[Windows Phone 7 General] awagner:
I may get roasted over this post, but it bugs me. First and formost not a big fan of the open source model. Have a friend that called me a freetard (I looked it up, some one who champions the cause for open source) when I had something positive to say about Andriod. Crazy! He is an iPhone, iPad user. iOs is based on Darwin which is open source. So when he made the argument for paying for software to drive innovation, it seemed a little odd. This guy is a rockstar in the IT world, but the iPhone smug is deffinately keeping him down. I was handed a Windows CE 1.0 device years ago and I could see the potential of this handy piece of equipment. Over the years I had some Windows CE based device at my side ever since. I have seen the rise of the Palm Pilot, listing to users complaing about how it synchs with outlook or doesn't until you buy something. I had my Pocket PC with Outlook, but the Pocket PC was not the rage so customers refused to even look. I was scratching my head as the Blackberry rose to power without the basic features I had enjoyed for years, it looked like a colorized version of a Palm Pilot. Enter the iPhone with the commercials touting listening to your music then answering a call. I was able to do that for years what was the big deal? Lotsa features in the iPhone at first were lacking.. how bout using songs as a custom ringtone... just plain old mp3 files.... nope you gotta jailbreak it. It was the must have items, if you had one you had status... it's a phone for crying out loud! Enter the G1 WITH NO OUT OF THE BOX EXCHANGE SUPPORT!!!! Use football, it sucks but it kinda works. Andriod is growing up into a much better phone O/S, better than the iSmug 4 (iPhone 4 for those who don't know a iPhone user or own one). Enter WP7 already condemed in the forums, even before official launch in the US. Windows CE from 1.0 to 6.5 were designed for lower resolution, smaller screens (excluding the screen size of the jornada and 1.0 devices) and a stylist. Phones are not like that anymore. A re-write has been long over due! From what I have read it's more like the Zune and it didn't act as a mass storage device either untill you installed a hack. I see the things it won't do as concerning sure, but as gamers argue the PS/3 is a better gaming box, it doesn't matter xbox is a more of a social network. I have seen the capabilities and it does now have huge potential. How many of you have installed Zune software and used it as a music player? Sure, internet radio is missing like a Winamp and it won't synch without a zune, that now has changed, but Winamp, itunes, any of them don't come close to the visual experiance and presentation of the zune software. Games that update your gamer score has my nephew frothing. Still has exchange support, better than Andriod when initially released on the G1.

Phones that had no out of the box tethering initially:

iPhone

Blackberry

Andriod

Palm O/S

All very successful O/S's. I think time will tell if WP7 is a hit or a miss, but in the tech world mediocre is usually the big winner. If tethering, mass storage support, and a few others are fixed in short order then who will you get behind? In all honesty I see huge potential in WP7. I have an xbox, use my phone as my music player... so bring on Zune software support! Work and play all in one device redesiegned for touch phones, I'm down to give it a try, to give it a chance to have some of it's limitations worked out in a few months. Don't be such a hater before it even has a chance.