Windows Phone 7 = bad iPhone

Below is just my opinion, and take it as such.

Windows 7 dissapoints me beyond belief. In fact, teverything about it is the "worst case scenario".

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1. Home page.. I can sum it up in "WTF". The home page that takes up about 80% of the screen (so even big screens look gimped, small and shifted to the side), with a huge area on right and up completely wasted for nothing. Ugly plain-colored squares, with no design consistency (big, small, long, tall) with pieces of information that make no sense.
2. Social networking - as for me, I really don't give a flying turd about my neighbor's ugly kid drawing an image of a bird on the wall with his drool. Nor do I care that much about viewing hundreds of pictures of my friend visiting his grandma. Thanks for covering my home screen with that.
3. Xbox - I don't even have an xbox, nor do I plan to buy one. Neither do most of the business-oriented people who buy a PDA. And even if I did, would I really be so obsessed about my "avatar" or "points" or whatever they use, that I need it on my home page?
4. Emailing - the heart of a PDA. For some people, even more important than the calling itself. By looking at the presentation videos 7's email system is complete trash. It gives you no real "sense" for the inbox, there is no good view to browse your emails properly. Swiping through pages to see "flagged" "unread" on different screens creates a feeling that you're not getting the whole picture, and you're missing stuff. Besides, it has no good integration with contacts that HTC's Sense provides pretty darn well.
5. Interface in general - animation effects blow. They are kind-of OK for today's standards, but when 7 is released, they will already be boring and plain. They are not looking forward, the "flow" of it is already outdated and will be completely destroyed by any new interface that Android or especially Apple will no-doubt deliver in near future. Besides, how awesome it is to see parts of words all the time? "Peop" turns into "ople", so if you slide left-and-right real fast, you can actually see a whole word..... freaking idiotic.
6. Customization... I'm just speechless. This is the only thing that I could raise as WM's, perhaps, only advantage over Android and iPhone. Now they are officially going over to the Apple's way of treating customers like money-packed down-syndrome drooling kids that fall into a seizure when they hear words "cab" or "tweak". After hanging in xda-developers for so long, and writing my own stuff for the PDA, this alone is way more than enough to make me never even look at WM devices again.
7. "Copy and paste" and "multitasking".... I cannot believe that there is even a controversy over WM device having those 2 features... I don't even know what else to say about this. Insane.

Microsoft is obviously a huge Apple fanboy now. They are accepting their market strategies and their development practices and are scared ****less to look ahead and develop something brilliant.
At this point, with current info, WM7 is nothing more than a bad, extremely poorly designed iPhone interface mod. It's already outdated, already looks inefficient, boring and just waiting to be forgotten. Heck, age-old HTC Home plugin looks way better than WM7, and is actually more useful for everyday tasks.

</rant>

Flame away.

WhyBe said:

Microsoft is mitigating all of the flaws of Windows Mobile. You anti-WP7 guys seem to be forgeting that the WM platform was quickly becoming a marketplace failure. Whether you like iPhone or not, there are plenty of things Apple did right (which is why they're kicking a** right now). If you want to call modern smartphone users dumb, then you have to realize that the entire general public is "dumb" and "dumb" people is where the money is. Tech geeks are just not a large enough market to build a platform around.

I for one, love the way MS is now focused on user-experience and integration (hubs) as opposed to a bunch of unrelated apps. I was wishing for that long before I knew what a iPhone or WP7 was.

Apple's idea of tying together all of it's products is a winning strategy. MS is the only company that can top Apple at this particular strategy: Zune, XBox, Office, Exchange, FaceBook (MS owns a huge share) and etc.. They have already opened up the platform for development even though the phone isn't even released yet.

MS seems to be really focused on people that actually use their phones to enhance their lives, as opposed to people using their lives to enhance their phones. Good job MS!

