Microsoft ‘Windows Phone 7 Series’ video derides Apple iPhone (with video)

“Those iPhones really are awful,” Chris Matyszczyk writes for CNET. “Who could possibly imagine people wanting to buy those ridiculous little objects? You know, the ones that only allow you to open one app at a time. The ones that simply don’t believe in the quintessential togetherness of apps.”

“No, no, I wouldn’t dream of offering such outlandish besmirchment,” Matyszczyk writes. “But you’d be forgiven for imagining that these were the exact sentiments expressed by Microsoft in a little film the company presented at the Barcelona launch of its… Windows Phone 7 Series.”


Direct link via YouTube here.

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft’s “Windows Phone 7 Series” does not support multitasking. Therefore this video is, like most things from Microsoft, meaningless, off-target, incomprehensible and just plain stupid, not to mention boring and years late.

Furthermore, Microsoft’s “Windows Phone 7 Series” devices will not ship before “the 2010 holidays.” Apple’s iPhone OS 4.0 is expected to appear at least 6 months in advance of devices running Microsoft’s 1.0 zunish scrollfest. A Microsoft version 1.0 product. Shudder.

Who wants to bet that devices running iPhone OS 4.0 (iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad) will offer not just 100,000+ more apps, a better-designed UI that doesn’t continuously destroy users’ visual memory, thousands more accessories, a much better mobile browser, and far greater stability, but also greater multi-tasking support than Windows Phone 7 Series devices, several months before Microsoft and “partners” even begin shipping their shelving dust collectors?

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]

92 Comments

  1. I don’t get this video. Pretty much all the rumors that I have been hearing say that “Windows 7 Phone Series” will not allow third party apps to multitask. So why is this different from the iPhone again?

    – HCE

  2. The best thing for everyone would be a multitasking preference:

    (1) Default is “off”. So our moms and dads don’t have to worry about battery life/stability

    (2) Users would have the ability to turn on multitasking for individual apps

    Solved.

  3. I have 2 iPhones for 2 years now and only wanted multitasking a few times. I’m a computer tech so I understand technology but love the simplicity of Apple and the iPhone. This new M$ phone will look “neat” to phone techs but will confuse the hell out of regular consumers. M$ just does not get it. Fail

  4. @R2
    No, if Apple is planning any major innovations to the iPhone OS the time to reveal it would be AFTER Balmer does his shitfaced thing in Spain.
    I doubt we saw even 20% of the iPad’s potential. That’s right Balmer, keep shooting where the puck is, not where it’s going to be when you finally get your shit in order.

  5. Because you have to convince people it is different not that it actually IS different. When you are so late to the water hole that all there is left are puddles you will do anything to fight your way to the front and lying is hardly new to Microsoft is it. Of course this time its the the Big cats at the front so bullying your way through isn’t likely to be kind on this particular manky prairie dog.

  6. @Mike Caine – For the benefit of us non Americans – when exactly are “the holidays”? I’ve seen it mentioned a few times but have no idea what time period it refers to.

    When do they celebrate Christmas in your part of the World?

  7. Christmas = 25th December, but then we do have other holidays. My own holidays will likely be in May and October this year, but I doubt Microsoft know that. Isn’t it easier and clearer just to say “before the end of the year”?

  8. Always remember that all Apple devices run OS X, which is Unix. Unix is scaleable from the ability to run your wrist watch to the ability to run a factory or a space shuttle by simply adjusting what’s in the kernel. When the decision is made that iPhones should have multi-tasking (probably when the battery life gets good enough) it will be done very easily and quickly.

  9. @Sarasota

    Christmas is a Christian holiday and is not celebrated everywhere. If I were to hear “the holidays” my first thought would be the summer holidays since that is the longest holiday period we have (at least, in terms of school holidays) but I only know that they refer to the Christmas period due to reading a lot of North American news.

  10. in 3 months time frame… you have halloween, thanksgiving christmas and new years… halloween is more of an event.. but you still got the last 3. Which is usually what they mean about the holidays.. though my first thought when they say before the holidays is before christmas.

  11. I look forward to a new phone OS from MS. The worst thing that could happen is that there is NOTHING new and apple doesn’t have to innovate (yeah yeah I know MS isn’t pushing apple but others might get ideas from MS).

