Please read a little bit before posting nonsense. Yes, Apple will be big with 7-8 billion worth of revenue for Samsung. Samsung yearly revenue is somewhere in the $180-$200 billion. In other words, Apple is 3-7%. Currency fluctuations account for more variability than does winning or losing Apple.
The loss of Apple's account will devastate Samsung's semiconductor business
The numbers published says that this is not so. Apple account for sub-10% of the market total. Probably similar for Samsung. Samsung semiconductor can handle a sub-10% hit to their business. Apple would not be able to inflict such a hit though, anyone who supplies Apple in the future would have to get rid of some of their customers, who would have to turn to Samsung.
Apple's such a huge player in the chip business, they can really distort the market if they wanted to
Being the largest doesn't actually mean that you are large. From the numbers posted in this thread it appears that Apple, at best, buys in the higher single digit number of OEM hardware. That is not big enough to distort the market.
The problem with concepts like "the largest" is that it doesn't convey any real information. In the chart provided with your link, the top ten are listed. Of those top ten, it appears that Apple accounts for about 20% or so. Now, there are thousands of outfits in the world that purchase these. Camera and camcorder manufacturers, car manufacturers etc. It seems quite unlikely that the top ten account for half the total market, they are quite probably a lot less.
What does this mean? It means that even if Apple is, by some margin, the largest OEM buyer in the world, they still account for a single digit percentage of the business. Assuming that the relationship holds for Samsung, Apple would therefore account for less than 10% of the Samsung business. Now, that is total. Samsung is only trying to block US imports, which is, assuming (optimistically) that the US is half the market, that the hit for Samsung will be below 5%. That is a small hit to take if you can seriously damage a significant competitor or, perhaps even better, get some of his profits as royalties.
I've done a bit of GWT, and so far it hasn't really been working out. Still too many issues where there is marginally different behavior on different browsers.
No, I have not done Swing since 1.5, but I have heard positive things about it. Will look into it this summer. If it is good enough I'll drop client-specific of course, I much prefer cross-platform. Now, performance was never my primary beef with swing though, looks was.Nimbus looks great. Next time I do a desktop app, Nimbus will be at the top of my list. Currently only doing HTML stuff using.NET MVC and Play! on GAE.
Curious - is Swing also accelerated as a browser plug-in (applet)? If it is, awsomeness might still happen to Java client stuff. Now, if I can only get my employer to understand how much nicer both Play! and Spring is than that JBoss monstrosity, life would be perfect. Next -> Oracle Fusion!
SWT is a good thing, and Eclipse as a platform is a Very Interesting thing. Sadly it hasn't taken off though, and that is partly because of the bad rep Java as a client framework got from AWT and Swing, both, in different ways, abominations onto anything holy.
Wow, so here we are, disagreeing on something, and the only thing you can do is to take quotes out of context. You are a sad and pathetic individual.
"Linux is a really bad fit for the desktop."
I also explained why. No reason to include why right? But hey, show me an app on Linux that can replace Vegas and Lightroom, and I will change that opinion instantly.
Windows 7 as an operating system is significantly better protected than Linux
That isn't a matter of opinion, it is a matter of technical fact. You might not like that fact, but it is still so.
you'll be significantly more productive with.NET than Java
Again, context would be nice. Also, if you had searched a little more, you'd have found that I have developed software commercially in Java since the late 1990s. I have done.NET only for two years. Wonder why I have such an opinion. Perhaps I have the experience to know. You will get that too once you finish Middle School, High School and University.
compared to DirectX, OpenGL sucks
Again, this is not at all controversial. The fact that it hurts your religious feelings is in that regard completely irrelevant.
NET MVC beats both Play! and Spring hands down
My personal experience, I have developed commercial software in two, MVC and Spring. I have done personal stuff in Play! How much experience do you have in either? How about Ruby? Ruby as a language beats C#, but the tooling is nowhere near as sophisticated. Also, Ruby is still difficult to introduce into the enterprise. Again, if you had chosen to read what I actually wrote and keep context, you would have known that. The sad part for you is that to you computers is a religious thing, and in your view I am a Satan Worshipper every time I say something positive about Microsoft. It just shows how amazingly pathetic you are. Get a girlfriend. Get some sex. Relax. Computers are not important. Not important enough for you to accuse someone of being dishonest just because they do not share your religion. I'm an atheist, in both a spiritual and a computer sense.
It's sad when the only thing you have to offer is calling someone you disagree with a liar. One day, when you reach fifteen or so, you'll realize people actually can have different opinions about things.
