yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Phone 7 General] shaundalglish:
@ElCondor

So why is it then that other companies, like Google or Palm, can create much better software in much less time?

I don't think MS developers are to blame, but rather their managers. Saying WP7 is a failure, which it definitely is, is not disrespecting to the developers.

It is however true. If you look at what other companies can achieve in less time, it's striking. MS is the biggest software company in the world - the fact that they can not even compete with a small company like Palm or a search engine company like Google, is just embarrassing.
[Windows Phone 7 General] MooGoo:
Man I'm so sick of seeing the "Don't criticize it until you try making it yourself!" argument. This fallacy is even more of an epidemic on the internets than comparing people to Hitler. By the way, don't criticize Hitler until you try being the Führer yourself, srsly.

Anyway enough hyperbole, give me an extremely talented and experienced team of developers, the name recognition of Microsoft, and billions of dollars, and I guarantee you I'd be able to create a better OS than WP7.
[Windows Phone 7 General] shaundalglish:
You don't even need all that.

Much smaller companies with much less money and less time have been able to make better mobile software than Microsoft.

And that despite that Microsoft is the biggest software company and has been in the smartphone business for more than ten years!

There's really no excuse for the huge failure that WP7 is. Others have shown Microsoft how it's done, and they're not even able to make a proper copy.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Can they? Google acquired Android Inc. in 2005. It took them about three years to make a usable phone OS, and they didn't start from scratch.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Dumdidum:
And still, in a year, everybody will be happy...

Some, cause they switched to Android, some cause they saw that WP7 offers still a lot and great apps are coming...
[Windows Phone 7 General] mrmomoman:
Hmmm really? I guess my autodiscover that set up everything for me was a glitch?

just put in my email address and it found my settings for me.

Setup on the Android 2.1 Exchange Email and also on WM 6.5 TP2
[Windows Phone 7 General] shaundalglish:
Yep, they can.

Three years for Google to create Android, with no experience in the phone business, just a barebone Linux OS and much more work to do than Microsoft in order to make a usable mobile OS.

And they released the new OS two years before Microsoft. And even small company Palm was able to release a new OS more than one year before Microsoft.

Even if you say they took the same time to develop their software, they're still the last to release it cause they started two years late.

What have they been doing in those two years???

The whole WP7 story is just pathetic for a company that has been in the phone business for ten years and happens to be the biggest software company in the world.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Spike15:
Except you still need to input, store (!), and continually update your AD password, something you don't have to do with BES.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Android wasn't a barebone Linux OS, it was a mobile OS when they acquired it. It's still a great achievement that they released it, but it wasn't done in a year. Don't know almost anything about Palm and don't care, so can't comment.

Well, this is true. On the other hand, why do you sound almost like this is offending you personally somehow?

Being complacent I guess. Playing corporate games where the mobile team was trying to convince the upper management that everything's on track, that the iPhone and Blackberry are temporary phenomena with no long-term implications. Two or three years ago Microsoft was even contemplating leaving the mobile business for good. It was too tiny for them to dedicate a lot of money and resources.

Was it a good strategy? No, it wasn't. Did they waste time? Yes, certainly. On the other hand, they had an opportunity to learn from their own and competitors' failures and successes, and they certainly can use it to be successful.
[Windows Phone 7 General] shaundalglish:
Actually you sound a bit offended here? Really, I don't care too much about WP7, cause I think it's just embarrassing how Microsoft dropped the ball.

I don't know how long it took Palm to make their new OS, but still it came out one year before WP7 and IMHO seems to be much better, despite the earlier release. Palm is not at all comparable to Microsoft in terms of size and possibilities, though at least they have some experience.

By the way, I remember some really small companies did their own phone software based on Windows CE 6, full mobile operating systems developed in no time, while Microsoft could not even get away from CE 5 for their old Windows Mobile...

Really, all that just shows how bad Microsoft messed up. There really is no defense and no excuse for that IMO. I agree with the OP that it's a failure, by any measure.