  12. David already beat Goliath…so bringing a sweaty Mike Tyson to the party this late in the game doesn’t accomplish anything. RIMM was a year and a half late and is suffering bigtime. M$ is three years late and there simply is nothing there revolutionary or even evolutionary. Their most evolutionary attempt is the UI, where Apple is strongest. The iPhone’s keys are simplicity and the iTunes App hub, which was well established long before the iPhone(weep RIMM). In June, the next iPhone and OS will leave the clones in the dust again. RIMM’s biggest mistake was neglecting their app SDK and creating a true accesible hub.

  13. @ Sarasota – little harsh, not everyone lives in a country as culturally diverse as the USA. In many countries ‘the holidays’ means the summer school holidays; vacation.

    Maybe try and appreciate there are other cultures/ traditions out there in the rest of the world & ease up on the xenophobic sarcasm.

  14. The “sea of sameness” purported by Microsoft is everyone else (including M$) attempting to copy the iPhone. This video has about as much fact in it as political advertisements.

  15. Better multitasking support?……Apple?

    Keep dreaming MDN. Oh, and you don’t know crap about windows phone 7 yet (no one does really) so stop talking like you do. Shhh, be quiet.
    Those guys in the Zune team did a good job. I’m sure Apple will be able to copy most of it’s data aggregation features by the WWDC.

  16. There will not be a windows phone for the better part of a year, at least. What the video shows is a computer generated (probably on a Mac) animation of a make-believe phone that does not exist.

    Maybe it’s just me but, it’s never come up that more than one app at a time is useful, except once I was trading stock and would like to have had the calculator open too.

    This is iPod history repeated. The competition says they have something better, but by the time they release their clumsy, dysfunctional version of it, Apple is ten miles down the road.

  17. As evidence of the detriment to safety and loss to productivity due to *multi-tasking* continue to mount, more and more companies are taunting *multi-tasking* as a winning feature. Such is the high regard for reality by leading tech companies.

    Guess if you cannot create one good thing, you scramble the customer’s attention with many busy little things.

  18. Clearly, the iPhone is not for you. So don’t buy it. So don’t use it.

    GO BUY YOUR VERY OWN NON-MULTI-TASKING ZuPhone right now! Do not hesitate. Do not pass Go. Get your credit card out and run like the wind down to your local Microsoft retail store, and make yourself crazy with the joy of this new and wonderful device!

    DO IT!

    Oh, wait, uh, there’s no Microsoft Retail Store near you? Oh, dang. Oh, and there’s no ZuPhone on the shelves in that non-existent store to buy yet? Oh, double-dang.

    Funny as hell how you MicroTrolls extol the virtue of THINGS THAT DON’T EXIST over those that actually do. (Bet you just LOVE that open-mouthed rubber girlfriend of yours, huh?)

  19. A good multitasking app options screen would be similar to the “Notifications” area of Settings.

    Apps would have to “opt in” to requesting background multitasking, and the user would have full control over whether the app actually runs in the background or not, just like they have full control of notifications.

    If I were at Apple, that’s how I’d design it. (Perhaps there’d also have to be some kind of glowy indicator thing around the app’s icon, to indicate that it’s doing its business in the background, I’m not sure.)

  20. @Mike Caine Holidays is a reference to Christmas, the political correct way of saying Christmas in our Modern America is to say holidays. We want to make sure we don’t offend anyone out there that might now celebrate it. Our Jewish Americans might get offended cause they want to celebrate Hanukkah=) BTW Im Jewish and I have lived in Israel as well so don’t give me this,”your racist” trash talk.

  21. the user experience for a mobile pocket computer is partly the moment to moment immediacy and availability of apps, but also the longer horizon of battery life. I think that for mobile CPUs, including Atom, that their power consumption is influenced by how many concurrent processes are running, hence the life of the battery. I prefer jumping in and out of apps, and running only one (plus iPod or phone) and having a device that needs charging only at day’s end.

  22. @Gabochido and Mike Caine
    “Christmas is a Christian holiday and is not celebrated everywhere. If I were to hear “the holidays” my first thought would be the summer holidays—“
    I can assure you that they are not celebrating Christmas from Thanks Giving to New Year in the US. More money is spent during this period than all of the rest of the year and that is why a company would try to get a product to market during this period. As some one who works retail I can assure you those buying and those selling are not only Christians.

