“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.
I just can’t believe that Bill and Paul would let Ballmer continue to systematically destroy their entire life’s work
But then again I guess they never really cared about the customers or their product
Not that I’m a PC fan by any stretch–my one 5 min nightmare experience with a friend trying to print drove me to my first of many macs, but it seems so incredulous to me…
@Dave
What lifes work? You mean ripping of CP/M and selling it as QDOS then PCDOS to IBM. What hard work? LOL
Why would someone buy a phone running software deemed to be a “placeholder” by the company that produced, it, when one could have a phone with the most user-friendly and sophisticated software in the industry? At least Microsoft is being honest about Windows Mobile’s mediocrity.
@macstorn
How many people are really running around saying “Damn, I wish I could edit that doctoral dissertation that I wrote in Word on my phone!” Sure, it’s nice to boast that you can do that, but most people are using phones for communication, games, web browsing, and apps and that’s where the iPhone excels.
@Macguy:
Which means that there must be a limitless supply of mindless morons for Microsloth to draw from. What a world!
MacStorm are you being serious? Ever heard of documents to go? I’m in college and I’ve written most of my papers on my iPhone.
All these crappy products from MS year after year and Apple can’t even get a 10% global market share….Apple’s marketing division must be the shittiest ever in the tech history.
For “vaporous” read “vapid”
I ams so tired of people saying that WinMo can work with MS Office documents and the iPhone can’t.
In fact, the iPhone with Docs to Go and QuickOffice actually do it better from most of the reports I’ve read on the forums.
Anyway, it’s good to have competition. Too bad WinMo isn’t one of them.
Think about it. It is JUST OVER two years since Apple introduced it’s VERY FIRST PHONE with its VERY FIRST PHONE OS! And WinMo is still archaic.
IF WinMo 7 actually IS a complete re-write and it has some success, perhaps within 5 to 10 years after that, Microsoft MIGHT get the brainwave that rewriting its PC OS might be a good thing too.
Never mind. They won’t.
Hi,
Windows Mobile is horrible!!!! I was stuck using the crapware (version 5.0, 6.0 and 6.1) for a long time before the iPhone was available in Hong Kong. My HTC phones used to crash all the time and even lose my data from time to time. They regularly locked up and froze randomly. Additionally, when typing emails on the tiny crappy plastic keyboard, the OS could not keep up with my typing. I could type a complete sentence and wait 20 or 30 seconds for it to finish appearing on the screen. Windows Mobile is just like the Zune and the rest of Microsoft’s “offerings”. Expensive, buggy, poorly designed and useless.
As soon as he IPhone became available I flushed the toilet on Microsoft’s phone “offerings” and got an iPhone. The iPhone has been the best phone I have ever owned.
Aaahhhhh!
“Demon” has it right.
No company can have so many failures and continue. Add to that the fact that Microshaft is now coming down the backside of the curve.
Time to short the stock and make an absolute killing five years down the road……..
Hasta La Bye-bye!