

Windows Phone 7 – Released To Manufacturing - rufflelesl
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/archive/2010/09/01/windows-phone-7-released-to-manufacturing.aspx

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cryptoz
Competition is good and I hope this forces Google and Apple to continue
innovating...

However, I've seen demos of this phone OS and it looks pretty awful to use.
Maybe you have to be using it in person and physically holding the device to
like it, who knows.

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byoung2
The OS seems to be a love it or hate it thing. I love the way it looks in the
demos, but I don't think I'll buy one. There are a few things that worry me,
such as the lack of a removable microSD card, no true multi-tasking, and no
copy/paste. My last 2 phones were Windows Mobile, but I recently jumped ship
to Android with my HTC Evo, and I'm not going back. Microsoft had their
chance, and they lost me.

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iamelgringo
I was at Maker's Faire in May. Microsoft was there demoing Sync ( mobile apps
)for Ford automobiles.

They had a guy who had built a aiming mechanism for a t shirt cannon by using
the tilt controls on the Win 7 phone. He was using the .Net api's from the
phone to control the t-shirt cannon via Microsoft's Robotics studio api. I was
rather impressed.

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ratsbane
I saw that same demo booth at Maker Faire - except that I never saw the demo.
The two or three times I stopped by that booth they were waiting for someone
to bring something or out of tshirts. It was a neat-looking contraption,
though, but I'm not ready to fully appreciate it until I see it shooting the
shirts.

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niyazpk
Meh.

Microsoft have been consistently failing to impresses in the mobile space; I
will wait till the actual product is released before getting excited.

Android devices are doing great, iPhone is doing great and it is not about a
single product anymore. Developers and the ecosystem is very important in
deciding the fate of devices in this space. I have a feeling that Microsoft
may be already out of the game.

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tallanvor
We'll have to see where things are in a year or so. Microsoft does have a few
areas where they may be able to pick up iPhone users:

1) iPhone fatigue. I know a number of people who are tired of their iPhones
for one reason or another and either have switched (generally to Android) or
will be switching when they can. Obviously Android will get a lot of these,
but not necessarily all of them.

2) If gaming works well, and there's integration with XBox Live, they could
start to pick up gamers. --I doubt anyone really expected Microsoft to be able
to rival Nintendo or Sony when the XBox first came out, but it happened.

3) Business users. Granted, many business people love RIM, but if Microsoft is
able to provide a fuller experience around business, they'll be able to
attract users.

I'm not going to try to predict the success or failure of Windows Phone OS,
but I'm certainly not going to write them off before the phones are in the
wild.

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roc
Microsoft has all the pieces to do a really great consumer ecosystem. But
they've been fumbling for so long, there's just no good reason to believe a
product developed within the bureaucracy can pull it together.

The XBox succeeded largely because it was outside the bureaucracy during its
formative stages. And since then, absolutely _nothing_ from inside the
bureaucracy has integrated well with it.

. Media integration into the 360 was not good.

. Media Center integration wasn't any better.

. 360/Zune integration was never really attempted.

. Live for Windows/XBox Live integration was not good.

. Live Marketplace/Zune Marketplace integration is more awkward than
Live/Netflix.

etc.

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nailer
You're right. They can't execute. They get 90% of the way there and fail.

I'm a Mac / Linux / Android guy. Not a Windows person at all. But I have a
Windows media Centre TV and it's awesome.

* I browse upcoming movies on TV by scrolling through a list of movie posters.

* I have Sky pay TV, a DVR, Blu Ray, and Youtube in one interface

* Channels are identified by logos as well as number.

It's a brilliant consumer product. But do you know who sells it in the
consumer space?

Nobody.

If you walk into Best Buy or Currys, you'll find boxes from everyone but MS.
There's no hardware partners, no Sony no Panasonic no Hitachi WMC boxes. I had
to buy a Dell box, a separate remote, and a separate dual tuner. The result is
awesome, but there is no part of MS the company that seems to want to stand
behind this awesome product.

