into writing Mac specific software. In some cases, that is probably good for the end user, but in all cases it is to lock people into Apple. Look what Apple is trying to do to competing eReaders written for iOS--trying to leech 30% of the revenues from now-required in-app purchases.

I've seen that movie. It ends with the US Government investigating the company and either breaking it up, or fining them excessively (depends if you have the Director's Cut or not).

And I am not sure about anything that is in absolute love with Google. I use Google for their search only when Bing cannot find it (Google is better at finding developer related topics, but Bing seems better at most other things for me), and I use Google for GMail because nothing comes close. But, I have no attachment to Google, just as I have no attachment to Facebook. The second a better service that is more keen to protect my privacy appears, rather than basing its business model on destroying my privacy, then I will jump ship.

M$ Quality

[omb]

I don't want agile development anywhere, but last of all in my phone or car.

In a phone, primarily I want a phone, with good 4+ days battery life, my N 3100 does that,
fits in my car and mutes the entertainment system when using your phone so hands free
is reasonably safe.

I need to re-boot, ie power off, my N95 once a week because Symbian goes dollaly.

Whe Bosch, who make the BMW and Mercedes engine/gearbox controllers, they started
the same crap, UNTIL Bosch reverted. I do not need a car that gets BSOD.

A NewZeeland friend with a new 535i that did this had a relay system fitted that took Vcc off the
ECR/TCS and put a 10 ohm 50 watt resistor across the Vcc input pins to discharge the
internal capacitors. Pushing the button once a week made his car work, not leave him by
the roadside once ever 3 months.

I say again M$ quality!

Sorry but....

[HerculesMO]

That video is pretty damn cool.

Re:Nokia demands

[phonewebcam]

Dream on. They'll be lucky if they can get Clippy removed.

Reversion

[SuperKendall]

If you're counting previous versions of Windows Mobile... they could multitask before Apple even put out the iPhone.

Right, but now they can't.

So what the hell is your point?

That one company is advancing.

Re:Reversion

[wmac]

WP7 can multitask but not for 3rd party applications. The OS kernel fully supports multitasking.

Re:Reversion

[SuperKendall]

WP7 can multitask but not for 3rd party applications. The OS kernel fully supports multitasking.

Yeah, I've tried to point that out for years to the people complaining about iOS multitasking since IOS fully supports multi-tasking too, but no-one wants to hear it.

Nokia got burned

[dbIII]

Windows Phone 7 was lacking a lot of functionality the earlier Windows Mobile had. It's just a new not-yet-complete OS.

Hey! I thought it was supposed to be hot enough to set your rig on fire!

Re:WP7 - The 'Metoo' Phone OS?

[gmhowell]

That's not a clod, it's an iRoadApple.

Not even that simple

[Namarrgon]

If applications ping a server regularly to see if they have updates or if there is a message, that uses a lot more of both resources than if it subscribes to a network service that notifies the device when the same event occurs.

Subscription to network notifications are more efficient for the local CPU, but then you have to keep the phone's radio powered up to maintain the connection and stay open for notifications. If polling frequency is low, you can probably save a lot more juice by only powering up the radio briefly, every hour.

And of course, multitasking complicates this too. It's a fixed power cost to keep the radio going for any number of potential notifications, whereas multiple apps polling, even occasionally, multiplies the power drain. System management of the radio can clearly help (by possibly e.g. only allowing it on for brief windows to allow both polling and subscribing background apps to connect - foreground apps would of course get unrestricted access).

There's a balance between unrestricted multitasking & potential battery drain, and as Google said, optimising this is Hard. But the user can be involved too - I rather like Android's approach of showing you exactly what is causing the unexpected battery drain you're seeing. This has saved my bacon by pinpointing badly-written apps and settings I accidentally left on, more than once.

Re:Not even that simple

[gig]

> but then you have to keep the phone's radio powered up to maintain the
> connection and stay open for notifications

The baseband is always talking to the tower anyway, so that you can stay open for calls. A push notification is just an app calling you when it needs your attention. It makes perfect sense on a phone.