  23. One App at a time is perfectly pleasing for anyone able to focus. I only read one book at a time. I only watch one movie at a time. True, lots of genYs are deluded into thinking they are smart because they live in a soup of perpetual distraction, but all the evidence coming in shows that multi-taskers are less effective at every task. That said, MS can give the impression of multiple apps running in tiles if they just have a distributer cap time slicing the cpu. It should work fine to have a stock feed, a twitter app and a weather app all on screen at once. But who cares? I have a real time stock ticker running on my Mac all the time, but I only look at it once or twice an hour.

  24. regarding the multi-tasking complaint. You realize that more multi-tasking means less battery life, right? If you run 5 apps at once, you might get only 1/5 the bettery life (that would be an extreme case, but you get the point). That’s why Apple is putting in alternative mechanisms like push that are highly power efficient — you can have dozens of apps on push notifications and barely impact battery life at all.

    To everybody saying “no multi-task, no sale”, you are effectively saying “short battery life, I’ll take it!” On a mobile device power is not infinite, at least not today — you gotta think about the trade-offs.

    p.s. have a friend with a Droid, biggest complaint is that the battery doesn’t last as long as my iphone.

  25. The Windows 7 Phone OS is just Microsoft’s bad copy of Apple’s iPhone OS. It’s not new, not innovative, not intuitive, not even a good looking UI, as a complete lack of esthetic value, will also have a complete lack of Developer interest, and then there is Microsoft Phone Specification requirements which is new to Microsoft’s Mobile OEM partners. Plus Microsoft is banning OEM’s from doing their own UI encapsulating skins. (This more of a big giant negative for Microsoft then a plus of OEM’s because the OEM partners that had built software engineering teams to build encapsulating & Branding UIs for Microsoft’s WinMo are now going to be free to work on the OEM’s Android UI enhancements and branding efforts. This will lead OEMs to Push their Android Platforms harder because they’ll be better branding for the OEM compared to Microsoft’s Windows Phone branding that Microsoft is now forcing on the OEMs.

    OEM’s need to build their own Brand. The Microsoft Windows Phone Brand must not just take a back seat to the OEM’s Brand but, must be stuffed in the boot. The OS Brand should be invisible if the OEM is to survive in the modern brand war that is occurring in the Mobile Industry. Motorola and HTC are letting Google undercut the value of the HTC and Motorola Brands by letting Google’s Android Brand take center stage on their products. Droid is failing because non-tech nerds think that the Droid phone is a Google Phone. HTC sold out to Google with the Nexus One. Where Google tried to raise Android and Google above the Hardware OEM manufacture by stating that the Nexus One was made by HTC. This was a huge blow to HTC’s brand image. While HTC contract manufactures phone for other’s Google is the only one with the disclaimer that the hardware was not made by Google but by HTC. Microsoft with the Windows 7 Phone Branding is trying to pull a Google stunt and force it’s brand to be more important on the Phone then the Phone Manufacture’s own Brand. OEM’s that are hoping and preying to not end up like Creative in the PMP/MP3 Player Market, (making “Made for iPhone” approved accessories) need to starting Building a strong Hardware Brand and start forcing the OS supplier’s Brand into the boot where it belongs. Google or Microsoft the Hardware Band is much, much more important then the software which should be generic and provide OME branded UI characteristics with the underlying OS being invisible to the user. If it’s not then no one (Motorola, HTC, Samsung, Sony, …) will ever be able to compete with Apple’s iPhone leaving, Motorola, HTC, Samsung, Sony, … competing not in the smart phone market but in the ever expanding world of iPhone accessories.

    Microsoft Windows Phone strategy = Epic Fail in my opinion.

  26. “Holidays” run roughly from October 15th to February 15th. It starts with something called “Hallowe’en” (which technically occurs on October 31st, but candy, costumes and decorations must be purchased earlier). February 15th is when any any remaining unsold merchandise is unloaded at so-called “President’s Day Sales.” In between is a feeding frenzy of excess fueled by easy access to credit cards. The original meaning has been lost in the mists of time. And yes it covers 1/3 of the year, although there’s a lull in January during which unwanted stuff may be returned.

  27. @MDN
    Lets be fair here, you are only assuming iphone os 4.0 would be better in the sense of better UI design, and even the possiblity of multitasking….all assumptions.

    Despite that I don’t really like MS stuff for personal reasons. That video from MS indeed did a good job by pointed out the “boringness” of single-app tasks of the UI experience of the phones / iphones.

