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Chris Jacob
If Android's current growth is any indication, by late next year, Microsoft won't have a leg to stand on to wait that long. Android's app pool will be far larger, newer better handsets will be sporting newer, improved versions and their install base will be well-planted in droidsville. Windows Mobile will lose relevance a wee bit more, and Microsoft's hopes to regain foothold may no longer be determined by how good the OS is.
I think it bears repeating that the Zune HD is a prime example of what being late and lazy does to good products.
@Kaiser-Machead: What better way to cut ties with a widely panned mobile OS than by announcing it's long, slow death. I think this is the plan to attempt a "fresh" start for the birth of the "Windows Phone" by sending WM7 on a separate trajectory.
But, you're right... They can't drag things out it only makes the hole they've dug for themselves deeper.
MS has as much time as they want. They have the money, they have the resources, and if they come out with the super-dopeness in windows mobile 7, all the fickle-ass techno geeks will buy it. Don't front. Im not saying they will, but lets be real. If its hot, its hot. In this chase hot means a good UI, solid performance and good looks. Your move MS....
@ibelli: Having money and resources does not necessarily guarantee you a great deal of time to delay new product releases. The time they take to dawdle means plenty of time for their competitors to sell handsets and dole out subsequent improvements, and ultimately cultivate a larger install base of people who are not just going to up and abandon their expensive hardware and service plans in droves. If Microsoft takes too long, a great deal of those fickle-ass techno geeks would have already moved on to some other handset.
@Kaiser-Machead: And what makes you think that when the "next big thing" comes around, that they wont jump ship to that? They always do, my friend. They always do... That's all I'm saying.
MS has officially tapped out.They had plenty of time to put something together. What's it been, almost two years since they announced that they were working on WM7. You can stick a fork in their mobile hopes... if they had any.
The only other thing I can think of is that they're pushing back "WM7" but the "Windows Phone" will be their (much earlier to be released) platform.
I'm not one to usually say this, but, seriously, MS, just give up already. Android is tanning your ass and geeks love it, BB OS is still loved and does great in the business world, OS X mobile is sweeping up amongst hipsters, fanboys, and, increasingly, business people. Short of creating a revolutionary phone OS that literally integrates every facet of your life or one similar to the Zune HD, there is no way that you'll retake that market share you've been pissing away. Focus on the other products that are done so well, like the 360 software, the Zune HD, the Courier concept, and W7.
Dr. Evil Genius is eagerly anticipating the Year of the Black Rainbow was starred
Dr. Evil Genius is eagerly anticipating the Year of the Black Rainbow was unstarred
@ninja in pajamas: I have tried with Opera Mobile 9.5 but the browser automatically goes to the mobile version of the site. When I went to the "Full Site", it never shows the 'login' link at all.
This has been my experience using Opera Mobile. Is there a difference between Opera Mobile and Mini?
Dr. Evil Genius is eagerly anticipating the Year of the Black Rainbow was starred
Dr. Evil Genius is eagerly anticipating the Year of the Black Rainbow was unstarred
@Davy Grolton: Not to be a detail-nazi but I believe that this download is compatible with WinMo 5.0 and higher for all those very, very late adopters.
Dr. Evil Genius is eagerly anticipating the Year of the Black Rainbow was starred
Dr. Evil Genius is eagerly anticipating the Year of the Black Rainbow was unstarred
WebOS, iPhone OS, and Android are all *NIX with HTML and Javascript on top. Except for Windows Mobile, most of the smartphone market has some form of *NIX / Java blend.
VMware would really shake things up if it blurred the barriers of hardware. I don't think the carriers will go for it, though. Handset vendors won't care as much, except Apple, whose whole game is "the total user experience" anyway.
@Jack_Burton: While webOS and Android run on top of the Linux kernel and iPhone OS is Darwin (way waaay down), this doesn't mean they're compatible. As far as I'm aware, none of them are Posix compliant, they all run completely different toolchains and userlands, and apps are written in JavaScript on webOS, Java on Android and Objective-C on iPhone.
@QuarterToTomorrow: I never said they were compatible, just that they had similar components in their underlying architecture. Have you ever used VMWare? It's a hardware abstraction layer that goes between the device and the host OS.
My point is that VMWare would have less work to do as far as supporting basic I/O since it would be piping in a manner similar in all 3 OSes. They are more similar than dissimilar.
As long as the devices are dependent on carrier distribution it's not going to happen. As it is right now if you want WinMo and Android, you buy two phones, they subsidize one (which locks you into a contract) and then sell you the second for additional profit.