OK, so here's the challenge. Show me one, just a single one, hardware vendor who is/was a Microsoft OS customer and who Microsoft "trampled in their quest for supremacy". Shouldn't be too hard if there is lots of them.
You're getting a lot of people calling you an astroturfer
I am? I see one person. You. I have given an opinion, and that opinion is mine alone. Is the opinion at odds with some perceived majority opinion that you have sniffed out? Usually, when people are accused of lying about having an opinion, it is because the opinion seems to go against reason or common perception. From what I can gather, WP7 has received nothing but praise from people who have actually tried it. Given that, what would indicate I am an astroturfer?
If you base the "You spend a lot of time saying..." on something else I have said on/., you should also have found me explaining why I prefer WP7 over iOS. I can do it again for you though. Some of the things I like is the UI consistency. Microsoft included some rather nifty UI controls with the Phone, and that means that you get a very consistent UX. Speed and smoothness. iOS bogs down on me after a while, WP7 never does, it is always responsive and smooth. Integration - honestly, Microsoft got this right, and everybody else got it wrong. I don't care about applications on my phone. I care about data. Contacts. Pictures. Books. I care about communication. Phone, SMS, Email, Messaging. The WP7 integration is heads and shoulders above anything else in the mobile market. Apple will do a little catch-up in iOS 5 as I understand it, but it is still catch-up. WP7 also has some areas where it need to basically catch up with its own idea of how things should be, most notably messaging. In Mango they will leap forward quite a bit (from the demos shown) though, and still be significantly ahead of Apple and Google in this regard.
If the data on my phone changes, in other words, I change info on a contact, it should be reflected everywhere I have that contact stored. On my iPhone, data is stored locally, and updates are not propagated to (for example) Google. On WP7 all changes are automatically reflected at Google. If I take a picture on my phone it would be nice to have that on my PC as well, just in case I lose the phone. No problem, automatic and easy.
Oh, and Apple still can't do hardware right. Not totally on topic but still. My iPhone 3GS gets zero wi-fi coverage in several of the rooms in my house. My latop, the wife's Nokia and my LG (universally agreed - the worst WP7 phone) gets full coverage everywhere.
Multitasking is not terribly important to me on my phone, in many ways what MS did originally with the Tombstoning concept - an application needs to be able to get back to the exact state it was when it was interrupted - works really well. For one of my own apps I would like to have multitasking though, so I will welcome it.
A clean, consistent, responsive UX with focus on what I want to do (talk, send messages, take pictures etc) on my phone is important, and nobody does it like WP7 at this point in time. Not even close. They are all too focused on apps.
I have to wonder if you are more than a little slow. It seems so. The vendors I listed have something in common, and they have something in common with Nokia. Stop reading now and let that sink in for a little bit. Think about it. Don't read further. Stop! OK, now you can continue. They are hardware vendors who run Microsoft Operating Systems on their hardware. What chances are there that Microsoft will try to produce WP7 hardware? Do they have a lot of positive experience in doing such stuff? Believe me, if they were even contemplating exploring the avenue, the rumor would be out.
Microsoft is essentially a software company. They are not going to "trample" the people who deliver the hardware on which their software can run. Not even Ballmer is that stupid. Thinking that they might means one is even dumber than Ballmer, which probably puts one in Chimp territory.
I install VIM on every PC I run together with a whole host of other stuff from cygwin. I would never even dream of claiming VIM beats VS as a tool for software development though. Anyone who codes in VIM is a Luddite moron and I would have him fired from my team for being too religious and too dumb. Eclipse, sure, even Emacs is tolerable, but VIM is not a programmers editor. It is great for quick fixes to text files, and I used to use VIM for search-replace (but even there VS is better than VIM now).
If all your "really productive" programmers use VIM they are in fact Luddite morons. At least they should use Emacs, or even better (probably) Eclipse.
In VIM that is 59 key presses or so. In VS2010 it would be 7-8 key presses. Not only that, after those 7-8 key presses I know that it will compile since it is once I hit the semicolon, a VIM user would not. Sure, there is insenvim, but I can't say it works too well. Hasn't for me anyway. This is an overly simplistic case. With templates and snippets I can have VS write significant amounts of my boiler-plate code, and that improves productivity.
So, I'll repeat it. Anyone who thinks he is more productive in VIM than in a proper IDE like Eclipse or VS is a Luddite moron with such strong religious attitudes he isn't worth keeping on your team. Mostly because he's refusing, on religious grounds, to use tools that will significantly improve his productivity.
