Ever feel like you were stuck in a toxic and abusive relationship? One where you can see the amazing potential and you are prepared to stick it out because it might, it *should* come right soon. However, your partner just keeps coming back with stuff which says
"Let's see how committed you really are to this relationship - if I really abuse you will you stay? Will you? Huh?"
Microsoft - I'm talking about you. Windows Mobile devices ought to be the best out there. Bar none. The potential is huge, but something, somewhere is so screwed up in the way Microsoft seems to approach the product that I no longer believe that that potential will ever be fulfilled.
I have now spent a year trying and failing to get Exchange ActiveSync to work. I've replaced servers and updated software. I've spent thousands of pounds and I've spent 24 hours at the stretch (really!) on the 'phone to MS tech support and nothing works. The only outcome was MS leaving an open mail relay on my system which took the spammers about a minute to find and my company about 6 months to clear up the mess.
I object to having to hard-reset and re-install all my apps every 6 months or so to keep my 'phone working acceptably.
I object to having to lay out hundreds of pounds every 12 - 18 months to buy new hardware in order to get updated software. I don't have to do that with any other piece of tech I own - *everything* else has regular soft / firmware updates, even Ifi I have to pay for them.
I've had enough. This relationship is over. In August, when my next buying cycle comes around, I will buy a new device, and it will not have Windows on the label.
I have said this once before, so I apologise if I'm sounding like a scratched record (remember those?), I do still have the same 'phone as then and the opportunity to replace it hasn't come around yet. Soon though. I kept hoping the MS would wake up step up to the plate. I've stopped hoping.
Jason - serious question - How does it feel to be an MVP when MS does not actually appear to really value your opinion (or that of the other MVPs) at all? You're much more tied into this relationship than I am, and it would appear from recent posts that you're none too happy. Does the relationship have any future for you?
My frustrations with Windows Mobile have reached a boiling point, and I'm not seeing anything about WM 6.5 that makes me want to reverse my resolution that the Samsung Epix will be my last Windows Mobile device.
In the meantime, I have the iPhone 3.0 beta firmware running on my 1st generation iPod Touch, and I can say it's really making me want an iPhone. I think Windows Mobile was a good idea in it's time, but Microsoft is still stuck in an old development and distribution model and it's just not keeping up. I've had 8 Windows Mobile devices in the last 6 years, and there has been way too little change from version to version to justify the money and time I've spent on these things.
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Current devices: iPhone 3G. Previous devices: Samsung Epix and 1st gen 32GB iPod Touch BlackJack II, iPaq 6945, iPaq hx4705, Dell Axim x30 high, iPaq 3765.
I wish there was a way for us as a userbase to stage an organised boycott of all things WM for 1 year to send the message to MS, no device purchases and no news coverage whatsoevere. It seems only drastic measures will make them listen to us, the consumer who actually pays for the devices they seem so cavalier about.
How about it Jason, switch PPC & Smartphone Thoughts to something else for a year?
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Back to being The Last Windows Mobile Fanboy - now with a Dell Venue Pro!
Steering away from the M$ bashing campaign and back to the topic at hand...
I don't really see this as much of an issue.
The MS app store is supposed to make it easy for not so knowledgeable users to find and download programs onto their windows mobile device.
The exact users that this market place is targeted at are not going to have any clue (ie. will NEVER install it). If they don't know enough how to find and install a program they sure are not going to know enough to install a market place program.
The only people this will make mad is you guys. But you already know how to find and install programs on your device... So how is this market place really going to help you? Sure it might save you a few steps from time to time.. But I certainly will not use it. I will continue to buy programs directly from the developer if at all possible.
I can see the reasoning why they might not release market place for existing devices. Market place is designed to fix a problem for a target user base. This problem that market place addresses is the same problem that will prevent these users from ever getting the market place program... Chicken or egg?
And by that logic, Apple's 'genius' in marketing is to release the chicken and the egg in the same pretty package, and so it would seem that Microsoft is emulating that model in hope of cashing in on Apple's strategy. Unfortunately, at least in the opinion of some, they have failed to grasp that existing users of the platform (just as with iPhone 1.0 users or whatever the heck the thing was called) will not be happy at being excluded. It may seem a small thing to a power user, but the vast majority of WM device users are anything but. Give them a widely publicized 'WMStore app' (yeah, right, that'll be the day when Microsoft bothers promoting WM effectively!) to help them then get anything else they might want, something which places user-tailored suggestions at their fingertips, that might just mean something to the millions of users who really don't have much of a clue... like iPhone users.