There are so many things f**ked the hell up with the wireless industry the ability to load your own OS barely even registers on the radar. How about we start by getting the carriers to discount service for those of us whose devices they aren't subsidizing. Once that happens buying unlocked becomes a much better value proposition, then with the carriers, and their desire for artificial market segmentation, out of the way a multi-boot smartphone might be possible.
People from the FCC / congress, if you're reading this, make it happen.
I think the Corporate Gods learned their lesson from computers and there is no way in hell they are going to give you "freedom" with their mobile phones
@sp00nix: Exactly. Then in time, we'd probably be paying penalties for backward hardware compatibility with things like battery life and extra CPU cycles because the generic way of doing something is more universal than the optimized platform-specific method.
Even if the only parts installed on the phone were modules to enable the OS with that phone (more likely) I would rather have a proprietary phone too dumb to catch a crossplatform virus that puts my notes and contacts at risk of deletion, exposure, or exploitation. From a security standpoint it's already unfortunate enough that people with smartphones put my info on their contact lists... security really seems to have been the very last consideration in the maturation of smartphones as a common device.
@fuchikoma:
Then we should be demanding more of our Smartphone OS developers.
At the heart of the issue, I agree with your cynicism in regards to past experiences with PC OSes. However, just as we continue to demand more of Microsoft and Apple, so too should we demand more from the folks at Google, Palm, Symbian, RIM, etc...
@fuchikoma: But the HD2 vs. the Droid vs. any ARM vs. any Snapdragon phone - their specs are not wildly different, and we've seen that Android can run on a Snapdragon and WinMo can run on an ARM and vice versa. Why does killer hardware have to be stuck with a broken OS? I'm not a programmer - what is really stopping a smartphone from running a different OS? Aside from money, of course.
@e.parker.pierce: Apart from licensing concerns and platform openness, I think the technical hurdles are in the fact that the OS must me compiled/made for the CPU on the device. Even in cases where it can be tricked into running on a similar platform, you would face challenges like running OSX on unlicensed notebooks - it may work, but be terribly slow, or lack audio, or lack network card drivers, and so on.
Money is also a big factor - you said aside from money, but imagine the resources it would take for a developer to port an OS to every handset that had the specs to run it. Presumably the handset makers would do this, but then you'd end up with a single non-proprietary OS that runs on that phone, because it's not worth their resource expenditure to prepare all the other OSes.
They could just make a standard smartphone platform spec list and start making smartphone OSes generic from that point on to run on anything that meets the specs, but that may also keep the makers from moving to a newer CPU architecture, or make new-ish versions, but still support all of the old legacy instructions as it has for PCs in the last 30 years. A new feature like biometric authentication may become the norm, but not be supported in some OSes for a while, leading them to pick a different one, or hack support into it unofficially, possibly with consequences like crashing or incomplete support.
I think overall there are a lot of reasons for and against crossplatform phone OSes, and a lot of factors that would make it doable, or hard to do. Personally though, what I've found is that the OSes we have, single or multiplatform, aren't mature enough to branch out to a far far harder to support model just yet. If you think it's bad having phones "stuck with a broken OS" now, just imagine if the same people who made that OS had to make it for hundreds of phones they would never even see in person. I'd imagine it will at least become an option in time, and it's becoming far more likely with platforms like Android, but I think it will be a while before you can put any phone OS on any phone, if ever.
Finally, hopefully this last reason will fade into obsolescence, but the carriers hate to give the customer any sort of control over their phones. It might allow you to use the phone on another carrier, so despite buying it, they will still lock it down so it cannot be modified or reconfigured. The way around this is to buy a unique phone that DOES allow customization and OS tweaking, for its full, unsubsidized cost. The OpenMoko FreeRunner tried this with a Linux-based phone, but it's not a popular option, or even easy to find... but in theory you can keep running the Linux based OS and write any apps you want for it, or mod the OS as you see fit. Theoretically you could write another OS for it right now, but I'm not aware of anyone who has.
Honestly I just don't know why no one has hacked the Android OS to run on the iPhone. Would seem like a no-brainer, right? Android is open-source, geek-oriented, and the iPhone is ubiquitous enough to merit serious 3rd party free-unlocking and pirate app support (and by pirate here I don't mean piracy, I mean not sanctioned by Apple).
@blash:
The iPhone's hardware precludes the loading of other OSes. One of the core means of doing this is via booting from a microSD card which the iPhone famously lacks.
@microlithx: Yeah but hackers have been able to access everything from root to the baseband. If they can do all that, why can't they boot something that lets them write new firmware to allow them to boot a new OS off the included storage? Is there some part of the iPhone that still hasn't been torn apart in software in some way?
12/11/09
12/11/09
I think it bears repeating that the Zune HD is a prime example of what being late and lazy does to good products.
