yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] thx1200:
I think it's pretty clear. The so-called 'runtime services' are a set of APIs used to access a range of cloud services without having to use 3rd party APIs.

And, I agree. The whole section on Processes and Threads is a good sign.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] Tigrouzen:
Where's Windows 7 ?

How we know about it if we dont get it ?

Just wait and we see realy if its interesting or xda came close forum !!:D
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] DavidinCT:
Time will tell, remember it's still only a Alpha and everything is subject to change.

I would hope it would allow some cab based programs to be installed like some games or apps that do not depend on any built in WM apps.

I would hope some of the games at least would run on WM7...

Again, time will tell...
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] Newromancer:
Are there any official statements from MS yet?

Lets just wait and see.

From what I found so far it is based on CE 6.0 R3.

microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/windowsce/default.mspx

ps. Can a moderator please fix the link?
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] Zaim2:
According to theregister, looks like they have:

Source
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] RustyGrom:
Meh, that's a dumb statement on their part. That would mean that HTC could do Sense which we already know to not be the case.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] ramdroid77:
well, Sense is a home screen plugin, not really a standalone application in the common sense. if the traditional home screen doesn't exist in WP7 then Sense can't exist neither.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] thx1200:
At least the sources are getting more reputable now. So it's not binary compatible, but it still sounds like if you take care to separate your UI layer from your logic layer, a lot of .Net code can (probably) be reused, making adapting to the Silverlight UI not very painful. But it will require a recompile.

I still think a XDA jailbreak will come that will allow the launching of unmanaged and managed EXEs... Call me a dreamer. ;-)

I doubt this will affect MS sales with us power users and hobby developers getting scared, but I can personally say my desire to be an early adopter has dropped to zero. I'm going to next get a really nice hardware with 6.5.3 ROM and wait it out for a year or two until there the platform is mature.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] samwill:
We could take Android source and add full native C++ support. Not that much work actually. XDAOS sounds really good. I would work on this project. Anyone else is interested?
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] Chainfire:
Wow, I really love how they make it sound like the translation was wrong - as some others have also (wrongly) stated in this thread.

Again, the translation was 100% correct, but after other sites picked it up they had another conversation with Maarten Sonneveld and updated the article to reflect that conversation.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] thx1200:
Not really. It's a separate EXE that hooks into the Today screen to know when to display. I wrote an app that makes TF3D appear and disappear based on that principal.

Still, I highly doubt it's managed code, so it's a moot point anyway.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] thx1200:
Meh. Unless this proposed "XDAOS" had some freaking fantastic APIs, it wouldn't attract developers. Plus, what carrier would spend resources developing radio software for a hobby platform?

I'm not happy about no backward compatibility, but I'm not going to spend 1000x the effort of rewriting a few apps to develop an entire operating system because of it!

EDIT: Missed you said "Android." I retract my statement. ;-) Of course Android will have radios. I was thinking we were still talking about generic Linux.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] joozzt:
Same thinking here, get UI of android but without google as big brother and add full native support. Then you have to have a manufacturer/investor picking it up. Ubuntu, IBM, RIM ? Realistic ? Just some random thoughts.

In the meantime, it's still unclear if MS dares to deny many of their business users who rely on special software a modern UI.

But my hopes are not high.

Isn't it funny that they charge 30% of app's sold in the marketplace. Nobody asks about the business case justifying 30% , why not 29% ? No, they copy somebody else without doing any decent calculations about what the real costs are. If they can not explain why we have to pay 30% and not 29% they're amateurs.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] vangrieg:
Of course not. :)

In the meantime, it's still unclear if MS dares to deny many of their business users who rely on special software a modern UI.

But my hopes are not high.

Why should they explain their "real costs" and what do these costs matter? Even if their costs were zero they still could charge 30% cause that's the market level of pricing for this stuff. They could charge more or less, but there's absolutely no reason why they have to adjust prices to costs.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] joozzt:
@ vangrieg

Sorry, i'm earning my bread here with some serious partners who explain themselves. Not use rule of thumb.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] joozzt:
i also wonder about the legal stuff. What if ALL popular mobile OS manufacturers restrict app access to the higher level only, like it's more and more looking as hardware manufacturers walk at the hand of the OS manufacturers. Wouldn't our EU hero Neelie find some way to force low level access to app developers the same way as MS has been forced to open up ? After all, it doesn't matter if it's only 1 manufacturer or many manufacturers together frustrating innovation and honest competition ?

Big OEM's getting native access and small developers not ?

They ALL charge 30% without any apparent reason ?
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] gjbnh:
I've just read thru this whole thread, and I thought I would like to offer some observations if I may, as someone who has been helped by many of the developers here.

