A Stranger in a Strange Land: A Windows Mobile Guy Meets iPhone

[stevew]

Originally Posted by Russ Smith

What if Apple decides "people don't really need that." (It wouldn't be the first time.)

Microsoft does the same thing. Remember when we could sync over WiFi?

[stevew]

Originally Posted by Russ Smith

What if Apple decides "people don't really need that." (It wouldn't be the first time.)

Microsoft does the same thing. Remember when we could sync over WiFi?

[virain]

Originally Posted by jngold_me

First, that's assuming Apple will stand still...

And that's assuming that MS will sit still. WM6.1 are on the way. And talk of all that lagging while running apps? You dont know how iPhone will handle similar apps.
QUOTE=paris18m;682409] My point was to highlight the possibilities apple iPhone has brought to the market and the fact that MS has been asleep. [/quote]
What possibilities? A touch screen? It's been here for a while. To make it more finger friendly? Talks about it were here even before iPhone. BTW how good is a touch screen if you can't take full advantage of it? with iPhone you can't use Stylus, that' means no inking, no drawing, etc.. Better browser? Again, 3rd Party better than PIE browsers were available before iPhone. I mean SE P900 had better browser than PIE 3-4 years ago. Multi touch? I don't see the reason to have it on such a small device that would be used mostly with one hand for convenience, except that it is fun.
The truth is iPhone didn't bring anything new to the market, it just capitalized on existing technology that was already available to the public. And MS was not in a sleep over the years it added plenty of useful things to WM. As far as for interface concern, if you go while back, to the beginning of Win. CE, you'll see that philosophy behind it is "If you know how to use your PC you won't need to learn how to use Win CE, they have similar interface" that was 1st selling point of MS that helped to win customers over Palm. So the thing is " if it works, don't fix it" And it worked well, with corporate customers, that's what MS was shooting for from the beginning.
And another catch phrase for iPhone: "It just works!" Ahr...? What exactly does it do? Not much - Plays music, serf web, and makes calls. Even dumb phones do all of that this days.
More stable, you don't have to reset it too often? Again, it doesn't do much at this time so don't really uses its resources. My girlfriend has Motorola RAZR for few years already, NEVER had to reset it! Want to compare it to WM or iPhone? I doubt it.
So the buttom line, it is unfair to compare WM to iPhone as they are different animals of the same family, You wouldn't try to compare house cat to tiger or a lion , and argue which one is better, but they are all cats (with different functions of course)

[jngold_me]

Originally Posted by virain

And that's assuming that MS will sit still. WM6.1 are on the way.

You are joking, yes? 6.1's major changes are for the smartphone platform, and those only deal with a "more decent" today screen. Everything else as far as the consumer is concerned is a non-issue. Threaded SMS you say? WM Treo's have had that for years already.

with iPhone you can't use Stylus, that' means no inking, no drawing, etc.

Nobody really wants to use a stylus on a mobile phone. Nokia are the best selling smartphones on the planet and they don't even have touch screens. Stylus is passe, so "early century". This is a non issue.

As far as for interface concern, if you go while back, to the beginning of Win. CE, you'll see that philosophy behind it is "If you know how to use your PC you won't need to learn how to use Win CE, they have similar interface" that was 1st selling point of MS that helped to win customers over Palm. So the thing is " if it works, don't fix it" And it worked well, with corporate customers, that's what MS was shooting for from the beginning.

Well we all know that methodology is backfiring now. That may have worked for WinCE way back when but is not applicable now. A mobile phone is not a desktop nor should it act like one. The consumers have spoken and they don't want a desktop on a mobile phone. They want something easy to use, they don't want to have to take out a stylus, and they want it responsive and reliable.

And another catch phrase for iPhone: "It just works!" Ahr...? What exactly does it do? Not much - Plays music, serf web, and makes calls.

Yes, you hit the nail on the head. The things the iPhone does, it does exceptionally well. As a matter of fact, the few things the iPhone does, is extremely better than what WM provides. Like I have said in my 8 years of using WM is that WM is the "jack of all trades, master of none". Plus, that's what Apple intended the 1st gen iPhone to do. They have a roadmap for the Iphone and the next gen will make it more appealing to the corporate crowd. Not too bad for a device that's been out for how long?

More stable, you don't have to reset it too often? Again, it doesn't do much at this time so don't really uses its resources. My girlfriend has Motorola RAZR for few years already, NEVER had to reset it! Want to compare it to WM or iPhone? I doubt it.

Silly comparison. The iPhone runs a mobile version of the MacOS and runs apps and does things that the Razr can't even dream of doing.

