Are Microsoft's Army of Developers a Secret Weapon for Windows Phone 7?

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/does-microsoft-have-a-secret-weapon-for-windows-phone-7/2279' target='_blank'>http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/does...ws-phone-7/2279</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Microsoft got a lot of attention yesterday for its Oprah-style announcement that every employee would get a Windows Phone 7 after the new mobile platform launches this fall. As it turns out, they're not just expensive toys. They're part of an effort to create some unexpected hits and seed the market using the energy from Microsoft's enormous pool of internal developers."</em></p><p>Ed Bott raises an interesting point with a bit of history - for years, the internally-developed but not-officially-supported Powertoys released by Microsoft employees were coded in their spare time. They offered fixes and workarounds to limitations in the platform. In the Palm-sized PC days (anyone remember those?) we saw a lot of Powertoys, and in the Pocket PC era we saw some more - but slowly we saw less and less of them...and I can't even recall the last one I saw for Windows Mobile. Maybe getting a free Windows Phone 7 phone will spark some of that passion to develop great apps and we'll see some amazing things from Microsoft's very talented developer pool.</p>

[mmidgley]

I hope they develop something more interesting than powertoys. When I think of powertoys I just think, "well, those are features that should have been in the Microsoft native UI, even if only in an 'advanced' section."

m.

[Jason Dunn]

I hope they develop something more interesting than powertoys.

I think that's a given because, for better or worse, being restricted to Silverlight or XNA apps means that the guts-level Powertoy-type apps can't work.

[caywen]

When I worked for Microsoft, what struck me is how dedicated most people I worked with were. My friend, who ran QA, always wanted to collaborate with me on a DirectX game in our spare time. Others loved to tinker and learn technologies from other teams.

If Microsoft can foster an environment where management encourages and rewards individual innovation on WP7, I believe this could seed the first thousand apps. Considering the amount of knowledge many must have on the XNA and Xbox teams, I would expect to see some really first class games come out of this.

But the real weapon here is QUICK developer feedback. Yeah yeah, MS already knows we're all pissed about Copy&Paste, but what they really want to know is what to add in the WP7.1 SDK. The earlier they can triage features, the faster we'll see an amazing follow up release.

[Jason Dunn]

But the real weapon here is QUICK developer feedback. Yeah yeah, MS already knows we're all pissed about Copy&Paste, but what they really want to know is what to add in the WP7.1 SDK. The earlier they can triage features, the faster we'll see an amazing follow up release.

Indeed. I think though that given the number of SDK/dev tool downloads, and the hardcore developer recruitment they're doing, I would hope they're getting a lot of feedback...