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Whether MS is taking the most profitable approach or not, is a different topic. I do agree that majority of users are "dumb" and freak out at anything that takes more than 5 clicks to do. However, I HIGHLY doubt they can catch on to Apple and give simple users a better experience than iPhone already gives. If we consider the release timeframe, and high possibility of iPhone 2, MS has picked a wrong battle and will fail miserably while we all laugh our asses off at the fugly interface that WM7 has.

However, I'm speaking from my own perspective, and what *I* want and need in a phone. Fortunately for me, WM, even having worst interface ever (thankfully fixed by HTC), still catered to all my tweaking/developing needs. I'd even say to the needs of the majority of people at xda - this is a developer forum after all, not an Apple fan-club.
And from that I can assume that the approach that MS is taking will make "advanced" users like me and people here at xda to feel like MS has failed them and abandoned them, turning to "dumb users". And that never feels good.

WhyBe said:

I actually love the new WP7 interface...giant words, big active tiles and all. I had Sense in my TP2 for about a month and finally decided that while it was pretty looking, it was not efficient at all. To much pressing and swiping to get to where I needed to go. Back to Titanium for me.

I think in due time, there will be a hacking community around WP7 just like this one...maybe even THIS one
Advanced users can fend for themselves. Isn't this how XDA grew? I'm sure it'll happen again with WP7.

iPhone 2 ? Naw, I think Apple has shot it's load and is just going to work on building and maintaining the market it has. I don't expect anything revolutionary out of Apple for a while (at least as far as smartphones go). I don't think they'll do what MS did and ditch the old iPhone for a new iPhone platform. MS was sort of forced to ditch WM if they wanted to compete.

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Well, in BEST case scenario (for MS), that's what will happen. However, for me, that's wishful thinking.
Will there be WM7 hacks? Yeah, of course. Question is, how easy/available/useful they will be. WM6 platform, even with all its deficiencies, is a nice and easy platform to tweak/expand. So far, WM7 looks to be complete opposite of that (just look at their idea of branding and marketplace), and few hacks that will be released won't make up for anything. Especially when 90% of all developers will switch to a more friendly platform (perhaps even Android).

WhyBe said:

I, personally would want to develop for a platform where I can turn a profit. Is Android at that stage yet (I'm asking, I don't know). If Android is so open and customizable the way WM was/is, then inevitably it's going to suffer the same fate as WM.

It seems that MS is making WP7 very developer friendly. What's wrong with developing for WP7 ?

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Android isn't going anywhere. It may not be as explosive as iPhone, but it's here to stay, if google does it right. And google pretty much always does everything right.

Problem with programming for WM7, and I'm going on a limited info that's curretly available, is that MS is putting down a "draconic" ((c) engadget) restrictions on anything that comes onto WM7 devices. Everything has to be within standards and everything has to go through the marketplace. In fact, reviewers are saying that methods that MS is implementing on WM7 infrastructure are much more strict that even Apple's. That spells "BAD NEWS" for me in big, bold letters.

WhyBe said:

This is the only way to ensure that the "dumb" consumers get a great experience. The average consumer doesn't want to tweak and figure out things. They want to quickly download intuitive apps that just work. Perhaps MS will be able to minimize "garbage apps" (though there are bound to be some). Look at the success of the App store. I think part of it's success is that their app store wasn't so fragmented like the WM market is. One place to download and purchase all apps for the platform (straight to the phone at that!) is a lot easier than Googling for an hour to find what you need on some random site. Again, this is catering to the "dumb" people and not the geeks.

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Yep, I won't argue that simplicity of use is paramount. However, I do see a trend of separation between regular users and developers.
And, although I do agree that developers seeking profit will develop on the most used platform, there is a also a huge factor of developers not wanting to use a device that limits their desire for customization.

I guess the question is which of those factors will overpower another. And will we have to buy 2 devices - one for "work", one for the "soul"

WhyBe said:

I think the industry is headed towards the user-friendly way of doing things. Hackers will fend for themselves (as always). Smartphones are only going to get more popular to the point where they are as common as the regular cell phone. A typical WM device could never support that kind of market. Only devices like WP7, iPhone, Pre and etc. will be appealing to this huge market of non-geeks.