So the buttom line, it is unfair to compare WM to iPhone as they are different animals of the same family, You wouldn't try to compare house cat to tiger or a lion , and argue which one is better, but they are all cats (with different functions of course)

The comparison here is not really a feature-by-feature of what both platforms can do. The fact is Apple has risen the bar for ease-of-use, and brought an excitement to the mobile space that apparently M$ could never bring.

[Russ Smith]

Just an observation:
Any sentence starting with "Nobody wants" or "Everybody wants" is 99.934% of the time wrong.

Originally Posted by stevew

Microsoft does the same thing. Remember when we could sync over WiFi?

True, Microsoft does the same thing, but they don't do it as routinely and consistently as Apple does. I'm currently running OSX on one of my machines. There's a lot to like, but I'm already getting tired of Apple's "the user is an idiot" approach.

[jngold_me]

Originally Posted by Russ Smith

Just an observation:
Any sentence starting with "Nobody wants" or "Everybody wants" is 99.934% of the time wrong.

Yes indeed, you are correct. The sentence should have started.. "The great majority of smartphone buyers......as evidenced by current market and interface design trends."

[Rocco Augusto]

Originally Posted by stevew

Maybe it's because we're asked for our opinion. This is a forum isn't it? I don't hate WM and MS at all. Disappointed yes. Disappointed enough that I'm ready to move on. I just got bored with it as many others have. We all like innovation with our devices and WM has not been giving us that.

And why do I keep coming back to this site? Because I love it simple as that.

This is true, we encourage everyone to give their opinions.

[Rocco Augusto]

Originally Posted by jngold_me

Nobody really wants to use a stylus on a mobile phone. Nokia are the best selling smartphones on the planet and they don't even have touch screens. Stylus is passe, so "early century". This is a non issue.

I want to use a stylus with touch based devices. I have an unnatural hatred for smude marks, without a stylus I would just get to annoyed to use the device.

Originally Posted by jngold_me

...A mobile phone is not a desktop nor should it act like one. The consumers have spoken and they don't want a desktop on a mobile phone. They want something easy to use, they don't want to have to take out a stylus, and they want it responsive and reliable.

I would beg to differ, the Apple iPhone delivers the most desktop like experience of any cellular device out there! One of the main selling features of the device is that it offers a desktop-like Web browsing experience.

Every iPhone user I know has told me one of their favorite uses of the iPhone is to pull it out while watching TV to check IMDB for some information or look up some other information on the Internet. This was something that less than a year ago most people would have had to get up and go to their laptop or desktop to accomplish since their handsets wouldn't have given them that true desktop-like experience.

Consumers do want something that is easy to use but most importantly I feel what consumers really want is convergence. They want that mobile desktop solution and they also want convenience, two things the iPhone delivers in spades (minus all that stuff its missing )

[jngold_me]

Originally Posted by Rocco Augusto

I would beg to differ, the Apple iPhone delivers the most desktop like experience of any cellular device out there! One of the main selling features of the device is that it offers a desktop-like Web browsing experience.

You misunderstood my intent. The point is the windows-like metaphor and design interface is not optimal for today's converged devices. WM start menu, things buried deep within menus and submenus, Yes, I agree the "experience" should be there, but the way you interact with a mobile device should not attempt to mimic the desktop, which was the original premise of the "Pocket PC".

That being said, the today screen is incredibly useful, productive and flexible part of the WM interface. It's one of the reasons why I didn't jump ship to the s60 platform when shopping for a device to replace my Treo 750.

[J4yDubs]

Originally Posted by jngold_me

First, that's assuming Apple will stand still. It's been said over and over from tech bloggers and journalists alike that others are chasing what the iPhone offers now. Remember, WM devices are several iterations old while the iPhone is still relatively a young pup.

WM is chasing the iPhone UI. That I'll agree with, but that's really it. The iPhone doesn't do anything else that hasn't been done for a while now.

If you're banking on the SDK to bring a lot of new features and functionality to the iPhone, I think you're in for a surprise. Read up on the SDK's imposed limitations. Some of them I can understand, but not allowing 3rd party programs to run in the background (no multi-tasking)? Come on. No watcher programs, no IM clients, no alarm programs, no "wait for activity" programs. etc... Get a phone call and your running program needs to shut down (hopefully saving state). Then you have to run it again after the call. Way to cripple a device with a lot of potential.

I want to like the iPhone, but the limitations are frustrating.

John

[J4yDubs]

Originally Posted by stevew

Microsoft does the same thing. Remember when we could sync over WiFi?

That one pissed me off (I was a WM developer at the time), but the reason it was taken away was because of the huge security hole it introduced. Being that the biggest push, especially at that time, was into corporate, they had to remove the functionality (or risk losing corporate customers).

John