Oh, so you're such an amateur that Java does not enter your consciousness
Assuming here that he is talking about client-side apps, Java should stay out of his consciousness, far out. Should never enter it. Should not even be let close to the door of his consciousness.
For client-side, you are probably better off doing client-specific development. A lot of the vertical stuff simply doesn't fit very well with the html/js way of doing things. You'd be a moron do go that route in many situations. That leaves you with either a cross-platform toolkit like Qt or doing each client in platform native tools. The latter would typically be preferable since it would leave you with a working Windows client rather quickly, an OSX client "coming soon" and a Linux client "in the works". Qt would leave you with three sub-optimal client applications "coming soon".
Here is why. If they had gone with a QT, GTK or wx solution, they would, with the current staff, have no solutions ready on any platform. With their current approach they have a rapidly evolving Windows version that probably covers 90-95% of their potential market. They make a token nod in the direction of Apple and Linux, but are not too worried that the teams are unable to deliver given that the increase in market would be insignificant.
Being able to claim you are on all those platforms has a nice marketing value but no real tangible (bottom line) value.
Such is the nature of developing niche products with small development teams. Windows is, by a pretty significant margin, above an beyond what exists on any other platform. If you care about delivering, you deliver for Windows.
If you are Adobe and need to be present on OSX, then you hire a few hundred devs and let them take it up the out-door. On the other hand, if you are Adobe you are probably either on Win32 direct or MFC (Microsoft Frustration Classes) anyway, which means that all of your dev teams suffer equally. It seems people, even on/. are unable to understand that the typical enterprise dev team (one, two or a handful of devs) doing vertical niche apps have hugely different requirements than a mass-marked shop like Adobe. For the small dev teams, there is nothing that can touch Windows for development right now. Nothing in the same league. Nothing even in the same type of game. A good Ruby setup comes close, but even that is not quite there since it is mostly appropriate for html (javascript)-only apps, which is great until that is not enough. A lot of the vertical apps are simply not suited for pure html/js.
You should never open your mouth and give strong opinion on things you are just guessing about. Your sentences were grammatically correct but contain no real information. Please stop using your deranged fantasy as a source for "facts".
I've interviewed at Nokia for a job in a team that was doing services
Ah, yes, services. I know those guys from when I worked in Telco. Honestly, Elop can do no wrong. A semi-trained monkey could do no wrong with Nokia. Nokia was doing all wrong all on their own. No matter what Elop does, except doing nothing, is going to make things better for Nokia.
They'll be just another in the long list of companies that Microsoft has trampled in their mad rush for supremacy.
Yeah, you are right. All companies that are involved with Microsoft get trampled. Companies like Dell, Asus and all the other PC makers that Microsoft trampled in their mad rush for supremacy. They were simply doing the heavy lifting for Microsoft's own product entry. As I said, stop doing drugs and stop washing them down with that kool-aid.
If the color is not to your liking, you change it. That was what he was trying to explain to you. Now that you realize color can be changed, that is no good either?
Metro isn't any more typography heavy than any other mobile OS. English centric? In what way specifically? You are desperately making up stuff as you go, are you not?
Compared to who, at Nokia specifically. Nokia has been scrambling for years to get something going. It hasn't happened. Everything out of Nokia since the release of the iPhone has been a sad joke, and it continues to be a sad joke. The Nokia SW Engineering team proved beyond any possible doubt that they simply did not have what it takes to build smart-phone software. Meeh-Too is a joke.
I would like to see a suggestion about what Nokia should have done. Symbian was in a coma, Meeh-Too was rotting on the vine. Nobody at Nokia was taking it seriously. Elop's gamble is not huge.
Take that advice. As a mobile developer I obviously have an iPhone, I have an Android device (actually more than one) and I got a WP7 device as soon as I could. My iPhone has always been my primary personal device. When I get a new phone, I always make my self use it as my primary device for a week to get to know it. I did that with my WP7 device too. Back in the beginning of this year. It's still my primary device, and I cringe every time I have to use the iPhone. Honestly, the UX is significantly better with WP7.
Are there things missing. Absolutely, but not enough to make me want to go back to the iPhone, and from what I gather, the missing will no longer be missing come Mango.
Slashdot Mirror
Please read a little bit before posting nonsense. Yes, Apple will be big with 7-8 billion worth of revenue for Samsung. Samsung yearly revenue is somewhere in the $180-$200 billion. In other words, Apple is 3-7%. Currency fluctuations account for more variability than does winning or losing Apple.
