[adamz]

Originally Posted by Jon Westfall

Personally I'd love to see Windows Mobile catch up to the ease of use that some other UIs enjoy, and we NEED a better browser. That being said, despite it's short commings, I'm still feeling like I'm most suited for Windows Mobile - and I sometimes wonder why! I guess I'm used to the compromises that we've all made working with Windows Mobile that current devices in other OS'es don't seem to make their users adapt to. Thoughts?

What other OS'es and easy UIs are you referring to and in what way are they easier or do they not make their users adapt?
I find it hard to believe that there is such thing as a UI that doesn't force you to learn something in order to use it. The iPhone has a huge learning curve, why do you think they had all those commercials teaching everyone how to use it? It doesn't have any user interface that's recognizable from anything else we've used (including Mac OS X). The pinch-zooming, browser navigation, scrolling interfaces are not intuitively discoverable at all unless you watched the video training (commercials). And of course, you have to adapt to not being able to copy/paste stuff, not having a file manager, not being able to make phone calls while driving (since you can't feel the buttons or do voice dialing), not having GPS navigation, not being able to search your contact list, etc., etc.

If you're referring to Palm or Symbian, again... there's major learning involved in figuring out how to use those operating systems. At least with Windows Mobile, anyone who understands what the word "Start" means will know where to begin. Anyone who's ever seen a scroll-bar on a computer will know how that functions.

[adamz]

Originally Posted by Jon Westfall

Personally I'd love to see Windows Mobile catch up to the ease of use that some other UIs enjoy, and we NEED a better browser. That being said, despite it's short commings, I'm still feeling like I'm most suited for Windows Mobile - and I sometimes wonder why! I guess I'm used to the compromises that we've all made working with Windows Mobile that current devices in other OS'es don't seem to make their users adapt to. Thoughts?

What other OS'es and easy UIs are you referring to and in what way are they easier or do they not make their users adapt?
I find it hard to believe that there is such thing as a UI that doesn't force you to learn something in order to use it. The iPhone has a huge learning curve, why do you think they had all those commercials teaching everyone how to use it? It doesn't have any user interface that's recognizable from anything else we've used (including Mac OS X). The pinch-zooming, browser navigation, scrolling interfaces are not intuitively discoverable at all unless you watched the video training (commercials). And of course, you have to adapt to not being able to copy/paste stuff, not having a file manager, not being able to make phone calls while driving (since you can't feel the buttons or do voice dialing), not having GPS navigation, not being able to search your contact list, etc., etc.

If you're referring to Palm or Symbian, again... there's major learning involved in figuring out how to use those operating systems. At least with Windows Mobile, anyone who understands what the word "Start" means will know where to begin. Anyone who's ever seen a scroll-bar on a computer will know how that functions.

[ADBrown]

I must note that while Gizmodo is implying that this is official Microsoft information from Derek Snyder, Brighthand has talked to Snyder, who has categorically said that the information that Gizmodo presents is not officially sanctioned or confirmed. They're basically lying when they say that they got this from the developers.

[VulcanTourist]

How about configurable scrollbars on the LEFT side of the display, dear Microsoft? Why do you continue to discriminate against left-handed stylus-holding people, whilst at the same time devoting so much care to adding "accessibility" features for deaf/blind/etc. people? What about the MILLIONS of left-handed people who currently have to reach across the very displays they're trying to view in order to scroll them, hmmm?

[absynth]

yea i must say.. it's nice to hear them say this, but did they just recently restaff the entire wm team? who the #### has been making 2003, WM5 and WM6? did they not already know all these problems. wouldn't most people agree here that most of the issues are not new problems, but simply the same old issues dressed up with a few improvements here and there, and some of those improvements are even steps back?

then it's kinda laughable that they'd say "yea we know what's wrong, but we'll get it right in two versions later? anyway, say what they want, iphone and potentially android are going to overtake the market. end of story. there is no way that they will hold their ground for two more years in this market and expect us to still be using WM. personally i'm looking forward to android. open source.. google's smart design.. iphone is cool, but unless i own a mac, probably in a year or two, i refuse to be using itunes on a pc.

here is one, and this is an AMAZING oversight. windows media player for mobile right? ok.. awesome.. i have an sd card.. now i think it's safe to say that some people here play games right? well games like to use wav files for their sound rather than mp3. etc.. how annoying is it that you can't simply filter out wav files. you used to be able to do this!! so right off the bat, the media player becomes useless because it has to scan the entire device for all music.. can't direct it to one folder even (which would fix the problem pretty effectively.

anyway pocket player is amazing. visualization.. great internet radio and podcast support.. even a directory for all shoutcast stations. anyway.. it's this kind of obvious and frankly unacceptable incompetence that shows that either MS has such a buerocracy that it can't keep anything straight or someone is playing too much golf and not doing their job.

of course i could say the same with a lot of cell phone carriers on the hardware side however, i hold the OS primarily responsible for most of WM phone shortcomings.


Thanks
Caleb

[randyzon]

I got tired of the HTC Wizard and the still somewhat glitchy WM5. Without any new products on the market the U.S. I gave up on Tmo and got a simple flip phone with walkie/talkie from Sprint Nextel. It serves my purpose without being a brick on my waist that is twice as thick as it needs to be with half the screen that it could have. iPhone is innovative but even it was obsolete when it was released. I suppose I'll wait another 6 months or a year for someone to put a phone/pda together that has good sound, a decent speaker phone, has contact/calendar synching functions, and doesn't take 3 minutes to load a webpage...also maybe someone can build a browser that you can actually use to enter passwords and get to secure sites. I don't know....seems like the U.S. market stagnated about a year ago and the providers just decided it wasn't worth upgrading their products to keep up with the rest of the world.

[Russ Smith]

Question for all you iPhone owners out there:
Just exactly what is it that's so much better about the iPhone? (On the one hand I've always thought Apple could sell nose hair trimmers just by painting them white and putting an Apple with a byte missing on it. On the other hand, it's not _all_ hype. OSX is a pretty decent OS, for instance. So, what, in the most concrete terms you can come up with, are the aspects of the iPhone -- OS, UI, etc. -- that WM should try to emulate and/or improve on?)