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Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7 But Does Anyone Care?

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Re: Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7 But Does Anyone Care?

#61
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following up to myself here: this could have some interesting benefits for Microsoft, too — iPhone has the most/best games right now, but Android is selling a ton of units so lots of folks are thinking about porting their iPhone games to Android. If WP7 was the inverse of what it is (if it had OpenGL and no XNA), it'd be seen as the third platform, something to maybe, possibly consider porting to once you'd ported to…

Android is a pretty horrible platform for gaming. Hardware acceleration is largely absent.

Is that being addressed?

Re: Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7 But Does Anyone Care?

#63
post #9

I'm currently working on several applications for WP7. The development experience for WP7 is a million-billion times better than it was for past Windows Mobile operating systems. - The emulator is snappy and you don't need to mess around with ActiveSync. - I'm not a huge fan of the XAML (the Silverlight/WPF markup language), but that is not an issue. I put a XAML place holder element in place and add controls in C# -…

Yeah ... app distribution is really limited to the store.

(PS: Send me an email? Would love to hear what you're working on)

Re: Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7 But Does Anyone Care?

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the move they needed most - to toss everything out and start new. I wholeheartedly agree, and from everything that I've seen of WP7, I'm impressed. MS has rethought the entire UI, and frankly, rebuilding from scratch was the only thing they could do to become relevant again in the consumer mobile space. They've done away with the desktop metaphor, menu bars and contextual menus, and yet they managed no…

Re backwards compat... I think MS did the right thing here making the applications have to be managed. The WP7 managed stack seems really well-tuned (especially for a mobile device). Removing native code from 3rd party apps gives them several things: 1) Reduces incidence of memory leaks. 2) Less buggy apps w/ better type safety than C/C++. 3) Improved security. No buffer overruns or out of range subscript class of vu…

WP7 seems really nice. However, since you have no native C++ support games can't be ported from iPhone/Android. Basically you have to start from scratch in XNA. Somehow I don't all that many games will be released on this platform.

Re: Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7 But Does Anyone Care?

#65
post #54
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My limited number of contacts at MS tell me that an Enterprise deployment solution is coming, but they couldn't get it done in time for the initial release. I hope it's better than Apple's solution.

What problems do you have with Apple's Enterprise deployment solution?

It's improved with IOS4 as you can now deploy wirelessly by having the users visit a web site. With 3 the only way to deploy was using the configuration utility or have the users install with iTunes.

What we keep begging them for is the ability to point out users at our own enterprise app store, hosted on either Apple's servers or our own. It's also what I keep telling MS whenever I get a chance.

Re: Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7 But Does Anyone Care?

#66
post #54
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My limited number of contacts at MS tell me that an Enterprise deployment solution is coming, but they couldn't get it done in time for the initial release. I hope it's better than Apple's solution.

What problems do you have with Apple's Enterprise deployment solution?

It's impossible to distribute an iPhone or an itouch as the user interface to custom hardware. It's also impossible to distribute an internal application if you only have 499 employees.

Re: Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7 But Does Anyone Care?

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re backwards compat... I think MS did the right thing here making the applications have to be managed. The WP7 managed stack seems really well-tuned (especially for a mobile device). Removing native code from 3rd party apps gives them several things: 1) Reduces incidence of memory leaks. 2) Less buggy apps w/ better type safety than C/C++. 3) Improved security. No buffer overruns or out of range subscript class of vu…

WP7 seems really nice. However, since you have no native C++ support games can't be ported from iPhone/Android. Basically you have to start from scratch in XNA. Somehow I don't all that many games will be released on this platform.

I think you may be right. Although, I don't think that's a great loss. Outside of literally a few games on iPhone, I think WP7 would do just as well with their own batch of games. I think XNA is a very effecient platform so I don't think developers need to port games. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 1,000+ games in mid-November.

Re: Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7 But Does Anyone Care?

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What follows is entirely opinion and based on little-to-no research, so if I'm way off I apologize: I'm not sure I would classify Silverlight as "successful", just yet. Certainly it's getting buy-in in corporate environments, intranet apps, etc., it's visibility to the public still seems pretty small. Certainly there have been claims made (which I have no reason to doubt) that Silverlight has an install base of > 50%…

Yeah, I think the problem for Silverlight is that "success" is not a clear idea for such a platform, and if "success" is just large sites using it, then you've got Netflix at least. I'm sure Adobe counts "success" as installed base, but if you were a marketer, the kicking they are getting from the development community is not success at all. It seems more cut and dried in the phone space. Sell units, make happy custo…

Ah yes, I had forgotten about Netflix, very good point!

Re: Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7 But Does Anyone Care?

#70
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is a pretty horrible platform for gaming. Hardware acceleration is largely absent.

Is that being addressed?

Some phones have it, some don't. Likely will continue in this vein due to cost considerations.
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