The loss of Apple's account will devastate Samsung's semiconductor business
The numbers published says that this is not so. Apple account for sub-10% of the market total. Probably similar for Samsung. Samsung semiconductor can handle a sub-10% hit to their business. Apple would not be able to inflict such a hit though, anyone who supplies Apple in the future would have to get rid of some of their customers, who would have to turn to Samsung.
Apple's such a huge player in the chip business, they can really distort the market if they wanted to
Being the largest doesn't actually mean that you are large. From the numbers posted in this thread it appears that Apple, at best, buys in the higher single digit number of OEM hardware. That is not big enough to distort the market.
The problem with concepts like "the largest" is that it doesn't convey any real information. In the chart provided with your link, the top ten are listed. Of those top ten, it appears that Apple accounts for about 20% or so. Now, there are thousands of outfits in the world that purchase these. Camera and camcorder manufacturers, car manufacturers etc. It seems quite unlikely that the top ten account for half the total market, they are quite probably a lot less.
What does this mean? It means that even if Apple is, by some margin, the largest OEM buyer in the world, they still account for a single digit percentage of the business. Assuming that the relationship holds for Samsung, Apple would therefore account for less than 10% of the Samsung business. Now, that is total. Samsung is only trying to block US imports, which is, assuming (optimistically) that the US is half the market, that the hit for Samsung will be below 5%. That is a small hit to take if you can seriously damage a significant competitor or, perhaps even better, get some of his profits as royalties.
Wow, you are sad.
Word has worked for me 100% with old files. Perhaps there are some compatibility problems, but they are few and affect few.
FCP will not open old work. Period. Apple: Fail
I've done a bit of GWT, and so far it hasn't really been working out. Still too many issues where there is marginally different behavior on different browsers.
No, I have not done Swing since 1.5, but I have heard positive things about it. Will look into it this summer. If it is good enough I'll drop client-specific of course, I much prefer cross-platform. Now, performance was never my primary beef with swing though, looks was.Nimbus looks great. Next time I do a desktop app, Nimbus will be at the top of my list. Currently only doing HTML stuff using .NET MVC and Play! on GAE.
Curious - is Swing also accelerated as a browser plug-in (applet)? If it is, awsomeness might still happen to Java client stuff. Now, if I can only get my employer to understand how much nicer both Play! and Spring is than that JBoss monstrosity, life would be perfect. Next -> Oracle Fusion!
SWT is a good thing, and Eclipse as a platform is a Very Interesting thing. Sadly it hasn't taken off though, and that is partly because of the bad rep Java as a client framework got from AWT and Swing, both, in different ways, abominations onto anything holy.
Wow, so here we are, disagreeing on something, and the only thing you can do is to take quotes out of context. You are a sad and pathetic individual.
"Linux is a really bad fit for the desktop."
I also explained why. No reason to include why right? But hey, show me an app on Linux that can replace Vegas and Lightroom, and I will change that opinion instantly.
Windows 7 as an operating system is significantly better protected than Linux
That isn't a matter of opinion, it is a matter of technical fact. You might not like that fact, but it is still so.
you'll be significantly more productive with .NET than Java
Again, context would be nice. Also, if you had searched a little more, you'd have found that I have developed software commercially in Java since the late 1990s. I have done .NET only for two years. Wonder why I have such an opinion. Perhaps I have the experience to know. You will get that too once you finish Middle School, High School and University.
compared to DirectX, OpenGL sucks
Again, this is not at all controversial. The fact that it hurts your religious feelings is in that regard completely irrelevant.
NET MVC beats both Play! and Spring hands down
My personal experience, I have developed commercial software in two, MVC and Spring. I have done personal stuff in Play! How much experience do you have in either? How about Ruby? Ruby as a language beats C#, but the tooling is nowhere near as sophisticated. Also, Ruby is still difficult to introduce into the enterprise. Again, if you had chosen to read what I actually wrote and keep context, you would have known that. The sad part for you is that to you computers is a religious thing, and in your view I am a Satan Worshipper every time I say something positive about Microsoft. It just shows how amazingly pathetic you are. Get a girlfriend. Get some sex. Relax. Computers are not important. Not important enough for you to accuse someone of being dishonest just because they do not share your religion. I'm an atheist, in both a spiritual and a computer sense.
It's sad when the only thing you have to offer is calling someone you disagree with a liar. One day, when you reach fifteen or so, you'll realize people actually can have different opinions about things.