    I can see the obvious reasons for single-app tasks in the phone, both technological and functional, I also agree as a user on the go with my phone, I don’t really need MUCH multitasking.

    Apple is the pioneer of this smartphone UI, this video + some of the other phone 7 UI videos at least showed that MS was smart enough to envision a different UI experience, rather than doing an me-too UI like the other companies, it has contributed with a different approach, “content-centric” rather than “function-centric” like Apple’s iphone.

    So in that respect, I give MS a thumb up. But still I like iphone better and hope the next coming iphone will be like Steve Jobs said a really A+ upgrade.

  28. @mike Caine,

    I the US, the word “vacation” is used where the rest of the English speaking world uses “holiday” which in the US means either a day off from work or to refer ri the month of December, more or less a major US holiday, Thanksgiving, is the last Thursday of November and starts the “holiday season”. It’s really just a bit if silly marketing fluff though. Most Americans have 1-2 weeks of vacation (holiday) annually, compared to the UK and other EU averages of 4-8 weeks.

  29. I wouldn’t mind some sort of managed multi-tasking, apps having to request permission to run in the background when you install them, and then having a limit on the number of apps to not decrease performance would be fine with me. Realistically it’s only things like non-iPod music apps and the like that I would want to keep running as I move in and out of other things. On a phone at least.

  30. I guess on what apple is doing is analyzing the various things apps *want* to do if they had multi-tasking, and putting alternative mechanisms (like push) in the OS that achieve the “want” in a more power efficient way. Maybe with 3 or 4 mechanism you can cover 98% of what apps want to do. Then for the most important apps that can only be achieved with multi-tasking (Tom Tom, Pandora, etc) Apple works with the vendor directly to ensure their code is power efficient (costly, but worth it if the app is that important). Now they have covered 99% of what is wanted and never had to open themselves to poorly written apps that gobble power in the background (the average user won’t understand that, and even though it’s really the poorly written app’s problem, they would just complain that Apple has poor battery life)

  31. Once you get passed techies, few people even know what multi-tasking means. We tend to consume one thing at a time, in fact it makes the experience less fatiguing – cleaner, simpler. You can switch to different functions so easily on an iPhone… most regular consumers love the experience.

    You can argue that *you* don’t like the iPhone, but millions of people do… and WinMo (WinPhone now) is firmly in last place and sliding. To focus on something that consumers really don’t care about is not compelling — classic MS move.

    BTW, all that being said, I just destroyed my iPhone with a hammer because I can’t listen to Pandora radio and read MDN at the same time.

  32. “I just destroyed my iPhone with a hammer because I can’t listen to Pandora radio and read MDN at the same time.”
    ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”LOL” style=”border:0;” />
    spitting milk through my nose on the keyboard–not plugged in of course

  33. @ try to be balance

    “…you are only assuming iphone os 4.0 would be better in the sense of better UI design….”
    Technically, yes, but it’s an assumption backed by history. When I was acquiring AAPL stock in the single digits (split adjusted), I got the argument from brokers not to bet on the iMac, OSX, the iPod, the retail stores, etc. My answer was, I’m not, I’m betting on the continuous flow of transcendent new ideas and products. This company’s leadership possesses that rarest of qualities: vision, plus the drive to develop it. So yeah, it’s a safe assumption.

  34. I agree with Microsoft on this, Apple should enable multitasking on the iPhone. The lack of multitasking is one of the reasons I would never buy an iPhone (and I’m as big a mac fan as anybody else).

  35. @ try to be balance
    “That video from MS indeed did a good job by pointed out the “boringness” of single-app tasks of the UI experience of the phones / iphones.”

    You tool. The video showed absolutely nothing. It was a girl walking through computer generated rooms, and some far-away shots of the same animations on the P7 site. They didn’t show exactly how any of those apps “work together” at all.

    But no matter, the phone isn’t what was most interesting about this video, it was the little tidbit you probably missed –

    “Don’t get us wrong, we like apps….” But the apps take away from the “Phone Experience”.

    What? The phone is a screen with three buttons. That’s 2 more buttons than the iPhone has, making the P7 phone, obviously, three times better.

    Now if you’re looking at the main the ‘springboard’ screen as a live area to aggregate data from multiple sources, that’s fine, but THAT DOESN’T MEAN IT’S MULTITASKING. It’s just running one app that mines data from lots of places.

    There is zero evidence, from any of the videos so far that the P7 phone mulititasks any more than the iPhone, or any other phone.

