[Windows Phone 7 General] Z80-Man:
Actually, we can't really blame Microsoft for willing to aim at iPhone users and try to offer their own alternative. This is normal business after all.

The real problem is the way they dropped WM. They said WM6.5 would still be supported for professional users, but at the same time, they left Adobe and Skype stop running development without any effort to encourage them to go on, then they closed MyPhone and MarketPlace.

So what does it mean ? On one hand, they obviously push their former users to a switch to a toy, and at the same time, tell them they would still support WM 6 professional, while they do nothing of that sort ?

We're not even sure there would ever any future professional development based on the new Windows CE platform. Of course, there are running projects and leaked information are coming to the public from times to times, but nobody can affirm they will ever come to life, not talking about being publicly available.

So we have very few alternatives offered. Android actually has endless possibilities, but even simple development is far beyond the quite simple knowledge that was required in comparison to make something out of a WM based smartphone.

What you said was true : quite extended knowledge about Linux is required.

Most users just download apps from the market, and don't know what's in their devices. So are iPhone users, and so are WP7 users.

Of course, WM users did the same thing. And easy access to ready-made sfotware has always been necessary.

The only difference there is lot of amateur users were able to create useful or funny apps out of basic knowledge, weren't forced to use a market to broadcast them, nor to pay for that.

It's quite unusual that a Microsoft OS would be the last free universe on mobile computing, but it's a fact. Unfortunately, this time has come to an end.

Whatever the surviving systems now (Android, iOS, WP7), we'll have once again to rely on the most competent XDA users to allow us to fully use our devices in the future (and a big "thank you" to them). Let's hope Google, Apple and Microsoft would finally understand their customers are not just money-making cattle, and stop putting all their efforts into finding ways to prevent developers to jailbreak their OSes. Let's just hope...

In the meanwhile, while Microsoft would like WM to be considered dead, and even as having never existed (you should really hurry to downloads anys apps, drivers and utilities you can now, as download links are disappearing faster and faster each day), we are still many enough to keep WM alive and useful.

What's not broken you don't have to replace, do you ? :)

Plus HTC brought us something that finally made an important difference : Sense, manila 3D M9 and LUA programming... We're far from having tried all the possibilities it offers and it changed greatly the way WM can be used. Not even talking about CHT.

With Sense, HTC finally put WM to its right place : an OS, not a GUI. This is where Microsoft actually made an historical mistake when it went on the OS/2 project while IBM dropped it : mixing the OS and the GUI is definitely stupid, and the way Sense, as a GUI, uses WM as a simple OS, is another proof of it. If Android and iOS success,es, both being GUIs over a Linux OS, weren't enough.

People seing Sense based WM pocket PC can hardly believe it's WM. And people trying it want to keep it. When I install a custom NRGZ ROM on an HD2, I add an SD Android, too, so people can try both. They all come back to WM.

Of course, over time, WM apps will disappear while more and more choice will be avialable to Android (and iOS, and WP7).

The only thing it proves is WM would'nt have disappeared because it was a bad OS, but only because their former major promoters decided to kill it by not supporting it.

It also shows how few efforts were made to promote it before. Most people even didn't know there ever existed a mobile Windows environment. Commercial actors never made the effort on advertising, nor really tried to sell it. So of course, it's easy to look back and say "it didn't sell, so it has to be abandonned". Apple invested havily on marketing, and succeeded. What did prevent others to do the same ??? Was it the mutiplicity of concurrent makers ? They would want to communicate on their products anyway, and it would have been easy to talk about Windows Mobile. But almost nobody knows about Windows Mobile : why ?

Maybe it's because the project for WP7 is older than we think. Microsoft knew they would have to kill WM years before they started to talk about WP. Itwould make sense, as it can't be developped in just a few months.

Plus they probably noticed that amateur communities were turning the cash-machine they were expected into a free open-source universe, so they probably took that in consideration while planning for their next OS.

So I'm not very optimistic for the future of mobile Windows. We're probably living the last years of freedom for our mobile devices. Even Google tries to keep a hand on Android development. Remember it's not the Mozilla foundation, but a genuine commercial company. People generally think it's more free than it really is because it's Linux based, but don't forget iOS is Linux-based too, and where's your freedom ?

Well, now let's just wait for the next WP release, and we'll be able to talk about the way it evolves then.

I wonder what will be its name. What after "Mango" ?... "Lychee" ? :D

Same about Android, though. What after "Ice Cream Sandwich" ? "Sauerkraut Waffle" ? :D