Oh that. Sorry Jason, guess I glossed over that in my thinking, as frankly I avoid like the plague anything where someone's trying to spoon-feed me or hold my hand too much when using a device I PAID FOR fer cryin' out loud. I don't like it from Microsoft, and from what little I have seen of Apple like it even less there. I mentioned Resco's updater... don't use it myself, as I like to keep the CAB file on hand in a couple of locations, not have it vanish. But that's me, I know lots of people want to be led along, have everything done for them. And that's why Microsoft's putting the finishing touches on their app store, right? Or so some articles here and elsewhere led me to believe. Sorry again, wasn't really paying attention, as app stores seem to me too much like an editor between me and the kinds of functionality I want. Not a barrier, just a filter, made up according to some mystical formula based on the lowest common denominator.
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Gerard Ivan Samija
Microsoft MVP
forum moderator for PocketPCFAQ.com
Oh that. Sorry Jason, as app stores seem to me too much like an editor between me and the kinds of functionality I want. Not a barrier, just a filter, made up according to some mystical formula based on the lowest common denominator.
Conversely Jason,
You'll have to admit if the homepage a PPC was set by default to freewareppc.com it wouldn't be all that different. Also In that market place weeding out the good from the myriad is much more time consuming.
Gerard's point seems more towards his leanings towards a lean PPC with quality tested apps.
And try hand the touch off to a kid. I'm sure he'll find a way to destabilize it. Son came back with his once which had done a spontaenous hard reset.
I installed gOS (Mac-like overlay for Ubuntu) onto my wife's ancient notebook, so she could continue using the decrepit thing upstairs for browsing and nothing else. The included Tux paint app made my 3 year old very excited, he loves to draw in just about any medium, and so it gets used for that now as well. On his third use, he managed to do something weird to the Main Menu such that it appears as a small blank patch in the corner with two arrows... so one has to scroll down though a long expanse of blank menu before getting to the actual shortcuts. How? I've no idea. Can't fix it either. I've given up trying, as we don't really need the menu, but I'm just pointing out that even something as allegedly fool-proof as gOS can be messed with rather easily in un-skilled hands.
I've known a number of Mac users who have lost serious amounts of irreplaceable data due to hardware failure, and in one case software failure. Every platform demands something of a learning curve. While the iPhone is sold as being dead simple, it is really only a matter of time before many, many users get vocal about their own tragic losses of information due to some glitch or other. These devices cost next to nothing to make - $100 for hardware on the high-end phones is the figure I see most often quoted - so really, what can we expect?
A sane response to fallible software and hardware on devices is to learn a thing or two. Having it handed to you and just accepting that it will work as advertise is a foolish stance. Take the recent Sidekick or whatever data loss. Sure, they seem to have got most of it back... but why were users not even allowed to make local backups of their information? I hope the iPhone offers a backup mechanism, something external to the device. If not, there will be tears.
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Gerard Ivan Samija
Microsoft MVP
forum moderator for PocketPCFAQ.com
I must be missing the point on these advertisments.
These advertisments seem to be aimed at a target market who like browsing facebook instead of listening in meetings and can not live with out their phone close to them.
Hasn't that market already been lost to Apple and the iPhone.
I think that MS is spending good money chasing after the wrong market.
I love my MS phones (HTC Snap - > HTC TyTnII -> Dopod730 -> HTC730 -> HTC620 -> A couple of iMate units -> Nokia 6110i -> Jornada 680 - > Newton).
Why - because they integrate the rest of my life (work and home). Exchange is the key for me with email, contact and diary. A few other great apps (thanks who ever posted the Evernote & Dial2Go they are brilliant).
Microsoft missed the boat on securing the business market with the exchange integration a while ago. No one else had a truely robust end to end solution out of the box. You had to get sync utilities etc. Now that Gap has closed.
I know sooo many senior exec's who are now bragging about their iPhone doing stuff that I have been able to do for years...
I might be stating the obvious here but Microsoft need a kick arse hardware design (perhaps they should buy HTC (rumour??). Without it they will struggle to achieve the full potential of MS Mobile. They will depend on HTC, Samsung etc to give direction to the sales. How many different MS phones have been launched since Apple released the iPhone ? Remember that Apple have seized its share of the phone market effectively with ONE product - iPhone. Again Microsoft had how many different versions released in how many different colours and flavours....
Common MS - Saddle up and catch up and give us a future to be excited about. If you don't I might actually stop and seriously look at an iPhone on its next release....then I might fall in love with it and then look at a MacBook and Mac's for the kids and also replacing all of the PC's in the office....
Laugh you may but I know many places where this had happened.....
Perhaps MS need non techo MVP / Evangalists who have nothing to do with technology side of things and talk in usage terms - Doctors, Teachers, Politicians, Factory workers, small business owners (I fall into this category), Policemen, Artists, Musicans etc.
Show someone what you can do with a MS phone and you don't need to sell it you just need to tell them where to buy one.
I know sooo many senior exec's who are now bragging about their iPhone doing stuff that I have been able to do for years...
Show someone what you can do with a MS phone and you don't need to sell it you just need to tell them where to buy one.
There are a coiuple of insightful statements the marketeers at MS need to have pounded in.
Why didn't anyone know we could do that stuff? Sounds like a marketing failure to me. I have mixed feelings about the PPC/WM/Windows Phone philosophy of selling the OS to OEMs. On one hand you (should) get broader innovation and choice in hardware, on the other you get a very diluted landscape. Seems part of the problem was letting the OEMs do all the marketing too.
