MacDailyNews Take: Make that “Mac-class,” Sascha.
Segan continues, “The App Store is, far and away, the best way to find and buy applications for a mobile device. By centralizing application discovery and putting it on every phone and in every copy of iTunes, Apple has made mobile apps easier to find and use than ever before.”
“Even if you’re not planning to add any apps (and why not?) there are still reasons to upgrade. The most important, for many business people, is Microsoft Exchange syncing. The iPhone syncs over the air, two ways, with Microsoft Exchange 2003 SP2 or later servers. We tried it with an Exchange 2007 server, and it gave us push email quickly and efficiently. You can turn on mail, calendar, and contact syncing separately,” Segan reports.
“In terms of the smart phone operating system marketplace, the iPhone is still a niche player. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile remains our Editors’ Choice because it’s available on a much wider range of devices, and has an even wider range of software and capabilities than iPhone 2.0 does. Nonetheless, the iPhone 2.0 upgrade is a must-get for any iPhone owner, who can download it for free, or even iPod Touch users, who must pay the reasonable fee of $10. The new apps in the App Store will make you look at both devices a whole new way,” Segan reports.
Full article here.
Niche. They love the word “niche.” It’s all they have left. Using it makes them feel better about choosing inferior crap in order to save a nickel upfront.
With more and more people switching away from Microsoft garbage (desktop, notebook, and mobile devices), PC Magazine faces the very real prospect of becoming the equivalent of Typewriter Magazine. Our guess is that they recognize their perilous situation all too well. It’s lucky for them that they love the word “niche” so much.
Microsoft’s Windows Mobile is feces compared to iPhone’s OS X 2.0. That’s simply a statement of fact. Steve Ballmer couldn’t get his 85-year-old uncle to line up with him in Redmond for one of those slabs of crap, much less generate hundreds of thousands of people lining up and camping out in countries around the globe!
Now, if being a so-called “niche player,” bars one from gaining PC Magazine’s vaunted “Editor’s Choice” award, then why does Firefox warrant PC Magazine’s “Editors’ Choice”, but Internet Explorer does not? Or, for that matter, why does Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard get an “Editors’ Choice” designation from PC Magazine while Windows Vista goes lacking?
Logic can be such a bitch, huh, Sasch?
If PC Magazine is going to come up with lame-ass excuses for not awarding their “Editors’ Choice,” they ought to at least employ some consistency, lest they render their “award” completely meaningless.
To be perfectly frank, though I have never owned or used regularly, and never will, a Windows Mobile Device, if there are thousands of business class applications, or even a couple hundred…
Even with all the HIGHLY obvious flaws in Windows Mobile, it does deserve the PC MAG Editors Choice award TODAY, simply because the majority of the apps on the iPhone are novelties and little more… Most I have tried out so far are rather weakly implemented, badly designed novelties and a few are riddled with siome rather lame flaws that make me wonder if anyone at Apple actually tried them at all before approving them.
However, that said, I think that it is VERY likely that over the course of the coming months, this will radically change. salesforce.com’s tool alone is an excellent example of a serious business tool that sets the bar (for the moment) and will surely be surpassed soon.
Windows Mobile is already far behind on user interface design, usability, and ease of obtaining applications, upgrading, managing, etc. It’s just going to take a few months for the worthwhile iPhone apps to roll out and the current ones to improve…
Is the game over? Hardly. The fact that there are two devices running iPhone OS X 2.0 currently does mean there is an edge for Windows Mobile, and will certainly restrain the iPhone’s growth in many corporate environments, but we’re now only on day 2 of the iPhone saga and I doubt Apple will rest on the seventh day like some lazy imaginary supreme being.
Lets face it, Apple locks down the app store so not anyone can sell apps for the iPhone, supposedly to ensure that quality is maintained, yet that same iron grip on the iPhone has led to a massive failure in the iPhone registration system today….
Apple is its own worse enemy.
@Eric,
I’ll tell you as soon as I try Salesforce.com on my iPod Touch.
“Typewriter Magazine”
THAT’s a good one MDN
(damn, can’t get the silly emoticon thingys working 🙁
BC
You just sound angry.
Great job reporting.
I’m a big mac fan – don’t get me wrong. But did you ever think that people think we’re ridiculous rabid fanboys because all our news sources tend to counter logical arguments with ‘oh yeah? well here’s some irrelevant facts, ASSHOLE.’
Sorry. Try being an actual journalist in the future so people will care.
He’s also recommending Windows 95 and Syquest drives for removable storage.
“it’s available on a much wider range of devices”
that all have crappy interfaces
“, and has an even wider range of software and capabilities than iPhone 2.0 does.”
but you can’t really use it well because the interfaces suck.
Typewriter Magazine
Love it. 😀
“I never understand these people that get so worked up about these things like ZuneTag,”
Perhaps that’s because you haven’t been here long enough to realize that Zune Tang is satire. He does it deliberately for a laugh.
The outlandish nature of his comments should make that clearer over time. In the mean time, enjoy his humorous take.
Aah…satire well I’ll just shut up a read from now on
I wonder how much Microsoft paid PC world to write this crap.