There, a token Apple bashing thrown in for balance. But really, they've brought that image onto themselves, by unabashedly promoting their OS versions as being designed for idiots, if one is being honest about it. Funny thing about that (and rather off-topic admittedly) is that the one-button mouse tends to confound users like me. I've tried over the years, once in a blue moon anyway, to make something or other happen on a Mac. I can't. That single button mouse, it just won't do anything much for me. If I want to bring up a context menu for a link in a browser for example - how's that supposed to happen? No right button, and if I click-and-hold the way I would on a Pocket PC, nothing happens. I just don't get it. Must not be enough of a beginner or something.....
I definitely don't mean it if I come across as bashing. I've been involved here at Pocket PC Thoughts since 2004. I've spent a lot of money and time on devices.
I'm honestly not sure what to make of a "Windows Mobile App Store". I've said in other threads on Thoughts Media that the impression I get is Microsoft sees Apple making lots of money from an App store and sees an opportunity. I'm not very confident that they'll work as hard as Apple on the user experience, which is definitely not Microsoft's strength.
I don't really expect this to be a benefit to anybody but Microsoft. It looks like a raw deal for developers, and it doesn't look much better for the users.
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Current devices: iPhone 3G. Previous devices: Samsung Epix and 1st gen 32GB iPod Touch BlackJack II, iPaq 6945, iPaq hx4705, Dell Axim x30 high, iPaq 3765.
AFunny thing about that (and rather off-topic admittedly) is that the one-button mouse tends to confound users like me. I've tried over the years, once in a blue moon anyway, to make something or other happen on a Mac. I can't. That single button mouse, it just won't do anything much for me. If I want to bring up a context menu for a link in a browser for example - how's that supposed to happen? No right button, and if I click-and-hold the way I would on a Pocket PC, nothing happens. I just don't get it. Must not be enough of a beginner or something.....
Sorry to continue the O/T, but you can use a multiple-button mouse on a Mac; it works just as you think it might when you right button/secondary click. (And, if you are stuck with that one-button monstrosity, just hold the "ctrl" key when you click for a right-click. Or, on an Intel notebook, you can set it so that holding two fingers on the trackpad while you click will be a secondary click as well.)
As for this decision, I don't know too much about 6.5 but is it possible that they are changing the application install procedure so that it supports in-place upgrading, requiring a different sort of mechanism than the CAB files that they are using now with pre-6.5? (Because it seems that every time I get an app update now on 6.0, it must remove the old version before it can install the new.)
Thanks for the tips... gee, I thought Apple was supposed to be simple. Seems one has to get instructions on how to make the mouse work. With Windows and any $1 bin basic mouse, just right-click and the screen shows you something, from which you learn about context menus. If one were to poke around on a Mac for a while (as I have, a few times in the past 10 years, for a few rather uneventful moments at a time), it seems possible that one *might* stumble across Command>Click or other variants... but really, why make it so difficult? And I didn't know that a 'normal' mouse could be used with a Mac. That's interesting. And yet, anyone I know with a Mac seems content with their one-button mouse.
Hasn't XIP been there for a few OS versions already? Since PPC2003 I think, perhaps earlier. It's not used a lot perhaps, mostly for OS upgrades. And then there's the old CEF (common executable format) which was basically an embellished CAB file, containing some extra elements which allowed for installing to different chip architectures such as MIPS and SH3 and ARM, all from the same CAB-like file. Only a small handful of developers (Phatware was one I think) ever released software in that wrapper though, and it's been dropped altogether now.
Thanks for the tips... gee, I thought Apple was supposed to be simple. Seems one has to get instructions on how to make the mouse work. With Windows and any $1 bin basic mouse, just right-click and the screen shows you something, from which you learn about context menus.
And it's the same for a Mac. Just right-click, and you get context menus.
And, actually, the only mouse(s) that Apple now sells (the ironically named Mighty Mouse, in wired and Bluetooth variants) are technically single button, but can sense a left-click, right-click or even a center click as three distinct events.
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