    And I know this, because she wasn’t listening to Pandora.

    -c

  36. This is off topic, but as I was reading this something suddenly struck me about all these devices and touch technology (and it applies to Windows as well as Apple) that I haven’t seen addressed anywhere.

    What considerations or allowances are being made for the handicapped to be able to use these devices?

    Without tactile feedback how can a blind person even use an iPhone, iPad, or touch tech of any kind?

    App developers and peripheral makers (with braille keyboards) could address some of this, but the iPad and some other devices could be viewed (by some) as a devices in violation of the ADA.

    With websites being held accountable to the standards of the ADA, how long will it be before devices used to access the web are held to them as well?

  37. To clarify Holiday for our non American friends:

    In the US the word Holiday generally refers to a specific day on which generally a national holiday is celbrated eg July 4th
    or Labor Day etc.

    In reference to the above article manufacturers/sellers try to capitalize on the Holiday gift buying season as was above defined (last thursday in November thru New Years day).

    To do that they generally introduce new products by the end of September so that they are on the shelf and available for purchase for the Holiday buying season.

    In the US we do not use the word holiday the way the Brits do for example. When we take time of from work and take a trip we tend to refer to that as “going on a Vacation”.

    We do not go on Holiday. Summertime away from school is Summer Vacation.

  38. I think that windows phone 7 UI is a total mess….. WTF is that hub thing, its just a giant icon that pop out notification like the iphone app icon.

    Its just some old stuff, but M$ make it like a big deal of great innovation….. yurkkkkkkkkk

  39. on the ad itself

    man’s voice + woman = implied family
    implies trust

    not bad

    image of woman inside building, looking for a way out
    message is that woman is trapped by existing smart phones

    not bad

    image of woman walking outside, smiling
    message is that the new smart phones are the way out!

    not bad

    given the nearly incomprehensible nature of the technology, I’d give the ad an A

  40. To an old crumudgeon like me, my interest was in the cutie displaying the “wonders” of Windows Mobile 7. The lady maybe too much to handle for you young fellers under 30 ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />

  41. It almost sounds like no apps. They run integrated. I can update Facebook and Twitter at the same time, or see what a friend posted on both, but how do I actually get into the app if I want to do more on them? I did not see anything that was not MS. Where was the browser? I have not seen how web pages will look on this yet. What about landscape so far I have not seen the phone turn on its side. It looks cool, but show some real apps running.

    The other thing about not having multitasking is it keeps apps form effecting others negatively. A app in the background could crash the system and other apps would take the blame. Apple wise to go about this slowly. Let apps prove they can’t effect others.

  42. Every time I see the WIndows Phone 7 Series UI displayed it always has these huge panoramas extending to one side or the other. I understand the idea of scrolling – I scroll through 14 pages of apps on the iPhone. But they advertise it as the user experience being all scrolling back and forth. And has anybody seen it go landscape? Just a question. But, while visually pretty with nice background images (of which you can only see a part) and bold hub titles (of which you can only see a part) what determines where downloaded apps go (of which you can only see a part). The ad tagline for this should be “That’s how we scroll.”

  43. 1)I love the iphone
    2)This LOOKS very cool especially the idea of having your contacts as people and not just information. e.g. their status updates are right there etc.
    3)there is no number 3
    4)The apps will most likely not be as useful as the iPhone because of Apple’s AWESOME sdk
    5)i’m done. . .i think…

  44. wow. microsoft finally puts out a quality product, and everyone who strokes themselves to a picture of steve jobs before they go to bed each night, start convulsing. It’s ok applephites, I’m sure apple will always stay a few feet in front of microsoft so you can read the latest “how best to lube your ass for your gay lover” book on your “itampon” at your local starbucks……. fret not.

  45. Before anyone attacks Joseph for his rude rage against “applephites” we should take into condition that in addition to being hateful, he displays the symptoms of Asperger’s Disorder. This is indicated by his inability to feel any empathy for others (who happen to like Apple) and more significantly, that he can’t tell the difference from what is known from what is true. The Microsoft video is not a product, it is only a visionary promise of what a product might be. While an interesting idea, the existence of the video, does not insure the truth Joseph finds in the promise.

  46. @Joseph “wow. microsoft finally puts out a quality product,”
    What product is it that microsoft has finally put out? A slick video advert. does not make a product. Let’s wait until this product comes out before we all say how good it is.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.