I get the impression the the alleged ‘journalist’ is a PC coolaid fanatic.
I sense jealousy and fear in his writing.
Just gotta love people who stick their head in the sand.
I’m convinced that there are technology writers out there whose minds are frozen in a 90s mindset. Back then, they decided that Apple (if it managed to survive) would forever be a “niche” player. I’m sure there are still plenty of these folks who would, with a straight face, still describe the iPod as a “niche” product. They simply can’t understand or admit just how dominant Apple really is with the iPod.
As an example of this, there was a recent study done showing that the first-generation iPhones were being sold primarily to people who already owned an iPod, which prompted analysts to speculate that Apple was having difficulty marketing their products beyond their existing customer base. The word “niche” wasn’t used, but it sure seems like that’s what some of those analysts were thinking – even though they had to be aware of the fact that Apple has a dominant 70% of the portable music player market. I’m convinced it’s another example that 90s “Apple = niche” mindset.
These are the same tech journalists who seem to think that the Zune is newsworthy, and cover news on the Zune as if it were the #2 player in the market after the iPod, when it’s barely even in the top 5. The flipside of “Apple = niche” is “Microsoft = dominant”, and this assumption likewise underpins much of the tech journalism I see.
So, the bizarre logic Sascha Segan uses to award the Editor’s Choice award to Windows Mobile doesn’t make any sense when you put it next to past recipients of PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice awards, as MDN points out – but it *does* make sense if you assume that Sascha, like many other tech writers, is stuck in the dual mindset of “Apple = niche” and “Microsoft = dominant”.
Either they’ll wake up to reality as the world changes around them, or they’ll be replaced by those who can see things more accurately. Either way, it’s quite interesting to watch.
It doesn’t take comparison with anything else to realize that Windows Mobile is crap. It sucks in a vacuum.
-jcr
To quote the immortal words spoken by Edwina Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous:
“I DON’T WANT MORE CHOICE: I JUST WANT NICER THINGS!”
(and yes, it was shouted)
The PC Magazine award is completely meaningless.
http://web.mac.com/sascha_segan/Sascha_Segan/Sascha_Segan_-_Journalist.html
i see PC mag doesn’t allow comments on this review. gee i wonder why. maybe because he couldn’t explain just how the sad Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile utterly fails to measure up in any way shape or form to Safari on iPhone. oh yeah, right, the web isn’t that important for a “smartphone” anyway ….
That headline needs editing.
“PC Mag reviews <strike>iPhone OS 2.0:</strike> Still a niche player, <strike>Microsoft Windows Mobile remains Editors’ Choice</strike>”
There you go.
No cut and paste, picture messaging, and saving word and excel documents ON your phone and grabbing them off your desktop when you get home…
I like the iPhone, but COME ON!!!
I’m supposed to spend more money on apps that MIGHT do the same things just to give a developer a job?
PC Mag hasn’t been significant in years. Nobody reads them. They will go the way of Byte (which sadly was actually a great magazine).
Hey – can you blame PC World? If Microsoft was your biggest advertiser and your meal ticket, wouldn’t you derisively refer to the iPhone OS 2.0 as a “niche player” too?
Face it: however nascent the current set of apps may be for the iPhone, this will change quickly. And despite any problems today with activations, the iPhone will quickly change the mobile telecommunications and computer landscape. And that is making for brown underpants at in Redmond, Washington and Waterloo, Ontario Canada. So, if you were a chair-throwing CEO of a large international software conglomerate, what would you do? Why dispatch any of your 700+ PR minions from your corporate PR team and outside PR firms like Waggoner Edstrom and have them go on a FUD campaign with journalists and editors they with whom they have built cozy relationships.
Face it: they’re desperate. And they’ll spin this like mad.
In a couple of months, the PC Magazine review will ring hollow. In the mean time, I strongly recommend that you read a wonderful article from the Industry Standard, “The iPhone Naysayers, One Year Later”. Here’s the link:
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/07/10/iphone-naysayers-one-year-later?page=0,0
It would be okay if Sacha had used some legit criteria for making Winmo his Editor’s choice, but to create a false standard, that of Smartphone OS marketplace, is nonsense. Where is this smartphone OS marketplace where I can choose from Winmo, Android, Symbian, Linmo and OS X? No store sells it? What marketplace is Sacha talking about?
Is Winmo the Editor’s choice just because more models are offered? That’s a lame reason, totally lacking in logic, becuase what if all the Winmo choices suck? Why would Winmo 7 look so much like OS X, if Winmo 6 wasn’t garbage? Why would so many new smartphones put a UI layer on top of Winmo 6 if it didn’t suck, like the Instinct?
Gourmet magazine revealed today that ketchup is the best food ever because it is in most people’s refrigerators and most people use it on the crap they eat at some point.
If you look at the reviews, the Windows Mobile Review was from March 31, 2008. Thats when it received the Editors Choice. This wasn’t a comparison between the two platforms today.
I’m shocked that MDN would resort to this type of sensationalism. Not. MDN is a true student of Fox News.
jocknerd,
“MDN is a true student of Fox News.”
Can we get a few more brilliant witticisms from your brothers jockstrap and jockitch?