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WiseWeasel
The cable/satellite providers control the DVR set-top box market. Resources
poured into marketing and distributing the WMC boxes would likely be largely
wasted.

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nailer
WMC includes cable providers already.

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endtime
Congrats to the WPS7 team...it's been a long journey.

I'm stuck with my iPhone contract for another year, and I'm hoping that by
then the WPS7 OS/ecosystem will have matured to the point that I can feel good
about making the switch.

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spoiledtechie
I agree. Congrats to the team. Its been a long process. Im happy to see the
team make a final release. I for one will be buying once they come out.

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keithwarren
I think what most people fail to understand when it comes to market
significance here is the leverage in the developer community. I know most HN
people are not MSFT fans but Silverlight is a great technology and the phone
dev platform is based on Silverlight. Microsoft has won markets in the past
because of developers and they will be strong in the 3rd party application
market here. Having had a iPhone for years, now and Android and developed for
all three platforms I think that Android is going to be in trouble unless the
quality of user experience quickly rises for apps in their market.

Because of contract cycle lengths on phones I think this is a battle that will
be waged for at least the next 6 years. Going to be fun!

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gte910h
I was amazed at the ZIP of the phone when I saw a demo model at a iPhone
event.

It's very snappy, app startup and the menus itself.

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commandar
I got to spend about half an hour playing with a hardware reference device not
too long ago. While it was fast (and had the best OSK I've used), the UI was
just a complete mess. Navigation was clumsy, and it's almost shocking that MS
would bring out a platform without multitasking after even Apple has conceded
that point.

The best description I've heard is that it sort of feels like using iPhone
1.5. That was great in 2007, but I don't know how it's going to fly in
2010/2011 given it's going up against a growing iOS and Android, an entrenched
RIM, and potential for HP to breathe new life into the superior WebOS.

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Hoff
Microsoft continues to long pre-announce their products - the first US widgets
are November? - which implies they're going to continue to under-deliver on
their execution, to detract from the work of all the bright people over there,
to follow the everything-is-named-Windows branding, and to generally
disappoint their customers.

This RTM on the same day where Jobs announced two iOS releases within the same
range when WP7 products are expected.

And what else Apple and Android or HP (with WebOS) might or will deploy before
the Microsoft partners ship products built from this Microsoft RTM
announcement?

Time to start managing their customer expectations down, as is their
inexplicable wont?

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kenjackson
I think in this case they had a tough call to make, and I think they made the
right one. They either keep it under wraps, and not get dev tools and SDK
coverage. Or they announce early and launch with a relatively strong ecosystem
out the gate.

I think they've built up a decent amount of anticipation for their devices.
And on the dev side I only know slightly more iOS devs than WP7 devs right now
(and far more than Android devs). That's kind of crazy since there are 120M
iOS devices and no WP7 devices shipped. I wouldn't be surprised if others were
seeing a similar phenomena.

And remember MS kept Kin underwraps until a month before shipping, and you see
how well that went. :-)

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prototype56
I am going to get this just for zune integration .

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tajddin
I think Microsoft has a lot riding on this platform and as such they'll be
pumping a lot of cash into the marketing and promotion of this release. From a
software standpoint, I'm quite excited about the .NET experience I'll be able
to harness in order to create apps -- Microsoft will be able to leverage
existing .NET developers like me to quickly grow the Windows Phone app
catalog.

As far as the interface is concerned, I like it. It's different and data-
centric, unlike most of the alternatives.

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jsz0
I think WM7 will be at least a modest success for Microsoft. The Android
handset makers are pushing the platform in a weird direction. Larger handsets
& more software complexity. I think there's probably a lot of people out there
who don't want either an iPhone or an Android device for various reasons. Most
of them are probably RIM users today due to the simplicity of BBOS. WM7 will
be a legitimate option for them. I could see WM7 having a 10-20% market share
within a few years.

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nopal
On a side note, this is one of the most well-formatted blogs that I've seen
from Microsoft. I usually find MS blog posts very hard to read, and usually
end up not doing so.

