[Windows Phone 7 General] Spike15:
You don't get it.

The platform is fine, it's the ecosystem that's built around the platform.

The only reason Apple's products work the way they do is because of the vertical integration, but this robs the consumer of choice, and the fact-of-the-matter is that Windows works just as well.

Now, in the case of Windows Mobile, we're dealing with older Microsoft technology -- they haven't updated it with all the lessons they've learned through their desktop operating system.

Windows Mobile's heart and soul -- the CE kernel -- has been around since 1997. Obviously it's been updated, but it's still iterations of a similar idea.

If you look at the big Microsoft renaissance, when their consumer operating systems actually became the modern operating systems that everyone uses, they threw everything out. The 9.x kernel that drove Windows 95, 98, and ME was totally replaced by the NT 5 kernel, which was used in Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2003 R2, which then turned into the NT 6 kernel, which was used in Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2.

CE hasn't really gone through a renaissance like that, and if you look at the big things that changed from 9.x to NT 5, a lot of them very probably aren't mirrored in CE. I don't think CE is fully a hybrid kernel -- for example -- nor does it seem to be a multi-user operating system. One of the big stability boons of Windows NT was that it allowed user processes to run in the context of a user, where they couldn't interfere with system processes. This doesn't seem to be the case in CE.

So instead of changing and adapting their model while keeping it in-line with the way they offer other products -- initially configured to be easy-to-use, with a plethora of power-user features hidden underneath, but convenient nonethless -- they've gone the other way, stripping the operating system of everything that set it aside from the competition, and merely conforming.

What makes this new copycat model good enough that people will be drawn away from the huge userbase of RIM and Apple, or the nerd-hipster draw of Android?

Nothing.

So it will fail. Just like Zune did.

Have you ever used an HP EliteBook 8730w?

A big thing that you're missing about MacBooks is the fact that they have two GPUs. The battery life you're citing is very likely obtained when the laptop has switched itself over to the integrated, crappy, less power-intensive GPU.

Also, with an HP EliteBook 8730w, I can get 4 hours of battery life on a 17" notebook with a 1080P monitor. And then if the battery runs out I can just insert another one. Apple doesn't have this advantage because part of the way they obtain their higher-than-average battery life is by eliminating swappable batteries, which is just stupid imo.

I don't know if you actually follow hardware design, but I know that Apple laptops actually use larger batteries than average, and they do this by eliminating the mechanics involved in swappable batteries...

Besides which, you're basing your argument solely on the basis of battery life, which is largely irrelevant. If you're really going to be away from a plug for >4 hours, then carrying a second battery really isn't an inconvenience. And then you have the option of carrying a third battery and being away from a plug for >8 hours (think trans-Pacific flight, I've been on a 13 hour flight myself) an option which simply does not exist in the Apple ecosystem.

I have an older HP laptop (3 years) which still has the battery it had when I opened the box. I've dragged it to the US (I live in Canada), around the world to Australia through airports and hotels, I've dragged it to two years of university, a year of college, to friends' houses, to hockey arenas, et cetera, and the only thing I've ever had to do to it is change the hard drive (old one crashed), which is pretty impressive to me.

Furthermore, with Windows 7 I get 2.25 hours of battery life on that laptop (as opposed to 2 on Windows XP) and even at school I don't run out.

What makes battery life significant to the degree most Apple users make it out to be, is stupidity. I'm at school all the time and I see laptop users sitting next to an electrical outlet without their laptop plugged in. In any modern university or college classrooms and lecture halls will be adequately equipped with plugs.

Does Windows support the dual-GPU configuration of the MacBook, or does it just use the more power-intensive GPU at all times?