Enervation: How to make something new unintelligible
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Microsoft will preview Windows Phone 7.5 Mango tomorrow
MOBILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Microsoft will release 500 new features in Windows Phone 7.5 later this year.
Microsoft's floundering Windows Phone 7 (WP7) is set to receive a major update later this year in the shape of what the company calls 'Mango'. Microsoft bills Mango as Windows Phone 7.5 and it will according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer have 500 new features and a launch of sorts tomorrow.
Talking at Microsoft's Developer Forum in Japan, Ballmer admitted that WP7 was released "a year later than I wished we had," adding, "shame on us". Talking up the Mango update, Ballmer said that it will be previewed tomorrow, though there was no word yet on how complete the build on show will be.
Microsoft doesn't really need 500 new features in Windows Phone 7.5, but just a few unique ones. Ballmer mentioned that Microsoft was trying "a different approach to user interface design" so that developers can have a unified look and feel between pre-installed applications and its own. It is a fair comment, considering Ballmer was at a developer's conference but consumers will be looking for much more than uniform user interfaces, and Microsoft needs to deliver.
Ballmer had a few words to say about Microsoft's acquisition of Skype, justifying why Microsoft spent the best part of $8.5bn to acquire a company that generates so little cash. Apparently it's all part of Microsoft's cloud strategy. Well, something is certainly up in the air.
Tomorrow's Windows Phone 7.5 preview needs to do several things - address developer issues such as the limited access to cameras, sensors and network interfaces, and, for users, provide a wider range of device specifications along with the ability to sideload applications without having to hack the operating system. The last and perhaps most important aspect is to get the update out as soon as possible.
Google has already mentioned that the next version of Android for smartphones, Ice Cream Sandwich, is coming up, and typically Apple releases a major update of its IOS every year. Given that IOS 4 is about to hit its first birthday next month, Microsoft doesn't have very long to get Windows Phone 7.5 out the door, and most importantly, into the hands of users. µ
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Stick to what you're good at Microsoft rather than getting as many fingers into as many pies as you can for the sake of 'Me too'.
Time to finally admit that Windows and phones don't make a good match and M$'s marketing strategy makes their products look dull and unappealing to anyone but a handful of buniess people with more money than time to think about what else is out there?
Microsoft has been making huge moves lately with Nokia and Skype announcements. Everything I saw of Mango at MIX in April and since then has really blown me away.
I think this update will be for Windows Phone what Eclair (2.0) was for Android. This is a game changer.
Honestly this still sounds like MS is playing catch up. If nothing else until they get on a similar development cycle to Android ie 2 major updates yearly odds are they're always gonna be left behind by it if not by the iOS as well. For that matter they're always gonna be behind until they finally add back in the functionality they removed when they switched from WinMo to WinPhone, which granted this does some of.
It's also worth noting that if they want to try to attract the homebrew community they should worry a little less about the troubles you have with loading them since ways already exist and instead first work on suppling some XP development tools. At current the individual components of the WinPhone development tools ie Visual Studio, SilverLight and XNA 4.0 are able to run on XP but the versions you can load seperately from the WinPhone development tools pack don't including any of the WinPhone components which means unless you're running Win 7 or the much hated Vista you can't develop for WinPhone. This is a big issue given XP still holds a larger marketshare then Win 7 and most of the Win 7 marketshare is likely made up of businesses and educational organizations. In otherwords most of your homebrewers are running XP which at present can develop for Android and iOS but not WinPhone.
FINALLY we will all be able to install the internet onto our mobile phones and be able to browse the web and point and click and cut and paste and multitask and do all of the things that are so DIFFICULT if not IMPOSSIBLE with any other mobile O/S.
Give me my LoseDoze Fone7!
If the author of the article was uptodate on the goings on in the tech world. He would have heard of MS' event MIX. They announced 1500+ new APIs for developers to get their teeth into, including raw camera access, network sockets and others. He would know that they've updated their chassis specifications. He would know that the new dev tools are out later this week with a baked emulator ROM of Mango. He would know that MS is officially working with the ChevronWP7 team to support a solution for the homebrew community though I don't see why average joe needs sideloading capability and I'd argue curated marketplaces are in average joe's interest.