Re:Not even that simple

[BitZtream]

Subscription to network notifications are more efficient for the local CPU, but then you have to keep the phone's radio powered up to maintain the connection and stay open for notifications. If polling frequency is low, you can probably save a lot more juice by only powering up the radio briefly, every hour.

No, it can stay in standby mode, the notifications come in just like an SMS or incoming call. The radio is always powered up to some extent so it can sit and wait for someone to call you or send you a message. Sending a notification to apps along this same line of communication is extremely energy efficient as the radio can stay in low power mode and wait for something to wake it up to do real, two way communications.

This is the way any app with a clue works.

Thankful for lack of choice?

[Namarrgon]

Ah yes, these users were no doubt just as thankful for Mr Jobs saving their original iPhone's battery life by denying them a 3G connection. Perhaps they would be even more thankful if the phone restricted its CPU to half speed, and locked the screen brightness at minimum? Think of the enormous battery savings there.

I'm just thankful that there also exist phones that not only do simple app switching, but allow the *user* decide if they wish to expend a little extra power on a useful background task (and that let the user easily spot and uninstall any badly-written apps that might abuse this). Choice always trumps no choice, at least in my books.

Re:Thankful for lack of choice?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I'm just thankful that there also exist phones that not only do simple app switching, but allow the *user* decide if they wish to expend a little extra power on a useful background task...

Oh, I completely agree. For geeks it's much better to have the choice to screw things up. I can run apps to monitor the battery and network usage of each app and do my homework on how those apps perform using some Google-fu. Normal users, on the other hand, cannot or will not do the above. That's why most prefer a curated experience where they get good battery life because Apple forces developers to adhere to strict use of limited APIs connecting to built in devices optimized for battery usage. They don't want to have to try to figure out why their battery life sucks, they want it to "just work".

Oh, and Google recognizes this as well. If you take a look at their Android blogs, you'll see several comments by Google engineers about trying to come up with a solution to this very problem that will allow Android phones to "just work" for battery life without the same restrictions Apple has implemented. Hopefully they'll manage a solution some day.

Re:Thankful for lack of choice?

[Namarrgon]

No argument there. "Just working" is a very good default. So long as there remains the choice, for the inevitable situations that the designers didn't envisage.

I certainly understand that for some people, reliability is paramount, and eliminating the possibility that they (or a rogue app) might screw something up is well worth trading off functionality. Personally I'd like a say in that, though - like rooting the phone, or at least a switch that says "Click here to live dangerously".

Was not Safari exploit

[SuperKendall]

Surely you haven't forgotten the exploit that enabled iphone OS to be jailbroken from the web browser?

That used two separate exploits, one in the PDF handler and the other in the OS itself.

Neither were Safari.

With IE in Windows many exploits got to go directly to happy play time because the browser was integrated in the OS.

It's pretty hilarious to see you guys trot out a once in a lifetime meeting of two exploits, when there were years with daily IE exploits and even now you can't run a PC without a virus checker running constantly. Oh sure, it's EXACTLY THE SAME.

Re:Was not Safari exploit

[exomondo]

That used two separate exploits, one in the PDF handler and the other in the OS itself.

Neither were Safari.

That PDF handler is a part of safari as it is used within safari, it isn't an external program.

It's pretty hilarious to see you guys trot out a once in a lifetime meeting of two exploits, when there were years with daily IE exploits

That's not the point at all, the point is just because an exploit exists in a desktop version of the software doesn't mean the mobile version will have the same vulnerabilities and vice-versa. That's the only point im making here. No 'this platform vs that platform' or anything like that, i have a WP7 phone and an ipad so i'm not biased one way or the other.

Multitasking

[jkeelsnc]

I fail to see how this is informative. My droid phone multitasks to one's heart delight without even thinking about it. And even IOS doesn't allow full multitasking all the time. The downside with the multitasking in android is reduced battery life at times. However, it is a tradeoff I am willing to make. I can switch between apps at will and no problem. :) I am sure WP7 is pretty good. Still, I will stick with android for now. :) Multitasking is nothing new. These are the not the droids you are looking for. Move along. Move along.