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Windows Phone 7's future revealed: multitasking, IE9, Twitter
- wvenable 16y agoIt's sort of funny that Microsoft bought into Apple's no-cutpaste and no-multitasking reality distortion field right before Apple added those features. It's a perfect example of the "don't follow your competitors" credo.
- steverb 16y agoI don't think MS ever bought into it. I think MS realized that what Apple had been saying about Cut/Paste and multi-tasking was true. They're hard problems to solve on a small touch interface. MS chose to release earlier without those features rather than waiting another 3 - 6 months. They were already far enough behind the market that they probably felt they couldn't wait any longer.
- wvenable 16y agoExcept that Android and WebOS already had solutions to the problem and no doubt the WP7 software stack already supported it all. Ultimately, Apple's solutions to these so-called "hard problems" weren't revolutionary. The net result was Microsoft produced a device comparable to the previous generation. I suspect they would have taken those 3-6 months to add the features (in whatever form they could come up with) if they knew that Apple was going to do it.
- rimantas 16y agoExcept Android's copy-paste still sucks and early solution for multitasking brought a wast selection of task killer apps.
- Pewpewarrows 16y agoI'd rather have a mostly-good feature than no feature at all, or no comparable feature for the next year or two.
- glhaynes 16y agoI think this is exactly the difference between the "Android philosophy" and the "iOS philosophy" when it comes to design. I'm glad both exist; I'd personally generally like to see things mature and great upon initial release, especially because of how long you tend to be saddled with the negatives of a bad initial design. But there are people and usages that want/need features more than they want refinement, and that's fine too.
- SwellJoe 16y agoThose task killer apps were just idiotic. There were numerous blog posts debunking the need for them, or their utility. Systems that were not being micro-managed performed better than those where the user tried to outsmart the automatic task management. And, the only complaint I have about copy-paste is how rarely it is available. It works great, when the option is in the menu.
- contextfree 16y agoI don't know about multitasking, but they did specifically say that adding cut and paste in the first update was a change in plans in response to feedback, and wasn't on their original schedule. They originally thought the features they intended to replace c&p (it detects things like phone numbers in text and automatically links them to the relevant applet, with the text auto-pasted in) would work better for covering the common cases. cite: "And I wanted to announce today that we've heard feedback from a lot of people who have had our technical preview. There's a feature we're going to bring onto the phones in early 2011, copy and paste. This is a feature that we initially did not put into our development schedule, because we focused instead on things like automatic touching of phone numbers and touching of addresses, but we're hearing from our customers, and we're going to get this feature in, so everyone who buys a Windows Phone this holiday will be able to get an update with copy and paste in early 2011." http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2010/10-11windowsphone7.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2010/10-11wind...
- rbanffy 16y agoOh boy... Remember how cool Windows for Pen computing would be? How amazing Longhorn would be? How WinFS would solve all our storage problems? Remember the Milo and Kate demo? Forgive me if I don't exactly trust Microsoft when they say the next release of a so-so product will leapfrog its current competition.
- hnhg 16y agoMilo and Kate aside, I would say that Kinect has leapfrogged its competition, though in the same breath I would also say I am aggrieved by the Courier project fiasco.
- edge17 16y agoahhh com'on now, marketing's part of the game. what're they supposed to say?
- cubicle67 16y agoI don't think it's the say bit that's the problem. I think the problem's in the do bit
- rospaya 16y agoThe new features are two weeks from now, not some blind future marketing.
- sjs 16y agoNo, they are not. > We finally have a timeframe for the copy-and-paste update—it will arrive in the first two weeks of March—and we also got a first glimpse at a major update due in the second half of this year.
- jsz0 16y agoI understand your skepticism but they're not daydreaming about unobtainable goals here. It looks like they're responding to the competition with more incremental improvements that are completely realistic to deliver in a timely fashion. It will be difficult to leapfrog the competition entirely but if you look at some specific things like their multi-tasking UI they are leapfrogging iOS and Android.
- Synaesthesia 16y agoYay, IE 9 is a HUGE improvement over earlier versions. Should make a big difference in rendering speed. I still use Webkit browsers on my PC though. I wonder, is there a Webkit based browser app for WP7?
- Splines 16y agoThere's a Webkit .NET project, but it looks like they're not anywhere near done.