I just felt like answering to ElCondor, otherwise I really don't care much about it, cause it's not going to be interesting for me in any way when it comes out.

That's the next thing. They were one of the first, now they're the last, ergo they had by far the most time to learn.

To me, it doesn't look like they learned anything.

Making a bad copy of an OS from 2007? That is all the biggest software company in the world with the most money and the most time can do? Seriously?
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Are you serious? You don't care about WP7 because you are embarrassed for Microsoft's bad business decisions?

Why should I care? Either they make a product that suits me or they don't. I'll buy it if it works for me and won't buy it if it doesn't. What series of decisions brought them to this may be an interesting topic, but it shouldn't influence purchasing decisions rational people make, I think.
[Windows Phone 7 General] shaundalglish:
I am not embarrassed. :D

Microsoft should be embarrassed....

I didn't start this. I just answered ElCondor, who tried to excuse them. I think the same as you: It doesn't matter WHY - too little time? too little money? bad management? bad developers? Doesn't matter.

And that's why I'm not interested in WP7. I don't really care why it's a failure - but I do agree with the OP THAT it's a failure (or at least, too little, too late).
[Windows Phone 7 General] thx1200:
You must have some pretty stupid users. Answering the "what's my domain" question takes two seconds and for the most part, most know it already.

Plus, Exchange supports automatic settings in DNS, so you only need to know your email address and password. Most users already know this. If you are a super duper clever admin (sarcasm), you can even set up AS to use certificate authentication, so you don't need to change the password. The only downside is that I believe it still requires a wired connection via WMDC/desktop-AS to renew the client cert before expiration. Been a while since I looked into it.

So if I set up port forwarding (which I have to do to make OWA accessible anyway), then I'm an idiot, my firewall sucks, and BES wins? Awesome! FTMFW!

I'm glad Blackberry's centralized servers never go down... oh shi-- wait!

Look, BES is great and offers a lot more enterprise features than AS, no question. But your argument is not supporting your thesis. Your thesis was that AS is not scalable and difficult to set up. It really is not. Resorting to insults doesn't suddenly make it so.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Spike15:
Well the fact-of-the-matter is, is that it doesn't matter whether or not you have to setup port forwarding for Exchange, because you don't have to for BES. So if getting ActiveSync to work through your firewall takes no work, Exchange doesn't "win" because getting BES to work through your firewall takes no work, and therefore they're equal.

So best case scenario is that they're equal, worst case is that BES wins.

There's no situation wherein Exchange wins for firewall friendliness.

How was what I said "FUD"? That's exactly how BES/ActiveSync work.

I never said they didn't.

I support both ActiveSync and BES, and all I'm saying is that BES is a hell of a lot easier to support.

I don't even like BES personally. I like BlackBerries, but I hate the scheme that RIM has going on behind-the-scenes for BlackBerries (BIS, BES, the centralized servers, et cetera). But I do admit that it is easier to support than ActiveSync is.

Maybe SCMDM fixes this, I don't know, I haven't played around with it because all that's important to me/my users is push e-mail. ActiveSync does this for Windows phones out of the box, BIS doesn't, so we need BES.

AS isn't scalable because you have to invest so much time and energy into every device and supporting it. Do you really think the average user is going to have the wherewithal to figure out that when he or she changes his or her password or his or her desktop, that he or she has to change it in the ActiveSync settings on his or her phone?

As for most users knowing their domain, no, they do not. You're operating under the assumption that your internal and external domain have the same names, which they often do not.
[Windows Phone 7 General] gerryjoson:
Here's hoping both huh.
[Windows Phone 7 General] MooGoo:
It's hard to imagine a world where people don't criticize Microsoft developers.
[Windows Phone 7 General] thx1200:
You keep constantly shifting the goal posts and this is getting tiring. The original comment was "AS is not scalable" because you apparently don't know what the word "scalable" means. I support both too and think they are equally easy to support. If you have users that don't know how to enter usernames and passwords, well, that sucks for you. I'm not sure how they can possibly operate their blackberries if they can't handle that simple task, though. It also sucks that it ruins your day to open and forward ports in your firewall. I have no idea how you got port 25 to your SMTP server if you can't get port 443 to your AS server.