12/11/09
But, you're right... They can't drag things out it only makes the hole they've dug for themselves deeper.
12/11/09
12/11/09
12/12/09
12/11/09
The only other thing I can think of is that they're pushing back "WM7" but the "Windows Phone" will be their (much earlier to be released) platform.
12/11/09
12/11/09
12/11/09
12/11/09
12/09/09
12/09/09
I am using Skyfire 1.5 on my Sprint Touch Pro 2 while posting this comment.
It took a little working around just to sign in to Giz but I was able to get on and stay on.
IE Mobile and Opera Mobile do not work with Giz/Gawk like this edition of Skyfire.
For now, I say 'thumbs up'.
12/09/09
12/09/09
This has been my experience using Opera Mobile. Is there a difference between Opera Mobile and Mini?
12/09/09
12/09/09
12/09/09
I had the beta on my moto Q back in the day, and it was wonderful.
12/09/09
12/09/09
12/09/09
It's a terrific little browser. Definately worth it if you're running WM or S60.
12/07/09
VMware would really shake things up if it blurred the barriers of hardware. I don't think the carriers will go for it, though. Handset vendors won't care as much, except Apple, whose whole game is "the total user experience" anyway.
12/08/09
(nb Java != JavaScript)
12/08/09
My point is that VMWare would have less work to do as far as supporting basic I/O since it would be piping in a manner similar in all 3 OSes. They are more similar than dissimilar.
12/07/09
There are so many things f**ked the hell up with the wireless industry the ability to load your own OS barely even registers on the radar. How about we start by getting the carriers to discount service for those of us whose devices they aren't subsidizing. Once that happens buying unlocked becomes a much better value proposition, then with the carriers, and their desire for artificial market segmentation, out of the way a multi-boot smartphone might be possible.
People from the FCC / congress, if you're reading this, make it happen.
12/07/09
12/07/09
12/07/09
Even if the only parts installed on the phone were modules to enable the OS with that phone (more likely) I would rather have a proprietary phone too dumb to catch a crossplatform virus that puts my notes and contacts at risk of deletion, exposure, or exploitation. From a security standpoint it's already unfortunate enough that people with smartphones put my info on their contact lists... security really seems to have been the very last consideration in the maturation of smartphones as a common device.
12/07/09
Then we should be demanding more of our Smartphone OS developers.
At the heart of the issue, I agree with your cynicism in regards to past experiences with PC OSes. However, just as we continue to demand more of Microsoft and Apple, so too should we demand more from the folks at Google, Palm, Symbian, RIM, etc...
12/07/09
12/07/09
Money is also a big factor - you said aside from money, but imagine the resources it would take for a developer to port an OS to every handset that had the specs to run it. Presumably the handset makers would do this, but then you'd end up with a single non-proprietary OS that runs on that phone, because it's not worth their resource expenditure to prepare all the other OSes.
They could just make a standard smartphone platform spec list and start making smartphone OSes generic from that point on to run on anything that meets the specs, but that may also keep the makers from moving to a newer CPU architecture, or make new-ish versions, but still support all of the old legacy instructions as it has for PCs in the last 30 years. A new feature like biometric authentication may become the norm, but not be supported in some OSes for a while, leading them to pick a different one, or hack support into it unofficially, possibly with consequences like crashing or incomplete support.
I think overall there are a lot of reasons for and against crossplatform phone OSes, and a lot of factors that would make it doable, or hard to do. Personally though, what I've found is that the OSes we have, single or multiplatform, aren't mature enough to branch out to a far far harder to support model just yet. If you think it's bad having phones "stuck with a broken OS" now, just imagine if the same people who made that OS had to make it for hundreds of phones they would never even see in person. I'd imagine it will at least become an option in time, and it's becoming far more likely with platforms like Android, but I think it will be a while before you can put any phone OS on any phone, if ever.
Finally, hopefully this last reason will fade into obsolescence, but the carriers hate to give the customer any sort of control over their phones. It might allow you to use the phone on another carrier, so despite buying it, they will still lock it down so it cannot be modified or reconfigured. The way around this is to buy a unique phone that DOES allow customization and OS tweaking, for its full, unsubsidized cost. The OpenMoko FreeRunner tried this with a Linux-based phone, but it's not a popular option, or even easy to find... but in theory you can keep running the Linux based OS and write any apps you want for it, or mod the OS as you see fit. Theoretically you could write another OS for it right now, but I'm not aware of anyone who has.
12/07/09
12/07/09
12/07/09
12/07/09
The iPhone's hardware precludes the loading of other OSes. One of the core means of doing this is via booting from a microSD card which the iPhone famously lacks.
12/07/09