Here's an ad scenario. A business man and a youngster meet at a bus stop or something, using their phones, obviously different styles. Kid is obviously listening to tunes, the business guy checking e-mail. They notice each other and go for one-ups-manship, the kid starting to check mail and the business man pulling out headphones. The kid shows Twitter, the business guy Excel. A few such exchanges go on, when one asks what kind of phone is that? It's a Windows Phone...Wow, so is mine. Hmm. Tagline, A phone for you, no matter who you are.
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Sometimes you are the anteater, sometimes you are the ant.
I hope the iPhone offers a backup mechanism, something external to the device. If not, there will be tears.
As far as I can tell just to iTunes. A strategy which is prone to the same vagaries as PPC's and Activesync are.
If the phone hard resets you are back to your last iTunes sync. On the plus side, it restores beautifully.
Also, I wonder what happens when your PC fries, iPods are monogamous. no singing to two PCs.
Well if a person has a grain of sense they'll not use iTunes to buy their music... unless of course they have a means of ripping high quality copies to some other off-device storage place. Otherwise a dual-hardware failure could cost an awful lot. Having experienced a couple of occasions where more than one device decided to die at the same time, this is clearly not an unlikely circumstance. Never trust only two hard drives with all your family photos for instance, as it's very easy for one drive to become corrupted (as recently happened to me when connecting it to a Linux machine, something that NTFS-formatted drive had never done before), then for the other to be the very last, and very vulnerable copy.
But this is off topic I suppose. And hey, one of Windows Mobile's strong points these days is the way user data is relatively safe on the device, not residing in RAM as it did prior to WM5.0. I've lost the odd thing thanks to software glitches and hardware failures since that change, but never on a WM device. A bit of configuration time lost is about the worst of it on this platform, and WM6.5 seems very stable generally. The devices are more solidly built too than in the old days. Very dense construction, where there used to be a lot of open space and room for flex when sat upon or dropped. Not a whole lot to complain about really, especially if one doesn't try to use Activesync, which I haven't in some time. Did about a year ago... funny really, how well it seemed to work for a little while... before it started eating some of my contacts mysteriously, duplicating others at the same time. So I ditched it from my system once and for all. never again to be installed for any reason. It's that bad. Resco Backup, PIMBackup, and once in a while a Phatware dbExplorer backup of PIM stuff, all copied to at least two locations besides my microSD, and I feel confident my most important data is secure. If an iPhone could offer that sort of peace of mind maybe I'd take it a little more seriously.
__________________
Gerard Ivan Samija
Microsoft MVP
forum moderator for PocketPCFAQ.com
Well, back to the ad campaign. Anybody actually seeing these things? I have still only seen one of them, 1 and a half times, (caught the end and saw it all the way through once) in a week or so. In about an hour of TV watching last night, two networks, saw the new Droid ad twice. Wouldn't have had any idea what it was about without having been alerted via Engadget. Probably see that Whoopie and friends T-Mobile/Google add once every hour. So, I guess there are three WinPhone ads out there, but it would be nice if they were actually shown. Guess that would enhance the effectiveness, but as I've said, I'm not a marketing guy.
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Sometimes you are the anteater, sometimes you are the ant.
Personally, I think they're pretty good - they make the connection that the things people care about the most on their computers can also be found on their Windows Phone.
I think you accurately summarized what the ads are conveying, but that's the almost exactly problem I have with them. Does the average consumer care about stuff on their computers? Or that they have "Windows" in their pocket? I also find the "app characters" kinda creepy/cringeworthy, but maybe that's just me.
I understand the branding perspective, but I think Microsoft is relying too much on the Windows brand to drive sales, as opposed to catching the eye (with a flashy device) or showing what the product can do (which is what Apple's iPhone ads do so very well). I'm trying to view this from the perspective of someone who barely knows what a smartphone is (as opposed to a mobile enthusiast), and I can't help but find this confusing from that perspective. Some of the other ad ideas discussed in this thread sound a lot more compelling to me (like, the kid vs. the businessman - that's a great one!).
Well if a person has a grain of sense they'll not use iTunes to buy their music... unless of course they have a means of ripping high quality copies to some other off-device storage place.
Well, people should back up their computers, no? How does that argument differ from buying from Amazon MP3, for instance?
Quote:
But this is off topic I suppose. And hey, one of Windows Mobile's strong points these days is the way user data is relatively safe on the device, not residing in RAM as it did prior to WM5.0.
That's true for nearly every Smartphone on the market today.
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If an iPhone could offer that sort of peace of mind maybe I'd take it a little more seriously.
Well, I've gone through three iPhones (deliberately, as in upgrades), and I'm using the exact same OS image I was using with my first iPhone. I've never, ever had to reinstall, including after OS upgrades. I just plugged in my new iPhone and it restored every last setting, including every app, app data, etc. My iPhone environment has migrated seamlessly every single time. It's uncanny how smooth it has been -- I almost feel like I should be reinstalling it because I'm so accustomed to it from every single other platform I've owned. So, when it comes to data integrity, Windows Mobile is definitely not the only platform with its advantages.
Does the average consumer care about stuff on their computers? Or that they have "Windows" in their pocket? I also find the "app characters" kinda creepy/cringeworthy, but maybe that's just me.
How does that argument differ from buying from Amazon MP3, for instance?
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