Microsoft Unveils Windows Phone 7 Handsets

[PeterQVenkman]

Some people rely on their home screen to get the weather! If you can't ask them to get up and open a window, why make them go through a swipe and a touch to get the weather? THIS IS CRUCIAL INFORMATION.

Why wouldn't you like to put whatever you want on your home screen? There are so many uses for it. Beyond weather or what you would use - the implications for people in IT or the medical field are amazing especially with iOS 4 apps that can run in the background. And that's just off the top of my head. If Apple puts some energy into it they can take it to the next level.

My best friend works in a hospital and would love to have his phone display certain time sensitive data during the workday.

Yes choice is nice.

But how would you know that if you don't have it?

But pandering to every whim and desire of the consumer is crippling.

As opposed to the consumer pandering to every whim and desire of one CEO?

So choose a different phone and don't try to cripple ours.

If you don't want any customization, then you are in luck! I have an old rotary phone I can sell you. $400 with a two year contract.

 

[sinsin07]

In 2010 you need to do what Apple didi in 2007: change the game.

This aint it, obviously. But then again, this is Microsoft we're talking about, so no surprises here.

You don't need to change the game. You need to make a profit. If they can make a profit, which has yet to be determined, than that is what matters to shareholders. Only fearful Apple fans are concerned with game changing. It does not need to beat Apple.

 

[chrmjenkins]

I don't disagree with a whole lot. What I am saying is that MS has never been a leader, but a follower.....does not have to be a copier. Every smart phone industry woke up after the release of iPhone.

You're just not looking hard enough. The pretty much pioneered online console gaming and are pioneering full body motion based human PC interaction with Kinect.

 

[dejo]

Then don't clutter it. On the other hand, I'd like weather to go along with date and time.

Isn't choice grand ?

Yeah, if only it could show me the local time (w/ time zone) and day of the week, as well as the time in two other time zones, the local temperature (with an indication of where that reading is being made; not always the same as your exact current location), as well as the forecasted highs and lows for today and tomorrow, and the current temperature in two other cities I need to keep track off, and the phase of the moon and when the date when it will be full next, and the number of unread emails, tweets, Facebook posts, text messages i have, and the next thing in my calendar, and the names of any contacts with a birthday today, and all the highest priority items from my to-do list, and the most recent number that called but went to voicemail, and the scores for all of my favorite sports teams, and how many unread xkcd comics I still have, and bits of info for any eBay auctions I'm involved in that are ending soon, and ...

Still think choice is grand?

 

[Avalontor]

How many tablet devices did Microsoft announce today?

haha, now thats funny. i could have said iPhone just as easy

 

[Dooger]

The competition usually SUCKS. Is Microsoft any better this time? Run by the same fools that were there four years ago. Anything change? Nope. So why do we have to take a balanced view of these clowns in Redmond?

For chrissakes it took them at least SEVEN YEARS to get their core business right! These dumbasses didn't even *see* Apple coming in 2007, never even imagined it.And they're still trying to shoehorn a full OS onto absolutely nasty hardware and pass that junk off as an "iPad-Killer." They try a new one every month. Instead of taking risks and starting from scratch, this old and tired dinosaur of the tech world hangs on to old and dying paradigms like their life depended on it: oh yeah, that's right. It does. Windows + Office. ZZzzz . . .

Screw em. I'm not obligated to say pleasant or "fair" things about them for the sake of balance or whatever. I believe they're a sinking ship run by fools and these days you don't even need to try their crap out before you know it won't hold a candle to the stuff Apple comes up with.

Am I supposed to *not* slam a company run by Ballmer? LOL

My day is spent using a MBP, iMac and iPhone, and I'll happily tell anyone who asks me to go Apple, but I'm really beginning to hate myself for being in the same crowd as *LTD*.

 

[burgundyyears]

haha, now thats funny. i could have said iPhone just as easy

Well MS had six months to respond then. Looks like they spent them wisely. Or maybe Steve Ballmer pissed away six months trash talking it. That may have happened too.

 

[maflynn]

The competition usually SUCKS. Is Microsoft any better this time? Run by the same fools that were there four years ago. Anything change? Nope. So why do we have to take a balanced view of these clowns in Redmond?

Are you talking about the same clowns who have 90% of the desktop OS market locked up, or are the ubiquitous standard for office apps.

Just because you may like apple doesn't mean everyone else is a joke. Win7 is a great OS.

