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Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

extremetech.com

11–20 of 70 posts

Re: Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

#11

finally, games can be ported to WP.

Yes and this is great for developers. Develop once, run on phone, tablet and laptop/desktop.

Have we had that confirmed? I was hearing that compiling a WinRT application for phone and desktop was going to take tweaking and recompilation.

Re: Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

#12
One giant leap for Microsoft that I won't touch with a 5 meter stick because the company has way too much of a treasure chest of influence to ever get my money ever again, and one that I will continuously tell anyone I am related to or friends with never to associate with.

The secure boot nonsense doesn't help. The image of M$ is destroyed, and even if they try to repair it I can never forgive them for ie6.

Re: Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

#13
I used a WP7 for several months last year. In many ways I really liked it, the UI was pretty slick, live tiles where great, the whole thing was surprisingly polished.

But I now use an iPhone. The reason is lack of quality 3rd party software. The PDF viewer available for WP7 (there was only one) was absolutely abysmal. Very poor UX. And that was all to often the case. Where Android or iOS would have numerous great apps, WP7 would have significantly less and usually all lower quality. Such a shame as the OS itself is pretty nice.

Re: Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and this is great for developers. Develop once, run on phone, tablet and laptop/desktop.

Have we had that confirmed? I was hearing that compiling a WinRT application for phone and desktop was going to take tweaking and recompilation.

I do know that design tools like blend support multiple layout views for different screen shapes and orientations. I can't see how this would be different. Underneath if you write .Net code it'll run on both.

Re: Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

#15

Those homescreen tiles are a cool new idea in mobile UIs and keep getting better. Kudos to those guys.

Agreed. I've been on WP7 for just over a year the the live tiles with update counts have replaced the need for a notification center for me.

Re: Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

#16
post #12

One giant leap for Microsoft that I won't touch with a 5 meter stick because the company has way too much of a treasure chest of influence to ever get my money ever again, and one that I will continuously tell anyone I am related to or friends with never to associate with. The secure boot nonsense doesn't help. The image of M$ is destroyed, and even if they try to repair it I can never forgive them for ie6.

And there I was, thinking that HN is above using "M$".

Do Apple and Google not also have a "treasure chest of influence"?

Re: Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

#17
post #13

I used a WP7 for several months last year. In many ways I really liked it, the UI was pretty slick, live tiles where great, the whole thing was surprisingly polished. But I now use an iPhone. The reason is lack of quality 3rd party software. The PDF viewer available for WP7 (there was only one) was absolutely abysmal. Very poor UX. And that was all to often the case. Where Android or iOS would have numerous great app…

Absolutely agreed. The issue now isn't that the major players aren't in WP, but it's that their apps are absolutely terrible, and obviously barely tested. The Rdio app didn't even play music for months, and the Spotify app is glitchy as hell. So the "100,000 apps" boast is a little hollow.

Re: Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

#18
post #17
post #13

I used a WP7 for several months last year. In many ways I really liked it, the UI was pretty slick, live tiles where great, the whole thing was surprisingly polished. But I now use an iPhone. The reason is lack of quality 3rd party software. The PDF viewer available for WP7 (there was only one) was absolutely abysmal. Very poor UX. And that was all to often the case. Where Android or iOS would have numerous great app…

Absolutely agreed. The issue now isn't that the major players aren't in WP, but it's that their apps are absolutely terrible, and obviously barely tested. The Rdio app didn't even play music for months, and the Spotify app is glitchy as hell. So the "100,000 apps" boast is a little hollow.

Apparently that is what Microsoft is trying to solve with the unified core. If the developers have ability to write code one time and target both the phone and the tablet/desktop, it is quite appealing proposition.

Re: Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

#19
post #12

One giant leap for Microsoft that I won't touch with a 5 meter stick because the company has way too much of a treasure chest of influence to ever get my money ever again, and one that I will continuously tell anyone I am related to or friends with never to associate with. The secure boot nonsense doesn't help. The image of M$ is destroyed, and even if they try to repair it I can never forgive them for ie6.

" and even if they try to repair it I can never forgive them for ie6."

You can never forgive them for making the absolute best browser on the market at the time it was released? Don't blame Microsoft because there are people out there are still trying to use IE6 today.

Re: Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft

#20
post #13

I used a WP7 for several months last year. In many ways I really liked it, the UI was pretty slick, live tiles where great, the whole thing was surprisingly polished. But I now use an iPhone. The reason is lack of quality 3rd party software. The PDF viewer available for WP7 (there was only one) was absolutely abysmal. Very poor UX. And that was all to often the case. Where Android or iOS would have numerous great app…

The 3rd party app criticism is in my view an outdated one. One year ago would have been premature to make a declaration on the availability of 3rd party apps for the Windows platform since it was still relatively new.

Windows Phone has been catching up and can probably do so more quickly now that the phone and desktop OSes can use similar code.

Edit: Since I am being downvoted for my opinion, I will add some evidence

"An app for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 can share the same code and the same basic user interface, since both platforms use the Metro design language, according to Wissinger."

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/258094/microso...

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