[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Prime_Directive:
Now this is good, I like your style and this argument is far better than the countless "Grrr! M$ are rubbish and I think WinPho 7 blows! I wan't sense!" posts that don't really say anything.

Don't get me wrong I'm not completely against the idea of customisation, I have an HD2 and wouln't get rid of Sense for titanium any day and must admit that I have had my fair share of flashing fun. I am even guilty of a little customisation of the standard UI in my apps. But in order for MS to survive in the mobile market as it stands now they have to get a little more restrictive, there are only so many geeks like us who enjoy tweeking and are happy to live with consequences of our actions.

I'm, as you appear to be too, ok with trawling the net looking for tweeks apps and have a solid understanding of what to (and not to) download based on what form factor, processor, version of the OS, version of the UI customisation and other dependencies may or may not exist on my phone. Think about how long has it taken you to gain that knowledge. For the (and it pains me to use this phrase) 'average consumer' this is just a headache and quite frankly is what has left windows mobile in our hands in the backwaters of XDA Devs and similar sites as the countless 'I've bought the HD2 expecting it to work for me and found out that it's me that's got to work for it' posts that appear in this forum.

I can see your point (and this is paraphrasing and feel free to correct me) 'I'm intelligent enough to make my own descision about what my device does and live with any consequences' just like being able to work out for yourself that setting fireworks off in your house is probably not a good idea and you don't need someone to write that on the label. Which is all well and good but most of us come from a background having grown up with MS software from it's early days and understand it's foibles.

At the end of the day MS are a company and they have to make money or what's the point? The only sensible way to do that in the current climate is to have something that has a learning curve which is not too steep because most people see themseleves as 'too busy' or 'not geeky enough' to have the time to spend hours trawling forums to understand how their new device works. With a 9% market share (obviously not entirely accurate due to it's method of sampling but we'll roll with it for now) that's 91% of people who fit either into 'I've never owned a smart phone', 'I own another brand of smart phone' or 'f!!! MS I'm never going near them'. They need to grab some of that 91% and in it's current format Windows Mobile is never going to do that.

Obviously that still leaves us with whether or not this is a good thing for us (the 9%). As far as I can see it's a compromise that will obviously be difficult to handle but ultimately worth it (although if they decide you can only get apps from a Microsoft App store my opinion changes dramatically). This is taken as a whole not just the standard UI but the more standard hardware and platform. The more market share the more development which means more apps (of hopefully higher quality), more developer interest as there will no longer be the need to convert your UI to various form factors and also no longer having to take into account so much the processing power and available hardware (gps etc...). In reality when we look at what we mean by 'making our devices do what wasn't intended' we generally (and correct me if I'm wrong) mean changing the way it looks or adding a different version or type of OS everything else is covered by applications. With a larger app base made available by a more restrictive platform the smaller the two other points become (well to me anyway) and flashing is always going to remain an option.

I think living in a controlled environment (as a whole not just the UI) may be a bitter pill to swallow to start with but in reality the pros do out way the cons, for me at least. And as it is based on CE (what version is still a little up for debate it seems) ultimately it will to some degree be customisable and should in some way shape or form leave a degree of backwards compatability (I'll leave the multitasking debate until after MIX)

Basically, I like the windows platform and I would prefer for it not to die. If that means we have to put up with some restrictions for some time so be it. Maybe my point of view is somewhat against the grain for this site and I can totally see that but I believe a degree of restriction is required to bring the platform to a level that will mean that it can ultimatly survive.