The jury is out on whether these phones will be a winner or not. To be honest, I'm hating the UI, at least of what I've seen.

 

[southernpaws]

Yeah, on day two we got the push the button to hear a laugh track....
If you can't admit there were initially a slew of useless apps approved I am not even going to try.

Seriously?

Focusing on the crappy apps that were out there will not by any means succeed at undermining what the app store accomplished in a very short time. You can't rewrite history. But nice try.

Even if it did take a long time for the app store to churn out quality apps--which it didn't-- the fact is the app store came out when there was little competition in the realm of third party apps. Sure bb had apps and so did some nokia phones. But the average consumer didn't often consider apps when buying a phone until apple. So even if apple started off with the same number of apps that MS starts with now, apple didn't have anyone to compete with at the time so they were at the top of the app world. By starting off with an underwhelming selection of apps, Microsoft is entering an already thriving market at the bottom of the barrel with a mediocre selection. They will have to expand, and quickly, if they are going to stay in the game simply because the game is moving faster now than when apple started the game. They've raised the consumers expectations to the point where apps play a major role in buying decisions.

Get over the fart apps. Like it or not, they were a part of changing the entire mobile phone landscape.

 

[chrmjenkins]

Yeah, if only it could show me the local time (w/ time zone) and day of the week, as well as the time in two other time zones, the local temperature (with an indication of where that reading is being made; not always the same as your exact current location), as well as the forecasted highs and lows for today and tomorrow, and the current temperature in two other cities I need to keep track off, and the phase of the moon and when the date when it will be full next, and the number of unread emails, tweets, Facebook posts, text messages i have, and the next thing in my calendar, and the names of any contacts with a birthday today, and all the highest priority items from my to-do list, and the most recent number that called but went to voicemail, and the scores for all of my favorite sports teams, and how many unread xkcd comics I still have, and bits of info for any eBay auctions I'm involved in that are ending soon, and ...

Still think choice is grand?

Yeah, let's take any concept to an extreme, therefore demonstrating that it's useless. How could we be wrong?

 

[sinsin07]

You keep showing you have no clue what Microsoft does. A sinking ship? Far from it. As long as Exchange, Sharepoint, Clustering, Serving, SCCM, etc. are around Microsoft will always be a major player.

I think you spoke above his level. He probably has no clue as to SCCM. (Don't you see, the bathtub is kinda tight.)

 

[burgundyyears]

Yeah, if only it could show me the local time (w/ time zone) and day of the week, as well as the time in two other time zones, the local temperature (with an indication of where that reading is being made; not always the same as your exact current location), as well as the forecasted highs and lows for today and tomorrow, and the current temperature in two other cities I need to keep track off, and the phase of the moon and when the date when it will be full next, and the number of unread emails, tweets, Facebook posts, text messages i have, and the next thing in my calendar, and the names of any contacts with a birthday today, and all the highest priority items from my to-do list, and the most recent number that called but went to voicemail, and the scores for all of my favorite sports teams, and how many unread xkcd comics I still have, and bits of info for any eBay auctions I'm involved in that are ending soon, and ...

Still think choice is grand?

Hey, where is my porn widget for my lockscreen?!

 

[inhrntlyunstabl]

Wonderfully Delightful

Another year and Ballmer will be wearing jeans and black turtleneck.

Too bad he had to continually reference the teleprompter on the floor.

But overall, "wonderfully delightful". Wonder how much practice his handlers had to endure before they just went the route of saying, "Steve, just keep saying it is 'wonderfully' <insert adjective of your choice Steve> and 'delightful'!"

Ballmer and Palin in 2012!

 

[reticulate]

Given this is Macrumors I sort of expected the response I've read in the comments so far.

Aa to WP7, I'm really liking the Metro UI. It worked well on the Zune and the extensions here seem very well integrated. It's all very slick and intuitive.

Further, I'm glad Microsoft followed a quasi-Apple route of strictly defining base hardware specs and locking out carrier modifications to prevent the kind of fragmentation we've seen with Android.

Hell, even Gruber really likes what he's seen, and that man takes a lot of convincing about anything not Apple.

Now to see what Palm/HP put up. WebOS has so much potential and it would be shame to see it wasted on another underpowered handset.

