Gawd, those are ugly! Let's hope these are just some fevered photoshopping, and not anything being planned.
To be honest, I am starting to wonder why Microsoft doesn't do now what it did to the original Max OS, back when they created Windows 3.0. Blatantly copy the parts they like. Seriously.
Things they should copy:
- Multi-touch: Microsoft had multi-touch on their "Microsoft Surface" (as anybody who watched election-coverage in 2008 is well aware), so they're pretty immune to lawsuits over it.
- Smooth, real-time touch panning/scrolling. The delicious part of using an iPhone is the almost magical way the display tracks your finger's movements. Everytime I use my wife's, I reminded how much more "fluid" it is than my HTC Touch Diamond, or the core WM 6.1 "fixed speed" panning/scrolling.
- Get rid of the nested, tiny menus. They're annoying, they're not finger-friendly, and make using WM6's advanced features a pain in the butt.
- Generate thumbnails once for photo albums, so that they scrolling thru photos doesn't become an annoying "wait for the thumbails to render" exercise in patience. This seems so damn obvious (and the iPhone's photo handling, including cacheing the thumbnails for later, is just lightyears ahead, even on my Touch Diamond, which has a fast processor)
And I know that Microsoft has only limited control over the hardware, but pushing the device-makers to embrace capacitive touchscreens would also be a good move.
I've said it before - Microsoft has the money to lure some iPhone UI designers away from Apple. They should bite the bullet and do it, and
execute on this quickly. A delay until Q3 of 2009 is totally ridiculous for a company with Microsoft's resources. Mobile Devices are the fastest-growing computer market on Earth, and Microsoft seems hell-bent on blowing it. I just don't get it. They need a serious, serious, "come to Jesus" talk in their mobile division. Steve Balmer should fire somebody, and bring in outside help.