Fin.
[Windows Phone 7 General] thx1200:
Well, if that's the case, let me be the first WP7 critic to say that I think the developers are doing a freaking fantastic job -- absolutely no sarcasm in that comment. To work on upgrading a great, but neglected OS, only to be told after putting a lot of time into it (Photon) that you need to start, literally, from scratch... That sucks, man. And what they've accomplished since this shift, it's pretty amazing.

There are a lot of things I don't like about Metro, but the idea is unique, original, and well implemented. I'm sure it will make a lot of people happy.

So, kudos on making WP7 what it is so far. And I'm hoping that after this version 1.0 crazy tight deadline, that things settle down and we start seeing some power user features added back in.

If I can recompile and run EXEs, escape outside the silly sandbox, use SQL CE, and control my own multitasking (eg, I can say which apps can continue to run in the background) in a future version, I might take the plunge. Because with all that, all the other "lacking" features can be supplemented by the community.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Spike15:
No, I'm not "shifting the goal posts". You just seem hung up on "scalable" having something to do with maximum capacity, when it really doesn't.

Scalability is a lot more than just how many users or devices or cycles or whatever you can possibly get out of something, and rather also has to do with how manageable the solution becomes the more and more users or devices or cycles you get out of it.

Exchange ActiveSync simply does not have the management power, or the ease of device setup that BES has, and therefore is not as scalable.

There are no "shifting [...] goal posts".

It's not a matter of entering usernames and passwords, it's getting their head around the fact that when they change the password that they use to log into their computer, that they also have to change the password that they use to sync their phone with their e-mail, a password they may have forgotten they ever entered.

At your place of work, do they have a seminar where they teach employees about Active Directory? I wouldn't think so, but if they do, that's great for you, but you have to understand the plight of the rest of us. I get users getting a hold of me asking what username and password they're supposed to use to log into webmail, so the concept of one username and password for everything totally goes over their head.

Throw in the concept of changing and saving a new password on their phone to sync e-mail whenever they change it on their desktop, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

I'm lucky that my organization doesn't have a policy that mandates that the users change their passwords every so often, but if it did...

Did I ever say anything about "can"? I merely posited that BES is more firewall friendly.
[Windows Phone 7 General] thx1200:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalability

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2004/12/13/282234.aspx
[Windows Phone 7 General] ericm115:
Damn, Making this makes me feel like i got my HD2 just in time. I went from my G1 to the HD2 and was blown away, i know not the best comparison. but from what i understand is, wp7 will be more than 80% similar to iPhone os, but with xbox live integration.hmmm. i hope android matures in the next 18 months or so. Android seems to be what fits me best. But i love this hd2, seems like a propper smart phone, it has the "i can be drunk and look smart" interface that the iphone has, and the openes of android. i guess good things dont last. i finnaly find a good WM phone and wp7 is just around the corner.

on a side not, i think HTC is the best smartphone manufacturer in the world. Sexy and Smart, its killer,
[Windows Phone 7 General] thx1200:
Yes, Android is still a bit immature, but it is coming along nicely. Each new release looks more like a more powerful classic WinMo than the last (but with better graphics and UI than stock WinMo, of course). I'm hoping I can ride out the 'dark years' here too until my contract renewal. heh.

Rumor has it (according to xda front page) that there are actually plans to gradually 'unlock' WP7. It's all rumors, so take it for what its worth.

But if at that time, WP7 doesn't offer a flexible end user experience like classic WinMo and Android, then Android is where I will go too...

inb4 'the industry doesn't care about power users, only average consumers
[Windows Phone 7 General] shaundalglish:
Yes looks just like WinMo minus the annoyances.

