I think this attitude has been the downfall of a lot of developers over the years. You fall in love with the development environment and then you transfer that love to the platform itself. The problem is sometimes great platforms aren't paired with great products.
Microsoft is at least two generations behind Google and Apple at this point. Some would argue three generations. I'm a .net developer who loves C# too so I'm sympathetic. But putting a lot of resources into Windows phone 7 at this point is just folly
But putting a lot of resources into Windows phone 7 at this point is just folly
It feels like MS isn't putting enough skin in the game. They shipped the OS in September. Great. That gets you a toe in the door. They should have rev'ed that OS at least as many times as Apple has theirs. Apple has shipped 5 updates to iOS since September. MS -- one (the update to prepare for future updates, so really not even a real update). That's embarrassing that the market leader, with 300k apps in the appstore and 100M devices on the market is more agile. And as a developer, you have to ask yourself, "Is this a platform I want to get in bed with?" At this point, I wouldn't.
And to complete this, even if you compare W7P with the early iPhone OS (arguing that both are version ones, not that they're both living in 2011), the first 6 months Apple shipped 1 major updates, 3 bugfix updates and 1 compatibility update (for the 1st gen iPod Touch).
And a second major update in month 7.
2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 were all followed by 2 major and 2 bugfix updates in the first 6 months.
Comparing WP7 to iOS doesn't really make sense in this case. WP7 is, like Android, an OS used by several manufacturers and delivered on several networks. Each manufacturer and carrier has their own acceptance testing scheme. Failure at any step means tweaking and retesting.
It took Android from 2008-09-23 to 2009-04-30 to get to it's first MAJOR update (cupcake, v1.5). MS is pretty much on the same pace. (Note: Android 1.1 was exclusively for the T-Mobile G-1; I don't consider that comparable to the WP7 Nodo update.)
iOS runs on iPhone and iPad, and on a comparably limited number of networks. Yet it took from 2007-06-29 until 2009-06-17 (days shy of 2 years) just to get copy and paste functionality.
The market leader only looks more agile today, after they worked out a ton of bugs. Considering just how well WP7 worked from day one, I think it actually has a very bright future.
You fall in love with the development environment and then you transfer that love to the platform itself. The problem is sometimes great platforms aren't paired with great products.
I hit into this with the Amiga in the 80's and 90's. Boom, Commodore goes down. Lots of anger ensued, got over it. Then did the same with BeOS in the late 90's. Boom, Be Inc goes down. Lots of frustration ensued, got over it.
At this point I seriously considered buying my first (and last) Windows operating system box, just to get "Boom, Microsoft goes down", too.
I don't think there are generational differences between any of the smartphone competitors right now. We're looking at missing functionality, unpolished app stores and so on.
WP7 should be able to compete with Android and iOS if they fix the bugs and add missing items such as copy-paste and multitasking.
The standard is constantly in flux and IE has long dev, testing, beta and release candidate cycles because they need to be backward compatible for the sake of companies.
If IE9 implements it, there's a danger of people developing sites that implement workarounds and fixes and will break when the issues are fixed.(i.e back to ie6 days).
>edit: I predict severe downvoting once people start arriving at their offices in Redmond..
Is this some kind of joke? Usually if you bash MS and praise Apple/Google you get modded up real high. Say thing that can be construed as mildly positive to MS or midly negative to Apple and you'll not get upvotes or get downvoted. There are HN users who have quit HN for good because of this.
There are HN users who have quit HN in disgust because of this.
If you're getting downvoted for bashing MS, then you must be doing something wrong, like being way off base with your hate or something.
> If you're getting downvoted for bashing MS, then you must be doing something wrong, like being way off base with your hate or something.
No joke, sadly.
While I get carried away sometimes (Windows has improved a lot since my windows 2003 days, WP7 is neither "Vista Phone 7" nor "WinMo 7") I see very frequent downmods when I paint Microsoft technologies in unfavorable light, most of them occurring early in the morning PST (I live in GMT-3, so I post a lot before US west coast wakes up). Since I have been very active these days, most posts where this happened are buried deep in the threads pages and may take some time to unearth.
To be fair, I also notice some backlash when I paint Apple in unfavorable colors too.
It really depends. When I criticize Windows, its innards, .Net or C#, I get consistent downvotes. Less consistent when I criticize Sharepoint (which makes sense - nobody likes that monstrosity). Internet Explorer, OTOH, gets little love from everyone and seems even less popular than Sharepoint.
I must say, I've been using WP7 for a little while now, and the browser is the only place I really have no serious complaints. While I'd love to be able to use canvas and the like, the browser is really smooth as it stands. I hope the IE9 update only makes it better.
They still have not managed to roll out their first update, containing critical bug fixes.
This does not exactly bode well for IE9 rolling out at all. And then the mobile webkits not only have pretty damn good support for actually displaying pages but have made quite monstrous performance improvements recently.
Which critical bug fixes are these? I've owned and used a WP7 since a few days after launch, all of the bugs are in the "annoyance" category, I don't know of any absolute show-stoppers.
That's hardly a widely experienced problem. Google "windows phone 7 text messages corrupt"; first result is a MS answers submission by DanTup - the same guy who's blog is referenced in the HN post.
First of all, IE9 is still years behind Webkit, Firefox and Opera in HTML5 and CSS support. Second, we'll see how quickly they can actually trim it into something usable on a mobile ARM platform; closeness is relative.
Microsoft is at least two generations behind Google and Apple at this point. Some would argue three generations. I'm a .net developer who loves C# too so I'm sympathetic. But putting a lot of resources into Windows phone 7 at this point is just folly