OK, so here's the challenge. Show me one, just a single one, hardware vendor who is/was a Microsoft OS customer and who Microsoft "trampled in their quest for supremacy". Shouldn't be too hard if there is lots of them.
You're getting a lot of people calling you an astroturfer
I am? I see one person. You. I have given an opinion, and that opinion is mine alone. Is the opinion at odds with some perceived majority opinion that you have sniffed out? Usually, when people are accused of lying about having an opinion, it is because the opinion seems to go against reason or common perception. From what I can gather, WP7 has received nothing but praise from people who have actually tried it. Given that, what would indicate I am an astroturfer?
If you base the "You spend a lot of time saying..." on something else I have said on /., you should also have found me explaining why I prefer WP7 over iOS. I can do it again for you though. Some of the things I like is the UI consistency. Microsoft included some rather nifty UI controls with the Phone, and that means that you get a very consistent UX. Speed and smoothness. iOS bogs down on me after a while, WP7 never does, it is always responsive and smooth. Integration - honestly, Microsoft got this right, and everybody else got it wrong. I don't care about applications on my phone. I care about data. Contacts. Pictures. Books. I care about communication. Phone, SMS, Email, Messaging. The WP7 integration is heads and shoulders above anything else in the mobile market. Apple will do a little catch-up in iOS 5 as I understand it, but it is still catch-up. WP7 also has some areas where it need to basically catch up with its own idea of how things should be, most notably messaging. In Mango they will leap forward quite a bit (from the demos shown) though, and still be significantly ahead of Apple and Google in this regard.
If the data on my phone changes, in other words, I change info on a contact, it should be reflected everywhere I have that contact stored. On my iPhone, data is stored locally, and updates are not propagated to (for example) Google. On WP7 all changes are automatically reflected at Google. If I take a picture on my phone it would be nice to have that on my PC as well, just in case I lose the phone. No problem, automatic and easy.
Oh, and Apple still can't do hardware right. Not totally on topic but still. My iPhone 3GS gets zero wi-fi coverage in several of the rooms in my house. My latop, the wife's Nokia and my LG (universally agreed - the worst WP7 phone) gets full coverage everywhere.
Multitasking is not terribly important to me on my phone, in many ways what MS did originally with the Tombstoning concept - an application needs to be able to get back to the exact state it was when it was interrupted - works really well. For one of my own apps I would like to have multitasking though, so I will welcome it.
A clean, consistent, responsive UX with focus on what I want to do (talk, send messages, take pictures etc) on my phone is important, and nobody does it like WP7 at this point in time. Not even close. They are all too focused on apps.
You haven't shown the list to be any shorter
I have to wonder if you are more than a little slow. It seems so. The vendors I listed have something in common, and they have something in common with Nokia. Stop reading now and let that sink in for a little bit. Think about it. Don't read further. Stop! OK, now you can continue. They are hardware vendors who run Microsoft Operating Systems on their hardware. What chances are there that Microsoft will try to produce WP7 hardware? Do they have a lot of positive experience in doing such stuff? Believe me, if they were even contemplating exploring the avenue, the rumor would be out.
Microsoft is essentially a software company. They are not going to "trample" the people who deliver the hardware on which their software can run. Not even Ballmer is that stupid. Thinking that they might means one is even dumber than Ballmer, which probably puts one in Chimp territory.
I install VIM on every PC I run together with a whole host of other stuff from cygwin. I would never even dream of claiming VIM beats VS as a tool for software development though. Anyone who codes in VIM is a Luddite moron and I would have him fired from my team for being too religious and too dumb. Eclipse, sure, even Emacs is tolerable, but VIM is not a programmers editor. It is great for quick fixes to text files, and I used to use VIM for search-replace (but even there VS is better than VIM now).
If all your "really productive" programmers use VIM they are in fact Luddite morons. At least they should use Emacs, or even better (probably) Eclipse.
someObject.someProperty = otherObject.someRelevantProperty;
In VIM that is 59 key presses or so. In VS2010 it would be 7-8 key presses. Not only that, after those 7-8 key presses I know that it will compile since it is once I hit the semicolon, a VIM user would not. Sure, there is insenvim, but I can't say it works too well. Hasn't for me anyway. This is an overly simplistic case. With templates and snippets I can have VS write significant amounts of my boiler-plate code, and that improves productivity.
So, I'll repeat it. Anyone who thinks he is more productive in VIM than in a proper IDE like Eclipse or VS is a Luddite moron with such strong religious attitudes he isn't worth keeping on your team. Mostly because he's refusing, on religious grounds, to use tools that will significantly improve his productivity.