Or iPhone minus all restrictions? True as well.

Maybe the best description is: Heading in exactly the right direction and almost there. :)

The only way to catch someone who's running in the right direction is by running faster... unfortunately, "fast" is something that can not be attributed to Microsoft.

And IMO, they're not even running in the right direction (instead they're chasing Apple, who is also heading the wrong direction).
[Windows Phone 7 General] MooGoo:
In some ways yes. I disagree about the UI. WinMo is the only and most likely the last mobile OS to have a minimalist UI that is designed to look and behave like a mini version of a desktop operating system.

If only people would stop trying to cram finger-friendliness down WinMo's throat and learn to appreciate it for what it is.

Sadly, now days, finger friendliness is the end all of all software designed to run on any computer smaller than a laptop. WinMo's minimalist stylus driven UI will become a relic of the past along with mice, keyboards, physical buttons, and average intelligence (you know it's true).
[Windows Phone 7 General] DavidinCT:
Yep, one of the main reasons I love it and might hate WP7...but, min specs are going to be hot for it, so I'll end up with one (have my newevery2 $100 credit waiting)
[Windows Phone 7 General] NoahVail:
OP=Right. WM7 really about controlling our behavior

All paths in WM7 lead to the Walled Garden. Each carefully crafted restriction, is a Wall designed to channel our behavior.

It's all about pre-deciding our app choices; to insure MS captures every possible dollar/yen/euro/pint-of-blood. To MS/Apple, consumers are generators of corporate income and are to be managed as such.

We have no other value in their world.

NV
[Windows Phone 7 General] ramdroid77:
you're kidding right? some people here should take a lesson in operating systems....

Wait... I'll help you out:

- iPhone, WP7, Android --> applications are running in a sandbox. This means EACH application is isolated on its own, you can't manipulate other running applications or replace core operating system functionality.

- Windows Mobile --> applications have direct access to the operating system kernel (on stock ROMs you know). You can do whatever you want....

The difference between iPhone/WP7 and Android is only that you have more customization possibilities allowed. But to compare the "openes of Android" to Windows Mobile is just hilarious IMO.....
[Windows Phone 7 General] shaundalglish:
Maybe you should do your homework, cause you have no clue about Android.

Given root/file system access, you can actually do more customization than with Windows Mobile. And Windows Mobile is actually not open at all. It allows to modify the registry and replace system files, which means lots of possibilities - but it's still closed source and many of the customizations are actually done by reverse engineering.

And maybe you haven't noticed, but there's a native development kit available and no API restrictions - VERY different from WP7 and iPhone.
[Windows Phone 7 General] thx1200:
I don't know. I'm not one of those people who thinks if [insert OS manufacturer X] doesn't do [insert feature set Y] in [insert arbitrary date Z] that it's impossible to ever catch up. I agree that MS/Apple are going the "wrong" direction insofar as our (aka miniature computer fans) tastes are concerned, but that doesn't mean those features cannot be added at a later point in time.

The development speed of Android is intense right now. They've released quite a few OS updates in a very short time frame. I clearly remember seeing the very first Android phone and thinking to myself, my god this thing is pure utter crap! But now I look at the latest devices and think, holy crap this thing is awesome! The same could be said about both iPhone and WP7 in the future. This is especially true as Android development slows down. It can't stay at the breakneck speed it's at. I don't mean that from any technical standpoint, I just mean that eventually Google will shift priorities when it gets whatever size of the market they feel comfortable with, giving others a chance to catch up. History supports this (cf, Newton, Palm, and Pocket PC). :-)

It's worth noting that iPhone 4 will contain quite a few new enterprise features. It's still nowhere near where I would buy one, but it's worth noting how priorities can change.

WORD. Although I would argue that WM 6.5.x already broke down that minimalist barrier, so you don't even really get that on WM anymore. But it doesn't bother me too much. As much as I like Going Stylus when I'm doing something complicated and screen real estate intensive (like working on in Pocket Excel), the rest of the time, I rather like the finger friendliness.