 

[Sabenth]

well its another series of phones like android to me just with windows apple has the ios phones google has android and ms has win 7 now so lets see what people want in or on there phones

 

[inlovewithi]

IMy day is spent using a MBP, iMac and iPhone, and I'll happily tell anyone who asks me to go Apple, but I'm really beginning to hate myself for being in the same crowd as *LTD*

I can relate. I started coming here because I wanted to try out a mac, bought one, but after a year it got to the point where I would be embarrassed to be seen with one because I was afraid of the idea that someone might think I'm like that fanboy.

 

[azurebat]

I can relate. I started coming here because I wanted to try out a mac, bought one, but after a year it got to the point where I would be embarrassed to be seen with one because I was afraid of the idea that someone might think I'm like that fanboy.

Same situation here a few years back.

I think you spoke above his level. He probably has no clue as to SCCM. (Don't you see, the bathtub is kinda tight.)

 

[southernpaws]

So, was the iPhone available for purchase the day news of it broke?

Again. It does not matter if the iPhone was available on day one. The mobile landscape was completely different. If Microsoft is going to succeed, they need to get these phones into peoples hands and fast. Because in the current landscape of the mobile phone world, they won't be able to generate any of the hype that the iPhone was capable of when it was announced.

Your comparisons are completely invalid.

 

[definitive]

cue the "and not a single ******* was given that day" jpeg.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Yeah, if only it could show me the local time (w/ time zone) and day of the week, as well as the time in two other time zones, the local temperature (with an indication of where that reading is being made; not always the same as your exact current location), as well as the forecasted highs and lows for today and tomorrow, and the current temperature in two other cities I need to keep track off, and the phase of the moon and when the date when it will be full next, and the number of unread emails, tweets, Facebook posts, text messages i have, and the next thing in my calendar, and the names of any contacts with a birthday today, and all the highest priority items from my to-do list, and the most recent number that called but went to voicemail, and the scores for all of my favorite sports teams, and how many unread xkcd comics I still have, and bits of info for any eBay auctions I'm involved in that are ending soon, and ...

Still think choice is grand?

I think the concept of a straw man argument is grand.

 

[bug67]

Once again, Microsoft enters the game with too little too late. They bring no innovation to a market already saturated with phone os's that do everything better. My prediction is this will fail miserably...as has the rest of Microsoft's ventures into the mobile os market.

 

[CFreymarc]

I try not to be cynical but this one deserves both the old men from the balcony commenting.

About the only think missing in this launch was Nero playing his Violin while Rome burned. MSFT is so far behind the curve here and this offering is almost laughable. After Windows Vista tanking, the mobile division was nearly abandoned getting everyone that could code well into fixing the kernal to get Windows 7 done. While they did do a good job fixing Windows, this is the price they paid for it.

As far as the interface goes, this "glance and go" interface looks like something out of an MIT Media Lab graduate project and not a professional shipping product. Bet dollars to donuts there are a few Media Lab types plucked right out of Cambridge to get this going. Also, no native third party apps! This is going to hurt them more than they think It didn't work out for webOS, it will not work out here. Some live and learn, some live and then ask for more money from their parents.

One big non-event that says more than anything else is HP no making any announcement toward this. HP bought Palm to get Windows Mobile out of the HP product offerings. Balmer saw red. Was there a connection to the HP CEO that engineered the Palm buy was out so quickly? Who knows. However, Palm Alto is quite today.

 

[inhrntlyunstabl]

Hairclub for Fanboys

I can relate. I started coming here because I wanted to try out a mac, bought one, but after a year it got to the point where I would be embarrassed to be seen with one because I was afraid of the idea that someone might think I'm like that fanboy.

We're not just fanboys, but we're also stockholders. So we can act like this.

 

[dejo]

Yeah, let's take any concept to an extreme, therefore demonstrating that it's useless. How could we be wrong?

The same way that saying "choice is grand" and claiming choice is always a good thing. And I'm not saying no-choice is grand. Just that too much choice can often be bad. We should avoid blanket statements like "choice is good".

 

[southernpaws]

by your defintiion of meaningful..
palm and winmo had appstores available

Meaningful being the average (and majority of) consumer(s) actually considered apps when making purchasing decisions.

This did not exist before the iPhone. Millions of app sales did not exist before the app store. Sure apps were there. But they were not nearly as successful as apples iteration.

Case in point. Microsoft had an app world before apple. Now Microsoft announces an app store and they're met with disappointment. If they actually had something comparable back then, they wouldn't be in the position they're in now.

Apple came into the app world with pretty much a blank slate. Microsoft is not.