

Windows Phone 7's future revealed: multitasking, IE9, Twitter - kevin_morrill
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/02/windows-phone-7s-future-revealed-at-last-multitasking-ie9-twitter.ars

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rbanffy
Oh boy... Remember how cool Windows for Pen computing would be? How amazing
Longhorn would be? How WinFS would solve all our storage problems? Remember
the Milo and Kate demo?

Forgive me if I don't exactly trust Microsoft when they say the next release
of a so-so product will leapfrog its current competition.

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edge17
ahhh com'on now, marketing's part of the game. what're they supposed to say?

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cubicle67
I don't think it's the say bit that's the problem. I think the problem's in
the do bit

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wvenable
It's sort of funny that Microsoft bought into Apple's no-cutpaste and no-
multitasking reality distortion field right before Apple added those features.

It's a perfect example of the "don't follow your competitors" credo.

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steverb
I don't think MS ever bought into it. I think MS realized that what Apple had
been saying about Cut/Paste and multi-tasking was true. They're hard problems
to solve on a small touch interface.

MS chose to release earlier without those features rather than waiting another
3 - 6 months. They were already far enough behind the market that they
probably felt they couldn't wait any longer.

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wvenable
Except that Android and WebOS already had solutions to the problem and no
doubt the WP7 software stack already supported it all. Ultimately, Apple's
solutions to these so-called "hard problems" weren't revolutionary.

The net result was Microsoft produced a device comparable to the previous
generation. I suspect they would have taken those 3-6 months to add the
features (in whatever form they could come up with) if they knew that Apple
was going to do it.

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rimantas
Except Android's copy-paste still sucks and early solution for multitasking
brought a wast selection of task killer apps.

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Pewpewarrows
I'd rather have a mostly-good feature than no feature at all, or no comparable
feature for the next year or two.

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glhaynes
I think this is exactly the difference between the "Android philosophy" and
the "iOS philosophy" when it comes to design. I'm glad both exist; I'd
personally generally like to see things mature and great upon initial release,
especially because of how long you tend to be saddled with the negatives of a
bad initial design. But there are people and usages that want/need features
more than they want refinement, and that's fine too.

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Synaesthesia
Yay, IE 9 is a HUGE improvement over earlier versions. Should make a big
difference in rendering speed. I still use Webkit browsers on my PC though.

I wonder, is there a Webkit based browser app for WP7?

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Splines
There's a Webkit .NET project, but it looks like they're not anywhere near
done.