I really think supporting both paradigms depending on the application is the ultimate compromise. To me, the best phone design would still include a resistive screen (a very good one) and a stylus. Then when I'm just fiddling around looking at the weather, I can finger it. But when I need to take a hand written note or work in excel, I can pop out the good ol' stylus. Just FYI, I wouldn't mind a capacitive screen if there was one with good precision and a non-bulky stylus.

As for my UI comment, I was talking mostly about the presentation. The graphics are great, the transitions are smooth, and the overall presentation is very consistent. It even has WM's tap-and-hold context menu (thank the heavens). But, yes, the lists are bulky and the buttons are very fat, and the overall "look" is very bubbly, as opposed to just a shrunked down desktop OS style.

By contrast, WP7 will feature Pocket PC's plain rectangle buttons -- white rectangle, white text, on black background, versus blue/gray button background, black text, black rectangle, on white background. Somehow one of those is "old Windows 3.1 style graphics" and the other is "clean lines, high contrast, modern UI." Go figure.
[Windows Phone 7 General] thx1200:
More in theory... In practice, about the same. Open source does not always equate to somebody actually going in and changing core OS stuff. By contrast, I've actually hex edited a driver on WM to fix a bug before. :-D Not elegant, but it worked. :-D

But despite that, I agree with you!

In addition, the Android sandbox for managed code is not nearly as restrictive as WP7, and the API is much MUCH more robust than WP7 is currently.

Of course WP7 as we know it is a last minute hack, basically, cramming everything they can into about a year's worth of time. Nothing that big will be feature complete. And the API will grow, just as Android's did between 1.0 and now. The question is how much will the sandbox fall down? That's what I'm curious about. And will I ever be able to write an EXE in C++ or unsandboxed C#/VB CF?
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Sure you will. This isn't going to happen officially soon though (if ever). Jailbreaking will certainly make it possible. And no, I don't like the fact that you need JB for this.
[Windows Phone 7 General] MooGoo:
Ah, but I still use WinMo 6.1, thus I am sheltered from such horrors. I've never really found it particularly difficult to operate with fingers, a little nail goes a long way. I feel MS would have been better served to make their OS more intelligent about detecting the intended target of finger presses, rather than super-sizing its UI elements.

I see no reason why we cannot have both capacitive multi-touch and pressure sensitive high precision stylus touch screen. My Lenovo X200 Tablet supports both options very well.

Yea I love it, WinMo is "Windows 3.1 hell" while WP7 is ZOMG SQUARE GREY BUTTONS.

I like minimalism, my favorite "window decoration" for any GUI is good old Windows Classic (with classic color scheme). Still, I'm not yet sold on WP7's brand of minimalism. Huge sans-serif fonts and excessive white/grey space has the look of minimalism but none of its efficiency or functionality. However part of me is glad to see so many people embracing a UI design with flat colors and sharp corners and hard edges. It is a refreshing change after a decade of ever increasing curves, gloss, and drop shadows.

I do appreciate the transition animations in Android, but from what I've seen WP7 takes it too far. Seems every time you navigate away from the start screen you are forced to enjoy a 5 second display of tile flipping.

Ah well...must learn...to embrace...future.......sigh.
[Windows Phone 7 General] ramdroid77:
Yes, I'm not familar with Android a lot, but when comparing different phone operating systems I usually talk about the state you receive them after you bought one, this means, no custom ROM, no jailbreak, and also no root access (which is more and more complicated as time goes, see HTC desire)

Yes Android is open source. But Microsoft also released the source code for most parts of Windows CE, that's why it was even possible to create custom ROMs as far as I got the story.... read the page from "itsme". It's full of references to MS's source code.

The native SDK from Android btw allows it to port code from other operating systems (i.e. Windows mobile) but it doesn't provide a way out of the sandbox.