Oh, so you're such an amateur that Java does not enter your consciousness
Assuming here that he is talking about client-side apps, Java should stay out of his consciousness, far out. Should never enter it. Should not even be let close to the door of his consciousness.
For client-side, you are probably better off doing client-specific development. A lot of the vertical stuff simply doesn't fit very well with the html/js way of doing things. You'd be a moron do go that route in many situations. That leaves you with either a cross-platform toolkit like Qt or doing each client in platform native tools. The latter would typically be preferable since it would leave you with a working Windows client rather quickly, an OSX client "coming soon" and a Linux client "in the works". Qt would leave you with three sub-optimal client applications "coming soon".
Here is why. If they had gone with a QT, GTK or wx solution, they would, with the current staff, have no solutions ready on any platform. With their current approach they have a rapidly evolving Windows version that probably covers 90-95% of their potential market. They make a token nod in the direction of Apple and Linux, but are not too worried that the teams are unable to deliver given that the increase in market would be insignificant.
Being able to claim you are on all those platforms has a nice marketing value but no real tangible (bottom line) value.
Such is the nature of developing niche products with small development teams. Windows is, by a pretty significant margin, above an beyond what exists on any other platform. If you care about delivering, you deliver for Windows.
If you are Adobe and need to be present on OSX, then you hire a few hundred devs and let them take it up the out-door. On the other hand, if you are Adobe you are probably either on Win32 direct or MFC (Microsoft Frustration Classes) anyway, which means that all of your dev teams suffer equally. It seems people, even on /. are unable to understand that the typical enterprise dev team (one, two or a handful of devs) doing vertical niche apps have hugely different requirements than a mass-marked shop like Adobe. For the small dev teams, there is nothing that can touch Windows for development right now. Nothing in the same league. Nothing even in the same type of game. A good Ruby setup comes close, but even that is not quite there since it is mostly appropriate for html (javascript)-only apps, which is great until that is not enough. A lot of the vertical apps are simply not suited for pure html/js.
Any further questions?
Goodness. So much fantasy. So little fact.
You should never open your mouth and give strong opinion on things you are just guessing about. Your sentences were grammatically correct but contain no real information. Please stop using your deranged fantasy as a source for "facts".
I've interviewed at Nokia for a job in a team that was doing services
Ah, yes, services. I know those guys from when I worked in Telco. Honestly, Elop can do no wrong. A semi-trained monkey could do no wrong with Nokia. Nokia was doing all wrong all on their own. No matter what Elop does, except doing nothing, is going to make things better for Nokia.
They'll be just another in the long list of companies that Microsoft has trampled in their mad rush for supremacy.
Yeah, you are right. All companies that are involved with Microsoft get trampled. Companies like Dell, Asus and all the other PC makers that Microsoft trampled in their mad rush for supremacy. They were simply doing the heavy lifting for Microsoft's own product entry. As I said, stop doing drugs and stop washing them down with that kool-aid.
Microsoft is copying Apple again and getting into the retail market with their own products.
Are you on drugs? Exactly how is Microsoft copying Apple here? Seriously. Stop doing drugs.
Sigh.
If the color is not to your liking, you change it. That was what he was trying to explain to you. Now that you realize color can be changed, that is no good either?
Metro isn't any more typography heavy than any other mobile OS. English centric? In what way specifically? You are desperately making up stuff as you go, are you not?
Elop is an idiot
Compared to who, at Nokia specifically. Nokia has been scrambling for years to get something going. It hasn't happened. Everything out of Nokia since the release of the iPhone has been a sad joke, and it continues to be a sad joke. The Nokia SW Engineering team proved beyond any possible doubt that they simply did not have what it takes to build smart-phone software. Meeh-Too is a joke.
I would like to see a suggestion about what Nokia should have done. Symbian was in a coma, Meeh-Too was rotting on the vine. Nobody at Nokia was taking it seriously. Elop's gamble is not huge.
Seriously, go to a store and try a WP7 device
Take that advice. As a mobile developer I obviously have an iPhone, I have an Android device (actually more than one) and I got a WP7 device as soon as I could. My iPhone has always been my primary personal device. When I get a new phone, I always make my self use it as my primary device for a week to get to know it. I did that with my WP7 device too. Back in the beginning of this year. It's still my primary device, and I cringe every time I have to use the iPhone. Honestly, the UX is significantly better with WP7.
Are there things missing. Absolutely, but not enough to make me want to go back to the iPhone, and from what I gather, the missing will no longer be missing come Mango.