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And that's excellent. However, that doesn't mean that the device should be "locked" and limited to modification. The idea behind the android is probably the most appealing to me - it's a very user-friendly interface that is completely open to any modification, including the end-user modification like moving stuff around, throwing widgets on the screen, etc.

In my mind, my perfect WM7 would be:
1. Build on a new platform, now the WinCE crap that gave us WM6.
2. Be very open to modification and adjustment, hopefully even moreso than WM6.
3. Not be locked in any way, allowing advanced users to tinker with devices.
4. For end users, come with an excellent user interface straight from the box. Openness to tinkering and ease of use are NOT mutually exclusive, they go hand-in-hand very well.
5. Platform absolutely must support all options available - meaning things like SDcard support, copy/paste, DEFINITELY multitasking (WTF, back to stone ages??), etc. Even though first phones might not have it all, there should be an existing support for it, so that companies/developers can take advantage of them.

I guess my ranting is due to the fact that Microsoft saw "gold" in Apple's ideas and went overboard with that. Along the way they completely ignored to include the potential into the device. Think of the military - you create, say, a tank - even if it's super-awesome today, if there is no room for potential improvements - it's a pile of useless metal in several years.

Well, everyone is entitled to an opinion. I don't share yours though:

WhyBe said:

I think the Pre and WP7 are the first of the "new style" of OS'es.

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I don't see anything that's "new style" about it. Cut words, ugly squares, "pushable" buttons look identical to the labels, which creates confusion.. etc etc.

WhyBe said:

Again, I think all of the customization and openness hinders the platform because you end up with so many incompatibilities and inconsistencies in the user experience. ...

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So it's better not to have any at all? It's like saying "oh, we should have just 3 models of cars on the market, so that everything's consistent and buyers won't be confused". Openness and customization only help any platform greatly, it doesn't create incompatibilities and inconsistencies. Bad programmers do.

WhyBe said:

I love the premise in WP7 that apps are supposed to work together. I don't know how this is going to play out in the real world, but if this is facilitated at the OS level, I don't see why it shouldn't be a great feature.

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You're missing a word.. "I love the premise in WP7, that MICROSOFT'S apps are supposed to work together." We all know how bad their software can be, and now u won't even have a chance to fix it. Sit around for years, hoping that new version will fix the bugs and not introduce a mirriad of others.

WhyBe said:

Some of the so-called Apple limitations are actually advantages for them (single form factor, only one App store highly regulated, lo-res graphics for speed, locked-in iPod/iTunes audience, no multitasking to possibly damage the user-experience).

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Dude you're so anti-choice. I have a very different view. Choice is what creates competition and improvement. It's what drives the progress. Single form-factors, locked software, penalties for tinkering (jailbreak) - it all hinders the progress, it cannot possibly be better.

WhyBe said:

If an experience on a platform is going to be consistent and pleasurable, it has to be highly controlled. You can't have a free-for-all and expect everything to just work together nicely. WM and Android are perfect examples of free-for-all, let's see how they do in the current market.

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Openness of current WM platform is about the only plus it has, not its drawback. I think that's pretty much established.
Besides, as I've said before, you don't have to pick between a smooth experience and openness for customization. WM7 could have an excellent setup right from the box, if you like what they've made, even maybe the one they have now. Nobody says that at the same time it cannot have support for developer's imagination. Nobody besides MS's analytics who decided that copying Apple will bring them a big buck. Honestly, no, it won't.

chiks19018 said:

Locked down OS?
Time for the next generation of hackers.
Get out the sharpening stone and hone your edge.
A system is meant to be broken, not remain intact.
Go XDA

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>.< That's not the point.

WhyBe said:

I haven't had experience with BAD MS software.

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Then you've never used Windows ME or anything before Windows 98.

Let's just agree to disagree =)