First I am not a programmer, I just benefit from their great work.

You guys have made my experience with WM enjoyable. M$ has left some many bumps in their OS, that about the only thing that has kept me from jumping ship has been the independent developers hard work to make it better. IF they restrict your power to fix their bad design, or innovate then look out android, here I came when it's time to get a new phone.

M$ suffers from the same disease as sooo many do in Washington; that THEY know what is best for us out here in America. And because "they know", the IMPOSE their will on us. Granted you need to keep some control over the OS to insure comparability, but locking it down so it keeps you in power, well again...that's what Washington does. M$ also suffers from the inability, and indeed the deliberate effort NOT to hear the community. They've made up their mind about what they want to do, and damm it that is the way it is gonna be. Look at what Google did in the past week about BUZZ. There was an outcry, they heard it, and took steps to address the issues. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but they knew how to change course!!

Ya know, I've never heard of an OFFICIAL Windows Mobile place where the developers and customers can talk and BE HEARD.

So, IF what we currently believe to be the facts turn out to be true, I guess we can all wave goodbye to the OS known as Windows Mobile, as it sinks into oblivion.

Remember..they always pretty up the corpse before they bury it :)
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] joozzt:
@gjbnh

Yes, it's soooo easy for MS or M$ to be popular, successful and still profitable.

They just don't realize the potential they have for the moment/coming months.

These things just happen to big conglomerates. I wonder if they see the light soon.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] arag0n85:
Well, in fact i guess that silverlight 4 it's a runtime able to run standalone aplications in the guest computer, so, we may be able to build mobile aplications for windows phone 7 series that actually works on a mobile and a computer. Can you imagine a light game or application that just works on windows and windows phone? That may be amazing to see. And what's more attractive, once tablets become popular (if they do), we will have aplications with a UI designed for touch that work on a windows 7 tablet, and a windows phone 7 tablet.

I guess, that we may be looking on an amazing future for aplications if we stay away of just "performance" trying to code for c++ everything we do. We need a framework that does the heavy work natively, like directx engine on silverlight today, and a good enought virtual machine, not like java. Really, i saw benchmarks that a CPU on .NET enviroment works almost at 80-90% on non float instructions.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] arag0n85:
I also belive that we gonna see that sense becomes "Weather Hub", because it's the main aplication that sense has and the actual windows phone 7 hasn't, and some custom aplications like clock or like, with titles to place a homescreen weather tittle, big clock, just with the look of the today sense with a similar layer done at the homescreen.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] hdubli:
hello

this is another quality discussion after a longtime and am happy that mamaich and vijay555 add value as they did earlier in those good old days.Though I do not know much about programming and that stuff, what I get from the keynote is that they researched a lot and made a user friendly UI common consumer oriented .android and iphone are dumb person ready UI, while WM still reflects a corporate stuff

so in order to reach out to maximum audience they have taken this step.I think, if handled properly, it will become popular.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] thx1200:
I think there's a good chance WM 6.x will be around for several years before the last device is released. And with Marketplace for 6.x getting better by the release, it could end up having quite a nice blow-out before being fully replaced by WM7.

I did a lot of reading about developing Silverlight Out-of-browser (for Big Windows) this afternoon and I have to say it sounds absolutely identical to what we have seen so far for Silverlight for WM7. I had never really researched Silverlight as platform before (haven't had any need for it thus far since I don't really develop heavy UI apps much). I agree that apps that can work on your computer and your phone with one codebase (and data stored in the cloud to boot) is sounding less and less like a fantasy!

My ideal world would be less of a sandbox than Silverlight gives you (man, it's locked the hell down), but it might be a trade-off I'm willing to make for my sell-to-end-user apps as long as on my personal device I can "jailbreak" it for extra tweakiness. ;-)

Or, heck, these WM7 phones are going to be CPU+RAM monsters, how about a WM6 emulator? You know, "WM6-mode" just like Windows 7's XP Mode. :-)
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] joozzt:
eeeh, this is being done by many developers for years already. We've been making and selling software for PC AND phone based on exactly the same codebase for years now. That's what made the platform so attractive. Main sales are now shifting towards PC/laptop and we see it shifting more and more towards netbooks/tablet-likes (and iphones) because of the clunky UI the rest of WM had.

It's also nice to see how a UI with big buttons etc made for phones works nicely on a PC, technically and interactively !
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] Starfury:
That story also links to this thread :) I found this thread via TheRegister :)
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] Yunabeco:
Knew this thread already, found it again from the CodeProject newsletter via WMPowerUser via freyberry's tip.

I just love the Internet.

