“The last time Microsoft delivered a major upgrade to its smartphone software, Windows Mobile 6, in early 2007, Apple’s iPhone was still five months out on the horizon,” Stephen H. Wildstrom reports for BusinessWeek. “You can tell how radically Apple changed expectations about smartphones if you pick up any Windows Mobile handset today. The software seems positively quaint.”
MacDailyNews Take: Archaic is a better word.
Wildstrom continues, “On Oct. 6, Microsoft released a significant upgrade, Windows Mobile 6.5, on HTC handsets from AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Unfortunately the results fall far short of what Microsoft requires to get back into the top tier of mobile communications. And it won’t get another shot until version 7.0, a complete overhaul that should appear in late 2010.”
MacDailyNews Take: Far too little, far too late.
Wildstrom continues, “In the case of WinMo, all kinds of things go wrong. If, for example, you have an e-mail message or Web page that doesn’t fit on a single screen, you flick your finger to move the text up, just as you would expect. But the display also has scroll bars for use with a stylus. This wastes screen real estate and causes confusion, because sliding the scroll bar up actually moves the text down.”
MacDailyNews Take: Click “Start” to “Shut Down.”
Wildstrom continues, “Microsoft executives concede that version 6.5 is a placeholder until a more modern Windows Mobile 7 is ready. The company plans to impose much stricter rules for hardware, which will allow a more coherent software design and a better user experience. WinMo 6.5 will plod along until then, but Microsoft and its software are sure to take a lot of abuse.”
MacDailyNews Take: More empty, vaporous promises from Microsoft for the criminally gullible.
Full article here.
Why anyone would want a Windows Smartphone is beyond me. A blackberry is better. Or even Palm Pre’s OS.
Isn’t “Windows smartphone” an oxymoron
I can honestly say that I’ve never even seen someone using Windows Mobile before. iPhones are everwhere you go these days.
Right now there is a break at the convention I’m at and there are dozens of people using iPhones to check email etc. Not a Windows phone in sight. I do see one Blackberry.
Just an FYI while I wait for the next boring ass session to start. I think I’ll act like I’m taking notes on my iPhone and play a couple levels of Geared.
Windows Mobile 6.5 is the Windows Vista of the mobile OS world. It’s interesting that Microsoft is pinning its hopes on WinMo “7” to be the savior.
WinMo is a Dead Horse, Microsoft should stop flogging it and let it die a quit death in peace.
The Zune is a joke and a Dead Horse, Microsoft can’t let it go yet because even though the Zune Brand is the punch line to a host of jokes Microsoft thinks it can squeeze some value out of it to maybe shore up some of it’s loses. But selling the Zune HD at below cost is no way to fix a failed Brand.
Even new Xbox 360s are still failing with the RROD at a high rate (down from it’s 98% failure rate to 63% failure rate over three years). Xbox 360 = Circle in the drain. Xbox 360 is a failure of a product’s quality that will damage Microsoft credibility for a long time, Perhaps not as long as the Vista failure and then the Windows 7 failure that is looming large on the horizon. Even Bing has not proven to a winner in fact it is headed to the major fail zone quickly.
Now let us list Microsoft’s current failure products:
1) Windows Vista
2) Zune (all)
3) Windows Mobile
4) Window’s Live
On the Microsoft Deck headed for failure:
1) Windows Mobile 7
2) Windows 7
3) Bing
4) Zune Branded anything
Not even Microsoft can weather so many product failures and remain a whole an viable enterprise.
@ken1w
“Windows Mobile 6.5 is the Windows Vista of the mobile OS world.”
no, that’s not fair to vista. vista introduced a modern feature to windows:
a compositing graphics engine, like mac os x did in 2000.
OK, delete “modern”. vista introduced… a feature.
WinMo introduces… shifted pixels.
All Microsoft has developed has been placeholder software
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> With the promis that they will get it right…
Some day.
How ’bout ‘Windows Stillborn?’
ahahaha… yeah a placeholder so that they can finish copying the iPhone OS and all its elements.
Bing is being used by Facebook for searches! Shocked the hell out of me!
By the time Microsoft release a crappy knock off of iPhoneOS 3.0 this time next year Apple will have 4.0 out and Google Android will have so many hardware partners nobody will even notice Microsoft’s offering.
They need to accept they simply cannot move quickly enough to compete in the mobile space and kill this embarrassment. Three years between version releases just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Finally an “i” product from Microsoft, The new Windows iMmobile™
2010 will be a train wreck year for MS. Let’s hope their board believes all the Ballmer BS. We need him to stick around to finish off the company for good. This time a year from now will be fun but 2, 3 and 4 years will each be better and better than the previous.
Click “Start” to “Shut Down.” — Love it. Too true!
Where do you want to go today? Any place without M$!
Why shocked? MS owns 10% of Facebook, so of course, they have to use Bing.
@ cptnkirk – bing/facebook – that’s because Ballmer gave FB a bunch o’ money a while back – Oct 2007 – The two companies said on Wednesday that Microsoft would pay $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. (nytimes)
“Why anyone would want a Windows Smartphone is beyond me.”
Here’s why:
Our small-business (40 people) has no IT department. IT decisions are made by the Finance and Admin directors who prefer minimal hassles over maximum usability. These two decided we should go WinMo because it has ‘Windows’ in the name. Of course, everyone hates the phones since they are literally unusable to make calls. Many of us have bought iPhones and forward our WinMo to it. WinMo only makes sales to donkeys (followers of the default).
@ SamLowry
In 2000 it was modern, now it’s just a feature.
I actually know a guy who has a WinMo phone. He makes his living fixing people’s Windows computers for them, so he uses Vista, too.
The WinMo interface is absolutely hokey. It looks like it was designed by a Kindergartener. Wait, that’s an insult to 5-year-olds.
Windows in any form is a “placeholder” for the missing brains of Microsoft’s customers.
i have a winmo phone form work. sad to say that it sits on my desk as a paper weight and collecting dust. its a samsung from verizon. its a piece of shit. it locked me out. and the only way to unlock is to reset it…by the phone tech. ssssshhhhheeeeeeessssssss!!!!!
“sliding the scroll bar up actually moves the text down.”
Makes perfect sense! This *is* a Windoze product after all. The only problem is that some dumb people, like John Dvorak for example, will buy one and assert the iPhone does it WRONG.
Windows Mobile was known as Windows CE or WinCE. This is because every time you have to use it, you wince from the pain of its awkwardness.
Wince ???
You guys don’t understand.
I get Windows Mobile friends who tell me all the time, look I can check email and it’s so fast. And also there is the Mobile Office apps where I can edit my Word file and Excel and Powerpoint. I don’t think your iPhone can do that since it is by Apple and not Microsoft.
Yet, somehow they will without effort find trillions of mindless morons to buy this crap.