Anyway, I'm not sure if MS's move is any good. Many developers who coded for the current kernel (Most WM2003 apps work well under 6.5) have long since jumped ship; switched to iWhatever, Android, or outright stopped developing.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] gogol:
Well, if you are a developer and you know how to code in the old WM6 platform ... and you also know how to code on WP7 ...

Will you port your product or not?

I would :)

Because new platform = new market = new "potential" profit

Of course you can completely move to iWhatever (or Android), but thats already over saturated with hundreds of thousands products.

So, to me, new platform = new opportunity.

It would be a very good start ... before too late.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] arag0n85:
the diference is that silverlight wont need a recompile.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] jhanford:
Sanity at last

Thank you for bringing a rational voice to this discussion. How refreshing to NOT hear that the sky is falling and that the Commie M$ (both big brother AND corporate moneybags) are out to get YOU and YOU alone!

We could all keep our 6.5.x phones alive for another 2 or 3 years, and MS could have come out with a 6.6 and a 6.7, etc, and when the final hardware vendor closed production of their versions of the WinMo phone, we'd be happily swapping stories of greatness with the pre-PalmPre owners.

No... WP7S is a major step forward. If it means I can finally show people an application running on my phone that doesn't resemble Windows 3.1, then I'm a happy bunny.

Being a .NET developer too makes me excited for this. I've been involved in a number of WPF-based applications and so my XAML knowledge will help out. Having a Silverlight-based framework will only lead to the consistency of UI needed to create the same buzz that iPxxx gets.

Anyway, my rant is done.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] j2inet:
I'd imagine you are not talking about something with binary compatibility for both platforms. One of the selling points of Silverlight has been crossplatform compatibility. You could write something once and it would work on a mac or PC without the need for a recompile. I think Silverlight2 had been ported to linux as a part of the Moonlight project. Not sure about Silverlight3. Silverlight 4 comes out soon.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] kneep:
Just a few days ago I told my colleague that the reason why I stuck to WM is that it supported writing application in C/C++. Ironic, isn't it?
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] gogol:
No, not ironic, because you can code in C/C++ :)

Obviously you are a developer who loves to write software for your own devices as hobby or making money.

But for regular users (non developer) ... who cares! C/C++ what? :)

For them, it does not matter ... .NET, Silverlight, C/C++, Java ... The most important thing is the final application itself.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] joozzt:
Make no mistake :

1. WP7 is a fantastic step forward IMO.

2. i think using silverlight or any unified modern library for UI is a great step forward.

3. Some applications are more than a UI.

4. Some applications can also contain elements/parts that are very different than what the original OS manufacturer thought would be useful/interesting.

It's very simple, think of us "whining" developers as the artists who heard that they are not allowed to use the same techniques anymore that set them apart from other artists. And i'm not talking about using C/C+, it's about reasonable low level access to the OS. If they invent D++, E+OBJ or whatever, it doesn't matter, we can adapt.

It's all about USP 's which are in danger of being killed.

We'll see what happens. In the meantime Opera may be preparing for breaking open the shackles at the iphone platform. Go Opera Go !

Very interesting times indeed .
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] vangrieg:
Well it's not so much about changing platforms, the dissatisfaction about lack of native APIs is more than that. It means that an Opera Mobile is hardly possible, or a Core Player.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] freyberry:
@jhanford and @ironic77

Developers are the people, who really keep the platform alive. Without them and their support, Microsoft can do nothing and WP7 is dead on arrival in the face of iPhone's 200000 apps.

They have every right to complain about the restrictions that Microsoft puts into place. They are the ones who will ultimately decide, whether WP7 will live or die and Microsoft better not upset them.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] gogol:
If the new IE web browser on WP7 is good enough, I dont think I would need Opera Mobile.

The only web browser that I need is Opera Mini. Simply because it is still the fastest web browser as of today. I doubt WP7 will support Java. So, I hope Opera Mini will be ported to WP7 (Silverlight?).

Core Player? Hmm ... Zune is not enough? How do you compare current Zune HD Video Player vs Core Player Mobile? If you have both ...
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] vangrieg:
If is the keyword here. It's never been so far, and the demos show no signs of text wrapping capabilities which makes Opera Mobile so much better for me than iPhone's Safari. With text wrapping or not, it's not going to be as cool as Opera Mobile 10 UI wise. In addition to all that, competition in app space is a great thing. Since I'm also using Opera on desktop, I'd love to use Opera Link as well.

I'm not sure whether Zune will be enough. First of all, I've never seen a mobile platform capable of playing real-life formats (.avi/.mkv xvid/divx). My second concern is this move to syncing as opposed to copying files and playing them. If these are just empty worries, I'll be happy with whatever is built in for sure.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] young blade:
@freyberry

Grab your self a cold beer and watch atached pic please...
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] j2inet:
"Copying and Playing" implies access to the filesystem. In trying to look at things from a user perspective does a user really need access to the filesystem? I think it works well on the Zunes, especially if wireless syncing is enabled. I plug the Zune into the power adapter for charging and while it's at it the device jumps onto my wireless network and copies my new music from the PC. It's a smooth process.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] freyberry:
Yes, definitely. Things get a lot easier. Without access to the file system, every application must include its own syncing method. For example, if you install an ebook reader, how do you get your ebook files onto the device without file system access? The ebook reader application can only access its own program folder, which means, the files have to be stored there and are inaccessible to other ebook reader applications (if you install another application, you have to sync your files *again*).

We can see from the iPhone what a big mess this is.

There must at least be access to a "Home" folder and the storage card, plus a file Explorer to open documents, music files etc. directly, instead of opening the application and having to wait for it to scan through the file system.
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] vangrieg:
It's all cool and well until you want to copy something from another computer. At least iTunes makes it a real mess, don't know how Zune works.

Apart from this, freyberry has a point about other apps. Since no mobile device I know of has the capacity to play all existing formats, and there are ebooks apart from music, there's need for third-party apps, and interfaces such as Zune, iTunes or what not don't cater for that. Copying books to my wife's iPhone is a major PITA. She just can't do that herself, I had to setup an http server on my phone so that she could use my collection. It doesn't get any more messed up than this.

WM (or WP) is also a device that has MS Office, and I need an ability to quickly copy office files there. OK, they can give me a syncing app on my desktop, but what if I need something from someone else's PC/Mac/Linux machine?
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] freyberry:
Exactly. Syncing any kinds of files to and from the iPhone is a big mess and it's clearly a huge issue that we're talking about here.

Missing multitasking and native APIs are other huge issues.

Those are issues that have to be talked about.

If you don't care about being able to sync your files to your device without hassles, if you don't care about being able to have a GPS navigation app running in the background, so that you don't have to illegally handle your device in the car, if you don't care about all the great applications that are not possible without native APIs and multitasking - then just don't post here.

But there clearly are people, who care about those things. Would all the $%&/§ coming here with nothing to say except for "calm down" (without a reason to calm down) please shut up already and let those, who have a clue about developing and who care about those features, continue the discussion, that made a lot of sense before you came in?

Seriously, you call us devs "whiners", how ridiculous is that?! We are talking about HUGE issues here and all you have to say is "calm down", without contributing anything to the discussion, like for example actual reasons to calm down. Again, if you have nothing else to contribute, just shut up (@eounce @young blade and others).
[Windows Phone 7 Development and Hacking] geek111:
WP7 is giving me a sinking feeling in my gut...

Hello All,

I can honestly say I've got mixed feelings about all this. After coding in linux for years, my first foray into embedded development was on Maemo after getting an n810. I was instantly hooked.

I originally bought a Windows Mobile phone because of the 'openness' of the platform and because of the excellent user communities, most prominently this one. I've been developing Winmo apps for 6 months now and currently have one pending certification in the marketplace. So here's my 2 cents-

1. The move to managed code/sandboxing makes sense for MS but doesn't really help us. Managed code is really easy to decompile. This may make it easier for MS to detect malware and backdoors in WP7 apps. But unless MS ships a REAL obfuscator with VS2010 all us developers are gonna get ripped off.

2. I personally will probably still develop for WP7 but the kinds of apps I'll develop will change. From what's been leaked so far, WP7 apps are gonna be heavy on the eye candy and light on functionality. Pretty much the opposite of Windows Mobile. Goodbye productivity/utility, hello fart noise apps and boobs that jiggle with the accelerometer.

3. MS can kiss the smartphone market goodbye. In emulating the iSuck development model MS is ceding the smartphone market to Android and Maemo. Neither platform is mature now. And Maemo hasn't even really hit the US yet. But the WP7/iPhone model seems to be 'Smart phones for stupid people'. Corporate/Enterprise users/developers are going to be forced to the more open platforms just to retain control of their data and communication. Microsoft knows this but doesn't care. They are after a larger market...

And no I didn't mention WebOS because it's not worth mentioning. (O.K. I did just mention it but only to say it wasn't worth mentioning.)

All things being equal, I am not giving up on WP7. But I am removing some eggs from the M$ basket. It's time to make a new friend of android and reacquaint myself with my old friend Maemo.

Cheers,

Charles

O.K. I'm done. Y'all can continue the bickering now. :D